It really just uses the cheapest and easiest ways it can found to get a mild yelp out of you (and that would be the best case scenario). That’s because even though Evil Inside claims to be a psychological horror game, there isn’t much psychological horror going on here. Meanwhile, each loop of the house veers harder and harder into the supposedly scarier bits of the game as the story escalates and things are revealed to you, but unfortunately, Evil Inside even fails at scaring you all that affectively. There are a couple of puzzles here and there, but they range from simplistic and completely forgettable to frustratingly opaque. There are rooms and a basement connected to hallway, and at times you head to the upper floor as well, but the house is, by design, limited in size and scope. The design o the house will be familiar to anyone who’s played P.T., from the L-shaped main hallway to the balcony on the upper floor that looks down on the house’s entrance. He’s now trying to contact his dead mother through an Ouija board, which, in terms of the game’s structure, materializes as you walking through his house across a bunch of different loops, each ending with finding another piece of the Ouija board, and each beginning at the beginning of the same corridor.

You play as Mark, a man whose mother was supposedly murdered by his father and thrown into a well. 'The similarities between the two are so blatant and so numerous that Evil Inside can feel like not just something that’s hugely influenced by P.T., but something that’s straight up ripping it off.'īeing a carbon copy of P.T. would have been acceptable if Evil Inside was good at its job – P.T. is an excellent horror experience, after all – but this is a poorly made game that fails at most of what it tries to do. Hell, even its name is basically just another way of saying “Resident Evil” or “ The Evil Within“. From its narrative premise to the imagery it uses to try and scare players, from its looping claustrophobic hallway setting to even the design of the hallway, Evil Inside suffers from a crippling lack of originality. The similarities between the two are so blatant and so numerous that Evil Inside can feel like not just something that’s hugely influenced by P.T., but something that’s straight up ripping it off. To put it bluntly, this is a poorly made replica of P.T. that borrows from Hideo Kojima’s seminal horror demo liberally, but fails to do anything nearly as well as it needed to. Unfortunately, JanduSoft’s first person psychological horror game Evil Inside is one of those examples that can and should be criticized for lifting things straight out of better games. Everything’s been done before, and so what audiences expect isn’t something that’s completely new, but something that builds on things that have been done before, implements existing ideas in new ways, and puts its own unique twist on them. In games, like in any entertainment medium, it’s impossible to do something that is wholly, entirely original. But it's unquestionably not for kids.The criticism that a game is too similar to something that came out before it can often fall flat. It's definitely something for mature gamers to play with the lights off and speakers cranked. Though it's not perfect, those who love survival horror games will be happy to know that The Evil Within was worth the wait the genre is alive and well in this gory offering from Mikami-san. The high-resolution graphics, smart lighting techniques, and creepy atmosphere nicely add to the fright, even if many of the levels are linear in design.

Ammo for your weapons is scarce, which adds to the tension. Fans of survival horror will appreciate this game's challenging scenarios, such as being chased by someone who wants to trap you in a cage, hiding in a locker as someone tears apart a room with a chainsaw, or sneaking past a butcher chopping up body parts. Despite a few random issues - some long load times, a lead character with no personality whatsoever, and lip-syncing that doesn't match and breaks the suspension of disbelief (probably because the game was ported from the Japanese version, called Psycho Break) - The Evil Within is a chilling, thrilling adventure.

Evil inside reviews