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What Horror Game Surprised You, for Better or Worse?
I haven’t quite gotten over just how good Until Dawn is, so in an attempt to help me move past it in time for SOMA, I’d like to hear about the horror game(s) that surprised you the most, either by exceeding your expectations or failing spectacularly to live up to them.
The last eight months left us with slew of titles that may qualify as victories for the genre, and it started with Capcom’s long-awaited course correction for their flagship “horror” series. The Resident Evil HD remake showed us what can happen when Capcom applies itself, the episodic Revelations 2 proved they’re still capable of innovation, and the recent confirmation of a Resident Evil 2 basically said they really are listening to us.
It took a while to get to this point. We should savor it.
Resident Evil is working on getting back to its fighting weight, but it’s hardly the only victory to come out of 2015. Dying Light sold enough copies to scare away its only competition, Killing Floor 2 got some blood in our eyes, and Bloodborne combined the immortal appeal of Nightmare Creatures with an overabundance of top hats and set it in an H.P. Lovecraft fever dream.
They haven’t all been winners, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call any of them bad. The Order: 1886 took itself too seriously, Zombi played fast and loose with the term “remaster”, and Lucius II is definitely a game you can buy right now, if you wanted to.
The surprises you go with don’t have to be recent releases. As far as good surprises go, my list would have room for Shadows of the Damned and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I might even include Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, which drew more ire than it deserved. It made some unusual changes to the core gameplay, but I suspect we’ll eventually remember it more for its unnerving world and brilliant storytelling than the terrible idea that was that electric lantern.
Representing the ugly side of horror games is Aliens: Colonial Marines, Dino Crisis 3, and Atari’s pitiful attempts to make Alone in the Dark and Haunted House relevant again. If there’s room on this hate train for another passenger, Konami’s done more than enough this year to earn that spot.
Now it’s your turn. Tell me, which horror games surprised you the most?
The best part about engaging with collaborative genre fiction on the internet is that anyone can get in on the action, with worldwide accessibility often resulting in absurd story beats that wouldn’t be possible if any single person was responsible for the entire narrative. And while Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film is definitely the young filmmaker’s own unique take on the infamous creepypasta, it’s fun to see other creators join the Backrooms sandbox now that the big screen adaptation is getting ready for a record-shattering opening weekend.
As if cleverly timed releases like Puppet Combo’s The Backrooms game weren’t enough (not to mention that Scary Movie poster poking fun at Parsons’ flick), McDonald’s official social media accounts have now released an analog horror video of their own celebrating the liminal terrors of the McRooms – complete with a familiar purple surprise at the end of the footage.
While it’s funny enough to see the world’s most recognizable Fast Food giant engage with internet-borne Found Footage thrills seemingly out of the blue, the video is actually referencing a long-running gag among the Backrooms fandom where creators jokingly talk about there being a fully functional McDonald’s restaurant hidden somewhere in level 0 of the infamous liminal labyrinth.
Now, would it be too much to hope for a moist-carpet-flavored McShake to tie in with the film?
Backrooms is now playing only in theaters from A24.
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