This is an exciting day for fans of the survival horror genre. The last few years haven’t been easy on us. It’s been tough watching one promising horror franchise after another fall, from Dead Space to Condemned. This year has gone a long way in changing that, as new installments in the Alone in the Dark, Fatal Frame and Silent Hill series, among others, have been announced.

2014 is an epoch for the genre, and games like Alien: Isolation and The Evil Within are just the beginning.

In 1996, game director Shinji Mikami brought us Resident Evil, the first in what would eventually become the most successful horror franchise ever, video games or otherwise. In 2005, he proved there’s always room for innovation, even for a series that was at the top of its game, with the hugely influential Resident Evil 4.

And we mustn’t forget about Shadows of the Damned, a hugely underrated collaboration between Mikami, Suda 51 (No More Heroes, Lollipop Chainsaw), and Silent Hill series composer Akira Yamaoka.

With The Evil Within, Mikami is returning to his roots. This is his answer to the years of outcries from Resident Evil fans who have been upset with the more bombastic direction Capcom has taken with the series. This game is the antithesis to that. It’s terrifying, intense, and despite its flaws — more on that in a bit — this is the game that may finally breathe some life into AAA survival horror.

I won’t bury the lead. This game isn’t perfect. Its visuals are a bit dated, the story has some pacing issues, and the wonky camera has a tendency to add frustration to close encounters. If you’re able to look past those quirks, you’ll find a game that’s worth losing sleep over.

My favorite thing about The Evil Within may be the surprisingly deep level of strategy that Mikami and Co. will force out of you. Early on, even basic enemies — dubbed the Haunted — will offer a challenge, even for survival horror veterans. Before they can outstay their welcome, Mikami throws more capable baddies, like Laura, the four-armed blood witch, the chainsaw-wielding Sadist, or the Boxman at the player. No one enemy ever outstays its welcome.

When I previewed the game back in May, I was worried the arsenal of weapons detective Sebastian Castellanos has at his disposal — including a pistol, shotgun, grenades, and a devilish weapon called the Agony Crossbow — would make surviving the hordes of monsters that populate this game too easy.

Thankfully, that’s not the case.

Whether you’re combating a gaggle of Haunted villagers or one of the game’s mini-bosses, every situation requires a certain level of strategy. Ammo is often scarce, so you’ll need to scour every inch of these beautifully realized nightmare locales to find the few precious resources that have been scattered about them.

Using the environment to your advantage is also key.

The Evil Within borrows from a handful of different genres, including stealth games. Sebastian can hide in lockers and under beds when necessary, either to survive or to help him to better sneak up behind an enemy. There are all sorts of environmental hazards, too, from exploding barrels and a variety of traps that can either hurt or help you in a pinch.

The Agony Crossbow will be the weapon you’ll need to learn your way around the quickest, as it will quickly prove the most useful. Its bolts come in a variety of flavors, including tips that freeze, electrocute, burn and explode enemies. They can be fired directly onto an unsuspecting baddie, or placed in the way of an oncoming group. When fired at the ground, the bolts become proximity mines, allowing strategic types plenty of room to be creative.

This room for ingenuity extends to Sebastian himself, who can be “upgraded” by paying a visit to nurse Tatiana in the dreamlike hub world where you can invest the green goop gathered from slain enemies or in jars that you’ll find all over the place to make Sebastian more adept at whoopassery. This gel can be used to improve his abilities (health, stamina), weapons (damage, firing/reload speed) and inventory size.

This results in a satisfying sense of progression. You’ll become more capable over time, but Mikami and friends have done a fine job in limiting Sebastian’s skillset so as to keep the player from ever becoming too confident in their abilities.

Much like the Otherworld in Silent Hill, the environments are always changing. It’s almost as if we’re flipping between channels on a television that only plays horror movies. Ghost towns, cemeteries, forgotten labs, empty mansions, labyrinthine networks of underground tunnels; the environments in The Evil Within run the gamut of scary-places-I-really-don’t-want-to-die-in.

The Evil Within has a tendency to try too hard to be scary. Its liberal use of barbed wire and copious amounts of gore may turn off some folks, but it works. If you’ve ever had a particularly awful nightmare, this is sort of like that, only it’s 8-10 hours long and won’t leave you wide-eyed and sweaty in your bed late at night.

Or, maybe it will.

The graphics are somewhat disappointing, especially when it comes to Sebastian’s friends. Detectives Julie “Kid” Kidman and Joseph Oda look like they came from the last generation of consoles. The lack of detail in their faces and how they’ve been animated become especially noticeable when they’re seen in close vicinity to one of the game’s monsters.

Every monster you’ll come across will be memorable, but for a game with such a paltry supporting cast, more attention should have been spent on making them believable. Then there’s the main baddie, Ruvik.

Ah, yes. Ruvik. Garbed in a white robe, with a hood pulled menacingly over his messed up face, it’s clear Ruvik has a bone to pick with, well, pretty much everyone. This guy’s pissed, and you’ll have to stick with it to find out why. He wouldn’t rank high on my list of favorite video game antagonists, but he was interesting enough to keep me interested in figuring out just what the hell his problem is.

The Evil Within isn’t perfect, but it is great. No enemy or environment ever stays long enough to grow repetitive, because the game does a great job in introducing new elements to keep the pace going. It gives me hope that there’s still room for games like Resident Evil 4, even ten years later.If you have the stomach for it, this is a game you won’t want to miss.

The Final Word: The Evil Within is a terrifying patchwork of nightmares that could only have been stitched together by a mind as delightfully twisted as Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami.