Mere blood and guts don’t cut it anymore for horror video games. They need to provide some genuine fright on top of all that carnage.
The Evil Within is the new survival horror game from Shinji Mikami, who fathered the genre with the original Resident Evil game released in 1996. The native consoles for the first Resident Evil were the Sony PlayStation 1 and the Sega Saturn.
Mikami’s newest game, on the other hand, is being developed with the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in mind. The system requirements on PC for The Evil Within are making people wonder whether their gaming rigs can even handle it.
That suggests we’re in for something interesting as far as production values go, and this trailer and survival guide for The Evil Within demonstrates the point.
Resident Evil, which was named Biohazard in Japan, made waves for how it mixed horror movie elements with a feeling of helplessness that gamers weren’t used to dealing with, i.e. having to use weapons sparingly and avoiding conflict wherever necessary. Resident Evil games have since gone the way of action/horror movies, or straight shoot-em-ups like Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.
The Evil Within, on the other hand, is a return to the helplessness and need for stealth that characterized the original Resident Evil. From the pre-release coverage, it looks like The Evil Within is drawing as much from the psychological horror appeal of the Silent Hill franchise as it is from the overt scares and gore of the latter-day Resident Evil games.
The Evil Within will be released on Oct. 14 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Image courtesy of Bethesda Softworks
