Game details Developer: Tango Gameworks

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Platform: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4

Release Date: October 13, 2017

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Price: $60

Links: Steam | Official website Tango Gameworks: Bethesda Softworks: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4October 13, 2017M for Mature: $60

It's oddly fitting that former detective Sebastian Castellanos, protagonist of The Evil Within 2, doesn't seem to remember much about the first game. Tango Gameworks' 2014 horror-action game was awfully unmemorable for players, too. I certainly didn't remember much more than poor ol' Seb when I booted up the sequel, in any case.

What I do remember, albeit vaguely, is that the whole thing took place in some kind of dream world. Yet our hero is absolutely shocked when the same sort of dream-like stuff—monsters popping up all over the place, super-powered sociopaths rewriting reality, etc.—happens all over again in this similarly survival-horror fueled nightmare. Despite the mountain of exposition The Evil Within 2 drops during its prologue cutscene, this sequel almost immediately develops into a more memorable stab at refining the Resident Evil 4 formula than its predecessor did.

Ex-Resident Evil lead Shinji Mikami stepped down as director after the last game, but this is still another refinement of his past work: a third-person shooter where the tension comes from planting accurate shots on quickly encroaching undead. Boil-covered zombies will go down to a headshot or two from your handy-dandy handgun, but you'll need every ounce of healing items, explosives, and trick crossbow bolts to take them down in droves. That's not to mention the time you need to kill 12-foot golem bound together from tittering corpses and buzzsaws.

Open-air scares

What actually sets Evil Within 2 apart from the last game is that the resource management action is spread across several open zones. I hesitate to call it an "open-world game," exactly, but many of the same hallmarks are there. Your map of the twisting, illusory suburb called Union fills out with pips to explore for more ammo, crafting resources, and skill points.

While this kind of thing feels like busywork in most open-world games (sidebar: there’s another Assassin's Creed game this month...), the activities fit snugly into a survival-horror game. Scrounging for more shotgun shells or finding more enemies to kill for XP goop feels more vital when every side quest directly helps your survival down the line.























These hand-crafted, off-the-beaten-path vignettes work on two levels. First, the usual scavenging you do in games where supplies are tight becomes more memorable. I doubt I'd recall foraging my third collectible photo slide if it hadn't involved sneaking stealthily around an invincible ghost made of floating rags that walks through walls. The same goes for the time I got an item locker key from a church, only to earn an optional fight with a possessed priest after his soul exploded out of his mouth.

The second benefit to these deadly open playgrounds is the element of surprise. Sure, those aforementioned monster encounters were scripted, but discovering them felt like a thrilling part of my regular exploration, rather than the narrow bottom of a funnel. I just saw some buildings that hadn't been looted yet and went inside, ignorant of what (if any) dangers lurked therein. I didn't know how many medical supplies I'd need, what enemies I'd face, or if the rewards would be worth it. That's much more exciting than the usual perfectly paced and predictable jump scares of the genre.

Grotesque gravitas

This isn't to say The Evil Within 2 doesn't try for a few such cheap pops. Ghosts reach out of mirrors. Zombies slide out from under abandoned cars when it's least convenient. Wailing ghouls sprint straight for Sebastian's generically gruff, apparently appetizing face. While they're not exactly cerebrally frightening, the shocks do lean into the general air of "fun" that comes with being harmlessly jolted. If The Evil Within 2’s tactically minded "survival" side is its real source of tension, its horror is akin to a funhouse where you're excited to fall into some new trap or see some new monster you haven't seen before.

Some inspired creature design keeps that curiosity and excitement going. The first Evil Within just stole from horror classics almost whole cloth. You had your basic onryō, a Pyramid Head knockoff, and so on. None of these had anything on The Evil Within 2's best baddies, although I could do with a bit more distinction from the new game's more mundane characters. My personal favorite is the half-human, half-old-timey camera miniboss called the Obscura.

For Resident Evil scholars, Kidman (Sebastian's ex-partner) is almost a carbon copy of Ada Wong, and she works for a secret society/corporation/cult that has quite a lot in common with Umbrella, which is under a shadowy figure who's basically an off-brand Albert Wesker. These maybe-kinda-definitely villains are easily the biggest victims of the game's early rush through exposition. By the time their personalities finally do get some meat to them, they've already been painted with such broad, mustache-twirling strokes that it's hard to care about their motivations.

Valuable trade-offs

And I'm fine with that lack of definition. If anything, The Evil Within 2 knows better than to take the series’ plot seriously at this point. Item descriptions are filled with self-aware jibes: like fuses that can be crafted into electric harpoons, but which explicitly can't fix any of the game's many broken fuse boxes. There's at least one very funny, oddly affecting callback to the previous game's much maligned letterboxing. I even liked the tremendously off-tone set of shooting gallery minigames, which even Sebastian calls "insane"... until he lands a new high score and dramatically pumps his fist with self-satisfaction.

You'll probably want to play those minigames, too. They're not very long, and the match-three puzzle game-esque time trial, especially, is surprisingly fun. More importantly, they're a decent source of experience points, which can be spent to tailor the way you do battle in all of those open areas. There's a skill tree for stealth kills, if you'd like to lean into conserving resources, and combat abilities to turn down the aforementioned squirrely nature of aiming. Maybe instead you just want to increase your stamina to sprint circles around enemies and stab them all day.

It's not Metal Gear Solid V or Far Cry levels of interlocking systems, but the wedge of combat options greases the wheels of the open-ended zones even further. Managing bullets and healing items isn't just about execution, it's also about strategizing over what tools and angles of attack to take into battle. Like the game’s wider environments, the variety of survival tools make the game feel much less formulaic and stale.

It's some of the most rewarding combat, surprising creature design, and thoughtful level design I've seen in a horror game for some time. The trade-off is a story that doesn't make a lick of sense—but also doesn't seem to care about making sense in the first place. That’s a trade I was happy to make by the end.

The Good:

Wonderfully disgusting creature feature design

Tense shooting and resource management

Open-world-ish design is a wonderful improvement for the genre

Surprising sense of humor around the edges

The Bad:

Utterly generic main plot and characters

Not especially scary, for a horror game

The Ugly:

That one very high-resolution rotten food force-feeding scene

Verdict: The Evil Within 2 is a mechanical step up from the first game in nearly every way, even if the narrative is just as disposable as ever. Buy it if that balance doesn't bother you.