The Evil Within

About The Evil Within

The Evil Within was made by Tango Gameworks under Shinji Mikami and published by Bethesda Softworks in October 2014 for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Today it is sold on Steam and GOG for Windows, on the PlayStation Store for PS4 and on the Xbox store, where it also runs on Xbox Series X|S. It was Mikami's return to the kind of game he helped invent, and it plays much like Resident Evil 4 with less ammunition and more stealth.

You play Sebastian Castellanos, a Krimson City detective called to Beacon Mental Hospital after a massacre. Something knocks him out, and he wakes hanging in a butcher's room, the start of a journey through a village, a church, a decaying city and stranger places. The world often changes as you look at it: corridors fold, doors open onto somewhere new, blood washes through a room and you are elsewhere.

Play mixes careful fighting with sneaking. Enemies take several shots and may get up again unless you set them alight with a match. You can creep up for a stealth kill, hide under beds or in lockers, set off traps on enemies, and take apart traps to gain parts for the Agony Crossbow's bolts, or throw a bottle to draw an enemy away. Between chapters a calm asylum lets you save and upgrade Sebastian with green gel, if you can stand the chair, and keys found in small Madonna statues open its storage lockers.

It is a brutal, gory game, often harder and grimmer than the series it grew from, with tense chases and large boss fights, including a masked man with a chainsaw. Finishing it opens New Game+ and the harder AKUMU difficulty. Three story add-ons, The Assignment, The Consequence and The Executioner, are sold separately or in a season pass, and a demo is on Steam. It suits players who enjoyed the Resident Evil 4 and 2 remakes and want something more grotesque; anyone sensitive to torture imagery should know it is everywhere.

How to play The Evil Within

1. Explore each chapter carefully, picking up ammunition, syringes, matches and green gel.
2. Sneak behind enemies and press attack for a stealth kill when you can.
3. Knock enemies down, then burn them with a match so they do not get back up.
4. Disarm traps for parts and craft crossbow bolts from them.
5. Use mirrors to return to the safe haven, where you save and spend green gel on upgrades.
6. Run and hide when a creature you cannot beat appears.

Tips

• Wait for enemies to gather near a downed one before using a match; the fire spreads.
• Upgrade sprint early; running away is a big part of surviving.
• Search for keys in statues to open lockers full of supplies in the safe haven.
• Many fights are easier with traps and bottles than with bullets.

Questions