The Evil Within (Xbox One)

The Evil Within is a survival horror game, developed by Tango Gameworks and released in 2014.

Detective Sebastian Castellanos, along with his compatriots, Kidman and Joseph are investigating a murder at a mental hospital, and soon find themselves in a world of destruction. After seemingly see the world falling to bits, Sebastian awakes and finds himself strung upside down on a meat hook, while a human-like beast is butchering bodies. Sebastian attempts to break free and escape, before delving into a world full of even more disturbing situations. It's one of the best video game opening sequences I've played in quite some time.

Sebastian encounters Dr Jimenez, who his looking for his patient, Leslie. Separated from his partners, Sebastian learns more information about what is happening around him through Jimenez, learning more and more about a powerful being, Ruvik. Dressed in rags and the ability to kill you in a instant, your best option is to run when Ruvik pops up. There's plenty more to fear though, Laura, a spider-like woman whose constant shrieking is enough to freak you out for life, never mind her introduction that comes out of nowhere. Sebastian, his fellow detectives, Dr Jimenez and Leslie must fight for their lives to escape the madness they find themselves trapped in.

The creepy tone is carried throughout, the screen is shortened due to the black bars at the top and bottom of your screen, restricting your view. Cinematically it looked good, but for gameplay it was hindering. There is a constant Resident Evil 4 feel to it, like the whole game is a homage to the horror classic.

You travel to lots of creepy environments, they looked great, they're intense to navigate through. You want to explore, and you should, there's plenty of secrets and you need to scavenge for ammo anyway. The gameplay is fun, the shooting can be difficult, but the actions scenes are great to play. You can stealth by throwing bottles as distractions and get up close for sneak kills.

You have a huge arsenal at your disposal, but ammo is very scarce. You can also find melee weapons that are only usable once and you have a crossbow with different types of bolts; freeze bolts, explosive, fire and a few more. I took a while to get into Evil Within, once I realised I couldn't shoot everyone in the head and played correctly, it was fun. The Haunted, the standard enemy of the game, can survive head wounds. The most effective way to kill, is to shoot them in the knee and drop and match on them when they fall. Matches are more damaging than bullets.... Seriously!

The creatures in this game are fucked up. Probably nothing compared to Silent Hill, they're pretty messed up too, but still. But I love that. I love the uneasy feeling you get from Evil Within, it's not something you get from many games. I was always looking forward to seeing the next boss introduction. The boss fights were always intense and well done. The Keeper is another stand out boss, a brute with a sledgehammer and a locked safe for a head? Did I mention he can kill himself to teleport closer to you? It's freaky and even worse as he respawns in front of you from the ground.

Survival difficulty is the normal difficulty, but you could get your ass kicked. If you were caught with a hit, you'd feel it with your health bar. You can upgrade your abilities, weapons and stock. Upgrade your stock for matches... trust me! You can also unlock safes by finding keys hidden in statues, you can get some wonderful items when you unlock them; upgrade gel, ammo, bolts, it's addicting unlocking them. You have a sprint bar, that's miniscule unless you upgrade it. The problem is, when you sprint, you come to a complete stand still when the bar empties as you recover, but you stop running before the bar runs down and can fuck you. The graphics were quite a let down too, ultimately they were good on the monsters and locations you went to, but the people looked like they came straight from the 360. This was one of the first games I played on the One and it was a disappointment.

I'm not a huge fan of horror games, I'd liked to be, but I'm often too scared to get into them. Evil Within is certainly one of the creepiest horror games around, but it's very entertaining and a really good game. I'm definitely getting the sequel and look forward to the next barrage of crazy enemies.

7.9/10