The Evil Within 2

I began this game without much hopes and playing it just confirmed it. The story of the second game is unrelated to the first game. It doesn't answer what happened to Ruvik for instance. I dropped when I reached the same chair and nurse from the first game to buy upgrades. I said "Oh noes! Again? I'm not going to continue this".

What they fixed from the previous game:

• Char turning 180º when you want to turn to open a drawer

• Char becoming tired without stamina and being defenseless

• Dropped the hide mechanic. It's useless in this game

• Dropped the bombs to disarm and beartraps

• Dropped the mechanic to burn down monsters

• Removed all the saws, spikes and crush traps

• Removed the instant death attacks from monsters

• Fixed the problematic collision

• The rest of game retains the same systems to buy upgrades, skills and the wheel to choose weapons

My biggest grip and complain is that this game is anti-smooth gameplay. Naughty Dog was right about interrupting the gameplay with pre-scripted open door animations. The first QTE in the game is to force a door open and while you are in the QTE you cannot defend yourself or escape. With monsters attacking I couldn't do anything and died. The character stops to drink coffee and the animation cannot be skipped. They did speed up the animation of the mirrors to enter the dimension where you buy upgrades, but now there is another dimension that you enter through computer terminals and it teleports you to a dark place with a "% loading" message on the top right corner of the screen. I cannot bear to play this game with this much interruption in the gameplay's flow.

A quick design note: this game puts some items inside cars, but to pick them up you first need to break the car's windows. The game does not present an icon or highlight the car in any way, forcing you to guess that you have to smash the window.

Ironically, this game takes place within a virtual dream world. The player should've been felt immersed in it. Yet, the immersion is broken by technical flaws. First the pacing and excessive interruptions. Second, the A.I. is stupid. Monsters that cross your path in front of you and ignore your presence. Monsters that don't react to you when you sneak behind them with the flashlight on. Monsters playing dead that you wake them up with bullets, just for them to die taking more damage from you. Monsters made of lava that don't cause burn damage and you can kill from behind with a knife. It's funny who a monster made of lava doesn't burn, yet they added an animation for Sebastian to "shake off" when he becomes wet.

The Evil Within 2 has even less terror than the first. I think that they confused surrealism with terror. This game has much more elements leaning towards surrealism than terror. The city is floating in space, chunks of the city floating in the sky, the constant shifts of reality from one place to another, the paintings, the scenes. I guess this is why there is a portion of the fans who liked the first but hated the second game. In the first game we had an hospital, a haunted mansion, an old village in the dark and so on. The second game presents a pretty mundane american town with nothing to be scared about. Just some stupid monsters. The Stefano guy is described by the psychologist NPC as an evil mind, a genius psychopath. Listen, I've studied personality disorders a bit and they relied on the classic psychopath portrait that we see in movies and TV Shows. However, the behavior of that Stefano guy is more about psychosis and an attraction to taking photographs of dead people. I'd say that the Cohen guy depicted in Bioshock was better.

There are deaths in this game that feel unnecessary or out of place. They don't contribute in any way to the character's development. The beginning of the game shows how Sebastian is spiraling downwards, drinking alcohol and blaming himself. Very similar to the beginning of Max Payne 3. I'd say that the character development of Max Payne is superior. Most of the reviews criticize the plot of TEW2. I couldn't believe that near the end of TEW2 you are told that you were deceived in TEW and some event from the previous game was a lie. Mind blowing! It's a huge plot hole. With Tango closed down we are never going to see this thread resolved.

I didn't bother to continue this game and just watched the rest of it. They couldn't decide between action adventure and terror. To give an example: Why did they add dialogues with choices? It doesn't make sense in this game and just forces you to waste time. You have to craft ammo and you are forced to go looking for resources out there in the city. You aren't rewarded with some gift or pieces of history of the city. This makes exploration in this game a drag.

I forgot to mention: they added a tetris match 3 minigame to earn points to upgrade. Really?