Evil Within
Genre: Survival horror
What it's about: Grizzled detective Sebastian Castellanos finds himself in a horrific world of monstrous creatures.
Why we should care: Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami returns to… well, make a new Resident Evil game that isn't actually called Resident Evil. Call it The Resident Evil Within.
What happens in the first hour: Castellanos and a bunch of other cops are called in to investigate a massacre at the Beacon Mental Hospital. It's actually called that, which is not at all politically correct in this day and age.
The police enter, only to find bodies and blood strewn about. It's strangely unaffecting, which a lifetime of violent movies and games will do to one's psyche.
Out of nowhere, a supernatural ninja of some sort attacks and knocks out Castellanos. When the detective comes to, he's hanging upside down in a scary room straight out of a Saw movie. Or is it a Hostel movie?
Wandering around is a huge crazy-looking dude with a meat cleaver. He's chopping up bodies and we have to escape before he does the same to us.
Theoretically, this shouldn't be too hard. Watching Cleaver Man for a minute or two reveals a pattern – he chops for a few seconds, then heads into a back room for no real reason. Rinse and repeat.
That gives us time to… uh, I'm not sure. Sneak around and look for an exit?
That's not right, as evidenced by the cleaver to the head I soon get. That's death number one. Four more follow in rapid succession as I try to figure out what to do.
It hits me on life No. 6 – there were some keys hanging over the chopping table the whole time. Aha! Now then… how many deaths will it take to figure out what to do with them?
I luck out and die just once more before discovering the door where the keys go. But Cleaver Man hears me and promptly chops me to pieces.
Eventually, I end up in another room, where I hide in a locker as he goes by. There's no suspense here because there's only one way to get through all this. So far, this is a very linear game.
Forty minutes and eight deaths in, we finally escape from Cleaver Guy and make it to the introductory credits. And then things get weird.
Castellanos sees the Mental Hospital and the city around it crumble in an earthquake while his driver mutates into a monster. This is looking more like Resident Evil by the minute.
We're also introduced to some new game mechanics, including shooting, melee combat, sprinting and climbing over obstacles, all of which would have really come in handy escaping from Cleaver Guy.
Clearly, we're playing this game by its rules. We're on a need-to-know basis.
Highlights: There aren't too many in the first hour, unless you count the gore.
Lowlights: Where to start? Clichéd characters and plot, robotic enemies, overused tropes like health-restoring syringes and letters and newspaper clippings that reveal backstory. It's been done to death.
Time suck factor: Factor in a lot of necessary time for all the unnecessary deaths.
Worth more than an hour? Not to anyone besides hard-core fans of Resident Evil or mindless, gory horror movies.