Hammer Time: Playing The Executioner In The Evil Within’s Final DLC

The third and final DLC for The Evil Within season pass takes the rule book and throws it away, or to be more precise, takes the rule book then dismembers it, shreds it and finally gouges out the intestines and wears them like a nice hat. Whereas the first two DLC packs moved the game into the realms of stealth, The Exectioner is about violence, combat and blood.

You play as the father of a young girl who has been hooked up to the STEM system, which is essentially a horrific version of the Abstergo chairs from Assassin’s Creed. Rather than transport you to a lilting French village full of wheat fields and maidens, you instead find yourself in a crumbling old mansion armed with a massive hammer and with your skull replaced by a safe wrapped in barbed wire. Notes left by Mobius instruct you to kill a specific target, each of which is located in their own arena which reuse locations from the original game.

It’s essentially a sequence of boss battles, with optional horde mode rooms, but to reach each battle you must make your way through the building, avoiding traps and smashing the occasional disfigured human into a pool of blood. The extra exploration element extends the game length considerably and allows the story to play out, with your ghostly daughter guiding you in the right direction.

Combat takes a while to get the hang of as you are playing as a behemoth clutching a hammer the size of a small cottage, so you’re understandably rather slow and lumbering. The trick is to learn the safe spots in each arena and learn your foe’s attack patterns, but this can take some time, especially when your foe is armed and can take down your health from the other side of the room.

Killing enemies and smashing up furniture gives you coins which pop up in a rather arcadey way, and these can be spent in the shop. Here you can upgrade your weapons and buy new ones, including a chainsaw and some very handy barbed wire traps which are great for immobilising enemies so you can take a good few swings at their head. Accessing the shop is one of the most disgusting things you will ever see in a game, as find them tucked away in safes in the walls of the building. That might sound too bad, unless you have a deathly fear of safes, but remember that your head is encased in a safe as well, and opening the wall safe shows the blubbery gory mess of your own brain into which you then plunge your own fist. “Bleaurgh!” doesn’t even come close.

Where the original game and the previous two DLC packs were genuinely scary and atmospheric, the tone being similar to films such as Hostel, The Executioner is more akin Nightmare on Elm Street, with gore and guts so over the top it becomes almost amusing. Smashing enemies results in blood drenching the surrounding area and, as you are an executioner, there are plenty of horrific execution moves which result in hammers passing through skulls and eyeballs popping.

Another quite horrific sequence occurs when your path is blocked and a safe that you can teleport to can be seen in the distance, bypassing the obstacles in your way. Of course, this being The Evil Within, you don’t flash over in a sprinkle of pixie dust, you have to remove the safe on your own head, effectively beheading yourself in the process. It’s an utterly pointless mechanic really, but it is amusingly gross.

Rather than play in third person like the original game, most of The Executioner is played in first person and rather surprisingly, the black bars have been removed from the top of and bottom of the screen. The game still suffers from the odd graphical glitch – I managed to peek outside the map a few times – while the sound design is pleasingly squelchy and vile, although there is no voice acting in this DLC, probably because your character doesn’t have a mouth. But this DLC isn’t particularly scary, and to be honest I am quite pleased about that as I won’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying about the Claudia Schiffer beast from before.

A flawless run through will take around three hours, but you will spend much longer than that on the first play trying to learn the attack patterns. Finishing the game then unlocks a New Game+ mode and gives you free access to the challenge rooms which extend the life of the DLC. There is also a surprisingly touching end sequence which may even make you blink back a tear.

The Executioner is a lesson in how to do DLC correctly, as it retains the themes from the original game but gives you a completely different experience. Alongside the previous two DLC packs in the season pass, you get over nine hours of solid story-based gameplay, complete with cut scenes and voice acting, for £14.99. That’s something that is practically unheard of in the days of £2.99 skin packs.

Despite being scared off my sofa numerous times The Evil Within and its DLC has been one of the most enjoyable games I have played on this generation; it’s not perfect, but I hope a sequel is in the works. Well done, Bethesda and Tango Gameworks.