2026 has been a terrific year for horror so far, across all different mediums, and video games haven’t been letting the side down. As of June, we’ve had some breakout indies, mid-budget releases that punched well above their weight, returning classics that have lost none of their luster, and exciting AAA blockbusters that more than lived up to the hype.

Even better, the year still has such sights left to show us (as the iconic villain of one upcoming release would enthuse). Fall, in particular, is set to lighten the wallets of many a gorehound, as we can look forward to facing off against the sadistic Cenobites in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, the bogeyman himself in Halloween: The Game, all manner of paranatural phenomena in Control Resonant, and the bracing weather of coastal Scotland in Silent Hill: Townfall.

With such a strong line-up of contenders, and everything still to play for, it’d be premature to declare our horror GOTY already. However, a handful of titles have debuted in the first half of 2026 that we’re pretty confident will be ranking highly come end-of-year roundup time in December.

Editor’s Note: This article was put together and written by Bloody Disgusting’s video game critics Aaron Boehm & Harrison Abbott, who each selected five games to include on the list.

With that said, here are our ten favourite horror (and horror adjacent) releases of 2026 thus far.

10) Directive 8020

Ushering in a new era for The Dark Pictures Anthology, Directive 8020 is a small step (if not quite a giant leap) forward for Supermassive Games’ ever-expanding catalogue of interactive movies. Taking what has so far been a terrestrial-bound series and launching into the far-flung reaches of the cosmos, it certainly represents a big change of scenery if nothing else.

Riffing on both Alien and The Thing, the game is a sci-fi adventure that follows a crew of astronauts as they scout for humanity’s potential next home amongst the stars (after we thoroughly ruined the good thing we had going on Earth). As you’d expect, these intrepid explorers eventually identify a viable candidate somewhere in the Tau Ceti Goldilocks zone. Alas, when they crash land on its surface, our marooned heroes soon discover that the exoplanet is already occupied by a hostile, shapeshifting organism that ain’t too keen on sharing its turf. Cue lots of twitchy paranoia, fracturing alliances, and gruesome body horror antics.

As exciting as these interstellar stakes are, the most substantial changes Directive 8020 makes to The Dark Pictures recipe are more mechanical in nature. Indeed, the team at Supermassive has really used the fallow period between this latest outing and its predecessors to their advantage. Not only have they switched to Unreal Engine 5 — lending the game a dramatic visual overhaul — but they’ve also made bold improvements to the choose-your-own-adventure formula they’ve been refining for well over a decade.

The new turning point system, for example, allows you to navigate the tangled web of Directive 8020’s narrative more conveniently by giving you the ability to rewind to key forks in the road. With this feature enabled, it’s easier than it’s ever been to witness all the different permutations of a scene, to try out the various branching paths that have been mapped out for you, and to unlock all the grisly death animations. In previous Dark Pictures entries, you’d have to go through the whole campaign multiple times in order to experience this full breadth of content, but now you can freely jump around the timeline at your leisure, gratifyingly filling in every blank node on the story tree until you’ve seen all possible outcomes.

When compared to its forebears, the game also places an increased emphasis on player agency, with interactive elements that go much deeper than the QTEs we usually associate with Supermassive. The exploration sequences are now far more sprawling, there are meatier puzzles (including one chemical mixing conundrum that feels like it’s been ripped straight from old-school Resident Evil), and real-time threats will pursue you from room to room.

There’s an argument to be made that not all of these advances are fully refined yet (the stealth is effective but one-note). Nevertheless, it still sets a high bar for the anthology’s fledgling second season, and we can’t wait to see where the developers take it from here. – Harrison Abbott

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Directive 8020 here.

9) Romeo is a Dead Man

I generally think that auteur theory is B.S, especially in the games industry where so many people touch so many different parts of the project, but it’s hard to deny the fact that I can always tell a Suda51 game at a glance. He and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture always create such eclectically strange games that feel wholly unique, even if they end up a bit more style than substance. Romeo is a Dead Man, their latest third-person melee action game, is my favorite of theirs yet, taking their signature maximalism and wrapping it around a set of combat mechanics that engaged me more than any of their other titles.

You play Romeo Stargazer, who is attacked by a monster and brought back from the brink of death by his time-travelling grandfather. He joins the FBI’s Space-Time Police in order to hunt down criminals who are abusing the broken space-time continuum, while also trying to reconnect with his beloved Juliet. As complicated as it sounds, this is the most bare-bones way to describe the events of the game, which only get weirder as it progresses. Not only is the plot stuffed to the gills with surprises and strangeness, but the amount of different visual and tonal shifts it makes throughout its 15-hour campaign makes it feel so wild and unpredictable.

Aside from the narrative, the combat keeps things interesting, with standard melee mechanics enhanced by Bastards, special zombies that sprout from seeds you plant in your spaceship’s garden. These zombies have a wild variety of powers and can be summoned into combat to help out, adding a dynamic element to battles that keeps them exciting. Everything in the game has a little twist that makes it feel clever, like the upgrade minigame where you do a driving game to navigate a maze, picking up your bonuses along the way. Romeo is a Dead Man is an ultraviolent, B-movie in video game form, with Suda51’s signature vibes baked into every corner of the game. While the brand of humor won’t work for everyone, you have to respect a game with such a clear and consistent vision that feels unlike anything else right now. – Aaron Boehm

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Romeo is a Dead Man here.

8) Project Songbird

A game so raw and intimate that playing through it feels like you’re somehow invading the author’s privacy, Project Songbird is a deeply confessional offering. One that doesn’t resemble a product meant for mainstream consumption, so much as it does a therapeutic exercise for the benefit of its creator.

Solo developer Conner Rush suffuses the title with autobiographical detail (modelling locations after childhood haunts, paying tribute to beloved relatives in its lore, and platforming local musicians from his hometown on the soundtrack), while laying bare his soul for a psychological narrative that gets uncomfortably vulnerable at times and that goes to disarmingly honest places.

The game casts you in the role of the titular songbird/indie musician, Dakota, as they attempt to brute force their way through a creative dry spell. At the urging of their manager, they’ve embarked on a retreat to the Appalachian Mountains, where they aim to go completely off-grid and regain their artistic mojo. Which works for a while, as the natural splendour of the American Southeast seemingly provides Dakota with that elusive inspiration they’ve been craving for so long and puts them on track to finish their next album way ahead of schedule.

Yet while they initially chalk this newfound productivity up to the restorative influence of the great outdoors, it soon becomes apparent that they’re indebted to a far more sinister muse. Indeed, we learn that — like many before them — Dakota has unwittingly made a Faustian bargain here with some eldritch being lurking in the woods. A wicked entity that specifically targets struggling creatives, gets them hooked on the promise of divine inspiration, and then demands that a terrible price be paid in return.

For anyone who has ever clung to artistic ambitions, Project Songbird’s script is painfully relatable, exploring the heartbreak of falling out of love with (and even growing to resent) the very thing that you were put on this earth to do. It considers how isolating it can be to define yourself by your output alone, how the pursuit of greatness can riddle you with self-doubt, and how perceived failure can lead to you entertaining the darkest of thoughts.

Playing out as an introspective walking sim by day and a more conventional survival horror by night, the game is at its best when it cleverly uses its mechanics to immerse you in Dakota’s mindset. The enemy encounters might be a tad janky, and there’s an eleventh-hour plot digression that frustratingly undercuts the main story. Still, it’s nice to play something this achingly personal and sincerely felt. – Harrison Abbott

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Project Songbird here.

7) Mina the Hollower

It’s been a long wait for Yacht Club Games to release their follow-up to their hit game Shovel Knight, but it’s finally here. Mina the Hollower is another retro-style adventure, this time taking the visual and gameplay feel of a Game Boy Color game and bringing it to life with more modern design sensibilities. It’s a top-down Zelda-like that’s mixed in heavy doses of Castlevania and Bloodborne to make for an engrossing gothic adventure that will appeal to modern audiences and retro gamers alike.

You play the titular Mina, a mouse inventor exploring a cursed island and trying to restore the generators that she helped build. After a thrilling opening sequence that involves your boat being destroyed by a kraken, you’re dropped into a town teeming with interesting and strange characters to meet, from merchants to quest givers to just plain-fun weirdos. After getting your bearings, you’re off to explore the surrounding areas, fighting your way through hordes of monsters and discovering satisfying secrets. The top-down presentation is really sharp, with distinct “screens” that you’ll move between as you go from area to area, layered in with clever soulslike-style shortcuts that make the levels feel dense and full of secrets.

What surprised me most about the game is the depth the combat is able to achieve with the relative simplicity of its options. You have a choice of some standard melee weapons at the beginning, and these are augmented with Castlevania-style side weapons like a throwing ax or deflector parasol, which run on limited ammo. The best wrinkle to the combat is Mina’s ability to jump up and burrow under the ground upon landing, which acts like a dodge during battle. It’s a clever change to the standard formula, one that requires a surprising amount of precision to pull off effectively. Once you master it, it not only becomes essential for traversal, but also feels amazing when used to outmaneuver your opponents underground. Mina the Hollower is such a deep game, providing an old-school challenge with modern design philosophies, wrapped in a beautiful aesthetic package. – Aaron Boehm

Mina the Hollower is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.

6) Crisol: Theater of Idols

Whether by design or happy accident, Crisol: Theater of Idols feels like a remnant of a bygone era. The platonic ideal of what I call a “Blockbuster rental” game, it would have fit right in amidst the wave of gimmicky shoot-em-ups that flooded the Xbox 360’s marketplace towards the tail end of its lifespan.

If you weren’t around to witness this cycle, it saw a string of inessential but exceedingly enjoyable, mid-budget actioners releasing around the same time, all featuring inventive twists on otherwise standard combat mechanics. Among their ranks were Singularity (a sorely underappreciated FPS with fun time manipulation), Clive Barker’s Jericho (a squad-based shooter in which you could possess your teammates), Army of Two (a Gears of War clone that was elevated by its unique co-op interactions), and Bulletstorm (wherein you were incentivised to kill enemies in gory, over-the-top ways).

Although it’s released in a completely different climate and with a completely different distribution model, Crisol feels like it spiritually belongs in the Blockbuster rental club alongside these forgotten gems of yesteryear. Like them, it is a no-frills, charmingly uncomplicated rollercoaster ride that doesn’t outstay its welcome, doesn’t get bogged down with any superfluous guff, and doesn’t preoccupy itself with anything other than its kick-ass creative hook. Or rather, it’s a pair of kick-ass creative hooks.

That’s right, developer Vermila Studios actually treats you to two gimmicks for the price of one here! First, there’s the game’s novel approach to enemy types, which sees you battling animate religious effigies whose behaviours are determined by the material they were fashioned from. For instance, wood-carved representations of holy figures can sustain repeated shots — and will even keep coming after you’ve whittled their legs down to kindling — while stained-glass wraiths have a nasty tendency to duplicate when shattered. Elsewhere, there are also stone gargoyles that act as old-timey sentry guns, waxen cherubs that you’ll need to shoot out of the sky, and sentient oil paintings that can liquify into puddles as you’re about to fire, making you waste precious ammo.

And ammo is very precious here. Which brings us nicely to Theater of Idols’ second gimmick: its use of blood. Representing more than just your health, blood is actually a multi-purpose commodity in this freaky horror shooter, and you’ll have to manage your supplies with care. Because, as well as filling your life bar, it’s also used to fill the chambers of weapons.

You see, each firearm in Crisol has a needle concealed somewhere. To reload, you’ll need to stick your palm into it and make a donation from your own vitals. The plasma will then congeal into a bullet for whichever gun you’ve selected.

It’s a fresh dynamic that changes how you strategize ahead of encounters, as you’ll have to decide what’s the best way to spend this one universal resource for the situation at hand. Maybe you’ll use blood to fill several clips for your peashooter, for instance. Or perhaps you’ll exchange it for a couple of rounds of buckshot. Or, hey, you could just decide to leave it coursing through your veins so that you can withstand more damage.

Between this clever spin on reloading, the diverse enemy roster, and the fact that the core shooting itself is fundamentally punchy, Crisol’s combat is a blast. And with a modest $18 price tag, it’s some of the most cost-effective exhilaration you’ll have all year. – Harrison Abbott

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Crisol: Theater of Idols here.

5) Mewgenics

As much as I love the gameplay of Mewgenics, the new game from The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen, I really don’t care for the overall style. There’s a Newgrounds-style edgelord attitude to the writing that may work for others, but that I find pretty repellent. Pushing the line of good taste by having you fight fetuses in the sewers, for example, feels like something I would have found funny in college, but my tastes have changed. That said, it’s a testament to the game’s tactical loop that, despite all my reservations, I love it.

Mewgenics is a combination of turn-based tactics and a bizarro cat breeding simulator, wrapped up in a compelling roguelike structure. At the start of each run, you pick a group of four cats from your dilapidated house to go out on a quest, assigning them each a D&D-style class that alters the way they play. You’ll move through nodes on a series of maps, encountering small story beats and participating in XCOM-like battles. Once you complete your runs, the surviving cats cannot be brought out on subsequent runs, but in their retirement, they can… interact with other cats and birth new ones. As you progress, you’ll amass items, improve your house, or “donate” unwanted cats to various people in the neighborhood.

The cat breeding part is pretty good, but I think it takes a long time to feel really substantial. The real secret sauce of Mewgenics is the extremely tight combat. Much like Into the Breach, each battle is a one-screen tactical puzzle, trying to figure out the best way to optimize your turn. Unlike Into the Breach, your turns are based on initiative, so turns swap between the two sides of the conflict, and you do not have perfect knowledge of what your opponents are going to do. What you do have is a smart set of skills that are familiar, but with just enough of a twist to make your options feel substantial.

Like any good roguelike, as you level up and collect items, you will refine the build of each of your cats in a way that complements your playstyle, making for a satisfying power curve that makes you sad when your perfect run comes to an end. It’s one of the strongest turn-based tactics games I’ve played in a long time, making it extremely easy to do “just one more battle” for hours and hours. – Aaron Boehm

Mewgenics is available on Steam.

4) Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE

While not leaving quite so large a cultural (or, indeed, commercial) footprint, there was a time when Fatal Frame, aka Project Zero, belonged in the same conversation as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It definitely got left behind in the rush to the seventh console generation, but it’s easy to forget that it used to be one of the big three in the survival horror space. Of course, that was decades ago, and Koei Tecmo’s outpaced franchise is now firmly cemented in bronze position, settling to be the Stargate to the other two’s Star Wars and Trek.

Still, Resident Evil and Silent Hill have had their rocky patches too, and they managed to stage winning comebacks. In both cases, they earned tremendous goodwill by returning to their roots and dusting off their most celebrated (sophomore) outings. So, there’s no reason Project Zero shouldn’t be able to do the same!

Enter the cumbersomely titled Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE. Like SH2 and RE2, Crimson Butterfly is something of a fan favourite within its respective canon. Heralded for an enthralling narrative, peerless atmosphere, and effective J-horror chills, it represents the undisputed peak of the series and is therefore a sound place to kick off its hopeful revival.

The 2026 remake wisely avoids messing with those strong foundations. As before, it follows a pair of twins, Mio and Mayu, who find themselves stranded in the fabled ghost town of Minakami. Said to entrap anyone who crosses its threshold, this rural settlement is notorious within the region for its history of paranormal encounters, occult practices, and unspeakable tragedy.

Prior to a devastating calamity, its residents were known to be highly suspicious of outsiders. As it turns out, they were afraid that any interlopers might uncover, and then try to put a stop to, the local tradition of sacrificing young twins in order to keep shut the gates of hell.

For years, the people of Minakami upheld this barbaric custom until, one day, the ritual was botched, and everybody was promptly spirited away. Now, with Mio and Mayu’s fateful arrival, the villagers’ revenants see an opportunity to conclude their unfinished business and rectify the terrible mistake that has caused them centuries of woe. As Mio, your only way of defending yourself (and your sister) from this spectral threat is to make use of the so-called Camera Obscura, a spirit-photography device that can exorcise malevolent souls by capturing their essence on film.

Veteran players will recognise that the key plot beats haven’t changed much in the remake, but will be heartened to learn that extra layers have been added to the backstory, and that the supporting cast is significantly fleshed out too. Whether deliberate or not, the themes also resonate differently in the 2020s. Like with Yûta Shimotsu’s Best Wishes to All, you could interpret it all through the lens (pun not unintended) of contemporary anxieties about Japan’s ageing population. There’s just something rather poignant nowadays about this tale of young maidens being generationally sacrificed to prolong the lives of town elders and patriarchal clans.

It’s an angle that the remake decidedly leans into anyway, as you get to learn more about past martyrs by completing new side quests, listening to audio recordings, and poring through reams upon reams of collectable documents. Striving to uncover all of Minakami’s secrets through these optional activities is a real joy, as it incentivises you to stray from the golden path and really get immersed in the rich, spooky setting (and boy is it spooky!).

This exploration side of things is made even more engaging by the addition of new lenses for the Camera Obscura, which can be used to reveal hidden items, detect phantom echoes, and purge festering corruption that’s blocking your path. Naturally, these attachments also factor into the game’s overhauled combat, with each lens functioning as the photographic equivalent of a different gun (be it the standard pistol, a long-distance sniper, a fast-loading machine gun, or a powerful shotgun). On top of this, there are multiple types of filmstock to consider, a quasi-parrying mechanic, the chance to take paparazzi-like combo shots, special abilities, a charm-based loadout, an upgrade system, and a mechanic whereby enemies get enraged if you give them too much aggro.

Honestly, it’s all a little overwhelming at first, but once you get into the rhythm, you’ll find that the combat has a lot of tactical nuance and that ghostbusting here truly makes you feel good. That’s not all the remake brings to the table, either, with other notable innovations being unkillable stalker enemies that hound you through pulse-pounding stealth sequences and contextual jump scares that leave you clenching each and every time you open a door.

All in all, this is a terrific package and the perfect way to experience a classic game with respectful touch-ups. Let’s hope it signals the start of a bright future for Fatal Frame going forward. – Harrison Abbott

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE here.

3) Vampire Crawlers

I liked Vampire Survivors, but it didn’t keep its hooks in me for as long as it did for many others. The aesthetics were really neat, but I eventually moved on to something that felt a little more active to me. Vampire Crawlers flipped the script and put the aesthetics and ideas of the game into a genre that resonates with me a lot more: the roguelike deckbuilder. While it doesn’t create something as deep as a game like Slay the Spire, the fast-paced, arcadey nature of the gameplay makes it stand out in the extremely crowded genre.

One of the most surprising things about the game is how well it maps all of the emotions and pacing of Vampire Survivors into a completely different format. It takes card game mechanics and makes them fast by adding a combo system, giving you multipliers for playing cards in mana value order, helping to alleviate some of the analysis paralysis that comes with deckbuilders.

As a result, turns go super-fast without sacrificing strategy. There’s still thought that goes into a turn, carefully weighing the synergies between the cards and how best to play them, but the focus is on keeping you moving by making the complexity manageable in the middle of a battle. In addition, it doubles down on the amazing audio-visual flourishes of Vampire Survivors, making every victory into a fountain of visual effects and pleasing sounds. It gives you slot machine levels of dopamine hits, while still requiring some brain flexing to earn it.

While the combo system is definitely the most drastic addition to the deckbuilding formula, there are other ways the game adds complexity that really make it sing. At the start of each run, you pick a crawler as your main character, which affects your starting deck. This crawler is also a card that can be played, and when it’s active, it grants you specific modifiers to your actions. Each card also has a number of slots that can be filled with gems, giving the card another effect when played. The combos, the crawlers, and the gems all mix into such an interesting amount of vectors for synergy, without ever overwhelming you with too much information. Deckbuilders can be a hard genre to get into, and Vampire Crawlers feels like one that I would recommend to new players as both a good intro to the genre and one of the most outright fun ones. – Aaron Boehm

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Vampire Crawlers here.

2) Saros

If you can count on Housemarque for one thing, it’s that their games always feel outstanding. Going back to their more arcade-y days, I was always impressed with just how perfectly-tuned their mechanics are, allowing you precise control as they overwhelm you with waves of enemies and projectiles.

Saros, which evolves on the formula established in Returnal, is one of the best feeling third-person shooters I’ve played in a long time, and, fortunately, it’s attached to a compellingly hostile world and a gripping cosmic horror narrative.

Dropping you in the ever-shifting world of Carcosa, Saros casts you as Arjun Devraj, an enforcer on an interstellar expedition trying to figure out what happened to the other teams sent to this planet. It quickly becomes clear that Carcosa’s oppressive eclipse may have an adverse effect on the mental status of everyone here, and evidence mounts of previous expeditions being lost to power lust and madness.

Even weirder, when Devraj dies on his many trips into the planet’s wastelands, he finds himself mysteriously reborn in the base. All this makes the perfect setup for a roguelite, albeit one that softens its commitment to the structure a bit more compared to its predecessor. For the better, in my opinion.

Each run, you select a starting biome and hit the ground running. As you blast your way through tentacled eldritch monstrosities, you’ll pick up various powerups that define your build throughout the run, while also collecting currency that will allow you to purchase permanent upgrades at your home base.

This is all well and good, and it manages to make a smoother experience than the overly punishing Returnal, but the real juice is in the core gameplay loop. Arjun moves so fast in this game, allowing you to use the hyper mobile dash to dodge your way through the bullet hell-like patterns of projectiles that are thrown your way.

Not only do you have to pay attention to the sheer volume of projectiles and enemies, but you also need to keep track of the color, as some can be absorbed to power your weapon, some can cause dangerous corruption, and others need to be completely avoided. It’s a thrilling game that puts you in a euphoric zone where you feel like you’re completely in sync with the game, making for one of the most satisfying shooters I’ve played in years. – Aaron Boehm

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Saros here.

1) Resident Evil Requiem

The last time Resident Evil tried to appease everybody, it resulted in the catastrophically compromised RE6. It was with justifiable scepticism, then, that many approached the franchise’s ninth mainline entry, as it promised to fuse two ostensibly incompatible styles of Resi game.

As touted in the marketing, half of your Resident Evil Requiem playthrough would adhere to the philosophy of the Ethan Winters saga — which pared down the globetrotting shenanigans, pivoted to a first-person perspective, eschewed super-soldier protagonists, and placed an emphasis on claustrophobic horror over bombast — while the other half was being sold as a return to the madcap glory days of RE4 — conversely characterised by its outlandish set-pieces, over-the-shoulder gunplay, campy extravagance and roundhouse kicking hero. It was literally being pitched as two diametrically opposed experiences.

Some were therefore anxious that history seemed doomed to repeat itself here, with Capcom once again trying to maximise broad appeal and cater to everybody in a ploy that would leave both camps (the horror and action fans alike) dissatisfied. After all, some people like pizza. Most people like ice cream. But only a demented crackpot employed by the Umbrella Corporation would ever dream of splicing them together.

Well, those faithless doubters (ourselves included) will just have to eat their words. Because, against all odds, Requiem is kind of magical. We’d go so far as to say it’s one of Resident Evil’s finest hours. What at first glance seemed destined to be a hideous culinary nightmare (mixing milk, sugar, bread, cheese, tomato, and candy toppings into an unappetizing sludge) instead turned out to be an exquisite pizza pie, complemented by a delicious serving of ice cream on the side!

The horror portions, wherein you control franchise newbie Grace Ashcroft, are electrifying, containing some of the series’ most frightening encounters to date. This is particularly true in the early hours, when ammunition is so scarce that you’ve got to frugally conserve your one and only high-calibre bullet, and even the garden-variety zombies pose a threat.

You see, thanks to a mutated T-Virus strain, the shambling corpses you deal with here are smarter, more durable, and more relentless than ever before. You subsequently have to use your wits to outmanoeuvre them as Grace, and the systems for doing so are surprisingly flexible. You can try and sneak around them, bait them into attacking one another, exploit their idiosyncratic behaviours (in a beautiful touch, every ghoul in the opening area has their own unique design and personality traits), or decide to expend some of your limited resources to take them down.

And because you have to seriously engage with them in this way, they’re no longer mere fodder. You even end up developing intimate adversarial relationships with some of them. I was terrified of the hulking chef and would do my best to avoid ever crossing his path. Meanwhile, I got flustered whenever the obsessive maid would follow me from room to room, and I shuddered upon hearing the telltale wailing of those shrill songstresses. It just puts the bite back into the walking dead when they don’t blend into an indistinguishable horde anymore and are instead treated like legitimate monsters to be afraid of in their own right.

Of course, they pale in comparison to “The Girl”, Requiem’s petrifying icon, who is used rather sparingly, but supplies some of the best stalker horror we’ve seen this side of Amnesia: The Bunker whenever she does descend from the rafters to menace us. Towering in stature and sporting a permanent rictus grin, she’s some of the purest nightmare fuel Resident Evil has ever given us, and tiptoeing around in the dark as she tries to sniff you out is guaranteed to get your heart racing.

In short, playing as Grace is disempowering and scary in all the right ways. The catharsis you feel when you then get to switch over to legacy character Leon S. Kennedy — who has been promoted into some kind of John Wick-esque Baba Yaga for bioweapons here — is downright euphoric. When taking control of the veteran zombie slayer, Requiem’s entire dynamic flips, and you no longer feel like you’re locked inside with the monsters. They’re locked inside with you.

Regardless of your stance on how action-oriented Resident Evil should be, you’ve got to admit the combat is ridiculously cool in this instance. The animations are silky smooth, and enemies react impactfully (and gruesomely) to your shots. There’s also a pleasing, almost dance-like, fluidity to the movement that has you grinning with glee as you chain together slick parries, axe throws, and brutal gun finishers like the trained badass you are. I especially loved the versatility of the game’s chainsaws, which can get lodged into foes’ stomachs and drag crippled zombies along the floor if they’re still clinging to them. The first time I was given the chance to go on a rampage with one of these awesome power tools, I mentally regressed into my 15-year-old self and could not stop beaming.

Come to think of it, I had that same demented grin on my face for most of Resident Evil Requiem thereafter, whether I was delighting in the meticulous level design of the Rhodes Hill Care Centre, facing off against classic Resi creatures in the throwback-heavy climax, or just marvelling at the insanity of increasingly over-the-top set pieces. On occasion, it does still feel like two mismatched games stapled together. But when those games are this insanely good, who cares? – Harrison Abbott

Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Resident Evil Requiem here.

Honourable Mentions:

Sol Cesto – This unconventional dungeon crawler roguelike is about manipulating the odds to kill strange monsters while getting upgrades in the form of teeth. Strong art direction and a unique gameplay hook keep you coming back for more, run after run.

Tombwater – A top-down Old West Bloodborne-meets-Zelda game that feels a bit like Mina the Hollower, but with more build options. It can be a bit easy to get turned around while exploring, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a fun one to lose yourself in.

Luna Abyss – It plays a bit like the unholy child of Metroid Prime and DOOM Eternal, casting you as a prisoner forced to explore an oppressive megastructure as part of her sentence. The first-person bullet hell and platforming combination makes for a thrilling sci-fi adventure.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator – Another weird one from Strange Scaffold, throwing you into a world where people can predict the lives of babies from the moment they’re born and use this technology as a speculative market. A simple, but fun gameplay loop that uses the language of the stock market, while pointing out its inherent casual cruelty. – Aaron Boehm