When Capcom officially announced a newResident Evilgame last June, few could have expected that it would be arriving so soon. After months of rumors and speculation, however, the Japanese developer revealed thatResident Evil 8will be releasing on May 7th. What’s more, the company also put outa playable demo of the gamejust to help whet people’s appetites for what lies ahead.
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With May still several months away though and the demo offering onlyaround half an hour of gameplay at best, those looking for a way to pass the time until the game’s arrival would do well to take a look back into the annals of gaming’s past. Over the years there have been sometruly outstanding survival horror games, many of which still hold up well today and are easily accessible through Steam and other digital marketplaces.
10Alien: Isolation
Alien: Isolation’s desolate environments, and the emphasis that it places on stealth rather than combat, make it bothincredibly unique and fantastically enjoyable. While other games seek to scare their players by bombarding them with wave after wave of terrifying creatures, Creative Assembly’s title needs only one.
Navigating the space station while attempting to avoidthe deadly Xenomorphcan be overwhelmingly intense at times and yet the game provides players with all the tools needed to steer clear of it entirely, for the most part. Knowing that it could turn up at any moment, however, creates a layer of suspense so dense that it will keep players on the edge of their seats for the duration of their playthroughs.
9Alone In The Dark
AlthoughResident Evilmay have been the game that popularized survival horror games,Alone in the Darkisevery bit as important a part of the genre’s history. Releasing in 1992, this cult classic game introduced ideas and mechanics that would go on to become survival horror staples while future entries in the series continued to build upon these solid foundations to great effect.
Sadly, the original game has not aged particularly well and the series' most recent entry is an ill-conceived mess, but that’s not to say that there aren’t still a few greatAlone in the Darkgames that are worth playing today.Alone in the Dark 4is probably the pick of the bunch, although the third and fifth games still hold up fairly well too.
8Days Gone
Much like the reanimated corpses that terrorize players,Days Gonecan at times feel incredibly bloated, and its meandering narrative drags on for quite a bit longer than it really needs to. When the game gets things right, it provides players with an incredible experience that’s full of thrilling encounters and heart-pounding moments.
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One of the things that makes it so enjoyable is the post-apocalyptic world in which the story takes place. The beautiful environments can often lull players into a false sense of security which can, in turn, be devastatingly shattered at a moment’s notice whena hoard of Freakers or Swarmers attacks. Combined with the game’s excellent sound design and gritty tone, this makes for one wild ride.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, theResident Evilseries has inspired countless other survival horror franchises, including Visceral Games' fantasticDead Spacetitles. The over-the-shoulder camera and breathtaking cinematics that help make the games so enjoyable are straight out ofResident Evil 4,as too are some of the core gameplay mechanics.
Although the series' third entry is quite a bit more action-oriented than its predecessors, the first twoDead Spacegames are built around theirforeboding atmospheres and innovative combat mechanics. The wide variety of enemy types all require slightly different strategies while the lack of a HUD helps to make the experiencethat little bit more immersive.
6Deadly Premonition
The visuals are substandard, the gameplay lacks substance and the voice acting can at times be downright laughable, and yet Hidetaka Suehiro’sDeadly Premonitiongames are two of the most brilliant and bizarre that the survival horror genre has to offer.They may not have impressed critics all too much, but the original in particular has gone on to develop something of a cult following.
For all of their flaws and foibles, the games succeed in the areas that really matter. They’re entertaining, they’re engaging, and perhaps most importantly, they can at times be genuinely scary. Suehiro dropped the ball a little with the sequel which features some insensitive and offensive writing, but the original remains something of a flawed masterpiece.
5Dying Light
Dying Lightplays much like a cross between theResident EvilandAssassin’s Creedfranchises. The former provides foreboding locations and terror-inducing zombies and the latter offers up its free-flowing movement and tight combat mechanics. As a result, it’s a lot more action-oriented than your typical survival horror game, but it achieves what it sets out to do just as emphatically.
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The game’s well-implemented parkour mechanics encourage players to never stop moving while the overabundance of zombies means that combat is never too far away. Although this can at times hinder the game’s ability to build tension and suspense, it provides a different kind of excitement that is just as effective at pulling players in; if not more.
4Parasite Eve
Having held dominion over the RPG genre for much of the eighties and nineties, Square’s decision to take a stab at creating a survival horror game came as a bit of a surprise to some. Considering the company’s strong track record though, thatParasite Eveended up being one of the best horror games on the PlayStation was a lot less shocking.
The game looks and sounds fantasticand features a wide selection of unique and terrifying enemies. Its two sequels continue this tradition as well, with more well-designed environments and the addition of some genuinely challenging puzzles. They don’t control quite as well as the first game due to their use of the dreaded ‘tank’ controls, but they’re still a lot of fun and continue Ayra’s story in fine fashion.
3Silent Hill
Few series have come asclose to rivalingResident Evilas Konami’sSilent Hillfranchise. The games are truly terrifying and feature some of the most messed up moments to have ever appeared in video games. Rather than simply relying on jump scares, however, a lot of work has gone intocreating psychological thrillsthrough both nightmarish narratives and bone-chilling environments.
Rumors of a newSilent Hillgame refuse to go away and this is perhaps more down tothe overwhelming desire to see onethan it is any concrete leads. Regardless of whether one ever arrives though,the series still has plenty of great gamesthat are just as enjoyable today as they were when they first released. They don’t look great by modern standards, but graphical fidelity was never really the series' strong point anyway.
2The Evil Within
There are quite a few similarities to be drawn betweenThe Evil WithinandResident Evil, which is perhaps unsurprising considering the huge role that Shinji Mikami played in both series. He’s the man responsible for creatingResident Evilback in the nineties and then was later brought in to direct Tango Gameworks' stunning 2014 title.
The game is terror incarnate, with nightmarish landscapes and some of the scariest monsters to have ever graced a video game. Combat is as much about knowing when to sneak past enemies as it is having the skills to take them out while each of the bosses provides a unique challenge that prevents the experience from ever turning stale. The sequel is just as impressive in this regard, although its narrative is nowhere near as captivating.
1The Walking Dead
Telltale Games titles maycome up a little short in the gameplay department, but what they lack in complexity, they more than make up for with their fantastic storytelling.The Walking Deadis particularly impressive in this regard, with Clementine’s tale full of brutal and heartbreaking moments from start to finish.
It’s very easy to becomeinvested in the games' charactersthanks to how well-written they all are and this can, in turn, make their deaths all the more tragic. Knowing that a poor decision could quite literally come back to bite you in the ass provides players with a real incentive to think every choice through carefully. The short window for making these decisions can therefore add a lot to the stress and tension that is constantly mounting as the narrative unfolds.
