The Evil Within 2

Tango flexing their creative talents with some short comings. The Story feels very typical and oddly paced at some points which is weird due to the themes and ideas that this game dabbles in. One thing that I will give it praise for is its lore as the world of The Evil Within is really interesting especially with the Mobius corporation and STEM and there are some documents that give some really cool insight into this inception like world. The Characters are pretty weak with their being some iffy writing and average voice acting. Even Sebastian (which I've heard has no character in the first game) is just ok, but my god sometimes I wish he would shut up as he has to make a comment on every single thing. The Setting of Union is a double edge sword as even though the idea of a collective consciousness town is cool in theory, it does come across as a little bland and generic. This does however lead into the Semi Open world sections as it was refreshing to be able to look for resources in different locations (which you can enter majority of them) whilst sneaking around all sorts of monsters in a more open design rather than the typical linear corridors that the genre is known for. Visually, it still holds up to this day. Performance was solid for the most part and I didn't run into any bugs or glitches. One thing I will say is that some of the textures were kinda poor when looking at them up close and there would even be some very noticeable pop-in that could ruin the immersion. Another thing to mention is that while I didn't run into any bugs, the game can be Janky (which I will talk more about in the gameplay section. The Art Direction can be really creative and even though the town can feel a little stereotypical, the sections where you have to deal with Stefano and Anima are really inspired and showed a lot of creativity on tango's team. Sound and Audio were also just ok with the soundtrack being pretty standard for this type of game (except for the classical pieces that really give it some identity) and the audio design was pretty decent with both weapons and enemies. In terms of Gameplay, it isn't reinventing the wheel but is really solid. I really loved the amount of upgrades that you can make to both Sebastian and your weapons as you can definitely feel the improvements you make. I also love the fact that there are side missions which help develop the world more and offer some great rewards. Combat is decent, however the only thing that I will say is that the head movement for the enemies can make the experience tedious as they can never sit still for one moment making shots feel purposefully wasted. There is a great arsenal of weapons at your disposal and I really enjoyed the diversity of the crossbow and the different ammo types. Finally, movement can be pretty janky especially when trying to vault or climb over stuff as the game kinda does its own thing at times. Overall, The Evil Within 2 showed a lot of promise and displayed Tango's creativity. While there were some shortcomings that the game faces, I still really enjoyed my time with it and think that its worth picking up on sale!