This weekend, I decided I’d take a break from all these exciting new releases to play something I had played before. It had been at least five years since I had last played Condemned: Criminal Origins, so I was surprised when it took me all of five seconds to get the hang of it again. Ten minutes in and I was bludgeoning crazed homeless people with a pipe I tore off the wall of a storage room. I crippled so many NPCs that day, I can still hear them screaming as I type this.
I assumed Condemned would’ve aged poorly, and it had, visually. I also didn’t expect to be impressed by what gritty, realistic visuals looked like in 2005. What did sneak up on me was how viscerally satisfying the combat still is. It also reminded me of how badly we need a new Condemned game.
I’ve had similar experiences with the underrated Saw: The Video Game — whatever your opinion is of the films, the first game is actually pretty good — and even Nightmare Creatures, which I can confirm is still a helluva lot of fun to play after nearly twenty years.
Alan Wake seems destined to join this club at some point. It’s not there yet because it’s only five years-old. The aging process hasn’t had enough time to really take effect, but when it does, it’s going to be a good thing. It’s common for weird things to go unappreciated for some time.
I’ve come up with a theory to explain this, and the gist of it is it’s all our fault. I like strange things, and I still occasionally make snap judgments of stuff I don’t immediately understand. I think it’s the quirky nature of these things that keeps a lot of people from wanting to try it. I have friends who never played Alan Wake solely because they saw a trailer for it back in 2010 and they decided it was too weird.
This has happened to me, too. I wasn’t able to glean much enjoyment out of Silent Hill 4: The Room until I returned to it with an open mind a few years ago. I still don’t love it, but it is easier to appreciate its strengths, such as the music, atmosphere and enemy designs.
How about you? Which horror game(s) do you think have gotten better with age?
