The Evil Within
may be the Resident Evil
game we've been waiting for. When we classify games, we typically
break them down into genres. This enables those who aren't fully
immersed in the culture to understand the overarching state of the
industry. Survival Horror is seen as a distinct genre, though it
falls under the broader Action Adventure genre if this is your first
rodeo. Within Survival Horror, we can break down specific
sub-genres. Sub-genres, in the (still) relative infancy of the video
games industry, are most easily defined by the defining title or
series that other titles have copied. The RE marketing machine used
the term Survival Horror but Resident Evil has become a long standing
genre of it's own. It is characterized by limited resources,
difficult controls, B-movie sentiments, and sudden, gory death.
The
difficult controls may be the most defining factor of what makes a
Resident Evil game fit this definition. In the first several RE's,
player skill was largely mitigated by an aiming system based on
line-of-sight and random number generators. Head shots were a dice
roll, not a reticule function. Starting with RE 4, the series moved
away from using controls as a source of difficulty. Real aiming,
enemy hit reactions, and a greater focus on mobility made RE 4,5,6
hew closer to Action-Adventure with a gore component than Survival
Horror. This holds true for the Dead Space
series, which never were really difficult, you just died a lot.
So we
have The Evil Within. Where
does it fit in this crazy world? It's made by Shinji Mikami, the
creator of RE, and it hits many of the same beats that RE hit. The
controls are clunky by modern standards, and the un-upgraded reticule
is more of a suggestion than a certainty. Enemies can and will kill
you. Your melee attack's damage is described as “slight.” At
least for the first half of the game, you are a fragile urn of guts
too easily spilled. The Evil Within
strikes back at what made Survival Horror games horrific in the first
place – your character approximates something close to a real human
who gets tired, makes clumsy movements, and can't pop long-range
headshots with a revolver.
As
Survival Horror games have moved towards the mainstream, they have
lost most of what defines them. The limited inventory has for a few
iterations now been the primary holdover, a checkbox on the list of
admittance to the club. The Evil Within
pushes this aspect, making your inventory a thing you upgrade like
your accuracy or stamina. Space, like everything, is a limited
resource. Your fully upgraded character will not be much more
inherently powerful, but will have more total power to throw at your
enemies. The Evil Within
manages the most important aspect lost in modern “Survival Horror”
games: it's goddamn stressful. The highly deadly enemies, limited
health replenishment, ineffective bullets, dodgy stealth, and some
hard-to-spot traps make your lives short. At the same time, managing
to overcome all the forces arrayed against you makes victory all the
sweeter.
The
real thing holding The Evil Within
back is the coat of paint put over this masterful cocktail of
throwback survival horror. The world is crazy, with some kind of
magical fault lines twisting the landscape like a rubic's cube. You
go random places and do random things. No spoiler territory here,
but the explanation is not very satisfying. However, it begs the
question, how realistic are any games in the Survival Horror
sub-genre? They all represent a world gone mad, and just because
there is a logical progression between
city->dock->hydrofoil->container ship, it doesn't make
what's happening in those realistic locales any more feasible.
Remember when white-dress-super-boobs turned into a twelve story
flesh column in RE 5? Conservation of mass, anybody? The realism(or
unrealism) of any video game setting can be immediately downgraded to
fantasy as soon as someone takes a shotgun blast and carries on with
their day.
The
Evil Within succeeds in it's
apparent goal of being a true survival horror game. It's difficult
and often unpleasant, but finding a balance between the hostile
creatures, environment and controls makes the payoff all the sweeter.
When you SURVIVE the HORROR.
