The Evil Within 2 is the 2nd installment in The Evil Within series and it is as awesome as its predecessor. The Evil Within 2 starts after the few years where original The Evil Within ends. Our main character “Sebastian Castellanos†starts the game with anger and guilt over the loss of his family. After playing the game for more than 20 hours, I have some thoughts which I will share with you in this review.
Graphics
The success of any game depends on its graphics and Tango Gameworks have done an amazing job with the graphics. In my campaign, something that struck me the most was the lighting. Great dim lighting in the corridors complement the theme of the game. Overall graphics are good, environment has great attention to detail and characters are also designed very well.
Gameplay
After playing The Evil Within 2 for it’s entirety I can say that its game play is Solid. At the start of the game, Sebastian will be given a chance by a shadowy organization to rescue his daughter from the world of union. So obviously Sebastian decides to go into the world of union to rescue his daughter. The game play is divided into two parts, in the first half you will be fighting the bosses who will pose a rather weak challenge but in the 2nd part you encounter a very environment . In the 2nd part, you will be fighting a number of bosses with great strengths and variety of enemies which makes the game more interesting.
In the game, you will be exploring a semi-open world full of challenges and side quests. The thing which I liked the most about the game was this semi-open environment, which you can explore quite a bit. You will be able to find side quests with the help of “communicator†a device which you will be using to find all sorts of quests and missions during your campaign. The beauty of side quests is that you never know where the stray signal will lead you into. In my campaign, I enjoyed the side quests as it surprised me every time with different scenarios.
Combat in The Evil Within 2 is good but I also felt that fights with some bosses were not very very to understand. Like in one fight, I was shooting the boss but there was almost no reaction and boss kept coming toward me. So I felt that there was a need for some kind of audio or video feedback during combat to let you know you are wasting your precious ammo because you can not kill the boss at this point. Apart from this specific experience, overall combat is good and with a variety of weapons, you can make the combat more interesting.
Overall, I’m impressed with diversity in the game. You will have options to either go for a straight fight, firing your weapons or follow a stealth approach to make overall combat experience more interesting. You also have 3 difficulty modes: Casual, Survival and Nightmare mode. Each difficulty mode caters to different type of players like if you want your enemies to be extremely powerful then you can go for nightmare mode where you will have to give your 100% to survive.
However, even in casual mode, survival is not easy especially if you are attacked by a mob of monsters and with low-level weapons, you will most certainly be killed. So you will have to be very careful in the initial stages of the game to survive. During your campaign, you will not only collect ammo and healing items to heal yourself but you will also find weapon parts to upgrade your weapon and a green gel from the corps of fallen enemies. Green gel will give boost to your health and also give you the ability to slow down time when aiming your weapons at the enemies.
Weapons
In the campaign, I also liked the fact that The Evil Within 2 has a large variety of weapons. From having a pistol to the shotgun. Also having other types of unique weapons make the game more interesting to play. It also allows players to use different ways to kill the enemies which make the overall gaming experience great.
During your campaign, you will be collecting weapon parts to upgrade your weapon. You will also get the choice to either upgrade all of your weapons or focus on any specific one like in my campaign, I focused on my pistol to make it the ultimate death-machine. Similarly, you can either focus on your specific weapon or upgrade all of your weapons just a bit.
Conclusion
The Evil Within 2 offers a great survival horror game experience without very little compromises. The only downside of the game is its story line which was not very good and the dialogues delivery between Sebastian and other characters was at times just boring. Apart from story line, I appreciate Tango Gameworks for adding side quests as they were a lot of fun to do. The game play is also very solid where you will have to be very attentive to counter the monsters else you will become their victim. Very realistic graphics and lighting complement the theme of game. If I sum up the whole gaming experience in one word then it would be “Wonderful†and if you are a fan of survival horror games then you would love The Evil Within 2.
