Horror Month: The Evil Within 2, Part 3: Chapters 5-6

Originally streamed Oct 20, 2019. The third proper annual "Horror Month!" Where I try to play all horror or horror themed games for all of October! These will become a fun tradition that will happen every year without fail! Tango's 2017 sequel to Shinji Mikami's original The Evil Within. The original was Mikami's attempt to revitalize the survival horror genre, which it somewhat did. I appreciated it's punishing difficulty and very creative surrealistic environments. The game emphasizes stealth whenever possibly as you can be killed quite easily. On the surface, this seems like a strong continuation of the first game, and I would even say that the 1st half of this game is quite strong. Environments are more open now and there is a bit more room for exploration and progressing in different ways. However, the character designs have suffered a strange degrade, and everyone looks visibly worse from the first game, which is pretty odd for a sequel. Even so, there are some pretty strong moments in the game's first half, when I was quite enjoying it. However, in the game's second half there are a number of glaring issues that get worse and worse. The well crafted open environments in the middle of the game get traded for increasingly bland and surprisingly uninspired environments. This is a big problem, especially when you consider that the 1st game got more and more creative with it's environments. The story also suffers, going in some very uninspired and trite directions, and also slogging up more and more of the playtime with overlong cutscenes. I have to say, the game ends on a particularly bad note with just a boring, overlong, predictable ending. It really sours the whole experience. It's strange because the 1st game was quite the opposite. It started out a bit bland, at times feeling like a lame retread of RE4, but as the game went on (with a very good story twist) it just got better and better, more and more creative. It really is a slow burn. Whereas this game is the total opposite! It starts out pretty exciting and just gradually loses all steam, turning into a complete slog. What are the chances of that? I should also mention that both games have the distinct weakness of a generic OST that does nothing to elevate it, although the first game is able to rise above that. Well, it doesn't look like there will ever be a TEW3, and based on how this game turned out, that's just fine with me. Ignore this one, but definitely play the underrated first game! My Rating: Overall 5/10 - Music 3/10   / flipsider99     / discord   Check out my webcomic Flipside: http://flipsidecomics.com/ A google doc of all my game ratings: http://tinyurl.com/gmz4ydt Also check out my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4949215