A survival horror title that does not offer too many scares

Jun 13, 2013 05:47 GMT  ·  By

The Evil Within promises to reinvent the survival horror genre and at E3 2013, the team at Tango showed players two levels of the game designed to reveal its core ideas and mechanics.

Shinji Mikami himself, the game veteran in charge of The Evil Within, took to the stage in order to talk about how he was re-designing the genre and making sure that players would be scared while playing.

The developer says that survival horror is back and the gameplay demo offered by Bethesda was filled with tense moments, blood-spattered walls and enemies that seemed straight out of a nightmare.

The first level of the game was shown, with four detectives responding to an incident at a mental health hospital and stepping in the middle of horrific events.

The Evil Within looks good and it certainly uses core ideas of survival horror, like limited ammunition and a frail main character.

The team also showed a more combat-oriented level, which pitted the protagonist against several hulking enemies. This gave him access to the bullets and the traps required to try to stop their advance before reality shifted around him to put him into even more trouble.

The big problem that The Evil Within has is that it's not that scary for a modern audience that has seen all the tricks of the genre exposed and overused by series like Resident Evil.

In order to be successful, the game needs to develop new types of scares that will catch modern gamers unaware.

Regardless of how the actual game turns out, it was a pleasure seeing Shinji Mikami use his unique brand of Japanese and signs to talk about the title he is currently working on.

The Evil Within is set to launch on the PC, current-generation consoles, the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony at some point in 2014.