For anyone that has played through The Evil Within (TEW) and it’s two DLCs, The Assignment and The Consequence, it’s been a harrowing, often challenging, and sometimes frustrating experience. Playing TEW is stressful in that intimidating, ever-present sense of uneasiness and dread sort of way. Few games that I have played have managed to create and sustain such an atmosphere. The Executioner continues that vibe, but you just feel much more in control this time around. The central reason perhaps is that you actually get to play as The Keeper, the massive, box-headed, huge spiked hammer-wielding character from the main game. The story behind this is actually pretty cool. Your character is a father who jumps into STEM to try to rescue his daughter who is trapped within. Mobius is helping you try to find and rescue your daughter, but the state of her mind and memories upon extraction from STEM are unknown. This unknown serves as a key plot point, but the one thing that is known is that if she is not saved, she will lose her memory and become one of the “zombified” creatures.
Upon ‘awakening’ within STEM, with your persona as The Keeper, you notice right away that this DLC is played from a first person perspective. In your left hand is that powerful sledgehammer weapon and in front of you is a path to the Victoriano Estate. There is no stamina meter so you can ‘run’ as much as you would like, even though this is not very fast, and you can even do a short sidestep hop to avoid attacks as well. On your short walk to the front door of the manor, you might smash a few barrels to reveal shiny coins, these are actually Memory Tokens used to purchase upgrades at the Shop, more on that in a bit.
In addition to wielding such an awesome weapon and not having to deal with a stamina meter, you’ll notice that The Keeper’s HP meter is pretty generous too. By this time it’s very clear that the gameplay of The Executioner is much more action-oriented than survival horror. Turns out, surviving isn’t too awfully hard in this two hour DLC, I died just five times. In fact, The Executioner is a bit of a boss rush as you go from one boss encounter to the next with very little content or things to do in between. So no, there are no puzzles to solve or keys to find and so forth, and beating this DLC is not very hard to do (there is actually a Trophy for doing so without taking a single hit). But this change of pace from the original game felt refreshing and sort of a cool send-off for the franchise to this point.
So as The Keeper, your hammer is your go to weapon, but several other weapons and things can be bought or upgraded at the shops which are found next to save points. Barb Wire traps, dynamite, Molotov cocktails, even a rocket launcher are some of the items that get unlocked as you play. Different items or new unlockables, like the ability to purchase the maximum amount of upgrades (four) for damage output by certain weapons, are made available as you clear each boss. The bosses are introduced by short Mobius files that you have to read and you can also find a dozen or so short diary notes from your daughter that shows her ever-increasing fall into the influence of Ruvik. The Manor you entered in at the very start of the DLC acts as a hub for going to these fights, and the areas you visit from here via teleportation are taken from the core game, so seeing familiar locations is pretty cool. You’ll also see several familiar faces in the boss encounters but I’ll not spoil those.
In addition to going from one fight to the next, you can jump into portals to go to Execution Chambers which are short, wave-based encounters with increasingly challenging sets of enemies. Your health and inventory items that are used or earned here are carried back to the ‘real’ world so you have to go into these with due caution lest you come out with less health and items than you had going in. The whole point of going to these in the first place is to net more Memory Tokens so that you can buy more goods at the shop. I only did about three of these Execution Chambers before I decided the reward was not worth the risk. Going back and doing these in New Game+ is a great way to rack up Tokens fast, though. I may as well mention that New Game+ also opens up a new secret battle and a new weapon.
I think I have covered the premise and so forth well thus far, but what about actually playing as The Keeper, and how does the first person view work for what are essentially brute-force melee encounters? In general, it all works pretty good. I applaud Tango Gameworks for not making this DLC a difficult one — there are sufficient health packs laying about, you can get yourself plenty of Tokens to upgrade early, and as long as you play sensibly you won’t have much trouble. I liked that enemies can be stunned for several seconds at a time, or trapped as well, and that you can quickly finish enemies with Executions or, in many cases, pick them up and throw them. This works especially well for those that are explosive, giving you some considerable crowd control. I will say that the AI can be a bit weird or clunky at times, during the Joseph boss fight (not a spoiler as he was clearly featured in a trailer), his motions are kind of weird. He seems to have a little bit of difficulty smoothly/realistically animating over the terrain of the room you’re in, especially if you chase him persistently. There are some minor quirks like that, but overall, no issue is notable enough to be the cause for any major concern — especially when you keep in mind that this a $5, two hour DLC.
And with that, let’s head on to the summary…
