The Evil Within 2

 

 Considering I finished the first game and wasn't a big fan of it, maybe I was playing it wrong, was rushing too much, or It really just wasn't designed in a way I enjoyed - I was skeptical coming into The Evil Within 2. So for the second instalment what have they done differently to enhance the experience?

 Well first I will get out of the way that the game is really fucking hard....IN THE FIRST 2-3 hours. Yes, the first few hours is like a gruellingly hard, no ammo, no items, hardly any heals ...I was wrapping my head around the mechanics and how to play, constantly dying, using the mechanics incorrectly such as wasting all of my resources on 'Field Crafting' instead of using a dedicated work bench...this in turn made me get stuck on Chapter 3 where I'm inside a warehouse, and it spawns 3 enemies that I MUST defeat to progress, however I only had 4 pistol bullets and 2 shotgun bullets. Well after an hour of dying over and over, raging at how bullshit it was, I somehow managed to get past it despite screwing myself over with no resources.
 
... And then the game got 10x easier and started to become a lot of fun.
 First of all, the game like the first one, operates off of an upgrade tree where you kill enemies and collect their goo (xp) then go back to your safehouse and sit in a chair to do upgrades. These are vital, and make the game WAY easier and more enjoyable. For example, before doing any upgrades you can hardly face up against a single regular enemy, but after just a few you turn into an untouchable killing machine.
 Some notable upgrades are the stealth tree where you get this ability to aggro a monster, then run and hide behind a corner, then spam the F key waiting for the monster to chase you, then you instantly go into this animation and one hit them every time (except for a few exceptions) - This alone makes the game way easier, and pretty satisfying ... albeit it feels a bit TOO modern in its basically a quick time event combat... but I enjoyed doing it anyway.

 Other upgrades are things like way more health, faster health regen up to a certain spot, more stamina, faster crouch stealth speed, an ability to smash enemies in the head with a bottle whenever they grapple you (Very good) etc...

 I found myself just wandering around purposefully killing enemies to collect their goo, in hype of being able to go back to my safe house and afford the next upgrade. Constantly searching the environment for items, upgrades, ammo, everything felt like it had a purpose and meaning, and I couldn't, or didn't want to, just try to speedrun past everything. Genuinely wanted to explore the environments that were rich in details searching for any cool new items and XP.. Pretty fun cycle. Theres even a shooting gallery at your safe house, that has various stages, and for completion it rewards you with some XP goo. And I went out of my way to complete all of them, because it was fun, and because I was that interested in unlocking more of my skill tree.

Another thing this game does different than the first, is it is a lot more open world feeling. In between safe houses you have this big, surreal, Silent Hill meets Resident Evil esque foggy horror villages, crawling with all sorts of insane nightmarish psychological monsters, that you can either avoid or engage with, as you crawl around to next objective or optional side missions that give you supplies, and most importantly: Ammo pouches. Because this game is very survival feeling in nature, by default you can only carry a handful of shotgun rounds (like 8) , and only 20 handgun bullets. Finding these ammo pouches permanently increases the amount of ammo you can carry, which is vital to your success. I enjoyed going around and trying to find these, as it meant I could be that much more confident when facing the ever challenging new enemies that the game keeps introducing.

Many facets of the gameplay feel both oldschool, and newschool. Like the difficulty is pretty punishing in that you're always kinda feeling insecure and short on supplies, which gives it a great survival horror atmosphere, but also these newschool elements like the regenerating health (which is welcome, because it only goes up to about 30% even maxed out) and the quick time event takedowns, stealth kills, and cover system.

The actual gunplay feels pretty good, and kind of realistic. Like your aim is extremely shaky by default, swinging all over the place,and the enemy animations are frantic and its not easy to kill them with guns, especially when you're so scrapped for ammo and stressed out that you don't want to miss. I'm not sure if the game has a lack of weapon variety, but for most of the game I realy only used the pistol and shotgun, there are other weapons like an assault rifle, that you get towards the end of the game, but the ammo is so limited it just felt pointless to use it.
 You can craft your own ammo, but I had already used all the resources to upgrade my pistol/shotgun so it felt a waste to craft assault rifle ammo. Theres also a sniper, which I only used a handful of times, mostly in boss battles.

 
 Which brings me to the actual enemies, as the story progresses it frequently introduces new types with their own strengths and weaknesses, and ways to take them down. Wandering around the open city can become very frightening because you never know what you'll run into, sometimes there's these huge insane monster ladies with sawblades crying and screeching around, other times melted face dudes with flamethrowers, or big hulking blobs that explode.. I found all the enemy designs really creepy and fun to encounter.. it never felt like a dull moment.
 And there are constantly boss battles, I thought all of them were pretty great. None of them were all that hard or frustrating, and all the crazy boss designs were fascinating and fun to fight. Mostly revolving around shooting a massive glowing thing, so nothing complex, but this is also where the newschool mechanics show up.  There is this detection meter in the form of a wandering eyeball on top of your screen that I thoguht was a nice touch. It wanders back and forth when enemies are aware of your presence, and searching for you. It stares directly onward when the enemy knows exactly where you are and is coming for you (stealth wont work), and it disappears when youre totally stealthed. In a way its a good mechanic, in the sense that you wont get hit will some bullshit and get attacked by an enemy you cant see because of the camera, but also in a sense it also takes away some tension and horror and you kind of always know exactly when you're safe or not. But I enjoyed the mechanic regardless. 

The enviorments are constantly shifting, changing, turning into new sights and sounds. In some chapters you're going through art galleries, encountering this interesting psycho villian who thinks highly of himself as an artist,  torturing humans to create his art. Forcing you into all sorts of strange otherwordly psycological encounters and 'trials' , with great enviorments and creepy artworks on the wall..and an eventual boss fight against him which was really fun and clever, with the giant eyeball in the sky acting as his camera.
 Other enviorments send you into the depths of hell 'The Bottomelss Pit' was really desolate and creepy feeling, this giant empty pit crawling with tortured souls, sneaking around to progress to the next nightmare..  

You have this other villian who thinks of himself some kind of religious cult leader, who is based around fire, and sends you into all sorts of fire based enviorments and enemy types , where you cant just stealth attack them while theyre on fire, you have to wait until they stop being on fire to really hurt them, and some cool enviormental puzzles, always including something horrific and bloody.
 
 Other enviorments like the aforementioned Silent Hill type foggy strange cities, underground tunnels which feel very much Resident Evil inspired, with labratory included.. it's all familliar enough that you've kind of seen it before, but its all combined and slammed together all in one spot its like a compilation of the best of horror games.


Onto the story, which I felt was kind of the weakest part of the experience, or atleast the protagonists motivations. The whole thing is nothing really new, its the typical family drama, but with an overblown, totally absurd nonsensical self centered utter child worship twist. Father thinks his daughter burnt alive in a house fire, turns out she didnt really but instead got captured by some secret agency that is basically operating The Matrix and needs the daughter to hook into some virtual reality world to be able to control the world? So they kidnap you and shove you into The Matrix to go after your daughter and help them or some shit?  I don't know, its really fucking absurd and silly at a certain point. Although I did enjoy The Matrix aspect of it, where everything you're experiencing is this strange dreamlike, virtual reality world where at a moments notice everything can collapse and change- and frequently does.
 Dont get me wrong, the characters, cutscenes, and most of the writing was pretty damn entertaining and I didnt want to skip any of it and even explored all the optional dialogues, tons of memorable moments with characters and really chilling gruesome cutscenes, all of the villians and bosses are super entertaining, and the side kicks, while ultimately filler, serve their purpose and are a good companion while they last. Theres something comfy, but also sad and melancholic about visiting all these safehouses where you know your NPC pal will be waiting there for you as a sidekick alongside your journey. Of course, they never last, but who expected them to? its all a part of the drama.
 
 Really, the worst bit about the story is how cliche, corny, and down right cringe some of it is at times with the time old tale of a parents emotional obsession with their offspring. Like, damn, I get it, the developer procreated and loves their children more than anything in the world, but they decided to make the entire plot in the game about how beautiful a parents relationship is with their child. Its not. Its pretty generic and cliche, and most of the dialogue surrounding it is just MUH FUCKING DAUGHTER IS SO PRECIOUS OH MY GOD ILL DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HURRRR. for hours on end. I mean, come on, you cant come up with any other motivation for a protagonist than his family? How many times have we seen that?
 Maybe its a nitpick, but I just thought it was painfully cliche the whole time.
So ok, the motivation of the main character is kinda cheesy, but everything that happens in between is damn entertaining betweeen all the various characters and interactions, so its fine.

Theres a lot to be said for this game, but for the sake of brevity I can cut it short I guess.
The atmosphere is pretty top notch, I dont like describing graphics in reviews, but this game has pretty awesome visuals, just check a video to see for yourself. Its gritty as hell and theres always something interesting to checkout in the enviorment. Nothing in the game really felt all that much like filler enviormentally , atmospherically or graphically. If I had to give complaints it would be on the cheesy generic main characters motivation, the difficulty spike in the early hours was just totally offputting, and the combat can be exploited a little too easily with stealth, mostly the corner take down ability kind of trivializes much of the game where you just aggro enemies and consistently and confidently take them out with a QTE, which reminds me, another thing I would complain about are the controls can sometimes suck badly and not do what you want. Sometimes youll want to rush into cover, only to jump ontop of it, vault over, do all sorts of acrobatics, when all you wanted to do was take cover, because all of these interactions happen around the same few keys and combinations. Not the best controls in that regard.
 And actually. another thing now that I think about it. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to upgrade my health so much, is because when you die, it will often load you back to a checkpoint at a cutscene, and you'll be forced to listen/repeat/watch the same scripted event time and time and time again, and you cant skip it. This got so annoying that I decided to just try to max out my health upgrades to ensure I rarely die and forced to sit through the same cutscene over and over again lol. 

 Really enjoyed the kind of open world feel, with all the safe houses scattered between, complete with cooldown based coffee machines to strategically refill your health. A lot of the game is done with a cunning combination of strategy and raw power. Strategy on how to manage  your resources, strategy on exactly when to use your health, raw power when overcoming enemies with the stealth kills, gunning them down when you feel like you have the resources..  I'll just cut it short here, a solid game that I suspect will be quite memorable and definitely enjoyed it more than the first one.


8/10