This week, The Evil Within received its third and final DLC, dubbed The Executioner because it swaps out a sympathetic protagonist for one that’s decidedly more difficult to connect with on a human level, mostly because it’s anything but.

This DLC is unique for a number of reasons. For starters, it gives us the chance to step into the bloodied boots of the game’s hammer-wielding baddie, the Keeper. It also switches the perspective to the first person, I’m assuming, so we can really feel like we’re embodying a monster.

This is the last expansion that’s covered by the $19.99 season pass – you can also purchase it separately for $4.99 — and unless Mikami and co. have been secretly working on something extra for us, this will be the last bit of content the game sees. As much as I like The Evil Within, with its DLC finished, the talented developer is now free to move on to the next big thing.

Chances are, you know what The Executioner offers going in. If you aren’t familiar with it, the goal is simple: to give players a highlight reel, of sorts, of the gruesome boss battles that were scattered about the main game. It’s a neat idea for a DLC capper that serves as a dramatic send-off to what was a mostly great horror game, even if it’s not as well-executed as I would’ve hoped.

The main issue here is tedium. The Executioner gets old fast because the only activities there are to do over the course of its hour-and-change-long running-time is scouring environments for documents to unlock doors that lead to areas filled with conservative smatterings of Haunted. From there, you’re tasked with using your Detective Vision to locate the “secret” door that leads to an arena filled with even more Haunted, as well as a boss fight.

The only reprieve you can hope to get from the surprisingly monotonous objectives comes in the form of the odd diary entry written by the daughter you’re trying to save, and some technical documents that help explain what’s going on. That’s all of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this DLC. Whooping copious amounts of monster ass with my comically oversized meat tenderizer was fun, and some of the fights are genuinely intense. There’s just not enough content here, and what is here doesn’t feel like it’s been fully realized.

The first batch of bosses is too easy – something I would never say about The Evil Within proper or its first two expansions – and that makes vanquishing them, even as a hammer-wielding behemoth, considerably less satisfying. They’re also too straightforward. I used the same technique for slaying one boss as I did two or three others, and that wasn’t so much of a “technique” as it was “stay inside the target’s personal bubble and bludgeon the shit out of them until they give in.”

I wanted Condemned and instead I got something that feels like a demo for a 90’s action horror game one might find in an arcade, assuming those still exist. It has a House of the Dead feel to it.
Slain enemies even drop coins that can be invested into upgrading the Keeper’s gear and improving its abilities, and that’s 90’s as fuck.

This DLC is going to be polarizing. The Executioner doesn’t shy away from its goal of being completely different. That goal of eschewing the stealth focused level design for a more combat-heavy focus is made abundantly clear the moment you realize the Keeper can only kick open doors. Crouching is still an option, but that mechanic is only useful for ducking under tripwire mines.

Even the stuff I like about this DLC has a ‘but’ to it.

Fighting bosses as a boss sounds like a good time, but they take so long to become challenging that most of the excitement has worn off by the time things finally do get interesting. The executions are satisfying, but there’s not anywhere near enough of them. I’d be surprised to hear that there are more than a half dozen of them.

Further making the executions a challenge to enjoy is the frustrating second in which the camera returns to the first person – it zooms out during the kill to show all of it – where the Keeper is left temporarily defenseless against the enemies that definitely closed in while you were distracted by all that gore.

Getting past obstacles involves watching a gruesome animation in which the Keeper tear off his own head so he can be reborn at a safe that’s been placed in an almost too perfect spot, and its brutality is matched only by how unnecessary and gimmicky it is.

Why can’t I pair my superhuman strength with the Mjölnir I carry with me at all times to clear a way? Hell, the Keeper could probably head-butt the debris and I’m sure it’d be super effective. I can suspend my disbelief as well as the next guy, but with the effort they very obviously put into the decapitation animation, they almost certainly could’ve repurposed that in order to build some destructible obstacles.

Or, make the obstacles look like something that’d be difficult to overcome. Suicide shouldn’t be the answer to getting past a couple stacks of moldy chairs. That was a tough sell when I was playing as Sebastian – now it feels like Tango was just desperately trying to come up more ways to make us cringe.

If you’ve stuck with The Evil Within this far, you’ll want to give this a try. Just make sure you dive in with completely different expectations from what was established by the preceding DLC, because The Executioner is entirely unlike what came before it.

The Final Word: The Executioner isn’t the explosive, hammer-smashing conclusion The Evil Within deserves, but a good time can still be had if you have the right expectations going in.

If you haven’t played the Juli Kidman story expansions, feel free to check out my reviews of The Assignment (review) and The Consequence (review). I hear they’re pretty great.