The Evil Within 2 (PS4)
By: Bethesda
RELEASED, like the 2014 original, in time for Halloween, Evil Within 2 is another bloody carnival of high-concept horror awash in blood, once again produced by the father of Resident Evil (and indeed, the enitire survival horror genre), Shinji Mikami.
This time, however, Mikami-san takes a writing backseat for yarn penned in part by Troma mainstay Trent Haaga, who lists in his oeuvre such low-budget fare as Tales from the Crapper and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.
Evil Within 2 unsurprisingly takes more mainstream horror beats than the head-wreck original, but is still designed to scare the bejesus out of you as Sebastian Castellanos returns in another psychological freak-out. Taking place a few years after the original, our reluctant hero’s only chance to save his daughter is by entering the virtual nightmare of Union, haunted by a dapper eccentric who enjoys photographing his victims using technology that captures the precise moment of their death.
Kicking off with the creepy, clunky horror of the original as Sebastian scarpers through creepy hallways, Evil Within 2 soon blooms into an open-world extravaganza with the emphasis on weapon crafting, exploration and side missions.
The town of Union can be freely traversed as players scrounge for ammo, mix herbs and create bullets like the last days of Jamie Oliver.
A communicator lets Sebastian speak with Mobius members, tune into ghostly frequencies and discover ammo n’ treasures along the way.
Evil Within 2 chucks every horror trick in the book at players. Its walls are adorned with paps of murder victims while its more disturbing creatures are comprised of women's body bits lashed together with barbed wire. And if that doesn’t turn you on, there are jump scares, Hellraiser cast-offs and raven-locked girls straight out of J-horror aplenty.
Unfortunately, our bland, Keanu Reeves-eque hero still handles like a tank while the game is hampered by a ham-fisted script, amateur hour voice acting and a looming camera that's closer than a weird uncle.
Worse still, the game auto-saves at critical moments but not during your open-world wanderings, meaning no interim crafting or improvements are kept when you cark it.
In Halloween terms, while the original was an imperfect, old-school turnip lantern, Evil Within 2 is a more mainstream, eye-pleasing pumpkin. Tainted by a bloody open world crafting and lacking the single-minded vision of the original, there’s still 15 hours of top schlock here, packing just enough brains and red meat to sate grue-mongers.
