A sequel showing improvement isn't new to games, but it's tricky in horror, where a once-scary premise loses power the more one is exposed to it. It's why Resident Evil went action-heavy, after mining all the scares it could out of zombies. (Ironically, Resident Evil went long enough in that direction to flip the script again with Resident Evil 7.) The Evil Within was more tense than scary, dropping players into claustrophobic spaces where survival lived on a razor's edge, ammunition always at a minimum. The Evil Within 2 is exactly the opposite, with open spaces and an emphasis on exploration, experimentation, and ample time to hide, scheme, ambush. It's shockingly good.
Just finished on Nightmare which was honestly a bit too hard but the more I played more committed I was to just torturing myself. I also immensely enjoyed it, enough that I’m doing a new game + run straight after.
PS. Patrick’s use of ironic in the story is firmly from the Alanic Morissette school of malapropism
I’m in two minds on whether to get Shadow of War or get Evil Within 2. I might just wait for both to drop in price. Mario Odyssey is out at the end of the month and that is definitely the priority!
I have a tradition of forcing my friend to play new Evil Within content every calendar year, mostly because I’m a bad person. The main game and assorted DLC has managed to carry us just far enough to get to the release of the sequel, and I’m honestly not sure I’m ready to live in a world where Evil Within is a good game. I want it to be…I always wanted it to be…it just seems so strange that this weird thing, that started out so well before falling off a cliff and forgetting what genre it even is, could make a comeback so strong that everyone seems to be happy with it this time around.
I agree. I dislike these weird revisionist histories in which The Evil Within wasn’t a good game. It was certainly flawed And had a pretty bad PC Port :’( but it was a good game.
