Sneaking a peek at the very creepy Psycho Break (a.k.a. The Evil Within)

This article is part of our coverage of TGS 2013. Be sure to keep an eye out for our new gaming-focused site, Games in Asia, coming soon.

True fans of survival horror games will recognize the name Shinji Mikami. After all, he’s the creator of Resident Evil, arguably the biggest survival horror series of all time. In the years since then, Mikami has branched out into other genres. But his first game with the new studio he founded, Tango Gameworks, is a return to his survival horror roots called Psycho Break in Japan and The Evil Within elsewhere.

At the Tokyo Game Show, I got a chance to watch an extended trailer for the game that was an interesting mix of cutscene footage, gameplay clips, jump scares, and confusing nonsense. As far as I’m aware, this trailer isn’t yet available anywhere online, although bits and pieces from it appear in the gameplay trailer that popped up on Youtube earlier this week:

The trailer screening I saw was behind closed doors and I wasn’t allowed to take any photos or videos, but from what I saw, it looks like the game will be playing quite a bit with the player’s sense of reality. The beginning of the trailer included an extended shot of the asylum the game takes place in from the outside, but the building’s architecture kept shifting and morphing subtly as light swept back and forth. It was quite eerie, and it gave the impression that the building’s layout isn’t set in stone. That impression was deepened by the gameplay clips we saw. It could just have been the way the trailer was cut, but the protagonist seemed to stumble down the same hallways and open the same doors to find different rooms on the other side each time. I came away with the distinct impression that Psycho Break is going to do a lot of messing with the player’s sanity, and that in this game, a hallway doesn’t necessarily lead you to the same place it did last time.

In most of the trailer, our protagonist is being pursued by the butcher you can see in the screenshot above, who is wielding a chainsaw and frankly seems like the kind of guy you’d be better off avoiding. It ended, though, with a terrifying reveal of the spider-like woman you see below (and in the shorter trailer embedded above) amidst an absolute avalanche of blood . In retrospect, I think I’d prefer the chainsaw guy…

There were also a few flashes of other monsters, and the game definitely looks like it’ll have at least a few good scares. There were no hands-on options so we’ll have to wait to see how it actually plays, though. Psycho Break is coming to PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC next year. In the meantime, you can check out the game’s official site here.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)