The Evil Within is Shinji Mikami's return to pure survival-horror with Sebastian Castellanos. Oppressive claustrophobic atmosphere, nightmarish monsters, maximum tension. A demanding and memorable survival-horror.
Your verdict
Category
Survival1 player18+
Description
Japanese version of Tango Gameworks and Shinji Mikami's The Evil Within plunging a detective into a psychiatric asylum. Published by Bethesda, released in Japan in October 2014. Includes The Evil Within, Japanese voice acting, scarce resources to manage, unexpected traps and ambushes, transforming environments, and fragmented narrative. Japanese Psycho Break version.
Psycho Break review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Visceral horror with putrid settings, dirty light and nightmarish creatures: Shinji Mikami returns to a survival horror of visceral darkness. The grain of the image and the disturbing transitions compose a constant unease. This visual direction, dark and organic, plunges into a relentless terror.
The most memorable sonic landmark is a piece of classical music. Debussy's Clair de lune drifts from the safe havens, guiding you to the mirrors where you can breathe and save, and this peaceful melody becomes the signal of shelter amid the nightmare. The rest of the game rumbles with organic noises and trapped silences, so that the distant piano is heard as a promise of respite.
The story unfolds inside a shared brain. The STEM machine links several consciousnesses to that of Ruvik, a broken mind that recomposes the world according to his traumas, and the places fold, rewrite themselves, slide from one setting to another without logic. Detective Castellanos advances through a foreign psyche where every inconsistency is a clue. The nightmare is not a place but a sick memory.
The Evil Within marks the return of Shinji Mikami, father of Resident Evil, to hard, pure survival horror. Detective Sebastian Castellanos crosses an unstable nightmare, where the settings warp and where fear arises as much from tight resource management as from the visceral horror of the creatures. This deliberate, demanding and oppressive return to roots reconnects with a tension the genre had set aside. Its uneven pacing and a few technical rough edges divide opinion. But for the fan of harsh, punishing horror in the lineage of the classics, the title remains a striking experience.
