Editorials
8 Horror Games We Missed At E3!
If you’re a gamer, you’re undoubtedly already fully aware of how stupefyingly awesome last week was. If you’re not a gamer, than let me take a second to fill you in. Last week, nearly every video game company in the country migrated to Los Angeles so they could spend a few days blowing our minds.
They did this by showing off new hardware — including a saucy battle between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 — and announcing tons of exciting new games. Among these big reveals were a myriad horror games, both from indie developers and high profile publishers, that all look absolutely terrifying. Unfortunately, even though we saw from the likes of Daylight, Outlast, Dying Light and Dead Rising 3 — there were still many highly anticipated games that didn’t make an appearance.
After the break I have eight horror games I really wanted to see more from last week, but didn’t. Check them out, and let me know what I missed in the comments!
I am so bummed we didn’t hear anything from inSANE. It was a long shot, but come on, Mirror’s Edge 2 and Kingdom Hearts III were just as unlikely and we saw both.
It doesn’t necessarily mean director Guillermo Del Toro’s exciting foray into video games has been canned; Dead Island and The Evil Within (previously known as project Zwei) both went silent before we resurfacing again a year (or two) later. I do hope Del Toro finds a developer, a publisher, and all the money he could possibly need, because a Lovecraftian action horror game from the mastermind behind Pan’s Labyrinth sounds incredible.
This is a game we know little about, outside of the possibility that it may or may not feature creepy dolls. It might not even be a horror game.
What has me most excited for this is the developer behind it. It’s Climax! You know, the team behind two of the best (recent) Silent Hill games, Origins and Shattered Memories. They understand psychological horror, so if this does end up being a horror game that sees the light of day, I have full faith they’ll deliver something that’s truly terrifying.
Okay, yes, this is a little unfair. Bethesda is busier than ever promoting their current projects — an arsenal of hugely anticipated games that includes The Elder Scrolls Online (now coming to next-gen consoles, as well as PC!), Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Evil Within. Asking them to show us something from Doom 4 when they already have plenty coming is almost definitely asking too much. With that said, I don’t care, just show me the damn game already.
If you can’t do that, I’ll settle for an explanation as to what Endless Summer is, or even something related to Fallout. Maybe more on that Skyrim follow-up, too…
Robotoki is working on a post-apocalyptic survival game called Human Element. It sounds amazing, and not just because it has Robert Bowling, former lead and creative strategist on the Modern Warfare series, behind it. This is the only game on this list that’s coming to the Ouya console, so I hope they show us something soon. Last we heard, the plan was to launch an episodic prequel exclusively on the Ouya, followed by the “full” Human Element some time in 2015.
The past decade or so has seen a lot of online discourse about how comic-book movies popularized multiversal crossovers on the big screen. However, the truth is that the horror genre has been bringing fan-favorite characters together since before cinematic universes were even a thing.
From the iconic Universal Monsters to more recent match-ups like Freddy vs Jason, genre fans have always enjoyed seeing their favorite characters duke it out like blood-soaked professional wrestlers. While the movies can only occasionally offer us this kind of entertainment due to the inherent legal complications involved in convincing different studios to relinquish the rights to their precious IPs, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of entertaining crossovers in other media (as well as some lesser-known movies that manage to skirt legal issues).
With that in mind, I’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating five underrated horror crossovers from different mediums. After all, genre fans might be surprised to learn about what the cenobites have been up to in the literary world, and plenty of our favorite “dead” franchises are still alive and well in the world of comic books.
That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite crossovers if you think we missed a particularly underrated one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. Hack/Slash (2004-2018)
A lot of crossover comics treat these events as semi-canonical spin-offs that usually have little bearing on the overarching plot of the main story, but this definitely wasn’t the case with Tim Seeley’s fan-favorite Hack/Slash. Every time Cassie and Vlad came across a familiar character such as Chucky, Ash Williams, and even Jeffrey Combs’ incarnation of Herbert West, the writers made a point of expanding the comic’s mythology in order to permanently incorporate elements from each different series.
In fact, one Redditor even compiled all of the different horror franchises that coexist under the Hack/Slash umbrella, and the comic actually serves as the quasi-official home to a veritable army of scary movies!
Of course, we can only hope that the rumored live-action adaptation continues this trend of honoring the iconic slashers of yesteryear…
4. Scoobynatural (2018)
Possibly the last truly great episode of Supernatural, this unexpected crossover event put demon hunting brothers Sam and Dean smack-dab in the middle of the classic Scooby-Doo caper A Night of Fright is No Delight! The best part is that this officially licensed adventure manages to blend both live-action and animation in order to tell a meta story that’s sure to thrill fans of either franchise.
Unfortunately, while the crossover was a highly promoted television event back in 2018, it aired towards the end of the internet’s love affair with Supernatural. At that point, many of the series’ long-time fans had already jumped ship and never got the chance to enjoy one of the show’s best episodes.
That’s why I’d urge genre fans to revisit this standalone adventure even if they have no interest in watching the rest of the series!
3. Terrordrome: Reign of the Legends (2018)
The original Terrordrome was one of my all-time favorite fan-games, but the folks at Huracan Studios were painfully aware that they could never turn that nasty roster of licensed characters into a proper fighting franchise. That’s why it makes sense that the spiritual sequel to Rise of the Bogeymen only features public-domain monsters and killers.
While it lacks easily recognizable icons like Jason and Leatherface, a new game engine and years of updates have transformed Reign of the Legends into a superior product. Despite the rudimentary 3D graphics, there are undeniable thrills to be found in beating the snot out of Sasquatch while playing as Bloody Mary, and I’ve spent way more time on the multiplayer mode than I’d care to admit.
2. Monster Brawl (2011)
Another public domain standoff between iconic horror titans that are no longer owned by studios, Jesse Thomas Cook’s wrestling-themed thriller remains one of the most creative takes on a creature-feature that I’ve ever seen. In this ambitious low-budget production, audiences are treated to a supernatural wrestling event featuring fan-favorite monsters like Frankenstein, The Mummy and even a handful of freaks from Greek mythology.
While the flick often feels more like an especially spooky pay-per-view event rather than a proper movie, wrestling fans are sure to have a blast with Cook’s fiendish sense of humor as well as some surprisingly well-choreographed knockouts.
1. Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell (2016)
Paul Kane is already a fan-favorite author among Hellraiser fans, with the English writer having been involved in everything from the incredibly fun Hellbound Hearts anthology to the non-fiction classic The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy. That being said, my personal favorite example of Kane’s work is the criminally underread crossover Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell.
A loving pastiche that brings Clive Barker and Arthur Conan Doyle together for a blood-splattered good time, this unique novel could only have been made by a writer with intricate knowledge of both the Sherlock stories and Hellraiser’s in-depth mythology. That’s why I’d recommend it to discerning horror fans craving a more investigative take on the cenobites!
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