The Evil Within 2 - 英文遊戲短評

*Light Spoiler / 輕微劇透
*Gory, creepy screenshots included, viewer discretion is advised / 包含血腥恐怖遊戲截圖，請審慎決定是否繼續閱讀

Maker: Tango Gameworks
Genre: survival horror
Platform: Windows, consoles

If describing in one sentence, Evil Within 2 is a survival horror game of zombie apocalypse with a tint of paranormal activities in a virtual world that its dwellers could actually kill and be killed for good.

The gameplay provides the highest level of thrills at the beginning. It unfortunately all goes downhill as the player advances the plot, uncovers the situation, and upgrades the protagonist's fire power.

Overall, the story is adequate, but cliched. There are some touching dialogue lines and cut scenes, but the imperfect 3D facial animation hinders the player's empathy to fully develop.

Combat-wise, at least for the first playthrough, the game provides just enough resources to defeat enemies. I consider it a positive experience, since overly abundant resources would make combats brainless "run-and-gun" sessions, which would not have fitted the survival horror atmosphere.

Negatively, I believe the biggest downside is the camera angles. From what I could tell, this game was probably ported from its console version(s), so the third person view is the default mode. However, in this mode, the camera would slightly oscillate up and down when controlling the protagonist to move around, which caused me to have motion sickness. On the other hand, the first person view is more stable but functions poorly with a couple of the game's main combat mechanisms:

1. Hiding behind obstacles - The player is often unable to see where enemies are in first person view;

2. Close combat - With first person view, the protagonist could easily engage too closely to enemies' 3D models and then miss hitboxes, while the enemy models could be clipped from the camera or block the entire view because of the tight distances. With the majority of enemies being close combaters, most of the time they would attempt to rush toward and be nearly "merged" with the protagonist, often making close combat very awkward.

In conclusion, The Evil Within 2 has quite meticulous background settings and an above average story, with its main flaws in game control mechanisms (the camera angles). It nevertheless still provided me 26 hours of fun time, though mixed with slight frustration.

My rating: 7.5/10

重點單字：
meticulous - 細緻的、嚴謹的
zombie apocalypse - 殭屍末日
combat - 戰鬥、搏鬥、格鬥
port - （遊戲平台）移植
clip/clipping - 裁切（在3D遊戲中，物件距離鏡頭太近或太遠導致（部分）不可視的情況，包括破圖等看到物件內部的情形