When someone tells you they have good news and bad news, do you prefer to take the bad news first or the other way around? I like hearing the bad news, that way I can get it out of the way. Otherwise, it's impossible to really soak in the good because all I can think about is the looming threat of whatever will hit me next. Because of this, I'll be starting off this list of the best and worst horror games with the bad, the disappointing, and the just plain ugly. Then, when you think you can't possibly handle any more, I'll share the great games, giving you a reprieve from all the bad I hit you with earlier.
TNS: “With the recent release of the incredible Silent Hill 2 remake, we reflect on the most underrated game in the series, Silent Hill: Homecoming.”
I didn’t hate it, in fact, I think the hate is unwarranted. It doesn’t have anywhere near the same feel of a Team Silent game, but if this were PTSD fake army man in spooky town: The Game, I think people would have really liked it more.
Now all I want to play is PTSD Fake Army Man in Spooky Town: The Game.... that sounds like a helluva game, lol
Conceptually, Homecoming works. On its surface the narrative is interesting and adds a lot of depth to the lore of the town. The misfire was in its execution i.e aping way too much of its visual cues from the feature film and themes from Silent Hill 2. The developers treated the game as a series of bullet points and checklists of what a Silent Hill game is supposed to be: Cult? Check. Otherworld? Check. Pyramid Head? Check. Trauma? Check. Sexy Nurses? Check. It felt forced instead of genuine and organic. It's a real shame because at its core there was a lot of great material to work with: a fraction of cult members branching off to do their own thing, Alex being a supposed military man, blood pacts and child sacrifice. This is all great stuff. It's just a shame that it never really came together.
Short story: it was mediocre with fun combat.
No memorable characters, no memorable atmospheric set pieces or visuals, lots of in-your-face gore, fucking around with lore by putting PH where he doesn't belong ...
And the ending where Alex also becomes PH and makes a roar was funnier(i remember laughing from disbelief) than the UFO ending in this instalment.
It wasn't terrible. It's one of those "if it didn't have this title" sort of games. It's actually pretty solid, but doesn't live up to the rest of the mainline franchise.
Downpour, however, and I'll die on this hill, is a highly underrated game.
I didn't hate Homecoming. It wasn't as good as 1-4, but it definitely wasn't bad. Downpour I think was just bad. But Homecoming was fine, and the music was really good. It was the game that came out after the movie, so they Americanized it. Pyramid Head was misused and was based on the movie design, not the classic Silent Hill 2 design. The town as well was not consistent with the other games, but rather the movie. The green Welcome to Silent Hill sign from the movie was even in Homecoming.
From GameWatcher: "Embracer has shut down Pieces Interactive, the studio that recently developed the Alone in the Dark Reboot for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Pieces Interactive, acquired by THQ Nordic in 2017, worked on the Titan Quest franchise. Its most recent game, Alone in the Dark, received mixed critical reception at launch but was improved with subsequent patches."
Like we did not see this coming. Pieces and Alone in the Dark, had a kick me sign on their back the entire dev cycle to release. Perfect example of not reading current market trends, bad forecasting, marketing and release.
Why is it the perfect example?? It was actually one of the few games that did all those things well. In fact considering the current environment in the industry it actually did all those things very well.
The problem was the game itself was just rough around the edges and that’s the problem we currently have in the industry it’s hard to release something like that when everybody wants perfection and the developer and publisher doesn’t have enough to pay off all the reviewers.. it has a large cult following and had potential to be exactly what survival horror fans have been crying out for while they were waiting for silent hill 2. Don’t see what market trends and forecasting has anything to do with it at all. I don’t remember it fighting in its release window either.
Alone in the Dark would've gained more praise if it released in 2022, well before Alan Wake II and other horror projects
The demo they released a while back didn't leave a good impression, and it seems like they were riding far too much on Jodie Comer and David Hayter to be the driving force to buy the game. They're both great actors, but their performance on this game from what I've seen felt very stiff/forced - like they were out of their comfort zones. It's a shame to see another studio closure, though, and I hope the people effected (affected? I always get it wrong) can find more work soon.
Embracer's takeaway from this will probably be that they should focus on live service games.
Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive has been hit with layoffs a month after its release, as per the latest information.
That genuinely, genuinely sucks. The reboot has clear flaws, but it really felt like a solid first step for this team to receive *greater* investment.
That's standard. Teams are together for a Project, after its done some..and sometimes most devs are fired until the next Project is in the works and people are needed again. Only the core members stay in the time between the hot phase of the game development.
What’s annoying is people don’t understand how contractors work, either. All of this is uninformed knee-jerk reactions without any understanding of how employment works in this industry. There are key developers and staff that stay with a studio/publisher, but often times it’s a hire per project and then seeking new employment for a project. That’s how it’s always been…
That's a fair point too. I would say that in light of its tepid critical/commercial response and ongoing mass layoffs across the industry I think it's understandable for fans to worry about the longer-term implications. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
RE5 is a shooter, not a survival horror.. the only one from the worst survival horror is Silent Hill:HC
I could add Fatal Frame IV and maybe Haunting ground
Dead Space was way more scarier then DS2.
All the open spaced levels with bright lights and voice announcers making you feel like you wern't alone is what killed DS2 in terms of horror....still scarier then RE5 but I hope DS3 goes back to it's roots.
On terms of being scary, Resident Evil 5 fails at that, because it isn't trying to be scary, its trying to be a hardcore, Michael Bay explosion-fest, awesome third-person shooter.
Resident Evil 5, as far as I'm concerned is an awesome fucking game to play with your Resident Evil friends, like I do, but is terrible to play as a Halloween-esque kind of game.
Dino Crisis 3 mate. - Dire-Bad, with a hint of wtf. haha
And I want SO BAD to get into the System Shock games, but I just never get around to it :(
Never a mention of clock tower 3. Such a shame, it's a very scary game.