After the first murderous roller-coaster of a chapter, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Evil Within was going to be an incredibly tense survival horror game in which the bruised and battered protagonist flees for his life from a series of murderous foes, á la Outlast.

After the second nerve-wracking chapter, in which the level is strewn with deadly traps and enemies, you’d be forgiven for thinking The Evil Within was going to be a slow and atmospheric stealth based horror game, in which the under-powered protagonist is forced to use his wit and cunning to best powerful foes.

Strangely enough, The Evil Within isn’t either of these things. The first two chapters build a sturdy foundation for an excellent horror adventure that never really happens.  Don’t get me wrong, The Evil Within is a very good game, it just initially promised so much more.

It’s undeniable that The Evil Within is a survival horror game. Much like the acclaimed Resident Evil 4, the protagonist, detective Sebastian Castellanos, uses a range of weaponry to defeat an endless stream of slow-moving but heavy-hitting enemies.

It nails exactly what should happen in a survival horror game. I spent most of my playthrough on very little health with very few bullets dreading every encounter. The horror doesn’t necessarily come from the monster design (seen one gory gentleman with nails through his head, seen em all), but from the fact that any single enemy, if not tackled correctly, can be your demise.

Although the more common enemies are pretty standard for horror games, there is some inventive monster design on show in The Evil Within. Any game that makes me shout out ‘what the f**k is that?!’ on more than one occasion should be praised.

It’s the unpredictability of the design that keeps things fresh. Huge, lumbering men with safes instead of heads? That kind of non-sequitur is far more effective than ‘gory man #4’. What is strange though, is that the primary antagonist is probably the least hideous foe in the entire game. He basically looks like a zombified version of Altair from Assassin’s Creed.

One thing I really respected about The Evil Within was the esteem it showed for the player. There were many occasions where I found myself trapped in what at first seemed an impossible situation, such as when ten or more enemies climbed out of a body of water and chased Sebastian around a room laden with deadly booby traps. Normally in a horror game, this would prompt a cutscene in which the protagonist narrowly escapes with his life.

Not in The Evil Within. The cutscene never comes and you’re torn to pieces. Instead, you have to face this seemingly insurmountable challenge. Sure, you’ll die a lot and swear a lot and curse Shinji Mikami a lot, but then you’ll notice certain environmental features that can be taken advantage of. You’ll learn how to make the most of every last bullet, and when to resort to the slightly pathetic melee attack.

In short, The Evil Within forces its player to constantly adapt their playing style with every new challenge. It’s impossible to fall into a comfy routine, because it’s impossible to predict what lies around the corner.

It may offer nothing particularly new in terms of gameplay, but it does almost everything right. I say almost, because it does commit the cardinal sin of horror games (I’m looking at you Amy).

For prolonged sections of the game, Sebastian is joined by his partner Joseph, who aside from being a stump of a character, has to be healed and protected by Sebastian. He has his own weapons, but is strangely reluctant to shoot the murderous cenobite intent on ripping his face off and wearing it as a loin-cloth. Instead, he’ll often just stand there and get the shit kicked out of him until you save him.

It’s not as frustrating as it might sound, but it does add a layer of annoyance and difficulty to an already exceedingly difficult game. It’s one thing getting a game over because you were overwhelmed by enemies, but it’s a joke when you get a game over because your docile partner fell off a bridge, and you were too busy dealing with your own monster problem to notice.

On the whole, this is just a minor annoyance in an otherwise tight and expertly crafted gameplay experience. However, The Evil Within does have something missing, and that’s a complete lack of personality.

There is no attempt to make Sebastian a likeable or interesting character. Every now and then you find a random diary entry detailing some family tragedy, but family tragedies are to horror protagonists what Pokémon cards were to people born in the nineties.

Following up a reported multiple homicide, Sebastian and his partners accidently fall prey to a mysterious and evil force which traps them inside a dream-like transient realm dominated by murderous creatures and a mysterious, hooded antagonist.

The story feels like a simplified Silent Hill plot, except in The Evil Within Sebastian feels like a stranger in somebody else’s nightmare. It lacks the intimacy that would have really hooked the player.

As good as the combat is, surprisingly my favourite parts of The Evil Within were the sections where the combat was taken away. Occasionally, the game seems to blink and all of a sudden, Sebastian is dumped into a different environment where the laws of physics no longer apply and he’s batted around from terror to terror like the plaything of some malevolent intelligence.

Unfortunately, this is testament again to The Evil Within’s major flaw. Sebastian is an entirely reactionary character. He doesn’t actually ‘do’ anything through-out the entire game. Things happen to him, and he reacts.

Taking away the agency of the character reduces any emotional impact the game might have had. The early Silent Hill games worked so well because there was a keen sense that everything was somehow connected to the protagonist, and that as he/her stumbles through the game, the choices they make are ultimately dooming them. Unfortunately, there’s nothing as sophisticated as that in The Evil Within.

But then again, the Resident Evil series was never praised for its writing. It was praised for its survival horror gameplay, its atmosphere and its ability to frighten. The Evil Within is a showcase of the direction the Resident Evil series should have gone in, instead of the embarrassing tragedy that was its sixth entry. More importantly though, it shows that the survival horror genre is alive and well and has a future on the new consoles.

7/10

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