When I asked Tango Gameworks creative director John Johanas whom he'd give Hi-Fi Rush's Best Audio trophy away to at this year's GDC Awards, he said he'd split it between the game's audio team and "the person who taught me everything I know" - Shinji Mikami, Tango's founder and one of the erstwhile Capcom and Platinum big brains behind Resident Evil, Vanquish and much more besides. I confess, I found this response annoying - partly because I was hoping Johanas would bring up some obscure indie composer I could then namecheck at parties, and partly, because I have spent years waiting for Tango to escape Mikami's shadow after essentially announcing themselves as a Mikami fan project back in 2010.
]]>Just over a year ago, Shinji Mikami - he of directing the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 fame - was confirmed to be leaving Tango Gameworks, the studio that he had co-founded over a decade earlier to create a modern successor to his survival-horror classics, The Evil Within.
]]>UPDATE: Bethesda have now confirmed the news in a statement posted on Twitter, saying, "We thank him for his work as a creative mentor to young developers." They continued to say, "We wish Mikami-san well in the future and are excited by what lies ahead fpr the talented developers of Tango."
Original story: Tango GameWork’s co-founder and studio head Shinji Mikami is reportedly leaving the Evil Within company “in the coming months.” This comes courtesy of TrueAchievements who saw and verified a company-wide email sent to employees by Bethesda’s VP of development Todd Vaughn. "I am writing today to let you know that studio head Shinji Mikami has decided to leave Tango Gameworks in the coming months," Vaughn said. "Mikami-san has been a creative leader and supportive mentor to young developers at Tango for 12 years through his work.”
]]>It may not be Halloween for a while, but there's no reason you can't celebrate horror as a genre all year round. In fact, it's one of our favourite genre of games, so we've put together our list of the 25 best horror games to play on PC right now. It really showcases the breadth of horror on PC right now, from visual novels to shooters to survival to weirdo demon games and text adventures, so it's a real joy to peruse.
]]>I felt strongly about The Evil Within when it first came out. By "strongly" I mean I pretty much hated it.
]]>US President Donald Trump yesterday held a private meeting to discuss the issue of violence in video games, having suggested after February's murders at a school in Parkland, Florida that it "is really shaping young people's thoughts." This would clearly amount to nothing productive, given mostly industry representatives and conservative pressure groups were attending, but it is a surprise that Trump showed attendees a short video montage of video game deaths. The White House have released this publicly, so we can all see a sloppy montage of deaths from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 4, and more. Somehow it isn't a surprise that some clips are clearly ripped from YouTubers - watermarks and all.
]]>You probably know what to expect when you load up a game called The Evil Within [official site]. There will be a bunch of logos before you get to the menu and at least one of them will involve barbed wire, splattered blood and sinister fonts. The logo for the first game turned some of the letters of the title into a nail that was variously plunging toward an eyeball or piercing a brain. Of course it did. That's what horror games do.
When the horror games in question are made by Tango Gameworks, though, there's something else in between all that noisy violence. A cheeky cartoon snail...doing a poo?
]]>Let me qualify that title statement, for fear it merely conjures images of a game in which you're supposed to be endlessly surprised to find more zombies lurking behind the next hedgerow. A good (or, indeed, bad) b-movie is not someone sprinting aimlessly around and being constantly jumped by monsters, but rather it's scene-by-scene situational. What fresh horror awaits in the basement, what tricksy traps and obstacles must be overcome to make it out this house alive, and oh no what just happened to that helpful man in the sensible pullover?
In an hour spent playing Bethesda's upcoming survival horror sequel The Evil Within 2 [official site], I found a game that was striving to be a cat's cradle of micro b-movies, spun across a freely-explorable, monster-blighted town. I also found a game that was trying so hard to be scary that my only true fear is that it isn't scary at all.
]]>Last week I popped off to play Bethesda and Tango Gameworks' upcoming survival horror sequel The Evil Within 2, which adds open world elements to its stomp through a town filled with science-gone-wrong monstrosities. You can read what I thought about it in my Evil Within 2 impressions here, or alternatively you can watch what I did and how many times I got killed by snickering things in the hour-long video below.
]]>Let's all go on holiday! To a twisted horror-world that exists solely as the manifestation of a fractured and agonised mind. Sure, the walls will probably bleed and that clock over there is definitely screaming about the severed threads of temporal stability, but there's so much to see and do. And let's not forget all the wonderful people we'll meet as we hike from one attraction to the next.
There's Stefano Valentini, for instance. He used to be a photojournalist but now he's an artist who likes nothing more than creating tableaux of peoples' dying moments. And because it's not every day you stumble across someone's dying moment, he's taken to creating some magical moments of his own. By murdering people. The Evil Within 2 [official site] looks as gruesomely and gloriously daft as the first, and I am totally on board with this nasty disciple of Sander Cohen.
]]>The Evil Within [official site] clicked for me the second time I played it, which makes me regret my slightly sniffy review when I read it back. It’s a schlocky tour through all kinds of horrors, riffing on director Miyakami’s own Resident Evil past as well as a host of other subgenres and tropes. Even though there’s a central plot underneath all the reality shifts, it almost feels like an anthology.
Yesterday's cgi-heavy reveal trailer didn't tell me a whole lot about what to expect from the sequel, but today's "gameplay trailer" gives a better idea despite using some of the same scenes. It looks gorgeous, in that grisly, grimy sort of way.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>The Advertising Standards Agency publishes rulings every Wednesday on everything from psychic hotlines to videogames. I'm incredibly fond of their rulings. I think it's mostly because of the language the companies use to defend themselves, breaking videogame concepts down and presenting them in what's intended to be a neutral manner.
The upheld complaints are generally less entertaining for obvious reasons – the concerns have been, in some sense, valid. But the *not upheld* complaints often have an air of the ridiculous about them. Through the formal structure of the rulings you get a sense of raised eyebrows or rolled eyes, of overblown sincerity. I've also learned some unexpected things, like how many sugar puffs are in a portion...
Here are some of my favourites from the last few years:
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 3 of the sale.
]]>The Evil Within [official site]? More like The DLC Out. Look, I don't know kind of joke you expect from me at 8:47am. But the third DLC pack came out this week for the third-person survival horror, and it makes it... a first-person melee arena brawler?
The Executioner has you playing as The Keeper, that nasty chap with a safe for a hat, swinging hammers and smashing faces with a hammer in first-person melee. It's not what I'd expect or want from The Evil Within, but as a Zeno Clash fan it sounds like a nice overlapping of my interests.
]]>The Evil Within [official site] is one of those gems that, because it was released in that pre-Christmas period when EVERY GAME IS, went a little under-appreciated. Basically it's a fantastic re-working of the survival horror genre, and in particular Resident Evil, as psychological torment rather than biological gauntlet – and my opinion of it increases over time. But with two pieces of DLC, both now released, developer Tango Gameworks has moved TEW even further away from the action beats of its inspiration.
Click to once again enter the world of survival horror.
]]>As Halloween approaches, do you find that your hunger for horror is increasing? Fear not. Or 'fear a lot', I guess. The first three chapters of The Evil Within are now available as a demo on Steam, with demo saves carrying over into the full game should you choose to purchase it. There's also a 50% discount on the Season Pass and anyone who buys the game during this promotion, or has already bought it, will receive a copy of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Those first three chapters are a fairly good taster, with a bit of spooky stealth, a big setpiece and just enough freedom and trapping to show what's coming later.
]]>Adam thought The Evil Within was a fine game, but that its letterboxed screen size was a hindrance - a technique that would have been best used sparingly, rather than for the entire length of the game. Rich Stanton thought that the technique was well deployed, increased tension and was never put towards creating cheap jump-scares. Parts of the internet, meanwhile, thought that the black bars were probably a technical fault rather than a deliberately-employed artistic technique.
Whatever you think, you'll have now have to make a choice: a patch has just been released that lets you turn the black bars off, change the frames-per-second cap between either 30 or 60, and other tweaks.
]]>Shinji Mikami, the director of The Evil Within (TEW), directed both Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 when at Capcom. It was always clear from TEW's title that this in some way marked a return to those roots, but about halfway through I started thinking that someone at Capcom had really pissed Mikami off. This is not just a loose reinvention and homage to Resident Evil, but one that absolutely goes for the throat in the latter stages, offering up parallels so stark the comparison is direct rather than implied. So what's Shinji saying?
Click to once again enter the world of survival horror.
]]>At its best, The Evil Within is the sequel that Resident Evil 4 deserved and that subsequent viral not-zombie games failed to be. That's reason enough to recommend the game to anyone who believes Resident Evil 4 is a fine thing to emulate, and that is probably true of everyone who has played Resident Evil 4. There's much to celebrate in Mikami's return to survival horror but the course of true terror does not run smooth. Here's wot I think.
]]>The Evil Within has been unleashed and I started playing shortly after midnight. I did get some sleep but, cripes, things move along at a rapid clip in Shinji Mikami's return to survival horror. The time to chainsaw is around ten minutes - five if you skip cutscenes. From there, it's around five seconds to the first hideous death animation, two minutes to spinning blades, two and a half minutes to near-drowning in pool of blood and guts, and half an hour to 'the city is collapsing and now there's a creepy hospital ward inside my brain and, blimey, this is all very entertaining, isn't it?'
Full thoughts as soon as I'm done but I wanted to report in with news that Bethesda have released a list of debug console command inputs. You may find them useful.
]]>I want to die doing what I loved: being pulled by ephemeral blood-soaked hands into the solid floor of some hell-set asylum. The Evil Within let's me simulate and prepare for this occasion ahead of time, plus many other less desirable demises. There's a new trailer below - there's been about a thousand of them now - ahead of the October 14th crikey-that's-Tuesday release.
]]>"The human eye can't see more than 24 frames per second," Those Internet People say. "Tests found fighter pilots watching a 250fps video of playful kittens will grow furious if you slip in one single frame of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties," Others insist. "If a game ran at 500fps it would seem so real that if you died in the game you would die in real life," I'm also told. I thought I'd heard it all in The Great Framerate Debate that rages eternally across the gameosphere. Dear, sweet, naive Alice.
Some Ubisoft chaps have declared that 30fps "feels more cinematic" than 60fps. Gosh.
]]>I have reason to believe that the latest trailer for The Evil Within is directed at a very specific audience. It might even be an audience of one. I share it here just in case the individual in question happens to be reading this website, for it now contains all of the answers he or she will ever need. The person we're seeking still thinks that The Evil Within will be a subtle and unnerving psychological horror experience, the sort that haunts dreams and takes up residence somewhere under the skin. The rest of us know - and can see final confirmation below - that it is a game in which everything is either bleeding, screaming or wearing its organs on the outside. While exploding.
]]>Start To Spooky Hospital: 16 seconds. Yep, horror game, goddit.
]]>It is quite daft that big publishers still delay international releases of games--coming out on Tuesday in North America, then the Thursday or Friday elsewhere. Here on this wide wonderful web, which has no oceans, it's silly that they artificially stagger releases to appease retailers, especially given that most retail releases nowadays are little more than a Steam key in a box.
But it's fine, Bethesda have finally come to their senses with The Evil Within and bumped the release date forward to- oh no, nope, they've made it even sillier. Most of the world will now get the survival horror at the same time, but some of you will still need to wait a few days, because reasons.
]]>The monsters we fear reflect anxieties of the era, some say. Frankenstein's creature is unmediated ambition of science. Godzilla was atomic weapons. Vampires are sexuality or, alternatively, posh people. Zombies are death or boredom or something I don't know I mean I glaze over any time someone starts to lecture me on them. What about the 21st century's first big new monster, The Slender Man? What does he represent, lurking in the distance, hinting at his presence, vanishing, then swooping in to make teenagers scream and swear? Why, video game delays, of course!
Boo! Publishers Bethesda have delayed The Evil Within. The Slender Man grows more powerful.
]]>Mysterious things, boxes. What's in them? Biscuits, cats, our wife's severed head... we simply won't know until we open them. How enigmatic this makes The Evil Within's villainous Boxman, so named because he's a man with a box on his head. What ever could this box contain! It's quite comforting, though. Seeing Boxman and co in a new trailer for the scare-o-shooter reminds me of Resident Evil 4, which is certainly welcome. We've got cruel countryfolk, silly science, mansion deathtraps, honking great fleshy monsters, and characters taking very seriously things which are quite absurd.
Capcom have clearly lost the knack of making good Resident Evil games, not to mention that it's drowning with tons of horrible lore pushing it down into dark waters, but perhaps other people can nail that tone. To a wall. Then write something cryptic in blood. Then a shocked character cries "Wha- what is this!"
]]>Looking through the recent releases on Steam, a casual observer might believe that there’s a horror game renaissance underway. In the last few weeks, several games have appeared, with titles like Paranormal and The Orphanage. I’ve installed a few of them, heard them go bump in the night, and then moved on. Despite some quality releases, horror is in a rut. And it’s an unpleasant one.
]]>I watched this video for the The Evil Within and all I could think about was who signed the invoices for the components in the room of blades? After all, this is supposed to be a working care facility for people with severe mental disabilities, so there's going to be a paper trail. It's not a small machine: it is industrial-sized, and it spins on either side of a room, blades whirring as it slowly grinds victims. Is it a paper shredder? Who ordered it? And where did it come from? Is there an Evil Innovations catalogue, written by a biting staff writer, subbed by a production editor with a murky past before he hands it off to the dark art dept? And is it laid out in a Adobe InDesign (already pretty evil, tbh)?
]]>[coffin opens] Hello! Hello? Can you... no, obviously you can't. Someone has set the dry ice machine all the way up to nimbostratus. I clearly specified cirriform! Fine! We'll just let it clea - [sound of fan being switched on]. Really? This is amateur hour. Honestly... Well, at least I can read the autocue. Can they see me? Good. VELCOME! Aha-ha-ha-haaaa! Ha! Tis I, Plague Fearsome. I am your g[ho]u[l]ide on this DEADLY JOURNEY into the HEArT of HoRRor and broken k£yboard$. We have The Evil Within trailer for you. It puts "demon" in "demonstration", and the "er" in "trailer". For that is the noise I made when I watched this collection of eldritch cliches, this midnight gathering of unscary moments, this fleash video of awkward peril. Follow me as I drop to the paragraph below to escape its blunt and ticklish claws... [Wilhelm scream]
WE KEEP IT IN THIS BRAIN. But you can also see some The Evil Within footage from E3, in the dungeon of this post. Be warned: it's a bit grim. Furthermore I don't know who that American guy is, or why, but the other one is Pete Hines. They both seem quite nice.
Good morning!
]]>What do you keep your evil in, readers? Do you have demonic tupperware? Perhaps an armoire of awfulness? I have a drawer of despair that I open every now and then, just to make sure my pants are not being burned up next to my socks of suffering. Bethesda keep their new survival horror, The Evil Within, within the most evil box of all: IGN [Lightning, sound of booth babes screaming]. They have the 'exclusive' first look coming up next week, so all we're left with is a live-action trailer that shows us nothing of the game. Enjoy!
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