NOTE: There are spoilers ahead for every game discussed in this feature.

Stray Souls

In Stray Souls you’ll take control of unremarkable teenager Daniel who moves into the dreary town of Aspen Falls after inheriting his recently deceased grandmother’s house. The prospect of a Silent Hill-alike was certainly enticing, but Stray Souls fluffs its lines by being a little too cookie-cutter. It certainly doesn’t nail the psychological trauma element it’s aiming for as Daniel’s actions and those of accompanying Martha can’t easily be explained. All this creepy stuff is happening, but they don’t seem phased at all. The spectre of Daniel’s grandma torments him, but why? Martha gives Daniel a gun, somehow? By the end, the lore is explained by a random note found in a police station. See, Daniel has ‘The Darkness’, with his grandmother’s haunting causing all the strange monsters to appear in Aspen Falls and the surrounding forest. Oh, and there’s a cult. It’s as inconsequential a backstory imaginable with zero context to explain the scary stuff happening despite its best efforts.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Soulslike Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has a lot to like: it’s an inviting spin on FromSoftware’s blueprint with the challenge of certain encounters indicated to the player before engaging, saving them needless frustration, and a streamlined combat system forgoing the mental gymnastics required with Team Ninja’s other Soulslike Nioh. The story overall has merit too, telling a complex tale of multiple parties vying for control of an all-powerful magical elixir. It’s just that, the ending just… happens, with minimal challenge. The final three bosses are much easier than the side-quest boss Zhang Liao for instance, for once you’ve mastered deflecting his lightning-fast attacks, the remaining bosses are a walk in the park.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Numerous complaints surround the brevity of Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare 3 and its controversial open combat missions. That said, the Modern Warfare 3’s villainous Vladimir Makarov hatches a plan to blow up the Channel Tunnel between England and France, with Task Force 141 fighting for their lives to defuse the bomb and eliminate the terrorists. Thing is, there’s no jeopardy; we know Task Force 141 will succeed – albeit, as it happens, at a cost – but perhaps others who’ve suggested Makarov should be victorious have a point. This resolution would set up a true cliff-hanger. As it happens, Task Force 141 learn of Makarov’s latest scheme and thwart it within minutes. Makarov could be portrayed as a major evildoer, but Modern Warfare 3 instead prefers to depict him as an easily beatable, cartoonish villain.

Daymare 1994: Sandcastle

The story-driven survival horror prequel to Daymare: 1998 features a host of deadly enemies, tense encounters, and niggling environmental puzzles. The plot itself however is a befuddling mess, poorly paced acted out by largely unlikeable characters. There’s no motivation established for the character’s actions; it’s a feeling of procession as player-character Dahlia Reyes delves deeper into the not-so-surprising underground secret base. And the ending, whereby Dahlia is telepathically persuaded by her sister Helen to inject herself with the final sample of Ogre blood to presumably survive teleportation is too ambiguous. Why would she do this? Is Helen speaking under the influence of the ogre? How is Reyes even hearing her in the first place?

Quantum Error

Developer TeamKill Media should be applauded for their ambition; attempting to meld first and third-person action, cosmic shooting, and horror, all through the lens of a firefighter can’t have been easy, but alas the results of Quantum Error make all their efforts somewhat misdirected. Front and centre is the game’s convoluted story, masterfully failing to make sense of its dimension hopping, planet spanning madness. The story is told through poorly directed cinematics to boot, with surprise cutscenes interjecting the gameplay. It tries to do too much, and by game’s end its impossible to make sense of the events that have transpired.

Amnesia: The Bunker

The Bunker is a smaller scale Amnesia experience, with an underdeveloped story to go with it. It’s possible Frictional opted to tell a story lighter on lore to fit the overall more refined experience, but the plot is guessable, full of red herrings and unnecessary distraction. The biggest diversion though is that player-character Henri’s amnesia doesn’t have any relevance at all. He didn’t forget, he was simply in unconscious when all the scary stuff started materialising. The ‘bad thing’ that he did was to cheat at poker to avoid partaking in a night-time patrol. An innocuous undertaking for the usually decent Henri; had he not cheated and gone on patrol himself, the events of the game – kickstarted by Lambert consuming the mysterious spring water – would likely have happened anyway.

Greyhill Incident

Owing to Greyhill Incident’s cliché story, underbaked characters, murky visuals, tepid gameplay, and extreme brevity, it’s premature ending might be its saving grace. The game’s only serviceable character Ryan is on a mission to save his son Henry from the clutches of the sinister greys, who for the game’s handful of hour runtime skulk nonchalantly through the rural farmland Ryan calls home. To save his son, he must be abducted. And… that’s it. We don’t see Ryan’s fate. Does he save Henry? Does he survive? Has his consciousness been transferred to his dog? Greyhill Incident’s climactic abruptness leaves too many pesky questions.

The Walking Dead: Destinies

It’s bad enough that The Walking Dead: Destinies has some of the most horrendous gameplay, stealth, writing, visuals, and cutscenes ever put into video game format. Yet somehow, for a game about your choices having an impact, it manages to have the same ending scenarios for Shane and Rick. The same attack on the prison with a tank (with Merle as the villain for Rick and the Governer for Shane). The same choice leads to either Glen or Michonne dying. Even the same fight in the circle of fire. The same bland evacuation from the prison, with either Shane or Rick leaving separately with Carl. It just comes down to which characters you’d like to see appearing in the same terrible ending rather than your choices having any meaning. At least Rick’s path has Carol 1v1ing a tank with an assault rifle, which is hilarious.

Flashback 2

This long-awaited sequel to the 16-bit classic has its fair share of problems. If you managed to get through to the end, well done you, as not only was there clunky combat, cliched atmosphere, lacklustre missions, and boring, blurry level design to lumber through, there was an unfathomable number of technical deficiencies which broke the game, meaning finishing it was an impossible endeavour anyway. Much like the original, protagonist Conrad is working to thwart an alien invasion, but the settings and story beats rarely deviate. It’s an execution so tepid that you’ll probably not even care what happens come the game’s end. Flashback 2 is a sequel we did not need.

Sonic Superstars

As with all 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games, story is told in between-level cutscenes. Except, in Sonic Superstars – the return to side-scrolling Sonic many long-term fans hoped would be a spiritual successor to Sonic Mania – even between-level cutscenes can’t explain all the crazy goings on in the Blue Blur’s latest adventure. Of the game’s multiple narratives, the Last Story is the most perplexing, with the release of a dragon, the origin of which is remarkably unclear. Eggman’s use of time manipulation is never explained either. A dumbfounding conclusion to an underwhelming Sonic game.

As its name might suggest, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle acts as a sort of prequel to its predecessor, giving us a look at what exactly was going on in the world four years before the events of Daymare 1998. The story takes place in the eponymous year of 1994, with a trio of H.A.D.E.S. agents heading out to Area 51 on a routine mission that goes horribly wrong.

"Daymare 1994: Sandcastle acts as a sort of prequel to its predecessor."

When it comes to gameplay, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle wears its influences right on its sleeves. Featuring an over-the-shoulder perspective, the game feels like a classic take on Resident Evil 2 Remake formula. The camera angle goes a long way in helping the game establish its tone and atmosphere, since your field of view is essentially funneled to focus almost entirely on what’s right in front of you. Another excellent idea that the game borrows from Resident Evil 2 Remake is the ability to do a quick 180-degree turn, which helps quite a bit in tense combat encounters.

Speaking of which, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle certainly features quite a bit of combat. After a slow build-up during the game’s prologue where you’re essentially learning how to execute some of the game’s puzzle solving and exploration mechanics, Daymare 1994 quickly starts amping up the frequency with which you’ll be getting into fights against the game’s many nightmarish enemies. This is where the game offers up a first impression that doesn’t really hold-up the further you get into the game. Where the slow opening would indicate an experience more focused on exploration and atmosphere, it instead quickly devolves into constantly fighting things off.

The combat itself, while quite a bit of fun once you get into the flow of switching between your weapons on time and making use of your Frost Grip ability, suffers from a distinct lack of variety in the equipment available to you. Where other action-oriented horror titles would offer you plenty of tools to at least have fun while you’re running for your life from monstrous creatures, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle instead features a surprisingly limited arsenal.

"Where the slow opening would indicate an experience more focused on exploration and atmosphere, it instead quickly devolves into constantly fighting things off."

The game shows an inability to balance out its slower, tense moments with the heart-pounding action that most of the game essentially becomes. While this is by no means a bad thing, the pacing quite definitely suffers because of these choices. If the game is supposed to be an out-and-out action game, it should definitely lean into those ideas further than the slow, plodding setup parts of the prologue. When it comes to horror, the game doesn’t really successfully pul off anything that might be even remotely scary.

Most of Daymare 1994: Sandcastle revolves around poorly done jump scares, which is a real shame considering how well the game can manage to look spooky from a distance at least. The bleak corridors of Area 51, lit up only by flashing red lights and a couple of lamps that haven’t had their bulbs blow out can offer up quite a striking image. Sadly, all the atmosphere can’t really help salvage the game’s attempts at horror when every second corner you turn around will have a monster lurking there. While early-game attempts at some jump scares can work quite well—a fuse box blowing up in the prologue comes to mind—trying to use nothing but jump scares can only really get you so far, and ultimately, it falls to the action gameplay to help uplift the game.

Sadly, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle also falters quite a bit with its combat. While visuals of weapons look decent, and the enemies look fantastically monstrous, there are smaller issues that combine together to form a bigger problem. For example, many enemies just won’t react to getting hit by your bullets. Sure, strong monsters shouldn’t necessarily be taking much damage from your SMG, but at least a minor stagger animation would have been much better than what we have now. There’s also the fact that you only really have access to two weapons during your entire playthrough: an SMG and a shotgun. That’s right, you won’t get any other weapons to play around with.

"Sadly, all the atmosphere can’t really help salvage the game’s attempts at horror."

Thanks to its poor attempts at horror while trying to focus on action gameplay, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle suffers quite a bit from poor pacing issues. While I first thought that these pacing issues would largely be limited to the game’s opening hours where it’s still trying to introduce its premise and characters for you, even the mid-game period still showed quite a few problems with how Daymare 1994 paces out its combat encounters with the slower, more exploration-focused puzzle elements.

The premise of the game is surprisingly fun, and grounds for a rather excellent adventure thanks to the heavy thriller vibes it gives off. H.A.D.E.S. agent and protagonist Dalila Reyes is a fun character, and despite the title featuring incredibly goofy writing, the interactions between her and her fellow agents can range from fun to entertainingly nonsensical. The premise for the game starts off simple, but as is the case with just about any horror game out there, things quickly get complicated once Reyes starts exploring deeper into the bowels of Area 51.

There’s even a contrived, surprisingly-futuristic PDA—called the D.I.D.—that you can use as the ultimate tool, since not only does it let you manage your inventory and track your collected documents, but you can also use a standard USB cable to hack just about any highly-classified government computer you find. Nothing in the game ever feels like it’s meant to be taken too seriously.

"The premise for the game starts off simple, but as is the case with just about any horror game out there, things quickly get complicated."

Daymare 1994: Sandcastle’s biggest success, aside from the fun vibes of its story, is how well it manages to capture its time period. Aside from the ultra-futuristic D.I.D., computers in the world of Daymare 1994 are beige, blocky things with massive keys on the keyboards, and a whole lot of dials next to screens giving off the soft interlaced glow of old-school CRT monitors. There’s quite a bit of charm to be found in exploring a ruined government office filled with these old-timey computers, even though you’re probably just going to get jumped by another monster.

The game isn’t free of technical issues in its visuals either. While the game itself feels and plays competently, cutscenes were strangely jittery, and the idea of lip syncing for dialogue may as well be a concept as alien as several of the monsters you end up fighting. Even when playing on Quality mode on the PS5, textures were surprisingly low-resolution, and even a map pinned to a wall was little more than a blurry, blocky mess. Where it might fail on technical levels, however, Daymare 1994: Sandcastle succeeds in its artistic intentions by presenting some really good-looking tableaus to punctuate the key moments of your exploration through Area 51.

Daymare 1994: Sandcastle is far from the perfect game. Plagued with technical problems as well as issues with fundamental design, it manages to be an average game thanks to its somewhat competent combat system. Sure, its story won’t be taking home any awards, and you might only really have two weapons to play around with, but the game still manages to be okay in a pulpy kind of way.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.