The following is a review by IM Dave Angel, who is joining on the Complete Xbox Team.
“THE POWER OF DAVE COMPELS YOU!”
We can trace the history of horror-based titles back to the complete surprise hit F.E.A.R. In 2002, we were not prepared for the fusion of tactical first-person shooter combined with the horrors that the main protagonist, Alba, was willing to show us (no spoilers shall pass my lips!).
Coming back to the past ten years or so, horror titles seem to be either single player, story-driven scripted experiences, or a competitive, objective-based multiplayer experience such as leaders in this field “Dead by Daylight” by Behaviour Interactive Inc, or Phasmophobia.
Which brings us to “The Devil Within Us”, a short, paranormal story which follows your character, a priest named Aughust Heylel, to a place where an invisible evil has made its lair.
Your story begins in the 1980’s, and your job is to investigate this unnamed evil, track it down and vanquish it, to allow the owners of the place to ultimately live there in peace.
Your character has a health bar, is armed with some caffeine pills to regain stamina and has a crucifix which is powered by the “ammo” of your faith. You can find rosary beads around the place which will refill your faith, but these pickups are very scarce. You will often lead an opponent in a game of “kiss chase”, where the “kiss” usually involves getting a slap around the head.
The puzzles you will face are not hard, following the Resident Evil trope of “Get key ‘X’ to open door ‘Y’, get item ‘A’ for objective ‘B’” and as such tries nothing new. However, the way these items blend into the environment makes progress slow, causing you to peek into all of the corners (where the beasties reside!)
Once the prologue is complete, the story moves forward to the present day, where a number of puzzles will present you with situations (some are jump scares) where you will have to dispatch an enemy or simply run past them to save your faith power.
Whilst I am deliberately being vague about the story, I really feel this is an experience that has to be experienced firsthand. The story as a whole will see you back at the start screen within 2-2.5 hours, allowing for some failures and retries, something I did many times.
Graphically, it’s a mixed bag. The graphics are Unreal Engine 4, within a slight watercolour style to the cut scenes that seems to draw you into the story. The sound design though is fabulous. I played through headphones and the sound was highly directional and forced me on a few occasions to think that there was a knock at my front door.
The ending has to be experienced for yourself to see what each of you take from it. It can be interpreted in a number of different ways and left my wife and I discussing it for some time over dinner.
I played the game on my trusty Xbox Series S and at no time did the game crash, glitch or cause me a problem (although some sections of the game were unnecessarily dark).
So, can I recommend this game to those who are fans of the story-driven experience? Quite honestly, I would not fail to recommend it to fans of the genre. It’s compelling you to play to the end of a story full of tragedy, sacrifice and sadness (again, spoiler-free).
Review written by IM Dave Angel, who is joining on the Complete Xbox Team.
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CX Score - 75%75%
Summary
Pros
- A game that epitomizes the genre. A strong, story-driven horror experience, with something for fans of every type of horror.
- An interesting concept that uses the standard trope of the fight between good and evil through the decades, forcing you to adapt your play style as the game progresses.
- The game was split into two sections, which lead you all over the property in search of answers or clues.
Cons
- Consumables are very hard to find.
- The game is really dark in places and whilst a built in brightness/gamma slider would have been welcome, the darkness is there to generate more tension.
- A length of 2-2.5 hours on my first playthrough (alas a little short for my tastes) but could be almost half that with following playthroughs (although a lack of a “New game Plus” mode was a missed opportunity).