The Evil Within

and its made by the legendary Resident evil yada yada etc, ok this game seriously has lots of problems for me. I'll say some good things first, I like the art direction and the environments and the many strange and surreal places you experience, the game is really cerebral and physiological and i enjoy those parts, the story is kinda neat almost like Brain in a vat type philosophy, graphics are cinematic and immersive, the game can be tense and horrifying yes, but for me personally the core gameplay loop is just fucking BAD. so for the first quarter of the game its just a generic stealth game where you take cover, study enemy patterns, sneak up and do a 1 hit animation KO, sure whatever, its boring as fuck and gets old fast. The controls are pretty terrible, the game doesn't feel good to play. the way the character moves feels like its locked on some gross axis, i dont know how to explain.

After sneaking you get some guns and yeah expect to have no ammo obviously as the game wants to be survival horror. the only real time you feel like you need guns is when (frequently) there are sections where you SPAM SPACE BUTTON TO OPEN DOOR/WHEEL/LEVER, while there are 50 enemies behind you. you never feel like you have a real satisfying chance to do anything about the situation you're in, constantly just running away or figuring out ways to cheese the enemies into silly positions through their sometimes bad AI. youre suppose to do whatever it takes to conserve ammo (sneak, throw glass bottles to awkwardly fumble around and *Stun kill* them, burn them with matches when they fall down but try to line it up so many of them somehow catch fire all at once?) just feels so awkward and not rewarding...the game is extremely tedious because around almost every corner theres some kind of trap that are real "HAHA, GOTCHA!" moments. only to die 1-3 times from them you understand what to do. I got stuck on almost every checkpoint for 1-5 deaths on Survival difficulty, not due to me thinking "damn I could of handled that better" but me thinking "that was bullshit, now i know for next time"

i never felt like i was worried about anything that happened because death was so frequent and the checkpoint system is very liberal. i only felt "damn when is this part going to be over im so sick of this"

infact i was almost counting down the minutes until the game was over, simply because I kept doing the same thing time and time again and feeling like the general game cycle was bullshit and enjoyable

scripted sequence > cutscene > strange RANDOM otherworldy happening > wave of enemies (Sneak around to conserve ammo!) spotted > awkwardly fumble to try to get 1 hit kill animations > BOSS ENEMY > Door > SPAM SPACE BUTTON!!!!!! >Boss grabs you just before you quicktimed fast enough, 1Hit KO
thats basically the entire game..

and yeah there are a ton of places where you can have 100% health, do flawless, an enemy gets you at just the right animation > 1HIT death
anyway, the shooting is medicore feeling with really awkward crosshairs and controls, the upgrade system is "We guess it needs one! modern console game!" and you end up just spamming Sprint upgrades because its the only way to avoid most situations, the main thing I like about the game is the setting and premise, and twisted surreal horror vibes, the enemy designs can be gruesome and well illistrated, the game is really over the top with its animations and its impressive, the plot is standard with some less than good characters, main character is kind of utterly forgettable and non-chalant

hurts to say its a 5/10, maybe a 6/10 hard to say... the gameplay cycle just couldnt make me stop thinking "cant wait for end credits"

5.5/10