Bargain Basement Reviews
With Game-pass and Sony's subscription models being all the buzz these days, I thought it would be a good idea to look at what was on offer to people that did not subscribe to those services. Let's be honest here, The 500 games for around ten bucks a month might sound cool in theory, but in practice, who has the time for all those games.
The goal of Bargain Basement Reviews is simple, to find some of gaming's best gems at their lowest prices.
I will be mostly looking at older games that are on sale and will be concentrating on the PS5 format as that is the system I own.
I hope to gradually expand this list over time, giving the user a broad base of games to look at.
With that said, welcome to the review of my very first game.
The Evil Within 2
Publisher Tango Game works/Bethesda
Price of sale, A Colossal £5
To be completely honest, I have never really been a fan of survival horror games, In fact, horror games in general are just not my particular cup of tea.
This fact stems all the way back to my youth, when, as a young child, my brother thought that it would be a good idea to watch the horror trilogy of Salem's Lot, Alien and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre over the course of a Friday night weekend. I was ten years old at the time, and have never been right since.
As for the horror game genre, I have dabbled in a few games over the years, Mainly the Dead Space and Resident Evil series games. My brief stint through the Resident Evil games for example, saw me play 4,5,6 in that order, with number four being rather excellent and six being a bit shit to put it mildly.
So with that in mind, I took to The Evil Within 2 with a slight hint of apprehension.
You play as the game's main antagonist, a Sebastian Castelllanos, An ex-detective who is on the quest to find his long-lost daughter.
The story's plot revolves around your character being connected to a neural network hub. Once Linked into this system, Sebastian's consciousness is transported into a world area called the Stem, an alternative reality environment, think Neo from The Matrix here.
The first few chapters of the game move forward at a lethargic jaunt. This purposefully slow opening of sequences sets the foundations for the story. From a house on fire to the outskirts of a distant town, you soon find yourself arriving at the game's main destination, a small town called Union.
Your first stop in Union soon leads you to one of the game's many safe-houses. Safe-houses are areas in the game in which you can save your game, heal up, and obtain quests from some of the NPCs that might be stationed there.
Safe-houses also give you access to Sebastian's office area via a broken mirror transport mirror system, this area of the game gives you the ability to upgrade Sebastian's skills and weapons branches.
After a brief respite in the safe zone, you venture out into the town's gloomy streets. The town itself is being ravaged by frequent seismic tremors. This effect is causing many of the town's locations to dislodge and seamlessly float off into the sky. To add to this destructive mayhem, there is also the unnerving sight of many of the town's populace laying about dead or being transformed into monsters.
The town's layout at first seems rather simplistic in design. It is a large sprawling landscape filled with a mixture of residential buildings. From vacant houses to empty food diners all ad-mist with empty streets and dark pathways. At first glance, everything seems pretty mundane, but after closer examination, there is a hidden layer of depth to its forsaken design.
Sebastian can often find himself venturing into a vacant property only to see a door or gate being suddenly shut behind him, these events can trigger an alternative reality or hidden memory and with it, a host of creepy creatures that suddenly transpire before your eyes. There is a real sense of discovery within this system. Moments of seemly dull interactions can suddenly send your heart afloat as you find yourself trapped in a small room space with a large menacing foe right beside you. This trick the developers have pulled off here works fantastically well and is one of the game's greatest achievements.
The characters you meet along the way advance the various quest lines, as expected. They range from your typical yes-man press x zealot to others that have tad bits of interesting information that might reveal an area or item on that map that is worth investigating.
Side quests in general are a pretty standard affair with the usual locate this person, find this quest item, Key-Card, etc.
There are some seriously good-looking locations in the game, that's if you think hell is beautiful.
Mob diversity on the whole is decent with your general zombie archetypes on full display here. Sprinters, Lurkers, Feeders, etc can be found in abundance all over the town's environment, however, there are also a couple of real nasty's that are sprinkled in.
Look up the word bitch in the dictionary and you will find a picture of one of these. A truly terrifying monster that got the better of me many a time, approached with extreme caution.
As for combat in the game, there is a diverse line-up of tools at your disposal, from regular pistols and shotguns to extremely accurate sniper rifles that you can acquire early on. All weapon offerings have an upgrade system of multiple layers.
My favourite weapon of choice was a silencer pistol which I found in the later stages of the game, This little beauty allowed me to precision target my way through the game with perfectly placed headshots.
A couple of nasty shotgun types are also on display that at close range can, and will, really ruin a monster's day.
There is also a crossbow device that can be changed on the fly to accommodate a vast array of different elemental bolt types. From explosive bolt tips and freezing arrows to electrical stun variants,
The electrical variant for example, can be used to good effect when firing at knocked-over drums of spilled oil while the freezing bolt can be used to shatter mobs when fired into a puddle of water flowing from an opened fire hydrant.
Ammunition and supplies as a resource are extremely rare to the point where you really need to value their usage of them. The choice of should I use my last few rounds now or save those bullets for the next inevitable monster that lies around the corner, is a difficult and sometimes profound choice that really shines in this game.
As for the stealth section of the game, sneaking about, and relying on your trusty knife to dispatch the horde, feels very organic in its play. Stealth-play is methodical in its approach with various sections of the game needing you to sneak around to avoid certain encounters. There is a terrifying feel of discovery when stealthily hiding in bushes while mobs aimlessly walk past you.
The boss fights are varied in their forms, from being rather simplistic as in run and gun, to other bosses taking multiple stages to complete. Not once did I not find any of the bosses particularly difficult, perhaps dying once or twice until I learned their particular pattern. There is no Valkyrie queen(God of War) or Orphan of Kos(Bloodborne) moments to worry about in this game.
One thing I did appreciate in regards to the monsters was their body movement patterns. Although slow-moving at the best of times, a lot of the monsters have extremely erratic movement patterns, from flinching heads to twerking bodies ( and when I say twerking, I don't mean Nicky Minaj booty here) Taking your time for that ever-so-perfect headshot can be frustrating but extremely satisfying at the same time.
Monsters are a whole lot harder to hit than this.
The story itself has three main antagonists at its core. A pretentious serial killer that leaves a series of gruesome murders in his wake, a cult leader searching for ultimate power, and of course “The typical G-men/secret organization” behind the scenes pulling all the strings, etc. Each has its own unique place in the story and I enjoyed interacting with them all.
Positives
-Atmosphere, Exploration, genuine moments of terror.
-Fantastic world design.
-Masterful use of shadows and colours.
-A robust upgrade system allowing a variety of play styles.
-Easy to understand navigation and map systems.
-Replayability, New game plus, all your weapons and upgrades intact
-Never felt I needed to play the first game.
-Half the price of a subscription service and you get to keep the game.
A note on a second play-through. The new game plus does not allow you to adjust the game with a different difficulty, instead, you play the same area all over again with all your weapons and upgrade intact. This can be deemed a negative in terms of game difficulty, as on my second play through I went in gun-blazing destroying everything in my path. For people wanting a challenge this can be a negative but at the same time a blessing for those people wanting to obtain their trophies.
Negatives
-Backtracking can cause small amounts of game fatigue.
-A a lot of cheap deaths especially in the early stages of the game, I must have died a dozen times in the first major part of the town, mainly trying to charge, 'aka' Bloodborne style into a large group of monsters.
-Some ropey AI, some monsters can simply be reset by running away from them. (zombies are meant to be dumb but not that dumb).
-The PS5 version is the PS4 version, The game would benefit from an upgrade patch.
Issues of note
-Some minor pop in.
-Close up of characters can look ugly at times.
-A somewhat strange game loading system.
Points of interest.
-My first play-through took me just over 20 hours to complete.
-I died 55 times in those 20 hours of gameplay, most of that with me being a total idiot. (Note to one's self, You're not Conner Macleod, Do not try to attack large packs of monsters with a small knife.)
-The second play-through clocked in at just over 10 hours.
-My first play-through netted me exactly 50% of all achievements.
-Obtaining a platinum trophy would require at least a second play-through.
End remark + score
A superb title that deserves your time and money, especially for its current price.
9.5/10
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