Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’13] The Best And Worst Horror Games, As Chosen By The BD Staff
It’s 2014, has been for about a week now, and our look back at one of the more mixed years worth of games in recent memory continues with another best and worst roundup! I already took the plunge and chose my picks for the best and worst horror games of the year that was, and now it’s time for the rest of Dead Pixel’s contributors to do the same. Some of these you may see coming, others could be surprising. Check them out after the jump!
Lonmonster (Best/Worst) | Lauren Taylor (Best/Worst) | Ryan Daley (Best Novels) | Adam Dodd (Best/Worst)
Best Posters | Best Performances | Best Trailers | Best Albums
BEST: The Last of Us. I know – HOW ORIGINAL. But as we step into a new year, it’s the one game that sank into my consciousness and stained the insides of mind long after I put down the controller. No the story isn’t particularly unique, but Naughty Dog’s break-taking presentation – coupled with the cast’s enviable voice work – often made it feel that way. It remains one of my favourite games of the generation, not just 2013.
WORST: … I don’t have one. I have no idea why not – hating games usually comes pretty easily to me – but if you want I can replay last year’s Resident Evil 6 and hate that again?
BEST: The Last of Us — This game had me crying in twenty minutes. You know what scene I’m talking about. The characters, the setting, the acting and the gameplay all adds up to one of the most unforgettable experiences on this generation. As Vicki said in her review, this is immersive interactive storytelling at it’s incredible, terrifying best. For the longest time this was my pick for the coveted number 1 spot, that was until I played…
The Swapper — Perfection’s a funny word. What does it even mean? Hell if I know. All I do know is that The Swapper achieves everything it strived for and more. From the gameplay that brilliantly compliments it’s story, the difficulty curve which only gives slight tutorials before leaving you to figure the game out for yourself and the fantastic yet dark ending, it’s perfect. I could go on, which I did in my review, but to put it simply, The Swapper is my Game of the Year, go play it.
WORST: Deadly Premonition Director’s Cut — I have it on good authority that the original game on the Xbox 360 is actually functional and perhaps even good. I wouldn’t know, as my only experience with the game is through the PC version which is just atrocious. From the quicktime events that rarely work to the horrible gun mechanics, this is simply a horrid game that pretty much broke me.
BEST: Year Walk — Based on a Swedish legend, of sorts, Year Walk uses the iOS platform better than any game I’ve played. The controls are unique, the environment is sparsely beautiful, and the puzzles are challenging, which is why it deserves a spot on the list. Don’t forget to download the companion app, as well.
Knock-Knock — A surreal and somewhat overlooked game from last fall, Knock-Knock is an unnerving little game about a paranoid house-dwelled (named The Lodger) whose job is to keep the lights on in the house so the spirits won’t haunt him. It builds to a weird crescendo and is a blast to play while wearing headphones.
The Walking Dead: 400 Days — The first season was a soul-wrenching experience, sure, but this interstitial volume shows that the team at Telltale doesn’t necessarily need to go back to the well in order to find interesting stories from the zombie apocalypse. Placing gamers in tense, often unpredictable scenarios gives 400 Days an anthology feel, and I hope to see some of those characters again in the second season.
WORST: Plants Vs. Zombies 2 — I know this might be a bit of a stretch, but Plants vs. Zombies 2 was kind of a letdown for me this year. I loved the first installment, but the weird metagame involved in deciding whether or not to spend money was a real turnoff. PvZ2 made some cool changes to the existing scheme, but it never quite hooked me. Also, way too much Crazy Dave.
BEST: I can’t think of a better horror game in 2013 than Outlast. It’s terrifying in a way that I’ve never truly experienced in a game, and until there’s an Oculus Rift in every home, there’s no quicker way to peed pants than Outlast. In fact, my reason for Outlast being the best horror game of 2013 is only a few sentences because it’s also my worst horror game of 2013.
WORST: I will admit that if you look on my Steam account right now, I likely have about 22 minutes logged on Outlast. I can barely play it. You know why? It’s too scary. I’m horrified of this game. In those 22 minutes played, a good 8 of them were likely me, pacing around the Mount Massive Asylum courtyard as I fumbled with my camera batteries.
I don’t even scare easily! I can watch any horror movie and chuckle along. Very few things in the realm of movies or music can “get to me” if you know what I’m saying… That weird feeling that makes you look over your shoulder, wondering if you should take your headphones off, just in case. So yeah, Outlast terrifies me, and it’s horrible. I hate every second of playing this game. You should absolutely buy it.
Now you have our picks for the best and worst of 2013 — what are yours?
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.