Review for The Evil Within 2. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 13/10/2017
"The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh"
If you are a horror fan you will know very well where this quote comes from: it is one of the most famous Silent Hill phrases, disturbing and decadent survival masterpiece of the 32-bit era. When Konami released his title on PlayStation, this wiped out practically every other horror on the market: Silent Hill offered a very different experience from the various Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark thanks above all to a more psychological terror, mature themes and gameplay slightly less driven.
But why are we talking about Silent Hill if the series is now dead and gone? Because at the beginning of October, The Evil Within 2, the second episode of the creature created by Tango Gameworks and Shinji Mikami, a game that has much more in common with the Konami series than you might expect.
This second episode takes place three years after the events of the prequel and sees the fascinating and tormented detective Sebastian Castellanos again as protagonist, who, now on the verge of collapse, receives an unexpected and shocking job offer: save his daughter Lily. But hadn't Lily died in a tragic fire? It would seem so and indeed, it seems she was kidnapped by Mobius, the mysterious corporation already seen in the first episode, to make it the beating heart of a new and more efficient STEM system.
For those who do not remember, STEM is the machinery responsible for the horror encountered in the first chapter, a tool so powerful that it is able to create a fictional world and host the minds of other people within it. However, all this has a price: the operating core of the machine is, in turn, a real human brain. Sebastian's daughter, a prisoner of Mobius for a long time, however, no longer seems to respond to the impulses of the system, thus causing the slow but inexorable collapse of the fictitious reality of STEM. What happened to Lily and the rest of the human guinea pigs? What is the cause of the disconnection? Our dear detective will have to answer this and many other questions who, driven by his paternal instinct, will immerse himself in the infernal machinery and will do the impossible to discover the truth.
Does this incipit remind you of anything? Yes: like Silent Hill, The Evil Within 2 also deals with the delicate theme of the bond between parent and child and that sentence, the one quoted at the very beginning of this review, represents the real terror set up by Tango Gameworks. "The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh" indicates the fear, the terror, the anguish deriving from the possibility that a loved one is in danger, perhaps the greatest fear that a human being can experience.
The fear and tension generated by The Evil Within 2 comes not only from the plot, but also from its gameplay. The title is in fact absolutely not indulgent with the player and indeed, tends to provide very little resources for survival, especially in the first portion of the adventure. Every bullet, med kit, raw material or dart must be carefully used as there will be very few available. Stealth dynamics, which in the past were a cornerstone of gameplay, now take on a new and very important role as they allow you to overwhelm and eliminate enemies, thus saving precious ammunition. In this regard, the cover system, although not yet perfect, has been significantly improved and with it also the artificial intelligence of the enemies, now more reactive and attentive to what happens nearby.
In fact the controls have all been finally improved: The Evil Within 2 is in fact a much smoother and more immediate game to control compared to the prequel since the change of the graphics engine allowed more stable and smoother framerates. The close-up second-person view has remained almost intact, including the player's limited field of view, but a more precise and faster aiming system for firearms manages to partially overcome the disadvantages of blind spots.
A notable qualitative improvement has also made the crafting system and development of the skills of the protagonist. The collection of raw materials around the levels will in fact be essential to create bullets, crossbow darts and healing kits, while gears and metal will be used to enhance your arsenal, which although not very large, still manages to provide a good range of tools for death. The gameplay has also been enhanced by various other elements, first of all a more open structure of the locations.
Sometimes we will in fact have the opportunity to move within fairly large areas, full of elements to discover and not always linked to the main mission. This has led to a wider range of possible situations, greater interactivity with surrounding objects and, above all, smarter management of the famous safe zones (SPOILER: Nurse Tatiana will be back and will be even more pungent than before!).
In short, this The Evil Within 2 seems to be the sequel we all want. Will it really be so? In some ways, yes: the work done to improve and refine the gameplay is in fact truly remarkable as many of the criticisms leveled at the prequel seem to have been corrected or at least blunted. The biggest step forward, however, was made by the plot and the direction itself. The formula used previously was in fact very chaotic and disorienting, often there was no apparent logical thread between one scene and another in the game and on more than one occasion we wondered what the heck was happening on the screen.
Sure, this effectively conveyed the idea of being in a world beyond any logic or physical law, but the feeling of dealing with a jumble of elements taken at random from a cauldron of horror situations and elements was actually tangible. Now the events follow a decidedly better defined path while not giving up on moments in which reality bends, distorts, changes just to play with the user's mind. A bit like Eternal Darkness did for Game Cube, another forgotten horror game that contributed greatly to the growth of the genre.
As already mentioned, from a technical point of view the team has opted for a change of the graphic engine, a heavily modified version of the id Tech which takes the name of STEM Engine. As already mentioned, this has led to numerous advantages not only from a visual point of view, but also from a gameplay point of view as the experience is decidedly more fluid and pleasant to play. The only element of the visual aspect that is subdued is the monster design: the famous motto "Less is More" also applies to horror and we would have preferred that the team followed a path more similar to that of the first chapter in terms of enemies and boss. How can we forget the iconic Keeper or the creepy Laura?
The soundtrack, on the other hand, remains as splendid as ever, with songs capable of creating the right tension and goosebumps sound effects.
The Evil Within 2 has improved everything, except perhaps the monster design. It had been a long time since we saw a horror of this caliber, a title that plays with the perception and feelings of the user in order to create situations full of tension and extremely gruesome. In short, Tango Gameworks and Bethesda have hit the mark, above all because they have corrected and smoothed out many of the defects that plagued the gameplay of the prequel, even accentuating the survival component. Do you love horror? Do you like challenges? Then The Evil Within 2 is an almost obligatory purchase.
► The Evil Within 2 is a Horror-Survival type game developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 13/10/2017
