COVID lockdowns broke us all a little bit (or, at least, those of us who endured actual lockdowns). Huddled in our little spaces while we waited for the government to assure us that the threat was passed and we could, again, go out and experience the world. At its core,…
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Remaking Silent Hill 2 is not like remaking a Resident Evil game. Resident Evil titles are big, fun, stupid rollercoasters of jump scares, ugly monsters, and a delight in the B-grade joy of zombie films. Silent Hill 2 meanwhile is thoughtful, introspective, and downright literary. The game is famous for…
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Schools are excellent locations for horror. They’re a shared experience for most of us, so developers benefit from the familiarity and can play on that to set up unease. Attending school is also a highly emotional experience that covers the full gamut thanks to a combination of societal pressure and…
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Schools are creepy places, and it doesn’t seem to matter which country you’re talking about, they’re going to be one of the most common settings for horror stories. The Bridge Curse 2: The Extraction is Taiwan’s turn to haunt a place of learning (in this case, a university), and it’s…
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I do not understand Sker Ritual. At all. It seems that at every opportunity the developers took what was great about Maid of Sker and do the exact opposite to it, and so now, across just two games in the “Sker” property, we’ve got a confused mess across the “franchise”…
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Death Mark deserves better recognition than it gets. The first two games in the series (Death Mark itself, and then Spirit Hunter: Ng) are both incredible horror visual novels, through which Experience Inc. has given us some of the finest art and suspense narratives that we’ve seen. And yet to…
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I don’t believe that games “age,” as new things come along to replace them. It’s a silly thing to suggest of an artwork. Is the Mona Lisa no longer relevant because people have Wacom tablets? Of course not. Is Shakespeare “dated” because Disney’s Marvel films are made on a bigger…
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Tsugunohi has been around for a few years on PC, but despite the developer proudly proclaiming the many, many minutes of streaming time it has chewed up in the promo material (over 100 million video views, apparently!), it’s been niche and exactly that kind of indie horror. Now it’s on…
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If you haven’t played Resident Evil 4 before, the game follows Raccoon City disaster survivor turned government agent, Leon S. Kennedy, on his mission to [undisclosed Spanish-speaking European country] to rescue Ashley Graham, the daughter of the US President, who has been kidnapped. Leon explores a village, a castle, and…
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Horror, at its best, is the most intense storytelling tool that is available to us. A good horror experience – whether that be literature, film, music, or video games – is inherently challenging. It makes us uncomfortable, disempowers us, taps into the primal fight-or-flight response, and, ultimately, delivers some kind…
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