The Evil Within - Playstation 3

If you loved Resident Evil 4 you should also love The Evil Within. RE4 for PS2 was the first game that I ever played on the PS3 (release 60GB PS3s were backwards compatible). I had heard that RE4 was *that good* and worth playing before any of the PS3 games that were out at the time of the console's launch. And, man, were they ever right. RE4 blew me away, and it still stands as one of my top 5 favorite games. Many elements of RE4 are as fresh in my head today as they were way back in 2007 when I finally beat it after logging 30 hours into the campaign.The Evil Within was created by the same guy that did RE4, so I entered the game with great expectations after getting it on Amazon for just 19 bucks on Black Friday 2014. Were my expectations met? Mostly. It was definitely worth the 19 bucks!!! But these days I hold Dead Space up as the pinnacle example of Horror/Survival. Dead Space did everything correct from gameplay to story to mechanics to graphics to scares...everything was top notch. The Evil Within was great fun, but it disappointed in a few places.So first let me reiterate before I speak to my whiny complaints: The Evil Within was GREAT FUN. It's scary and tense with 15 very challenging chapters. It took me over 20 hours to beat. You will die (a lot) in Evil Within (on normal or higher difficulty). You will not beat certain enemies before a trial and error learning period (which can sometimes take more than just several attempts). There are some puzzles but it's not puzzle heavy. The challenges come by way of making it to the various chapter checkpoints via levels that are made insanely difficult at times by enemies driven by smart and accurate AI. I have no problem with smart and accurate AI, but when you add in that almost ALL enemies are walking bullet-sponges and ammo is scarce you are in for a challenge that requires more than just blasting your way through the game.And indeed there should be more than just blasting my way through a game, but in Evil Within when you're lucky enough to collect a decent amount of ammo in order to get through a chapter, it'd be nice if the ammo worked. 4 bullets to take down a human-haunted? Folks...aim for the head in this game and sometimes that doesn't even give you a 1-shot kill. Two grenades to take out the human-haunted with the machine gun? Ridiculous. Remember, I said accurate AI earlier and by that I meant that the enemies with guns in this game don't miss if you let them get a shot off.The creatures in Evil Within range from creepy to scary to disturbing. And almost all are viciously ruthless in their pursuit of you if they see you, so a lot of the Evil Within strategy will be to stay stealthy. The story and the dialogue are a bit whacky, but that's made up for by a game that has you in tense levels for the most part with a limited amount of cutscenes.I'm very late to the game with this review so I'll get this wrapped up by AGAIN saying that The Evil Within was great fun. I am excited to do a Survivor Difficulty New Game+ second playthrough. One thing's for sure about the second playthrough though: I will NOT be increasing the difficulty to Nightmare (unlocked after beating the game on Survivor difficulty). You can't raise the difficulty and use New Game+ anyway.Overall Rating: 4 ½ Stars

Before i go into the game i would like to add a short back story on why i love it so much. I have always been a Resident Evil fan (video games) ever since Resident evil directors cut came out and beyond. I also enjoyed many other horror survival RPG's, in fact they are my fav class of video game. Ok enough about Me!!! Here it is, what makes "The Evil Within" Such a bad ass title for any system in the RPG survival horror class ? 1) The game's environment, it is a lot like Resident Evil but much more in the realm of insanity, but this is good insanity. The first time i play it i couldn't stop, because it jumped out at me with such realistic environments. 2) The Horror (this should have been 1), If you enjoy scary movies and very scary games, then this is your baby right here, they don't rely on jump scares to cause terror... trust me on that.The first time i played it i was like "well seems kinda scary but where's this so called great horror and terror at ?" Well after awhile later i changed my tune to "Omg, get me outta here i'm gonna die from FEAR!!!!" as some giant juggernaut of a beast wielding an Axe came at me.Oh and Axes, Traps, Monsters, tricks are not the only thing you should be worried about, they have the legendary chainsaw wielding beast in this game too!!!! But as you play reality also plays on your mind, you will meet things you could never imagine ever to exist.3) Customize !!!!! Yes this is soooo important to me as a gamer of horror RPGs i love to have control over my player then just walking around with something with zero choices. In The Evil Within you will have the chance(s) to customize your player in all sorts of amazing ways, which to me just made a great game even better.Well i like to keep these short so here is my last words on the game.If you have not had a chance to watch this game or play it i would suggest you give it a try, however if you did just run out and buy it anyways i don't think it would matter since you will love it. I give this game a 9.2 out of 10Well hope this helped, if it did why not thumbs it up for me because it did take time to write it for Amazon, and i don't get paid for writing these things.