The evil within
Discussion
Searched for a thread on this game but nothing came up trumps.
Has anyone got this yet and if so what do you make of it? seeing a lot of conflicting reviews about camera angles and no storyline etc. Alien isolation is next on my list but if this is any better i may get this first off.
Has anyone got this yet and if so what do you make of it? seeing a lot of conflicting reviews about camera angles and no storyline etc. Alien isolation is next on my list but if this is any better i may get this first off.
I have it on PS4.
I am no gaming enthusiast (more of a casual gamer) but initial view is positive.
I agree camera angles can make the game awkward at points but it is rather gory and tense in places.
I liked the original Resident Evil games on the first Playstation; this game is similar but more like Silent Hill if I am honest. It is just weird in places - whoever made this game has some serious issues.
To be honest, I think any game I play on the PS4 will be fall short of 'The Last Of Us.' If you haven't played it - get it...
I am no gaming enthusiast (more of a casual gamer) but initial view is positive.
I agree camera angles can make the game awkward at points but it is rather gory and tense in places.
I liked the original Resident Evil games on the first Playstation; this game is similar but more like Silent Hill if I am honest. It is just weird in places - whoever made this game has some serious issues.
To be honest, I think any game I play on the PS4 will be fall short of 'The Last Of Us.' If you haven't played it - get it...
NewNameNeeded said:
I second the last chaps comments. I loved Resident Evil 4 and this is very, very much in the same vein. But for me The Last Of Us has moved this genre on. The Last Of Us looks better, is far, far immersive and much scarier.
It's not really in the same vein as RE4. The first few chapters play like a love song to RE4, but the pacing is way different - mainly because you're largely at the mercy of your enemies, unlike RE4 where you became an overpowered steam roller quite quickly. As for The Last Of Us, it's a very different game. Unlike TLOU'S utterly silly mushroom men, who aren't at all scary, TEW keeps bucking it's own trend and switching pace. The horror is very much psychological and that's a theme that develops as the game goes on. I'm enjoying it intensely so far, it's the first genuinely unmissable survival horror title in quite some time.
Baryonyx said:
It's not really in the same vein as RE4. The first few chapters play like a love song to RE4, but the pacing is way different - mainly because you're largely at the mercy of your enemies, unlike RE4 where you became an overpowered steam roller quite quickly. As for The Last Of Us, it's a very different game. Unlike TLOU'S utterly silly mushroom men, who aren't at all scary, TEW keeps bucking it's own trend and switching pace. The horror is very much psychological and that's a theme that develops as the game goes on.
I'm enjoying it intensely so far, it's the first genuinely unmissable survival horror title in quite some time.
Each to his own, I guess. I love creepy/psychological horror but so far have found TLOU much scarier than TEW. The Clickers in a dark enclosed space (e.g the underground station) I found much scarier than anything I've seen yet in TEW. And maybe we're playing on the wrong difficulty but we don't seem to be that short on ammo, or we're just doing well at conserving it. So far I've found the best approach is to kill everything in TEW, but that approach didn't work so much in TLOU. We're only six chapters in, so maybe something will ratchet up a notch but for me The Last Of Us remains a better game. I'm enjoying it intensely so far, it's the first genuinely unmissable survival horror title in quite some time.
Some mild spoilers below based on my observations now, as I start Chapter 11. There are no real story spoilers. They are mostly a collection of thoughts and tips, which may be of use to you. In the case of this game, having a strategy is often a good idea especially since so many mechanics aren't explained at all.
1) The over-use of chase sequences isn't half wearing. The long haired bloody creature (LHBC) chase sequence was genuinely exhilarating the first time around. Then blood-man chase wore a bit thin. But the time of the second chase sequence with LHBC, I was begging for it to be over. In this case, the punishment is ramped up even more as you must complete a sequence of shots to open and close vents of flame, whilst disarming bombs, whilst avoiding the LHBC and her one hit kills. Give it a f
king rest already! The end of the second LHBC chase was particularly grim, I must have played the last checkpoint section 15 times, just working out which order to shoot things in, where to stand and when, and then when it was going well, she'd usually teleport next to me and kill me. fk's sake! Glad to see the back of that, only to then be dumped into a tought boss fight.
2) Chapter 9, in Ruvik's Mansion. The bits where Ruvik would teleport in were st. No warning, and if you were in an inopportune area, no chance of getting away to hide so an instant kill and restart at the checkpoint (the library being one such area).
3) It took me until about chapter 6 to realise that you could make new bolts for the crossbow using scrap parts! Quite the game changer.
4) It took me even longer to realise that you could throw the bottle at the enemy's head, stunning them for a quick stealth kill!
In spite of the above, I am very much enjoying the game. It sure does like to punish though. Most of the level flow is quite easy, with difficulty chokepoints.
1) The over-use of chase sequences isn't half wearing. The long haired bloody creature (LHBC) chase sequence was genuinely exhilarating the first time around. Then blood-man chase wore a bit thin. But the time of the second chase sequence with LHBC, I was begging for it to be over. In this case, the punishment is ramped up even more as you must complete a sequence of shots to open and close vents of flame, whilst disarming bombs, whilst avoiding the LHBC and her one hit kills. Give it a f
king rest already! The end of the second LHBC chase was particularly grim, I must have played the last checkpoint section 15 times, just working out which order to shoot things in, where to stand and when, and then when it was going well, she'd usually teleport next to me and kill me. fk's sake! Glad to see the back of that, only to then be dumped into a tought boss fight. 2) Chapter 9, in Ruvik's Mansion. The bits where Ruvik would teleport in were s
t. No warning, and if you were in an inopportune area, no chance of getting away to hide so an instant kill and restart at the checkpoint (the library being one such area). 3) It took me until about chapter 6 to realise that you could make new bolts for the crossbow using scrap parts! Quite the game changer.
4) It took me even longer to realise that you could throw the bottle at the enemy's head, stunning them for a quick stealth kill!
In spite of the above, I am very much enjoying the game. It sure does like to punish though. Most of the level flow is quite easy, with difficulty chokepoints.
Edited by Baryonyx on Wednesday 22 October 16:15
Edited by Baryonyx on Thursday 23 October 16:15
Well, I slogged on to the finish line last night. Check the spoilers once you're done with the game and see if you agree with me....
I would like to preface these comments by saying, having largely enjoyed the start of the game, which turned to concern as the middle section seemed to lose pace, I was dissatisfied with the game by the end. The last few levels were some of the worst I've ever played, just genuinely dreadful rubbish. I came to appreciate that the developers held the player in some contempt, which always grinds when you're paying so much to experience their game. I deconstruct my thoughts below...
1) It's just not scary. Shini Mikami said he wanted to create a survival horror game that focuses on survival, atmosphere and fear rather than action and fighting. This was very much the case for the first couple of chapters, but by the time you reach the section in chapter 5 where you must shoot the enemies raining fire from gatling guns overhead, the peak of this has passed and it descends into a silly action experience for the most part. Either Mikami's vision is clouded, or more likely, the developers and publishers wanted more action, fearing reviewers wouldn't like an exclusively horror based game. It's hard to say that this revelation came later in the day, because it feels that this game was built from the ground up with shooting action in mind. The most intricately designed levels are the later efforts with lots of cover and platforms for shooting action.
2) It feels like a lot was recycled from Resident Evil. The village section at the start, whilst being the best bit of the game, feels like a carbon copy from RE4. The parts where you defend your partner as he opens a door or whatever, feel like crap offcuts from RE5.
3) One of the best things about the game is model viewer, unlocked when you finish. It gives interesting information about the enemies in the game and is worth checking out. The models and enemy designs are for the most part, stunning.
4) The pacing of the game is incredibly awkward. There is an achievement for finishing it in five hours. That must be a herculean effort, because I took fifteen hours to wrap it up. I think I could half if I went quickly, but five hours? A bit like the Silent Hill 2 speed run (which I have completed), it shows these games can be completed quickly if you know what you're doing. But in a lot of TEW, it feels like the length of the game has been artificially increased by making difficulty bottlenecks to slow the player down. Most of these involve sections with one hit kills.
5) fking one hit kills! Most bosses have a one hit kill move, the price for letting them get near to you. The Laura boss was excruciating, as I mentioned above. The boss in the basement car park also, was annoying. Once you've shot the car park boss enough that he is about to die and glows purple, he takes on a new burst of speed and unsurprisingly, can hit you with a one hit kill from his charge mode. The final portion of the game, entering Ruvik's mind, was a disaster. I must have fought the first ten or so Haunted five times over to get the Ruvik copy to spawn, which would then launch a ranged one hit kill move to wipe me out. Horrendous rubbish.
6) The Keeper is a fking hopeless rip off of Pyramid Head, and isn't scary at all. It goes so far down the line of paying homage to Silent Hill 2 that it becomes a parody. Later in the game we're treated to scenes of The Keeper abusing the weaker Haunted enemies in an homage to the closet scene in Silent Hill 2. However, it has no effect as it's simple violence directed towards an idiot enemy, whereas the closet scene deftly implied Pyramid Head was sexually abusing the disturbingly female enemy. TEW misses out on this completely, but the parody does not end there as right before the very last boss, imagine what you find? Yes, two Keepers to shoot out! The only thing they didn't do was impale themselves on their spears at the end of the battle.
7) To go back to the game not being scary, I'm not sure why it isn't, but it just isn't. It makes all the right noises and often looks visually stunning. The enemy design is top notch. Early on in the game, you feel weak and powerless, and the enemy threatening. But it never gets under your skin and gives you the creeps like Silent Hill did, and it never immerses you like Forbidden Siren did. Instead, it feels shallow and cheap, like a ride through a funfair haunted house.
8) The story is an interesting concept but is handled pretty badly. There are a number of major inconsistencies. I had thought that the papers you can discover would go some way to explaining the timeline of the story, but they don't, they're all dated 1996, which seems sloppy as they reference current events in the game which other documents show takes place in 2014 or thereafter. Victoriano Mansion is said to be "100 years old". How old is Ruvik supposed to be? He's dressed in Colonial type clothing as a young boy, and when we see the scene where Laura is burned to death in the barn, it clearly appears to be late 1800's or turn of the century, judging by the clothing of the characters in the scene. But then we see Ruvik as a young adult being betrayed by Dr. Jimenez, whom we know exists in his present state in 2014. We can put aside the theory that Ruvik's brain has been preserved in the STEM machine for an unknown amount of time because we see that Jimenez has not aged a significant amount in between his meeting with Castellanos and the memories with Ruvik.
The game also borrows liberally from Inception, indeed it's a bit like Inception with ghouls. This theme works quite well and is very interesting, but I just knew the game would end with a poxy shootout in the twisted mind of the bad guy. There is no twist, just a by-the-numbers ending.
I would like to preface these comments by saying, having largely enjoyed the start of the game, which turned to concern as the middle section seemed to lose pace, I was dissatisfied with the game by the end. The last few levels were some of the worst I've ever played, just genuinely dreadful rubbish. I came to appreciate that the developers held the player in some contempt, which always grinds when you're paying so much to experience their game. I deconstruct my thoughts below...
1) It's just not scary. Shini Mikami said he wanted to create a survival horror game that focuses on survival, atmosphere and fear rather than action and fighting. This was very much the case for the first couple of chapters, but by the time you reach the section in chapter 5 where you must shoot the enemies raining fire from gatling guns overhead, the peak of this has passed and it descends into a silly action experience for the most part. Either Mikami's vision is clouded, or more likely, the developers and publishers wanted more action, fearing reviewers wouldn't like an exclusively horror based game. It's hard to say that this revelation came later in the day, because it feels that this game was built from the ground up with shooting action in mind. The most intricately designed levels are the later efforts with lots of cover and platforms for shooting action.
2) It feels like a lot was recycled from Resident Evil. The village section at the start, whilst being the best bit of the game, feels like a carbon copy from RE4. The parts where you defend your partner as he opens a door or whatever, feel like crap offcuts from RE5.
3) One of the best things about the game is model viewer, unlocked when you finish. It gives interesting information about the enemies in the game and is worth checking out. The models and enemy designs are for the most part, stunning.
4) The pacing of the game is incredibly awkward. There is an achievement for finishing it in five hours. That must be a herculean effort, because I took fifteen hours to wrap it up. I think I could half if I went quickly, but five hours? A bit like the Silent Hill 2 speed run (which I have completed), it shows these games can be completed quickly if you know what you're doing. But in a lot of TEW, it feels like the length of the game has been artificially increased by making difficulty bottlenecks to slow the player down. Most of these involve sections with one hit kills.
5) f
king one hit kills! Most bosses have a one hit kill move, the price for letting them get near to you. The Laura boss was excruciating, as I mentioned above. The boss in the basement car park also, was annoying. Once you've shot the car park boss enough that he is about to die and glows purple, he takes on a new burst of speed and unsurprisingly, can hit you with a one hit kill from his charge mode. The final portion of the game, entering Ruvik's mind, was a disaster. I must have fought the first ten or so Haunted five times over to get the Ruvik copy to spawn, which would then launch a ranged one hit kill move to wipe me out. Horrendous rubbish. 6) The Keeper is a f
king hopeless rip off of Pyramid Head, and isn't scary at all. It goes so far down the line of paying homage to Silent Hill 2 that it becomes a parody. Later in the game we're treated to scenes of The Keeper abusing the weaker Haunted enemies in an homage to the closet scene in Silent Hill 2. However, it has no effect as it's simple violence directed towards an idiot enemy, whereas the closet scene deftly implied Pyramid Head was sexually abusing the disturbingly female enemy. TEW misses out on this completely, but the parody does not end there as right before the very last boss, imagine what you find? Yes, two Keepers to shoot out! The only thing they didn't do was impale themselves on their spears at the end of the battle. 7) To go back to the game not being scary, I'm not sure why it isn't, but it just isn't. It makes all the right noises and often looks visually stunning. The enemy design is top notch. Early on in the game, you feel weak and powerless, and the enemy threatening. But it never gets under your skin and gives you the creeps like Silent Hill did, and it never immerses you like Forbidden Siren did. Instead, it feels shallow and cheap, like a ride through a funfair haunted house.
8) The story is an interesting concept but is handled pretty badly. There are a number of major inconsistencies. I had thought that the papers you can discover would go some way to explaining the timeline of the story, but they don't, they're all dated 1996, which seems sloppy as they reference current events in the game which other documents show takes place in 2014 or thereafter. Victoriano Mansion is said to be "100 years old". How old is Ruvik supposed to be? He's dressed in Colonial type clothing as a young boy, and when we see the scene where Laura is burned to death in the barn, it clearly appears to be late 1800's or turn of the century, judging by the clothing of the characters in the scene. But then we see Ruvik as a young adult being betrayed by Dr. Jimenez, whom we know exists in his present state in 2014. We can put aside the theory that Ruvik's brain has been preserved in the STEM machine for an unknown amount of time because we see that Jimenez has not aged a significant amount in between his meeting with Castellanos and the memories with Ruvik.
The game also borrows liberally from Inception, indeed it's a bit like Inception with ghouls. This theme works quite well and is very interesting, but I just knew the game would end with a poxy shootout in the twisted mind of the bad guy. There is no twist, just a by-the-numbers ending.
So, further to my previous post (above) I have had a bit more time on it and I have just finished Chapter 3.
I only have it on normal mode (this is the easiest mode apparently) but it is very tough to play. Yesterday, I had a bit of time on it and found it a bit repetitive and frustrating; I got fed up of running around looking for stuff and it took me about 20 attempts to kill the guy with the chainsaw.
I intend to stick it out a bit more (was considering flogging it at points yesterday) and hopefully it gets better. Fingers crossed it does because, as a "Resident Evil" fan, I have been waiting for the game to come out for a while.
I re-assert my opinion that "The Last Of Us" is a far better game overall. Graphically, storyline, characterisation, gameplay and so on...
Will report back when I have had more time on it next week.
I only have it on normal mode (this is the easiest mode apparently) but it is very tough to play. Yesterday, I had a bit of time on it and found it a bit repetitive and frustrating; I got fed up of running around looking for stuff and it took me about 20 attempts to kill the guy with the chainsaw.
I intend to stick it out a bit more (was considering flogging it at points yesterday) and hopefully it gets better. Fingers crossed it does because, as a "Resident Evil" fan, I have been waiting for the game to come out for a while.
I re-assert my opinion that "The Last Of Us" is a far better game overall. Graphically, storyline, characterisation, gameplay and so on...
Will report back when I have had more time on it next week.
I've just started a New Game+ to grab a few achievements. Or rather, I did a couple of hours ago and I've now packed in at Chapter 7. I've done all I want to do with it.
I really enjoyed New Game+ in RE5, with super weapons and infinite ammo, it felt great to go back and kick loads of ass for fun. However, in TEW I just wasn't enjoying it. The machine gun was nice but ammo was way too scarce for it. By the end of chapter six, having played for two and half hours, the real survival horror portion of the game was over and it the levels from there are just cheap shootouts.
I had been thinking about the story more, especially whizzing through the first few chapters where the tension and mystery is at it's most taut. Now, one of the main issues with this game is the hopeless protagonist. Castellanos is so bland, so beige. Nothing about him is ever really developed. The back story about the disappearance of his wife, and the murder of his daughter, is never really explained other than hints given in the items you collect.
He seems utterly unaffected by the happenings of the game. I know this is partly due to Japanese writing, where characters can seem a bit stiff and cardboard, especially when the script is written in English. But Castellanos never seems to fear death or injury, he just grinds on through the game with a blank stare on his face.
Similarly, although the story is an interesting concept, but the intrigue over the setting is never really explained enough to connect with the player. The suggestion is that even at the start of the game, when you arrive at the hospital, Castellanos was plugged into the STEM and was sharing a dream with the other users and Ruvik's mind. Then, as you leave the hospital and the city starts to collapse, you find yourself wandering some barren countryside filled with dilapidated Colonial era style farmhouses. Then you're whisked off to a mental hospital. Then you're back to a ruined church.
The time/space hopping trick is cool when played once or twice, but because you are never given a grounding in reality or what you believe to be reality, you never pay much attention to the landscape. There is no question of 'where am I? Is this real?' because the expectation (for me) from the start was that I was trapped in some kind of shared conciousness experiment, living in some nightmare dream state. This angle to the storyline was given away too quickly. As such, I never felt any urge to return home, all I wanted to do was smash the one in control of the nightmare.
Unlike say, Silent Hill, where the location is the star, the setting of TEW is utterly inconsequential. It's just a maze of s
tty offcuts from RE4 development and blood spattered corridors. When you do enter Ruvik's conciousness at the end, for the last gauntlet, the game looks fresh and amazing. If only this creative hand had been more active throughout. Only on Chapter 5, but so far I am liking it (apart from the silly camera angle at times). I'm gonna go against the grain and say I much prefer to TLOU up to this point. It's far scarier (the ability to hear/see your enemies in TLOU ruined it for me) and while to story line atm may not be as good, I feel that the gameplay is much more fun (especially now that I've got a shotgun 
)
Also, the beginning of the game was brilliant and properly scary (with that chainsaw guy)
)Also, the beginning of the game was brilliant and properly scary (with that chainsaw guy)
NumberoftheBeast said:
So, further to my previous post (above) I have had a bit more time on it and I have just finished Chapter 3.
I only have it on normal mode (this is the easiest mode apparently) but it is very tough to play. Yesterday, I had a bit of time on it and found it a bit repetitive and frustrating; I got fed up of running around looking for stuff and it took me about 20 attempts to kill the guy with the chainsaw.
I intend to stick it out a bit more (was considering flogging it at points yesterday) and hopefully it gets better. Fingers crossed it does because, as a "Resident Evil" fan, I have been waiting for the game to come out for a while.
How did you get on past chapter 3 out of interest? I got this 3 weeks ago and I'm on chapter 7 playing on Survival which is level 2 out of 3. I have been slow to get to this point as I found it pretty stressful to play, so I've been playing in short bursts. I only have it on normal mode (this is the easiest mode apparently) but it is very tough to play. Yesterday, I had a bit of time on it and found it a bit repetitive and frustrating; I got fed up of running around looking for stuff and it took me about 20 attempts to kill the guy with the chainsaw.
I intend to stick it out a bit more (was considering flogging it at points yesterday) and hopefully it gets better. Fingers crossed it does because, as a "Resident Evil" fan, I have been waiting for the game to come out for a while.
The game appears (to me anyway) to improve significantly as soon as chapter 4 starts. I started chapter 4 yesterday, and I'm hooked on the game now. Did anyone else feel this too? I agree with what you've said NotB, the first 3 chapters are hard, too hard even. I find those first 3 chapters strange as I think they could (and possibly have) put a lot of people off the game entirely. I'm not sure why they made it so difficult for those first chapters, and then changed the game play from chapter 4. I would love to ask the developer about that.
For me there are some very difficult parts in the early game; sneaking through the infirmary to escape the butcher is really not a good way to start the game in my opinion. In chapters 2 and 3 where you're given barely any ammunition to work with, but you have a lot of killing to do; I just found that a struggle, and not in a fun way.
Chapters 5 and 6 although difficult as well, just seem far more enjoyable. Some of the large open battle areas with ladders, bridges, walkways, and ammo/items scattered around are great.
Chapter 4 to Chapter 7 remind me of RE4. Chapter 1 to 3 remind me of playing Demon Souls - difficult and stressful!
Edited by RenOHH on Saturday 22 November 19:37
NewNameNeeded said:
Each to his own, I guess. I love creepy/psychological horror but so far have found TLOU much scarier than TEW. The Clickers in a dark enclosed space (e.g the underground station) I found much scarier than anything I've seen yet in TEW. And maybe we're playing on the wrong difficulty but we don't seem to be that short on ammo, or we're just doing well at conserving it. So far I've found the best approach is to kill everything in TEW, but that approach didn't work so much in TLOU. We're only six chapters in, so maybe something will ratchet up a notch but for me The Last Of Us remains a better game.
At this point I can't even compare them. TLOU has a deep running and emotional story line. It's about relationships (I might go so far as to say it's about love) and the horror is secondary to that. TEW is pure survival horror. The story is not even on the same planet as TLOU, but it's still fun. I don't really know what's going on in TEW; I'm expecting it to be explained later I suppose.Gassing Station | Video Games | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff