The Evil Within tries to entertain you by making you feel like barfing (hands-on preview)

Above: Shooting from the ground in The Evil Within.

Image Credit: Bethesda

I then moved outside to another home in the village. The door burst open, and a body came running out. It was on fire, and then it collapsed in front of me. I went into the building and explored further. I moved down the stairs and found a horror show of blood and bodies all over the place.

I moved into a corridor that ended in an operating room. A spider-like monster awoke from the floor and chased me. I had to avoid it, rushing around everywhere until I found a door. I opened it and escaped only to find myself transported to some other mysterious place.

This place was awash in blood. It was some kind of cellar that was like a torture chamber. A bunch of bodies lay piled in the middle, with metal stakes through their skulls. They had apparently fallen through some chute and were ready for incineration. There were booby traps throughout the room. I could press on a controller button for a while to disable a trap, and then I could do the same to rearm it.

I approached a door and tried to open it. That triggered the trap. The hooded figure appeared and animated all of the bodies in the room with his magic fairy dust, or something like that. I walked calmly (because it clearly isn’t easy to run in a straight line in this game) to one side and shot a zombie in the head. Then I went to the other side and did the same. I moved back, and one zombie set off a booby trap grenade, which blew him to bits. I then moved around as fast as I could into the second room, but I was caught and killed. I repeated this about five times until I got it right, making my way to a ladder and some more weaponry.

There, I kept shooting and blowing things up until the undead were pulverized. Every time I fired a shot, I felt myself flinching even though all I was doing was pushing a button on the controller. That’s how much tension you’ll find here. I then moved outside into the next home in the village. This sort of thing repeated until I was able to escape all the traps and finish the level.

Above: The Evil Within — a Haunted attacks.

Image Credit: Bethesda

Chapter 8 brought me to creepy mansion, once again during the night. I had the presence of mind to go looking for resources like matches, bullets, explosives, and hiding spots before I approached the house. I looked at my weapon wheel so that I could competently switch among weapons like the shotgun, revolver, and crossbow. I found some crossbow darts that I could use to craft better ammo like explosive darts.

Sure enough, as I approached, the Haunted came out in droves. There were some fast and feisty ones that I had to eliminate with grenades. I also had to lure some of them past the explosive propane tanks and other traps that could take out one or more of them at a time. After fighting that firefight multiple times, I finally gained entry into the mansion.

And that’s where it got more gruesome.

Above: The Evil Within. Brain surgery.

Image Credit: Bethesda

Inside the mansion, I found four wings. Two on either side of a central staircase, and two upstairs, with a menacing looking vault door right in the middle. The vault door at the center was locked, and I had to find a way to unlock it.

So I moved to the left wing on the ground floor. I had to clear each room of its zombies, avoid the booby traps, and solve little puzzles in search of important clues. In the meantime, I had to avoid sudden attacks by the hooded figure, who would create a deadly trap that would shred me or behead me if I didn’t escape it.

I finally reached the end of the wing, which turned out to be a scientist’s experimental lab. Yes, that evil brother. He was evidently doing research on live humans to figure out their responses to various stimuli. On the table was a human head with its brain exposed. I had to look at an image on the desk to figure out which part to drill into. Then I moved the drill over that section and turned it on. After buzzing for a while, it filled up and created a liquid that flowed to the vault door, unlocking part of it. Oh, ya, I solved the puzzle by drilling a hole in some guy’s brain. As a reward, I was shown a flashback to the past, when the young brother scientist was growing up and figuring out how to drill into the brains of people in the name of science.

I had to do this a few more times before I was able to unlock the vault door in the middle. When I did so, the hooded villain wasn’t happy. I had to fight him off, but all of that preparation put me in a pretty sour mood.

Like a lot of horror shows, The Evil Within does its best to shock you and frighten you even as its game designers are aware that you’ve been deadened to simple horror. This gives you unrelenting horror, blood, and violence. Ultimately, I think that’s part of why it fails. After all, if you try to shock people all of the time, you’re bound to succeed only a small percentage of the time. And make their stomachs hurt.

Above: The Evil Within. Here’s what happens when you lose.

Image Credit: Bethesda