Evil Inside – Recensione (PC)

Whenever you start reviewing a first-person horror game with haunted houses, corridors and doors galore, you are looking for parallels with PT which, paradoxically, was not even a game, but a playable teaser, yet so inspired that it has created a genre of its own.

The heir is sought, but it is difficult to find, the only one to have approached it was Visage, while many others have messed up or simply have proved to be nice games and nothing more. Let's start with one thing before the review of Evil Inside: In the game preview we wrote about good feelings because the free prologue on Steam seemed to have taken the right path, but we are now here writing about a full game that is not all that different from the demo.

Haunted house, forgetful protagonist

PT also managed to convince from a "narrative" point of view, despite there being no story, because the atmosphere, the child's laughter, the reflection of the woman in the mirror, that corridor, waking up in the basement were all elements that could offer the ability to speculate on a story that. in reality. it wasn't there for a very simple reason: PT was not a complete game, it only served to promote Silent Hills (peace to his soul).

Games that try to emulate it are therefore expected to make at least a step forward from a narrative point of view because it is not tolerable that a teaser, obviously free, is more exciting than a full title that is instead sold in the stores ( 12,99€ for heaven's sake, but it's still money).

The plot of Evil Inside is the same as the other P, T.-like: the protagonist, Mark in this case, he is not convinced of what happened to his mother, killed, according to official sources, by her husband, then by Mark's father, so he decides to use a tavola ouija to find out the truth. This backfires, the house is now haunted by a demonic presence, Mark himself begins to remember events from the past. Little else, really.

If we add to this narrative scarcity that Evil Inside is an experience of about an hour in duration, the complete picture begins to reveal itself. Indeed, if you are quick enough to understand situations, never too cryptic, you can be able to finish and platinum the game in 45 minutes.

Il loop del loop del loop

Gameplay-wise, Evil Inside is also loyal to PT with its loops, exploration of a house that changes with each cycle, spirit manifestations from time to time, but it stops there, it has no flickers, there is no spark.

During each cycle, the player must pay attention to the changes of the rooms to understand what to interact with how to move forward: a half-open drawer, an interactive object that in the previous cycle did not present any kind of input, a crooked picture, are all clues to focus on. .

Everything runs smoothly enough comfortably because there are no real obstacles, the same presences are not lethal, but placed there only to create tension, act as jumpscare and make the player understand that he is advancing in history.

An incentive could have come from the puzzles, but even from this point of view we are not there: if we exclude things such as looking for a lever to fix the generator or finding a hole in the wall after warning on a sheet attached to the door, of real puzzles. there is only one at the beginning, the same as in the demo.

The regret also lies in the fact that visual and sound effects, after all, are also done well, especially the latter. The sound design at certain moments he knows how to offer the sensations of a place contaminated by the presence of another reality, however he is unable to revive a production that is too anonymous, too derivative. Technically we are on good levels, but even in this case we have not noticed anything so original and different from the titles of the same vein. The location of some elements and the furniture in general are very similar to those of PT but if you don't put your own into it, you're not going anywhere.

Final comment

There isn't much more to say. Evil Inside remains anchored to the mechanics of PT-like products, remaining crushed by its inability to offer something different. Evil Inside even tries to propose dynamics very similar to those of Kojima's teaser, but approaching the sun melts the wax wings and causes a ruinous fall. Everything knows already seen, absent puzzles, ridiculous longevity, there is no spark, there is no shock that can revive the body of the monster assembled by dr. Frankenstein.