

One of the game’s villains, a tormented artist with a knack for dismemberment, creates installations of his kills. They’re linear and claustrophobic rife with arresting imagery and twisted creatures. Though the open-ended segments are a departure for The Evil Within 2, its narrative-focused chapters are similar to those of the first game. Though it’s a great way to scrounge crafting components and extra ammunition, stalking between buildings feel more like The Last of Us than Silent Hill tense rather than terrifying. I alternated between digging the exploration and barrelling towards my next objective. Traveling through Union starts as a welcome diversion, but transforms into a chore before too long. Controlling Sebastion feels flighty, especially in cover, and except for a great quick-turn, the grizzled detective moves with the grace of an overturned truck. In combining limited firepower with situational awareness, The Evil Within 2 mixes its horror roots with action gameplay that sometimes feels like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Castellanos can take cover behind objects and use a crossbow to set environmental traps. To survive, it’s best to approach encounters stealthily. Sebastian can hold his own against an enemy or two, but many of Union’s poorly lit alleys hide multiple foes. These open sections encourage exploration and careful planning. It’s a shattered town, literally breaking apart as the game progresses, but the pieces that remain are open and littered with both shambling monsters and valuable resources.
#EVIL INSIDE REVIEW PS5 FREE#
Instead, he’s given free reign over swaths of Union’s suburban grime.

Castellanos isn’t just stuck stalking through abandoned facilities and blood-soaked rooms this time around. But while the actual story is nothing new, it affords the main character room to explore all the grief, guilt, and trauma that he’s buried since surviving the first game and losing his only child.ĭespite its basic story structure, The Evil Within 2 has grand gameplay aspirations.
#EVIL INSIDE REVIEW PS5 SERIES#
Instead, it’s a tool to place Sebastian into a series of increasingly terrible situations for fifteen hours. The Evil Within 2‘s story never reaches far. Strange events coincide with her disappearance, and so Sebastian must enter Union, figure out what’s going on, and bring his daughter home once and for all. He’s told, by the very people that took her, that she’s gone missing from the dream-like town of Union. This time around, Castellanos throws himself into STEM - a bathtub-like device that connects users’ minds to create something of a utopia - for the chance to rescue his kidnapped daughter. He’s gone to hell and back before, fighting the mental machinations of a psychopath during the events of the first game. The Evil Within 2 pulls Sebastian Castellanos back into chaos. There aren’t many games like this one, even though it sometimes feels like it’s all been done before. From another, it’s a remarkable mood piece that draws players in with familiarity only to subtly shift attention towards something altogether new. If you examine it from one angle, The Evil Within 2 is a strange mashup of horror’s greatest hits held together by a leash of semi-open exploration. Its DNA is muddy, mixing gameplay systems and tonal stylings with abandon. Like its predecessor, the survival horror game can’t resist nodding and emulating elements of other franchises. This allusion defines one aspect of The Evil Within 2. It’s a transient place, existing somewhere between Sebastian’s waking world and the shared reality created by connected minds at the center of The Evil Within‘s fiction. This location is a far cry from his previous surroundings. Black and white patterned tiling spills out beneath his feet, not unlike the Room’s chevron flooring. Rich, velvety curtains hang in front of him. As he wanders through darkened corridors, chasing leads in desperate hope of recovering his missing daughter, the former detective enters a room that’s best described as a stand-in for Twin Peak‘s Red Room. In one of The Evil Within 2‘s early chapters, Sebastian Castellanos stumbles onto a familiar scene.
