The Evil Within 2 is Much Better Than You Think
There’s a small band of five zombies (called “the lost”) loosely patrolling the path between me and my goal. I could go around but I’m feeling adventurous and decide to clean them out. The first one strolls too close to the low wall I’m hiding behind and so I’m able to knife him using my special kill-around-the-corner ability. I throw a bottle that attracts two more behind a tree. I sneak up and knife one but the other one spots me and screams for his buddies. I lead the three on a merry chase but they quickly loose interest. I’m able to catch up to one of them as he shambles back to his patrol and knife him and then – in a fit of stylish overkill – quickly use my crossbow to lob a bomb into the path of another. Finally, I simply let the last one spot me and use my trusty pistol to ground him before he gets close. This is the Evil Within 2 at it’s best: allowing you to explore an open world populated with monsters whom you can deal with however you like. When it’s working well, it’s a lot of fun.
You’d think those robes would trip him up but zombies here are remarkably agile.
I never played the original, but the sequel takes place several years after the first. Your hero here enters into a virtual reality that a shadowy paramilitary organization uses for…something, I am not sure what. Your daughter, whom you thought died in a fire, is the core of this world but she’s been kidnapped and now the virtual people are all turning into zombies and virtual neighborhoods have been broken into fragments drifting through space. You spend the game moving through neighborhoods, underground corridors, temples, and other areas in the VR world battling zombies (and some other things monsters clearly inspired by Left 4 Dead) while powering up your weapons and abilities. You’ll need to save (just like Resident Evil) but the game also autosaves pretty generously and – if you play with a walkthrough to make sure you don’t miss anything – you really won’t die much at all. Overall, if you’ve played The Last of Us and Resident Evil 4, you’ll know what to expect in The Evil Within 2.
These guys are just the worst. But you can see how all the trees in Union are so nicely trimmed.
Gameplay starts a little rough. Your hero is a typical survival horror hero, which means he moves clunkily, is constantly low on ammo, and can run maybe ten feet before getting winded. The first levels focus on stealth, which works well, while the latter ones require more gunplay. The game is enormously flexible, though, and you can power up which ever abilities you like. I enjoyed one that slowed down time while I aimed my gun immensely. You can also increase the power of your weapons, but – again – there’s really no wrong choice. I leaned on my starter pistol almost the entire way through the adventure (though if you powerup your regular crossbow bolts, targets you hit burst into flame!). Add to that the fun shooting gallery, the myriad of genuine spooky monsters (particularly in the early levels), and considerable length (my run through took me 31 hours), and you have a game worth playing.
Talk about Deep State.
To me, the real strengths of the game are found in the open world levels (particularly the first “real” level of the game, Chapter 3). These levels provide you a goal but let you explore as much as you like. You can clear out enemies however you want (though using spilled gasoline to set them on fire is always fun). While it’s easy to simply run through and avoid combat, you’ll miss the creepy ghost who pulls you into the asylum from the first game just to chase you around. You might overlook a fun weapon or a stack of bodies that morphs into a creepy, mulitheaded chainsaw wielding nightmare (there are several of these). You might even miss a zombie who is pretending to be dead only to jump out and attack you when you get close (I’m just kidding on this last point, literally dozens of enemies pull this trick throughout the entire game; they are impossible to miss and laughably obvious).
Guys, listen, if you’re going to play dead, you have to CLOSE YOUR GLOWING EYES. They are a total give away.
Evil Within 2 is so much fun that you wish it could compete with the games it is clearly inspired to emulate. But the game is never as powerful as The Last of Us or as genuinely scary as Resident Evil 7 (though you’ll laugh in the later stages when your hero grows tired of endless nightmarish monsters and simply chops one mini-boss in half for you). So while it’s not as good as the best of the best, I’d still recommend playing this title through at least your battle with Stephano, the serial killer whose camera freezes time. The battle occurs about midway through the game and by then you’ve seen all of the creepiest monsters that the game has to offer and enjoyed the best of the open-world levels. If you’re interested, though, the levels in the game’s second half are briefer than those in the first and there’s still a lot of fun to be had.
These creepy bugger will be haunting your dreams forever. Good thing Stephano didn’t have a cellphone camera when he was making monsters.
THE GOOD POINTS
Gameplay is fun and varied and the powerups give the game enough variety to make the experience a lot of fun. Play as you want with whatever powerups you want, the game is designed to let sneaky ninjas and wild west gunslingers both have a great experience.
THE BAD POINTS
The game kind of peaks in the middle and later stages aren’t as much fun as earlier ones (though there’s nothing as bad as that boat stage in Resident Evil 7). Also can someone explain to me why this takes place in VR? Why does your hero have to go into VR to save his daughter when she’s hooked up right next to him in the real world?
OVERALL: RENT IT
As much fun as I had, I’m not likely to play through the game a second time. And, as good as it is, it never quite hits the highs of the best Resident Evils, The Last of Us, or Dead Space 2. Still, if you liked those games, you should give The Evil Within 2 a shot. It’s definitely better than you think it is.
