Eternal Evil - A budget Resident Evil created by one man

Why do people love the Resident Evil series? Some loved the game for its viscous atmosphere, some loved the characters, and some loved the combination of the quest, the horror and the staged cinematography. I love Resident Evil for its eternal lack of ammo - dropping a clip of a gun into milk is tantamount to suicide. I love RE for its linearity - in Resident Evil the players were told a story without dissipating their attention to side activities, so the narrative component was always concentrated rather than being spread thinly over the hours spent in the game. I also love Resident Evil for the fact that this series is fundamentally not even so much a game as it is a Japanese farcical series that hasn't rolled over in 26 years. Hypertrophied, grotesque monsters with eyes in their mouths and tentacles out of their palms; charming female characters and proper pathos are the key to the success of any Resident Evil game. And Resident Evil should be respected at least for its bold experiments with genres. Capcom developers are true masters of correct changes: after we saw Resident Evil 4 trailer many people blasphemed not yet released game for its transition to the third person mode. But Capcom didn't care, they knew what they are doing.

The result: Resident Evil 4 has been objectively the best part of the series for over 17 years. Then many were wary when they saw the Resident Evil 7 trailer, because the game will be first-person. "Resident Evil has finally become a shooter!" came from every corner. But Capcom didn't care again, because they knew what they were doing. Resident Evil was the first truly scary installment in 17 years.

But what does Resident Evil have to do with it if the subject of the review is a certain Eternal Evil? Well, it's because Eternal Evil is an ideological copycat of Resident Evil, which combined the first, second, third, seventh, and eighth parts of Capcom's creations. It sounds promising, but what actually happens?

Plot? In Resident Evil, it wasn't important, Eternal Evil, not at all.

Eternal Evil was developed by just one person, the sole creator of Honor Games. Plus the game is a debut one, so some components had to be sacrificed anyway or wait for the game for 8 years... In the case of Eternal Evil, the plot was under the knife. It came out here, to put it mildly, graphomaniacal: Ghouls appear in a certain town, and one of the main characters rushes into the thick of it to get the answers to some questions. The answers don't intrigue at the beginning and don't motivate afterwards. Again some vampires, again the saving of the world falls on the hero's shoulders...some sort of exaggerated Resident Evil:Village, no less. The plot level of Eternal Evil is a fanfic by a seventeen-year-old writer. In the intricacies of what happens players are initiated in two ways: by comic books, as it was in Max Payne...

...And notes with text, as it was in Resident Evil. And if at the beginning of the game the plot is even a little interesting to follow, then closer to the finale the players are waiting for a very mediocre plot twists, which managed to get bored even with non pretentious fans of the stories.

It is fair to say that even the Resident Evil stories do not shine with script art, which, in fact, no one has ever complained about. Eternal Evil is a budget clone of Resident Evil, so I think it's silly to take it out on the game for its inept script. Eternal Evil has a different kind of appeal, and that is...

Eternal Evil - Horror or...

Surprisingly, Eternal Evil makes good use of the mechanics of its mastermind, and sometimes even improves on the seemingly unshakable trends of Resident Evil. For example, Eternal Evil already welcomes players from the doorstep with a flexible system of customization of the subsequent experience:

The developer has been making Eternal Evil for two and a half years and has thought well the point that not everyone these days can like the logic of the old parts of Resident Evil. Not everyone liked the tiny inventory and the constant shortage of ammo - in Eternal Evil you can fix it on the fly, without waiting for improvements during the story.

Not everyone liked the pixelation in Resident Evil 7. In Eternal Evil, story important items flicker slightly. You can't miss them unless you're inattentive. But if you liked searching every square inch of Baker Manor, you can turn off the highlighting of story items. Variation in difficulty is always a good thing, and Eternal Evil gets a first plus for that.

But the puzzles themselves, which over the years of Resident Evil managed to become a calling card of the game, in his ideological copycat turned out to be two heads higher, they were at least a lot more complicated. Starting with the usual search for items to move on...

...Finishing with a reconstruction of a chess game. Eternal Evil never ceases to amaze you with its original cleverness challenges:

Sometimes the riddles are over the top, sometimes the riddles turn into full-fledged mini-games. In full-fledged mini-games with high-quality animation and cleverness challange.

If riddles confused you back in Resident Evil, then Eternal Evil will drive you to the brink. In Resident Evil the riddles were solved at random, but in Eternal Evil... it's too much: you'll need not only some logical thinking, but also some mystical way to understand the author's idea, his opaque hints, and sometimes even Latin will be asked to translate, with hints in the notebook. In case of too complicated riddles, the author has provided a special item, which solves the riddle automatically. Using this object throughout the game is not possible, about 40-60% of the puzzles still have to beat your brains. Get ready for the fact that for solutions of particularly complex puzzles you'll need help from YouTube.

After all, Eternal Evil is the developer's first game, and single-developer games sometimes suffer from exorbitantly high complexity. It is worth recalling Tunic, there all the puzzles without hints would not have been able to Einstein himself.

Eternal Evil - A shooter after all?

Eternal Evil even managed to surpass Resident Evil in the shooter part, but with a small caveat, which I will write about later...

Everything about the weapons is implemented perfectly. You can see the titanic efforts of Honor Games. Let's start with the impact of weapons: the weight of weapons feels in the hands of the protagonist correctly, and the barrels do not go through a wall, collision worked out.

The shooting experience is the pride of Eternal Evil. Aiming, recoil and the feel of the hits are a successful combination of Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil:Village shooting. From the former - deliberately complicated targeting and the display of hits on the body of the enemy, from the latter - the highest level of animation. Moreover Eternal Evil has its own features - after firing the shells you can see a smoke from the barrel, and after each shot there are bullet shells on the floor. The casings fall to the floor with a distinctive sound, there are also spent casings on the ground...and only one person made this game. Kudos.

To the attentive eye, Eternal Evil is full of details, for example: the clothes of burned enemies do not just burn, but are destroyed, burning to a crisp. Charred bodies remain on the ground even after re-enter the game.

But not everything in Eternal Evil is cloudless. Animation in gamedev is a separate profession, not any easier than the work of some Full Stack Developer in "C#". Competently animate the models, make their movements realistic and smoothly available only to specialists. Remembering the unprecedented level of animation we saw in Resident Evil:Village reminds us that Eternal Evil is an indie game from a single developer. Sicknesses of indie games are striking and repulsive already at the stage of the first visual acquaintance with the game. The character movements of Eternal Evil are at the level of second-rate shooters, or maybe even lower...

And if at first this defect is not so conspicuous, ordinary vampires move more or less tolerably, after a couple of hours there appear running and flying opponents. Of course, no smooth flying and smooth running is out of the question. From unnatural animations suffers atmosphere. It's hard to be seriously afraid of a vampire who shortens the distance with the protagonist, like Naruto...

It's hard to take the game seriously when such supposedly scary opponents regularly get stuck in walls and fall through textures.

Is Eternal Evil worth buying?

Eternal Evil is made with soul and great ambition, but not without flaws. Including critical ones. It is noticeable that by the end of the development the author got tired of single-handedly pulling the string, and the remaining problems required too labor-intensive solutions. But the fact that Eternal Evil is a people's game, there's no doubt about it. We just wish Honor Games success, work with a sensible screenwriter and release a sequel, Eternal Evil deserves it. Eternal Evil is only available on PC, and only available on Steam. The author has priced the game with a bearable price tag, but discounts on this game are rare. Eternal Evil is a good buy if you're a Resident Evil fan, you've been through all the parts and are languidly waiting for the next masterpiece from Capcom. But with one caveat: Resident Evil is a guarantor of quality, while Eternal Evil is a cute fan's craft.