Tag Archives: Survival Horror

Game File, Games and Software, Indie Pennant

Song of Horror is on Kickstarter!

June 14, 2015 RaShaun Eshalomi

UPDATE: It’s BACK! Song of Horror are back on kickstarter and even better. Don’t forget to show your support. Tweet, follow and spread the word. #IndieDev #SupportIndies!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, funding for Song of Horror was unsuccessful; however, developers continue to work and haven’t let this throw them off of creating an awesome game. You don’t need Kickstarter show your support. Tweet, follow and spread the word. #IndieDev #SupportIndies!

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I’m extremely excited about this game. The graphics look great and I’m loving the different camera angles. I did notice, however, some of the wording in the descriptions and narrations is a little off, but this game is still in it’s early phases. I can’t wait to watch the next gameplay video with the voice acting and eerie music.

Now that my hopes for Silent Hills are dashed, I need Song of Horror even more.

Game File, Games and Software, Indie Pennant

Indie Alert: Song of Horror – Bringing Back Old-School Survival Horror

March 3, 2015 RaShaun Eshalomi

Protocol Games has been working on bringing back what survival horror used to be, before it became more of an action genre with some jump-scares. In August of 2014, Song of Horror was conceived: a third-person survival horror determined to freak you out and make you feel completely helpless—you know, like in the good ol’ days.

We aim to preserve and recover the feelings that the old-school survival horror masterpieces provoked in us, while also taking advantage of current technologies to build upon those foundations.

Daniel Noyer is a washed-up advertiser who has fallen on hard times; now, he has a crappy position at a publishing house. Daniel’s boss asks him to check up on the company’s most important client, renowned writer Sebastian P. Husher, who has missed some deadlines and meetings to turn in a first draft. Believing Husher has only gone dark without notifying the company, Daniel takes on the simple task. Upon arrival to Husher’s mansion, Daniel quickly realizes something is wrong: missing guard dog, lights off even though it’s night time, ajar door, dark hallway. I would have ran away and called the police, but I guess that wouldn’t be much of a game.

Daniel won’t be the only character you play as. You will take control of up to 16 different characters, depending on how long you can keep your characters alive. The game is divided into different chapters—not like Telltale Games episodic games—when you begin most of the chapters, you’ll choose a character to start. If your character dies, that’s it for that character and his/her storyline; you will have to choose another character to continue where the previous one died off. Each character has his/her own backstory, but will still fit in with the main story.

Sophie van Demend|Concept Art — Sophie van Denend|Concept Art

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Defenselessness, constant terror, that “NO WAY I’M GOING DOWN THERE” moment… all of it, wrapped with an enthralling story, one that does not let you quit the game even when a part of you is wishing you did just that.

There are a variety of puzzles and riddles in the game. Some are small obstacles, others are life threatening. To keep tensions high, Protocol Games uses a movie-like camera style; all the cameras are automated, meaning players will have no control over them.

A little gameplay video to show our current cameras, lights and doors. Still a work in progress!

I’m interested to see how well all these different stories will fit into the main story. Husher is well-known, so you can assume he knows a lot of people, or at least has a lot of people working for him. A bunch of stories and characters can be distracting at times, but I’m definitely intrigued to learn about them all. This game looks and sounds scary; it reminds me a little of P.T., which, of course is a major plus—super Silent Hill fan over here.

Though Song of Horror is still in its early-development stage, the game looks great and has a lot of potential to be a horrifying experience. Protocol Games hasn’t announced a release window or platform, but you can stay updated by following its Twitter and Facebook page.

For more indie news, follow RaShaun on Twitter

Action, Adventure, Game File, Games and Software

The Evil Within: Mikami’s “Revival” of Survival Horror

October 31, 2014 Alex McCumbers

Over the past few months, I’ve done a grand tour of the horror genre. Whether that’s seeking out Silent Hill 2 at my favorite game store or watching Markiplier plod through indie games, I’ve come to understand what makes horror games great and what can bring them down. All of these thoughts, themes, tropes, and expectations are what I’ve taken in with me as I braved the world of Evil Within, Shinji Mikami’s latest gift to the world of survival horror. I’m not sure if I’d put this game on a pedestal just yet, as I’ve yet to beat it and lack the ability to look back at what I’ve played, but I can comment on what I’ve seen so far and compare it to the games of the past.

Ever since I played through the original Resident Evil, I’ve noticed a lot of horror games lock doors to direct the player. Sometimes it is as simple as finding the key for the right hole. Other times there isn’t a way in period. Another trope used is having players witness something, usually a cutscene, to be able to move on at all. While this may work in a linear design and can make the player feel trapped, I find it to be irritating when overused. It devolves powerful moments and environments into a glorified hunt and peck. Silent Hill 2, a game many believe to be at the pinnacle of the genre, is built upon this conundrum, and for me it really hurt the overall experience.

In The Evil Within, thankfully, there are very few locked doors. Instead players can seek out keys found in tiny, white statues. These keys then unlock one of the several lockers in the save room. The lockers contain minor rewards such as ammo or healing items. What’s great is these items fade away only when they have all been picked up. I sighed a bit when I found twenty handgun bullets and could only bring about ten, even with my pistol fully loaded. Luckily, when I returned there were still ten bullets to be had.

I think the horror genre’s greatest strength, especially in gaming, is the atmosphere it can build. Probably one of the best examples of atmosphere is Super Metroid. In that classic SNES game, the player gets to feel the emptiness of the alien planet, making it more powerful when it comes to life. Our game in question, The Evil Within, does a great job of setting the stage. Each area has a gritty tone that feels wrong, with occasional surprises and secrets. There’s also quite a bit of variety from vast mansions to sprawling mountainside cathedrals. Adding to each area is the dynamic lighting system that’s powerful most of the time, but occasionally has some hiccups. Finally, the game often will bend perception, making the player question whether an area is real or distorted or flipping the world upside down. In fact many of the scenes lead me to believe that Mikami is a fan of Lewis Carroll.

Aside from the environment, another major aspect of the horror genre is the opposition. What sort of monsters or challenges will the player face? This is probably Evil Within’s best asset. The creatures in this game ooze (often literally) with detail and deeper symbolism. Each of the aberrations feels unique and have many ways of making Sebastian hurt. The scariest of these monsters are what I would like to call boss monsters, even though they don’t really feel like traditional bosses as everything in the game is deadly. Engaging these beasts drive a lot of tension into key moments, making a few really memorable.

Sometimes these encounters are not meant to end in a single, surviving victor, but sometimes its better (and required) to run. For example, in the prologue, Sebastian must escape a slaughterhouse that’s kept by a large butcher. With no weapons, the player must rely on sneaking and hiding to evade death. Later on, a new menace crawls out of pools of blood. Laura, as she’s been named, is a shrieking terror of a woman with way to many arms. At first she must be fled from, but eventually the player learns that she’s afraid of fire. Luckily, fire is Sebastian’s main way of taking out an enemy for good with match flicks that Jensen Ackles would be proud of. This moment of realizing a weakness turns into a showdown with the beast. Needless to say, once I reached this moment I quickly found every way in the level to turn up the heat, bringing some much needed redemption between Laura and me.

Even though the game balances stealth moments with the need to take action, I found myself having a hard time determining when the game wanted me to use them. In an early level, a chainsaw-swinging lunatic burst out of his chains in a barn. I knew that to escape this village, I needed to use something to cut the chains holding the gate. Cleverly, I planned on luring the monster to the chains, where I then would dodge at the last second. Hopefully, the chainsaw would break the chains and I would get out without firing my precious rounds. This plan led to about ten deaths of trying to get the guy to swing right. When the chainsaw finally hit the chain, my smile faded as the saw phased through the object. I was taken out of the situation, reminded that this is just a game. Turns out, to cut the chain I had to kill the monster to take his saw to cut it my damn self.
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This leads me to the greatest blemish of Evil Within, trial and error. As a player, I expected to die. However, I didn’t expect to throw myself at a hole, posing my body in varying angles, to try to fit like that game show that’s escaping me that also made a terrible Xbox Kinect game. Sure, there are times when dying is okay in this game. Usually though, it was a result of me over-thinking a situation and being punished for my cleverness. Imagine the scenario below.

Sebastian walks down a path with high walls on either side. In front of him a giant busts down an iron gate, brutally decapitating the unlucky chap who set him free. Knowing that this foe could down him easily, Sebastian nimbly dodges the creature’s initial charge to further blaze down the path in hopes that there will be a way out or an alternate way to kill the thing. . .

There isn’t a secret escape. Or a trap to kill it for that matter. Nope, I was forced to kill the giant in a dire situation, one that clearly should have had the solution of running. In fact, there were tons of moments just like this one. For a game that clearly wants the player to be afraid and run away, even going as far as providing beds and closets to hide in, shooting stuff still seems to be the best and often only solution.

Contrasting the often ignored stealth opportunities, there is another part of this game that deserves mentioning, the Save Room. Evil Within treats saving progress in a similar fashion to resident evil. Sebastian checks in with a nurse in what seems like a hospital. There’s more to this room than that though. Not only does this area provide the player with upgrades and the aforementioned lockers, it also never feels safe. I won’t spoil all the juicy bits, but let’s just say that there are tons of surrealist scenes that expand the narrative in this area. This filled me with both relief and dread when finding a mirror, the way to enter the save room.

Just thinking about the mirrors brings me to the topic of the dominant symbolism in this game and many other horror games, but that deserves its own writing entirely. I’ll save that for future musings.

Don’t let my mixed feelings fool you; I’ve had tons of fun with Evil Within. It has some genuine memorable moments. If you’re into a dark, psychological narrative with a general sense of wrongness about it, then this is the game for you. Lots of gameplay elements remind me of my favorite horror game, Resident Evil 4, but even that isn’t enough to put it above that classic. Granted, I’ve only reached the aggravating Chapter 9 so far, so I’m ignorant of how the story wraps up or if there is any post-game content.

Either of those two things, if executed perfectly, could easily put Evil Within on my list of favorite horror games.

Game File, Games and Software

Alex’s Top 5 Horror Games

October 20, 2014 Alex McCumbers

For the past month or so, I have been on a huge horror-game kick. I’ve been seeking out all the titles I missed out on, simply because either I was too scared to play them or too confused by the control schemes. This has led me to buy some of the classics: Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Silent Hill 2, and Dino Crisis. Even though I haven’t beaten any of these yet, I’m having the best time playing them.

Playing this genre piqued my interest in the history of survival horror games. Turns out, much of the survival horror genre can be accredited to Shinji Mikami, one of the minds behind the original Resident Evil. This guy defined a whole genre. Soon after Resident Evil’s success, not only were there sequels, but other games followed that style and control scheme. Developers started pushing the genre, creating terrifying games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame.

Now Mikami is back with a vengeance. With Tango Gameworks and Bethesda, he has probably created another masterpiece known as Evil Within. Judging by the trailers, screenshots, and what little I have played of the game, I can already tell that this game is going to be awesome.

In honor of this release (but mostly because I’m on this kick), let me share with you my personal Top 5 Horror Games. Know that I haven’t played everything and that I’ve avoided the genre for a while now, but these are the titles that stand out to me.

Final Fantasy IX (PlayStation)

Don’t question it, just follow me on this. As a child, I was afraid of most horror monsters, mostly vampires. However, there is one particular ’90s movie monster who disturbed me to no end, Chucky. It’s not like I’ve actually seen the movies, but the trailers that played while my dad watched wrestling were traumatizing. Since then, I’ve had a fear of dolls, which leads me to why my favorite Final Fantasy game also scared the crap out of me.

Not long after the forest scene, the party arrivs at a simple mountain town. Zidane and his pals soon discover a dark secret. Turns out, the Queen of Alexandria is making an army of black mages. They look like fat scarecrows that throw fire magic around, but they are described as dolls. The narrative leading up to this moment is creepy. There are sounds coming from the only well in the village and then Vivi vanishes. Towards the end of the dungeon, I found an assembly line of the things being created. That’s when I turned off my PlayStation, crawled into bed, and proceeded to have nightmares.

It took a few days, and daylight, before I could play it again.

House of the Dead 3 (Xbox)

This title is mostly just a fun little arcade game. There are few scares in it, but there is a hefty amount of gore. Players use a lightgun to blast away zombies and monsters, all while having to put up with terrible voice acting. Seriously, it’s like after Resident Evil came out, all horror games had to have bad voice acting too. Granted it’s hilarious, so at least there’s that. I remember playing this game with a friend on his Xbox. We hooked up two gun controllers and shot up a staggering pile of zombies. The best part is having infinite lives. That, and after he got bored of playing, he handed me the other gun.

Dual-wielding light guns, while yelling because the moment is so awesome, will forever be ingrained into my memory.

P.T.

The pure genius behind the idea of P.T. is astounding. Not only was it a complete mystery, but Hideo Kojima published it under a fake studio name. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the millions who was purely surprised. I learned about this game from my favorite YouTube gaming show Game Grumps. Yet, when I finally sat down to play it, the horror was real.

Ever since Amnesia became a hit, several horror games have chosen to have the player completely defenseless. P.T. uses that helplessness to pull true fear from their players. It is less of a game and more of an interactive short film. Most players don’t know how they “beat” this game, even more, I assume, stopped playing due to the many heart attacks I’m sure they experienced. Me, I share this game with friends and film it for my YouTube show, Forever Classic.

What’s even better than a short, focused horror experience? The fact that this game was a secret teaser for an upcoming revival of the Silent Hill franchise. The amount of talent behind this project is amazing. Not only will Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) be behind the wheel, but also Guillermo Del Toro (Pacific Rim) and Norman Reedus (Walking Dead).

I can’t wait for Silent Hills’ release, but to be honest I’ll probably never finish it. I’d never thought I would look forward to wearing Depends. . .
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BioShock

Speaking of demos, I first learned of BioShock through Xbox Live. The demo was essentially the first bit of the game. Those who have played it know that this one grabs you by the jewels from the first scene. I remember my friends teasing me about it, saying that the game wasn’t scary. I love media of all types, so I have a tendency to suspend my disbelief for everything. Some people will look at a horror game and say, look how silly the monster is, but I become that character and the fear is real.

One of BioShock’s biggest strengths was definitely its atmosphere. Rapture holds a lot of dark secrets, making the player want to discover them, but these same secrets are often morally puzzling and disturbing. Players have to choose to save or kill the Little Sisters, gaming’s most adorable evil. Also, the player is alone. There are no shop keepers or other characters to help you out, it’s kill or be killed.

Even to this day, I consider the first BioShock to be the best in the franchise. It drew me in and consumed me for a week or so. I’ve always wanted that same feeling, but few games have done that since.

Resident Evil 4

If I hadn’t borrowed Resident Evil 4, and if it hadn’t been seriously recommended by a friend, I never would’ve played horror games. For me, this is the absolute peak of the genre and anyone looking for a place to start may as well start with the best. I have played this game more times than I can count. I know all the secrets, all the weapons, and all the history. While I may know less than I boast, I love learning everything about it.

Resident Evil 4 is a third person survival horror game, which originally appeared on the GameCube. Yep, the same purple box that had Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing was the first to have the newest Resident Evil of the time. I actually didn’t get to play it until it came out on PS2. The mission is simple, save the President’s brain-dead daughter from a grisly fate at the hands of cultists infected with bio weapons.

Even though the main character, Leon, gets to use powerful weaponry, ammo is scarce and placing shots well becomes a key way to survive. He uses these guns to put down angry Spanish farmers, Tolkien-esque trolls, and ugly fish. Several of the later enemies proved to scare me the most, like the Regenerators and the Verdugos. However, one moment in particular made me quit playing for a while.

As my friend suggested, I played this game exclusively at night with the volume cranked up. I was doing fine at first; I only died once or twice, usually to quick time events. Eventually, I was tasked with getting a key to a church. Getting the key wasn’t too bad, but coming back was awful. It started to rain, obscuring poor Leon’s vision. I walked across the rickety bridge with no obstruction, where before there had been farmers. Just before reaching the church, I came across a dog.

Fans of Resident Evil 4 will know that you can save a dog from a bear trap that will later help you in a boss fight. I wasn’t that afraid of dogs up until this point.

A low growl sounded from the dog. At first I was glad to see my puppy friend, but then it leaped at me. I watched as the beast tore at Leon’s throat in horror. After the initial shock I frantically tried to push it back by mashing the onscreen commands. It stood there afterwards, staring at me. I emptied a full clip of my sub-machine gun into the thing, having little to no effect. Ripping out of the beast’s back were tentacles that struck out at me. This depleted my health and Leon fell with a sigh.

This moment not only scared me half to death, but forced me to quit for the night. Since then, if I come across a dog in a horror game, I shoot first and ask questions later. Resident Evil 4 will always be one of my favorite games of all time.

There’s a reason I chose to make this list a Top 5 instead of a Top 10. I simply haven’t played that many horror games. That’s why you should leave your favorite horror game in the comments below. Who knows, you may see an article here at Giga or a video on Forever Classic. Either way, I love this genre, so lead me on a path to discover the best.

If you like to watch other people get scared, check out my latest video on Forever Classic.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI3V4WKN21A&w=640&h=360]