Zero Punctuation: The Evil Within - As Bad as Bad Horror Games Can Get

Genocidicles

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Sep 13, 2012
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Could anyone else hear that beeping sound at around 4:08? I'm worried I'm going mental or my headphones are acting up.
 

Thanatos2k

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The game is like RE4? Wow, I have seen no promotional materials or articles written that seemed to suggest that. Marketing in gaming is completely broken.

The biggest problem is that RE4 is barely a horror game. Capcom doesn't understand this either, but Resident Evil 4 ruined the Resident Evil series. Because it was such a good game, Capcom mistakenly thought that this is what people wanted out of Resident Evil and horror in general. Nope. RE4 was just a really good game, but it wasn't a good Resident Evil or Survival Horror game.

And so we have another game dancing about how it's such a great horror game that modeled itself after RE4 without understanding why.
 

layne

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Jun 14, 2013
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The story does comes across as rather opaque, but it has enough going for it otherwise that I'm looking forward to playing it when I get the chance.
 

Malpraxis

Trust me, I'm a Doctor.
Jul 30, 2013
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Spot on, as always.
I bought the game at launch and dragged myself to finish it last night to watch this. I liked the plot, but the gameplay was so boring that I couldn't bear to play more than 2 chapters every other day. I can't remember the last game I put down because I was bored of it.
 

Mangod

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Feb 20, 2011
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Genocidicles said:
Could anyone else hear that beeping sound at around 4:08? I'm worried I'm going mental or my headphones are acting up.
Yeah, I heard it too and thought my computer was about to go haywire; apparently it's just a truck backing up and Yahtzee didn't bother to re-record that part of the video.
 

Osaka117

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Feb 20, 2011
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I thought Yahtzee would finally bring some clarity to this game for me, but just like every other review I've seen it only makes me want to play it even more. Despite saying that it's a bad game, he sure made it sound appealing, even though he was saying it in an angry way.

The consistent complaint that I keep hearing from reviews that even made it into this one is that it's RE4 but not as good. Since I can count the number of games that came out between RE4 and now that I liked as much or more than RE4 on my one hand, that just isn't a sufficient criticism to me.
 

Jburton9

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Aug 21, 2012
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Genocidicles said:
Could anyone else hear that beeping sound at around 4:08? I'm worried I'm going mental or my headphones are acting up.
Yup definitely beeping, went on for a bit and eventually stopped.

Thank you for posting the review Yahtzee. I had that sinking feeling as well and wondering about the direction of the game. I am glad I opted to pass on this one. : )
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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Thanatos2k said:
The game is like RE4? Wow, I have seen no promotional materials or articles written that seemed to suggest that. Marketing in games is completely broken.

The biggest problem is that RE4 is barely a horror game. Capcom doesn't understand this either, but Resident Evil 4 ruined the Resident Evil series. Because it was such a good game, Capcom mistakenly thought that this is what people wanted out of Resident Evil and horror in general. Nope. RE4 was just a really good game, but it wasn't a good Resident Evil or Survival Horror game.

And so we have another game dancing about how it's such a great horror game that modeled itself after RE4 without understanding why.
People like to say RE4 ruined Resident Evil, but the series wasn't really doing that much better before that. The last stand-out entry was REmake, and that was... a remake. Code Veronica was meh, and when REZero came out they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. And it became obvious how desperately Capcom was trying to maneuver within the ever cramping 'pre-rendered background' space, by adding in new mechanics just for the sake of new mechanics. And with the Hookman demo they just started throwing in ghosts, because Christ, what else are they gonna do with this franchise!?
 

Ulquiorra4sama

Saviour In the Clockwork
Feb 2, 2010
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Thanatos2k said:
The game is like RE4? Wow, I have seen no promotional materials or articles written that seemed to suggest that. Marketing in gaming is completely broken.

The biggest problem is that RE4 is barely a horror game. Capcom doesn't understand this either, but Resident Evil 4 ruined the Resident Evil series. Because it was such a good game, Capcom mistakenly thought that this is what people wanted out of Resident Evil and horror in general. Nope. RE4 was just a really good game, but it wasn't a good Resident Evil or Survival Horror game.

And so we have another game dancing about how it's such a great horror game that modeled itself after RE4 without understanding why.
Except Capcom had nothing to do with Evil Within and the only times Shinji Mikami directed Resident Evil was RE1 and RE4 (RE2 and 3 he was just a producer).

The way Evil Within plays didn't really come as a surprise to me at all considering Mikami's history with games like Shadows of the Damned, RE4, and Devil May Cry 1. The guy just doesn't actually do horror, he does action games dressed up as horror.

Pretty sure the only time a game Mikami's directed got a jump out of me was that burning zombie that hides in a locker in RE4.
 

Guffe

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Jul 12, 2009
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thaluikhain said:
Heh, liked the boxing glove at the end, you knew something was going to happen, but I'd not guessed that.
Damnit, ninjad'!
I was so sure it was going to drop on the poor lad, then the glove came out of nowhere, got a small chuckle out of. Got love those Tom and Jerry sort of moments :D

On Topic:
Rage would be a fitting word for this review.
Haven't heard Yahtzee this frustrated in quite a while :p
 

Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
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Well, that escalated quickly...

But it's a shame this game didn't turn out to be good. More good horror in the AAA scene is always welcome, especially since even as recently as 2012 the only decent one was Silent Hill: Downpour (and that wasn't scary, just good on it's actual merits). Still, it's nice to see more horror games in the AAA scene anyway, even if not all of them are good.
 

Kuilui

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Apr 1, 2010
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I've beaten this game and the plot really makes absolutely zero sense. Yahtzees borderline screaming at his microphone is completely justified. It's a game they padded out with stupid bullet soaking boss fights for absolutely no reason and the plot is basically never ever explained in any way shape or form. Most of it makes absolutely no sense either even at the end of the game when you realize what's going on. In fact it makes even LESS sense at the end of the game.

There's entire subplots that go through most of the game that just never get any kind of conclusion. They're just there and then they vanish. For example there is this subplot about the main characters wife and child and what happened to them. The game tells you this subplot through the entire frustratingly padded story. Then it just kinda stops, you never actually find out anything and that's literally the entire game. Heres some plot. You want actual closure or any kind of explination "LOL WERE IMMITATING THE SHOW LOST". It honestly feels like a story written by five or six different people that never talked to each other and someone just took everything they wrote down and made the plot out of it when they weren't even finished writing their parts out.
 

Thanatos2k

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Aug 12, 2013
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Ulquiorra4sama said:
Thanatos2k said:
The game is like RE4? Wow, I have seen no promotional materials or articles written that seemed to suggest that. Marketing in gaming is completely broken.

The biggest problem is that RE4 is barely a horror game. Capcom doesn't understand this either, but Resident Evil 4 ruined the Resident Evil series. Because it was such a good game, Capcom mistakenly thought that this is what people wanted out of Resident Evil and horror in general. Nope. RE4 was just a really good game, but it wasn't a good Resident Evil or Survival Horror game.

And so we have another game dancing about how it's such a great horror game that modeled itself after RE4 without understanding why.
Except Capcom had nothing to do with Evil Within and the only times Shinji Mikami directed Resident Evil was RE1 and RE4 (RE2 and 3 he was just a producer).

The way Evil Within plays didn't really come as a surprise to me at all considering Mikami's history with games like Shadows of the Damned, RE4, and Devil May Cry 1. The guy just doesn't actually do horror, he does action games dressed up as horror.

Pretty sure the only time a game Mikami's directed got a jump out of me was that burning zombie that hides in a locker in RE4.
You misunderstand. I'm saying they took the same approach to horror that Capcom did after RE4 because of RE4. Which is to say, the wrong direction.
 

Alphadude007

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Dec 15, 2013
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Possible candidate for one of the Worst top 5 for the end of year? If the last thirty seconds of Yahtzee's review are proof of anything, it's that and how annoying backing-up trucks are.
 

ckam

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Oct 8, 2008
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Was kind of freaking out about that beeping at the end there. Thought something bad was about to go down.
 

GrumbleGrump

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Yes! I longed for a game to come along that makes Yahtzee tear it a whole new Grahams Number of assholes. He had me laughing by the end, with his incrementially larger rage.
 

Ferisar

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Oct 2, 2010
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Darth_Payn said:
And that Miracle of Sound song Gavin wrote for this game made it look so good, too! Well, that at least is a testament of his skill as a performer.
Or they just don't have the same opinion of the game, which seems to be the case for a lot of people with this one.
EDIT: Alternatively, you can like something despite its flaws. :3
 

Xenominim

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Jan 11, 2011
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I'm really surprised more people haven't been angry about the bait and switch they've pulled with this game. Yahtzee mentions it, the demo they were floating around actually looked like a horror game with the stealth elements and invincible monster and crazy traps springing from the walls. But from the gameplay videos I've seen the stealth only carries through to the very next level where you can toss bottles to distract enemies and get a few backstab kills in, everything after that the enemies pretty much always seem to know where you are and it becomes entirely about gunplay. In my mind this is worse than the Colonial Marines demo, that just looked nicer than the game that came out, it was still advertising a shooter though. This demo was promoting an entirely different genre than what they published.