Latest round of "Evil Within" previews

[matt]

Some sound reasonably excited, but I am still kind of worried about the game.Destructoid thought it was pretty bad:

We're at a point where I honestly don't know what can be done to salvage The Evil Within. It's commonly known that at preview events, publishers try to put their best foot forward and show the most impressive parts of their game. If this is the best that The Evil Within has to offer, I can't see how it doesn't flatline. Maybe the benefit of being told the story in its entirety can be the saving grace, but that's a puncher's chance. Otherwise, it's looking like it'll be entirely forgettable.

It sounds like there are unkillable enemies, poor checkpoints, and frustrations all over. While unkillable enemies make sense for something like Amnesia or Outlast, I just remember how irritating it was in Silent Hill 4, so I'm wondering if that might be a bad sign.

Eurogamer liked it, but only for nostalgia.. Some of the "praise" seems kind of damning in my opinion:

It is, let's face it, Resident Evil. Quite blatantly.... It's an odd feeling - the game is deliciously creepy, but never really all that scary because so much feels familiar. It's like visiting a theme park haunted house - you're always anticipating the jumps with a smile, rather than dreading them.

The attempts at gross horror stuff feel almost quaint.... It's more theatre than challenge, but it's fun in the same way as as a rubber Halloween mask; horror as a cliché that we willingly embrace.

I hope Neverending Nightmares doesn't cause people to smile and describe it as quaint...

Kotaku liked it, but mentioned checkpoint issues, which always drive me nuts:

Game loads back up, and I have to do that whole sequence again. I mean that whole sequence. I mean back at the front of the mansion, going through all the doors again, facing all those enemies behind them again, getting back through that library and back into the room with the desk. When I realize that the game checkpoints after you complete the brain puzzle, my stomach drops. "I have to do all that again?" I lamented.

Polygon had a pretty positive overall preview.

Joystiq had a preview that is light on opinions and mostly just explains what is going on. I didn't watch the video though.

Also, they have have a preorder bonus of in game items to make the game easier. This seems like a difficult line to walk. Either the items are easy to come by, and the bonus sucks, or they potentially unbalance the game and make people irritated who didn't preorder. A recent Sonic game had a preorder bonus of 30 lives instead of the standard 3 or whatever, and it rubbed people the wrong way - rightly so if you ask me.

It's pushed back until after the release of Neverending Nightmares. I wonder if that will help or hurt us. Probably it won't really matter because we are such a small title compared to them, and the people who are interested in us will buy us, but I was kind of hoping that it would come out, be underwhelming, and everyone would turn to Neverending Nightmares for their scares. Wishful thinking I suppose.

What do you guys think?

[JPrice]

Hmmm it's strange to see it having such a mixed reception.
Personally at the moment I don't have all that much faith in the project. I mean sure there may be stand out moments in the game but I can imagine that the game will end up mostly the same old same old stuff.

Sometimes I'd crouch in the shadows and bushes, patiently waiting for one to turn around on his path when it'd see me out of nowhere and come lumbering toward me. Other times, I'd be brazenly attacking one in front of another, but it wouldn't react at all.

See this level of inconstancy is what puts me off, like it seems like this in tandem with the bad checkpointing would make the game very frustrating.

I have this feeling that The Evil Within is going to come across as an easily digestible survival horror game. Like it won't really do anything all that outlandish that hasn't been done before and whilst that's not necessarily a bad thing, I feel like it'll just be presented in a way that's generic or uninteresting. I don't know maybe it's just me thinking that it's getting far too overhyped but nothing that interesting has really come out of the The Evil Within for me. It just looks like a generic highly produced horror game, something with a lot of budget but barely any soul.

[ranger_lennier]

The two editors at IGN who played the most recent build liked the game. They specifically mentioned that they liked the tension when you had to run away from enemies, and they felt like this didn't come through nearly as well when you're just watching someone else play it.

[matt]

I feel like most game reviewers give previews of games the benefit of the doubt thinking that they'll have time to fix fundamental gameplay flaws (even sometimes a month before ship), so if someone comes out and says they hate it, I tend to give that a bit more weight than positive previews.

If you don't believe me, try reading this preview of Aliens: Colonial Marines.

More important (and impressive) though is the fact that everything feels right. There’s no sense of weak impersonation here. Nor is this a mechanical video game remake, going over the same old ground in hollow tribute. It’s a video game sequel, revisiting Aliens’ world but expanding upon it.

I don't think GamesRadar was the only one who gave it positive coverage!

I don't think Evil Within is going to end up being an Aliens: Colonial Marines type disaster, but the previews make me worry. Perhaps JPrice is right - it will be a decent survival horror game and nothing more.

Or maybe the extra two months will allow them to put all the polish on the game needs! Unfortunately, 2 months can disappear before you know it... (It's happened to me a few times on Neverending Nightmares!)

[ranger_lennier]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised by the bad reviews of Aliens: Coloniel Marines, since it did have some good buzz leading up to its release. But in that case a lot of people said that the final product was actually much worse than the demos. In general, I think I do see more coverage pointing out flaws in previews than I used to. Wolfenstein: The New Order actually seems to have been better received after release than it was before.

I do think a lot of what I've heard about The Evil Within is that it's intentionally returning to traditional survival horror, for better or for worse. This is something that a lot of survival horror fans have been asking for, so it will be interesting to see if they actually like it, or are viewing clunky mechanics from the past through rose-tinted glasses.

[matt]

I guess maybe while I love horror, I was never that into the brutal difficulty of Resident Evil and the old school survival horror. I like the easy modes in the Silent Hill series. If it's too classic Resident Evil, I might have a hard time with it, but I guess it's more along the lines of Resident Evil 4, which I guess I didn't have too much trouble with.

With Alien: Colonial Marines, there was actually a demo that was 100% different than the released game with better graphics and just different content. I suspect that's what Gearbox built to pitch the project to Sega, but they handed over the reins of the project to outsourcing partners. I read that TimeGate Studios (developers of the Section 8 and the FEAR 1 expansions) did the singleplayer campaign.

I imagine they had to actually show the real game at some point before release. I vaguely remember reading a preview that was like, this could be cool but it needs a lot of work. I think it's hard to not buy into the hype both as consumers and the game press.

Anyway, I think I'm getting the game no matter what just because I try to play all the significant horror games.

[Harry Sunderland]

Out of boredom, I started playing RE1 on Ouya this weekend. Damn, that game is so hard. You really need to master that knife, because there are hallways SO narrow that you literally cannot run, and there is not enough ammo to kill all the zombies you find yourself in this situation with.

I may retry on training mode, but it kicked my butt on standard.

[matt]

Also, if you kill them, that's bad because they come back as Crimson Heads and kick their ass. I tried to only kill the zombies I had enough lighter fluid to burn... So many systems working against you:
1) Limited ammo
2) Limited item space
3) Limited lighter fluid
4) Limited auto defend knife thingies (I think they might have been a remake only addition, but I could be wrong)
5) Confusing controls (I can't imagine playing with out the C-style controls in the remake)

Probably it'd take me like a hundred hours of practice to beat the original PSX Resident Evil. Maybe longer. hahah

[Grabthehoopka]

Actually, the crimson heads were added in the remake as well. Still, it's hard as balls and I don't have the patience for it.

I watched a whole playthrough of it on youtube, though, cause I still think the resident evil remake, or REmake as fans are fond of calling it, is the best-looking game of its console generation. Yeah, Resident Evil 0 was about equal, if not slightly better, in terms of graphics, but I think from an artistic standpoint, the original is far more visually dynamic and moody overall.

[matt]

The reason it looked better than all the other games of the generation was because the have pre-rendered backgrounds. (It worked well for FF7)

The could use as many polygons as they wanted in the background, and basically all their real time polys on like 3 characters.

If you try to play it in an emulator, it doesn't really stand up. hahahah