It’s been a while SRK…
Long winded post incoming 
Back when I posted here regularly we’d have a horror thread pop up once a year about but they’d never stick around but it’s always a fun topic for me. Survival horror has always been one of my favorite genres for a long time and I even made a youtube channel to do lets plays of a few of them. The channel’s defunct now since it’s tough for me to find time to record or when I can I sometimes just don’t feel like it. It also made playing horror games a chore for me since I could no longer just enjoy them for myself and had to set stuff up and wait until ideal recording times (when the house is quiet) to start.
So to start I’ll answer the question - my favorite horror game of all time is Silent Hill. I played this as a kid not long after RE3 Nemesis came out. I had never really played a horror game until Nemesis, it was my introduction into survival horror and it scared the crap out of me at times, especially the infamous police station window scene. After beating it I had heard that Silent Hill was similar so I went and picked that up to give it a try - night and day in terms of how it scares you. I think it hits everything right in setting the tone of the game. Even early on you see in the streets just how messed up this town is including the people that lived there with things like a severed dog head that was used as a basketball and the random things just left out in the open. I’ll be completely honest though in that I don’t think the nuances that made this game so good were done with “this will be perfect” in mind, it was kind of a perfect storm where things just added up right. A common example is using the fog to hide the bad draw distance. I guarantee you if they had better hardware at the time they would have jumped on the chance to use it and remove the fog which makes you wonder if that would have truly added to the game or taken away from it. The clunky combat is another example, people (including myself) love this game because it’s not a brain dead monster killer. The combat was so bad though because Team Silent didn’t really have much experience in something like that. It just turned out for the best.
From the list of upcoming games I’m looking forward to I’ll have to say Alone in the Dark and Call of Cthulhu though REREmake is up there too with The Forrest not far behind. Zoolander I agree 100% with you on not paying for an early access game. I’m surprised we don’t see more Cthulhu games since he’s become a thing in the last couple of years. Hopefully Alone in the Dark is, you know, good.
And since no one asked I’ll do short recaps on how I feel about the more popular games I’ve played or ones I’ve seen mentioned here, I’m definitely far from playing everything I want to though. Spoilers for all of them though so just a heads up.
Alan Wake
Spoiler
I really liked this game and actually played through it twice. It suffered from being overhyped unfortunately for most people but thankfully I’m just in the dark when it comes to media coverage for new games so I didn’t have my sights set too high on this. Most people agree the environment and narrative is what set this one out and made it good and to be blunt with how much effort they clearly put into those two things they better be good. The combat was fun… for the first couple of nights then it became a bit too repetitive. At least they mixed it up a little at the end with the inanimate objects being flung at you despite still only needing to shine your light on them. I’ve only played the first DLC story after when Barry is in Alan’s head/dream after the events of the main game. Overall I give this a recommend.
Alone in the Dark
Spoiler
It’s a shame what happened to this series. One of the very first survival horror games (since there’s no set specifics on what defines the genre no one will ever agree on what is) it was honestly the precursor to Resident Evil along with Sweet Home. I played the original as a kid but honestly I remember so little of it from back then I don’t even count it as me playing it. I have played New Nightmare and the self-titled one on the last gen and they were… different. New Nightmare was straight up a RE clone that focused a lot on combat and the most recent one was just a buggy mess that had no clue what it wanted to be. It tried too many different things and was bad at them all. The new one looks interesting but it won’t be a day 1 buy for me. I’d only recommend the original for hardcore fans to say they’ve played it. The second one is real similar too but I’ve never played it myself (though I own the port on PS1).
Amnesia
[details=Spoiler]If you haven’t played this game yet you’re probably sick of hearing about it, if you have played it someone’s probably sick of hearing about it from you. This game is good. This game is scary. It came at just the right time too when what we did have was just nothing but action and combat flooding the market in the wake of RE5. It just did an amazing job of making you feel dread at going further but still being very fun at the same time. This game became a reference for a lot of the newer games that are coming out and rightfully so. Spoiler within a spoiler – the part when you extract something from the body you find in the locked room and the monster blows the door open is still one of the scariest things ever.
Theeeeen A Machine for Pigs came out. I have a hard time saying exactly what’s wrong with it, it just feels bland. It felt like they just had you go through the motions again without really trying to be scary. Sure there were a couple jump scares but overall I did not feel like the world I was in was scary. It didn’t help that you actually saw the monsters/pigs often and still lived for the most part. I literally played ring around the rosie with one and often treated them like Resident Evil zombies by just brushing by them on my way through. The side snippets that you read on the way through were pretty interesting though. I highly recommend Dark Descent but only play Machine for Pigs if it’s cheap.[/details]
Call of Cthulhu
Spoiler
This one I only heard of after looking up lists of horror games years ago. I’m putting it in this post since there’s a new one coming out in the OP. It’s a first person shooter but definitely counts as horror for me with insanity effects and hiding. I don’t know much of the Cthulhu mythos at all honestly so I’ll bet a lot of stuff went over my head when it came to references. When this game wanted to be good, it was really good. There is a chase scene towards the beginning when the people of Insmouth chase you out of a hotel at night and I can count on one hand the number of times a game has made me felt so pumped and filled me with adrenaline. Unfortunately there are a lot of parts where you (or I should say I) just didn’t know what to do and could not find the item needed to progress, or the caves would be too similar and you’d get lost. The combat was really unforgiving but there would be no other way to proceed but to waste everyone in a room. The game definitely picked back up the closer to the end I got but the middle part just left too much of a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn’t recommend this, but I won’t say it was entirely bad either.
Clocktower
[details=Spoiler]This is another old series that just got butchered. The very first one on the Super Famicom, in my opinion, still holds up today if you can get past the graphics and slowness. If you want to play this one I highly recommend using the fast forward button in your emulator or you’ll be sitting for literally minutes at a time waiting for Jennifer to catch her breath. It’s just not worth the wait since you’ll do this a lot. It’s the first game where you don’t fight at all and only run from a randomly spawning single enemy. It has a lot of point and click puzzle elements in it as well however you do move a character through a mansion. The visuals for the time were really dark as well and really set the tone that the situation you’re in is f***ed and you need to get out. The game gets a lot of flak though for the antagonist and kind of rightfully so – it’s a little boy with a giant pair of scissors who chases you around the mansion until you either lose him or interact with an object in a room that can defeat him. I’m not 100% on how the mechanics work on how he spawns but I think it’s based on the actions you take, such as skipping a door and going down the hall or grabbing certain items before certain events. It’s complicated enough to make it random for future playthroughs though. Would highly recommend.
The sequel came out on PS1 and takes place years later. The canon ending on the first game is that you’re the only survivor from the incident and it plays the same only on a 3D plane now. My god is this a slow game. The English dubbing is so bad it’s hilarious. I’m a huge fan of the first so I can enjoy this game but really it’s toxically bad to anyone just trying to play something decent.
The next one, The Struggle Within (or Ghost Face) apparently wasn’t supposed to be a Clocktower game but they threw the name on it to help it sell. I’ve never played it myself though I do have it on PS1. Apparently this one makes the first PS1 game look like Citizen Kane but again I’ve yet to play it and probably won’t.
3 was… a weird departure. It has nothing to do with the story of the prior ones but kept the core gameplay of randomly spawning bad guy who chases you. It’s also pretty bad in the voice department. They added in a really weird and semi anime fight at the end of each chapter where you get a bow and arrow and weird holy powers to fight the bad guys with. Would not recommend.
I’m counting Haunting Ground in here since it’s the spiritual successor of Clocktower. It plays a lot like 3 only they don’t have the weird super powers at the end. They added in a dog companion as well to fetch items and help fight. In general this is a pretty good game. The enemies seemed to get less scary as it progressed but there was always that feeling that they could show up at any time, because they could. Bonus points for the alt costumes you can get at the end. My oh my Fiona…
This series uses the mechanic that I think has the most potential to be scary. The fact that the enemy is random and you’re all but powerless to stop him/her really puts you on edge. I hope this gets used or elaborated on in better games since it feels like a waste in most of these. [/details]
Cursed Mountain
Spoiler
I saw someone say this was a good game. I disagree good sir. I was so bored playing this, plus the Wii motion controls just did not work for me at all. I liked the premise of it though but, for me, it just didn’t deliver.
Dead Island
Spoiler
Fun games honestly, they get a lot of hate and rightfully so but at the end of the day I enjoyed playing both. Was it because I played them with friends that I enjoyed over the games? Probably. These are not scary in the slightest but I don’t think they are meant to be. They’re just more serious versions of Dead Rising honestly. I recommend them if you like Borderlands and that style of gameplay but not at all as a horror game.
Dead Space
Spoiler
I have yet to play part 2 of this. I know, I know get on it. Part one was really good. It was kind of formulaic in when it tried to jump scare you and man is Isaac the most bossed around guy ever but the atmosphere was definitely there. Part 3 would have been a good game with any other name but it just was not scary in the slightest and also didn’t try to be scary it felt. We can always chalk it up to EA being EA and watering down every game they get that gets successful. I really liked that the dismemberment mechanic existed here and it wasn’t just “lol headshot” to play the game. It added a subconscious layer of what you’re doing to these monsters and what you have to do just to survive that worked really well. The upgrading feature was fun too. You can play to what style you want (and yes there is a right style haha). Definitely recommend, and someday I’m sure I’ll recommend 2 as well.
Deadly Premonition
Spoiler
Not popular nor mentioned but man do I love this game. It’s in my top 10 games of all time. You either love its quirks and charm or you think it’s one of the worst things ever made and neither opinion is wrong. It draws heavily from twin peaks and is more of a murder mystery than a traditional horror game only the protagonist goes into a Silent Hill style otherworld when investigating. It has bad graphics even for its time but the characters in this game are just so likeable you get over them all. It feels very Japanese though at times despite being set in the northwestern US. The game is based on a timer so you have to be at an objective by a certain time in the game but it is very generous in how much it gives and allows you to do mini games and side missions in between main objectives. The soundtrack repeats itself but I love every single song in it.
Evil Within
Spoiler
This game surprised me at how much I liked it. The trailers made it out to be another generic horror game despite saying it was going back to horror. It feels like it’s a love letter made to fans of the genre and has a lot of throwbacks to different styles of horror games throughout this game. You have your Resident Evil style, you have your Silent Hill transitions and psychological attempts, hordes of enemies at some points like newer games and even a clocktower style “run away from him now” chapter. I played the PC port and it was very clear that this was made for consoles but I didn’t really let that bother me. I would recommend this to anyone who’s played a lot of horror games but even someone new to the genre would enjoy this. The story though seemed like it tried to hard then just forgot where it was going. That’s probably enough to set a bad taste in some people’s mouths but honestly the game itself was good enough for me to overlook that.
