[SPOILER] The Sancho Review Hour

[TheAlmightySancho]

This is The Sancho Review Hour
Please read this first: This particular review contains rather graphic images, don't keep reading if you dislike that sort of thing.

This will hopefully be a little series I do, since my shop doesn't take up much of my time, where I'll just be reviewing some of the games I finish. These reviews will be of different lengths, depending on how much I have to say about the game. So welcome to the very first episode! And on today's menu...

I loved the first one, the second actually lived up to expectations. Not many games can say that. The main theme for the game is Ordinary World by Duran Duran (love that song).

Brief summary, The Evil Within is a horror series based on the concept of a machine called a STEM. STEM is like the Matrix, but spookier. There is one mind, often selected for being the most stable candidate, at the center that connects up to the mind's of people who are plugged into the machine. Everyone, even the Core, is living inside the Core's consciousness where an entire world is built. The purpose of this is to create a unified humanity where everything is plugged into STEM.

The Story

The Evil Within 2 takes place after the first one, you play as Sebastian Castellanos who was inside the first STEM - called "Beacon Mental Hospital" (good setting for a horror game, of course), and this is inside of a man named Ruvik who's actually a psychopath. Psychopaths should never be in a STEM as the darkness in one's mind is dragged with them into STEM. Somebody who's twisted thoughts are too strong, such as a psychopath, manifest their thoughts into equally twisted horrors within this artificial world. If their mind is truly unstable they become the monster, allowing them to twist reality itself to their will. Ruvik ends up like this before you kill him at the end.

Why is this important? There are a few good ol' twists in The Evil Within 2. You encounter a man named Stefano Valentini. He's an artist, and instantly strikes you as an unstable man...well, he can teleport and shape reality, and has a slight obsession with "making perfect art" (not what you might expect, psychopaths aren't pleasant people). He's also got the reason you're even in this new STEM: your daughter, Lily, Core of the second STEM. Obviously the villain, no? No, actually. He's one of this big 3 but he ain't the biggest fish out there.

You eventually meet the man he swore to serve, only to betray: Theodore Wallace. A member of the secret society Mobius that built the STEM systems, turned into the Dark Wizard Gargamel himself or something. He likes fire and wants to kill Lily so that he can control reality itself and somehow take over the real world, he's a little bit delusional. "Father Wallace", as he now calls himself, is also in conflict with the final villain of the game.

Your wife, Myra. She was actually inside STEM with Theodore Wallace in order to save Lily, but realised his treachery and decided to go full white-goo monster mode and destroy everything. There fighting also creates an outbreak of The Lost, people transforming into poor zombie monsters. Every game needs zombies!

The Cast
There's obviously Sebastian Castellanos, who's pictured in the art above.

We've got good old Stefano Valentini:
The thing behind him is "Obscura", a creature made of the corpses of female victims, with a camera for a head.

Father Wallace, the man who specialises in fire and mental torture:


And then Myra. A loving mother who's maternal instinct went too far. There was no cool artwork of her, so here's a screenshot:


There's a woman named Kidman who's important but only appears in cutscenes. She helps you save Lily

Then there's squaddies of a Mobius team that was plugged into STEM before you. All but 3 are dead before you even arrive. You find Liam O'Neal early on but I found him to be stuck up and annoying to deal with. You meet the team psychologist Yukiko Hoffman (senpai) and I love her. Literally. But she dies due to Sebastian's stupidity. You also find Sykes, who makes you help him escape STEM so he presumably dies because it's a horror game.

Esmerelda Torres is a badass with a mission but you accidentally shoot her and it all goes down in flames so that goes real swell.

The Ending
I won't spoil the final ending. I've done it on the hardest difficulty (took me 18 hours) so I got the bonus ending clip. In my expert opinion, the ending is amazing. It's depressing but relieving, and the bonus clip is ominous though that's probably since it's meant to be the big old cliffhanger for the next installment. It's happy because you've finally won and escaped to an ordinary life again, but then you realise everything you sacrificed along the way. Everyone you sacrificed just to save one girl. Some were important, and better off, but others were meaningless and it would've been much better to have saved them. Being a test of psychological endurance, your character often complains that everything's his fault. Trapped inside an artificial world full of though-up evils really does break his mind.

My Thoughts Overall
It's an amazing game. If you can handle spooks which aren't just cheap jumpscares then I'd recommend this to anyone who'll listen. The difficulty is wonderful, the open-world exploration is a rare treat for a horror game, and there are so many play styles you can try. Me? I did my classic tank-mode.

Of course a game is not without it's flaws. The minibosses of The Evil Within 2 are SO TEDIOUS. They're not difficult, just an annoying time-waster that sucks up your ammo so you have to stealth your way through some zombies for a while. Speaking of ammo, a casual player will be living in a nightmare like the STEM itself as you scrounge for a few more bullets only to find a few more enemies.
So, as I said, I would definitely recommend you play this one. Horror isn't for everyone and I'm aware of this. When my boyos invite me to watch a horror movie I shrug and say I don't care, but this game's not some cheap jumpscares. It's some good stuff if you don't mind the gore. And the barbed wire.

Conclusion
That's it for now. I reckon I could've spent more time explaining my opinion but I'm pretty tired right now. Please give me feedback, and if you've played the game or the prequel feel free to tell me what you thought of them.

RIP Hoffman-Senpai


 This took a lot longer than I expected it to...