#15. CONDEMNED: CRIMINAL ORIGINS

Condemned: Criminal Origins really doesn’t get the love and attention it deserves. Perhaps it’s because it came out at a time when survival horror games seemed to be headed to an early demise, but it’s an incredibly underrated game. At the time, it was leaps and bounds ahead of most of its peers in terms of everything from its visuals to its AI, and with its visceral combat and genuinely terrifying scares, it ranks as one of the most uniquely memorable games in the genre to date. Hopefully, Sega will be encouraged by the current state of the genre and decide to bring the franchise back.

#14. DINO CRISIS

The folks over at Capcom are, of course, the masters of the survival horror genre, but though the Resident Evil games are obviously the ones that gave them that crown, others in the company’s catalogue have also put their talents on display. Dino Crisis remains a fan favourite to this day, even now, more than two decades on from its launch- and how can it not? A game with the survival horror design and mechanical sensibilities of Resident Evil that replaces zombies with dinosaurs? That’s a premise that’s as good in execution as it is on paper, especially in the series’ very first outing. To this day, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that Dino Crisis will eventually return.

#13. SOMA

Frictional Games has established itself as one of the best developers of horror games over the last decade or so, and as those who’ve played it will gladly tell you, SOMA definitely ranks as one of the studio’s best outings to date. A chilling setting that’s absolutely seeping with atmosphere, an incredibly told story that keeps you captivated until the very last second, gameplay mechanics that evoke genuine terror and dread from start to finish- in more ways than one, SOMA exhibits an immaculate understanding of what makes survival horror games tick.

#12. ETERNAL DARKNESS: SANITY’S REQUIEM

Boy, the GameCube really was an incredible console for fans of survival horror games, wasn’t it? And even though there were obviously quite a few games in that category on the console that are probably way more iconic (more on that in a bit), Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem still deserves its flowers. It can be an uneven experience at times, but when it comes to things such as its story and its atmosphere, it’s hard to find fault with it, while its combination of survival horror gameplay and insanity mechanics also deserves special praise.

#11. AMNESIA: THE DARK DESCENT

Frictional Games exploded onto the scene of the survival horror genre back in 2010, when a little game known as Amnesia: The Dark Descent took players by storm and delivered what is still one of the most uniquely terrifying games we’ve ever played. The first game in what is now an iconic horror franchise, Amnesia: The Dark Descent had an incredible knack of making players feel constantly vulnerable and helpless, and thanks to a combination of de-emphasized combat and nightmare-inducing stalker mechanics, it ended up crafting an experience that could easily keep you on the edge of the seat from the first second to the very last.

#10. ALIEN: ISOLATION

Speaking of stalker mechanics- it’s hard not to bring up Alien: Isolation when you talk about pursuer enemies, or about survival horror games in general, really. Creative Assembly’s 2014 gem didn’t get the praise that it deserved back when it first launched, but the further away we get from its release, the more it becomes apparent that it was a special game. From how perfectly it fit into the Alien franchise to how incredibly tense it was to play, from how well its levels were designed to how deftly it balanced its horror elements with exploration, there was just so much about it that one couldn’t help but love. Does it fall off a cliff towards the end? A little bit- but as they say, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

#9. THE EVIL WITHIN 2

We’ve spoken about quite a few underrated gems in this list, and yes, The Evil Within 2 is yet another one of those- an incredible survival horror experience that got neither the critical praise nor the commercial success that it so clearly deserved. Coming from the horror connoisseurs at Tango Gameworks, it built upon the foundations of its predecessor in some truly incredible ways. The way its resource economy was balanced, how well the progression mechanics worked, how rewarding and engaging exploration was in the semi-open world sections, how tense and enjoyable combat was (especially in the boss fights)- The Evil Within 2 was a massive leap over its already impressive predecessor, and we genuinely hope to see more of this franchise in the not-too-distant future.

#8. SYSTEM SHOCK

Immersive sim, first person shooter, survival horror- System Shock is many games in one, and yet in spite of that, no one aspect of it feels diluted by any means. Nearly three decades on from launch, the absolute genius of this game still stands tall, in spite of the fact that many elements of the gameplay have obviously aged quite a bit. But when it comes to things like the sense of place of Citadel Station, the eerie atmosphere that constantly looms over your head, and how uncomfortable the game constantly makes you feel, it feels like System Shock hasn’t aged a day. We can only hope that its upcoming remake will be able to do it justice.

#7. RESIDENT EVIL 7

After delivering the most mindlessly action-oriented Resident Evil game Capcom could have ever made, the company decided to go in the exact opposite direction with its successor in an attempt to take the series back to its roots- and did so with rousing success. Resident Evil 7 is exactly what Resident Evil should be, but this time, through the lens of a first person perspective. An emphasis on exploration, backtracking, and puzzles, combat that feels slower paced and deliberate, incredible atmosphere, and above all, genuine scares- these have been hallmarks of the franchise for as long as it has been around, and Resident Evil 7 has all of that in spades. While its direct sequel, Village, might be better as an all-round package, as a survival horror game, RE7 is one of the best games we’ve played in recent years.

#6. SILENT HILL 2

The Silent Hill franchise has frequently been regarded as one of the pillars of the survival horror genre, and Silent Hill 2 remains its absolute zenith to this day. The story of James Sunderland is still one of the greatest stories ever told in a video game, and the way it ties his character arc with the horrors that we as players witness in the titular town of Silent Hill simply cannot be praised enough. Add to that the game’s stellar atmosphere and, of course, its gameplay loop – which remains consistently compelling in spite of how little the game emphasizes combat – and it all comes together in truly masterful ways, to the extent that even today, going back to this classic is heavily recommended for any fan of the genre. Its upcoming remake has big shoes to fill, to say the very least.

#5. RESIDENT EVIL REMAKE

Speaking of remakes with big shoes to fill, the original Resident Evil remake may have come a long, long time before Capcom’s more recent reimaginations in the franchise, but time has done very little (if anything) to dull its brilliance. While its tank controls might make it a harder game to go back to for some in today’s day and age, where Resident Evil truly shines is in things that are of timeless quality- the level design, the puzzles, the sheer oppressive atmosphere of Spencer Mansion, how the story unfolds bit by bit as you slowly navigate the horrors of the setting. If palpable dread and constant tension are what you are looking for in a Resident Evil game, look no further than the RE1 remake.

#4. RESIDENT EVIL 4 REMAKE

Resident Evil 4 Remake might be most recent release out of all the games in this list, but it’s also undoubtedly one of the best- which is no surprise, given how excellent its source material already was. Yes, the game moves away pretty significantly from the series’ horror roots in order to deliver a very different experience, but the experience it does deliver is nothing short of masterful. Resident Evil 4 is a masterclass in pacing, in building tension through combat, incredible encounters, and excellent enemy design and variety. The constant ramping up of stakes and tension in RE4 stands peerless even now, and all of the game’s biggest strengths are only amplified further in its 2023 remake.

#3. THE LAST OF US PART 2

To call The Last of Us Part 2 a divisive game would be something of an understatement, but those who love it absolutely love the crap out of it- and we certainly fall in that camp. Story and storytelling have always been Naughty Dog’s biggest strengths, but it’s not just in those departments that The Last of Us Part 2 succeeds. It’s also a gigantic leap forward over its predecessor in terms of gameplay- the level design, the incredibly tense combat, the expanded stealth mechanics, the horror elements, and how it blends all of those different mechanics together so deftly. It’s a constant thrillride from start to finish, and for fans of survival horror games, an absolutely unmissable experience.

#2. DEAD SPACE REMAKE

It only makes sense to place extra value on horror in a list about survival horror games, and when viewed through that lens, it’s hard to think of many games that are better than Dead Space. The USG Ishimura ranks as one of the best survival horror settings of all time, and spending even a little bit of time in the derelict ship is enough to prove that beyond any doubt. Every time you turn a corner, every time you hear a loud thud, every time you see a flickering light, your heart can’t help but skip a beat. Isaac’s decaying mental state combines with the horrors of the hellish nightmarish he finds himself trapped in perfectly to create one of the most unforgettable experiences this genre has ever delivered- and the remake has only made it better, which we didn’t think would be possible.

#1. RESIDENT EVIL 2 REMAKE

If someone somewhere decides to teach a class on how a survival horror game should be made, Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake could easily be the one and only game they look at, because this game just nails every single aspect of what makes the genre tick with absolute perfection. Combat? Every single shot you fire at a Licker or a zombie feels immensely satisfying (thanks in no small part to the game’s incredible gore). Exploration? The RPD, the sewers, and NEST are immaculately designed locations that are made all the more compelling to traverse thanks to excellent lock-and-key design and expertly designed puzzles. Horror? Resident Evil 2 does atmosphere better than most other games in the genre, while the ever-present threat of Mr. X injects massive doses of tension into the experience, even if he is nowhere around you and all you can hear are his distant booming footsteps. For Resident Evil as a franchise, for Capcom as a developer, for video game remakes, and for survival horror games as a whole, 2019’s RE2 remake is the absolute benchmark to follow.

The Evil Within

Tango Gameworks made a splashing debut with The Evil Within back in 2014, which went down as one of the best horror games of the generation. While the game is still playable by modern standards, the graphics and gameplay have started to show some noticeable cracks. As such, a modern remake with updated graphics and smoothed-out gameplay mechanics would really make fans want to re-experience the classic all over again.

THE ORDER: 1886

There’s no denying that The Order: 1886 didn’t exactly do justice to its premise, but at the same time, this is the sort of premise that could really have come into its own if it had been given the chance to build on its foundation and learn from its mistakes. The 2015 title looked gorgeous and transported players to a vividly imaginative setting, and we would have loved to see that idea being expanded and built upon in a sequel that worked to address its predecessor’s issues.

SPEC OPS: STEALTH PATROL – SWAPPED DIFFICULTIES

A perfect example of how the lack of post-launch patches (which is something we now take for granted) could ruin a game. Its easy, normal, and hard difficulties were dubbed private, corporal, and sergeant respectively, only in the game itself, private and sergeant were, for whatever reason, swapped. This meant that people who wanted to play the game on the easiest difficulty were unknowingly playing it on the hardest, wondering all the while just why things were as frustratingly difficult as they were. Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol wasn’t exactly the best of games as it is, and this did it no favours.

One of the better games from sort of the middle of the budgetary range was Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. This is a game that tried some interesting ideas, and ended up benefitting from the vast majority of them. With a game as incomparable as Eternal Darkness, it can be sort of difficult to quantify exactly what makes it such a great game, but we have to at least give it a shot, because a game like this deserves to be recognized for the risks it took, how well it managed them, and how ultimately successful it was in delivering it’s vision to players.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem could be described as an adventure game crossing over with classic survival horror like Resident Evil. With an elevator pitch like that it’s easy to imagine where it could have gone wrong. Action-adventure games are often associated with lots of movement, power, and freedom while survival horror games, especially from that era, are often associated with claustrophobia, limited abilities, and vulnerability. These are two philosophies that might seem like they’re at odds and destined to clash at every turn. This is why back then, and even more so today, these two types of games generally don’t have a lot of crossover in fear of turning into something like Resident Evil 6 as it ends up pleasing nobody despite trying to please everyone. Mixing action and horror is a tough road to walk if you do it that way, where the horror aesthetic is driven by essentially the gameplay of an action game.

But Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem flips the ratio on that by making an adventure game aesthetic driven with survival horror gameplay. Fixed camera angles, atmospheric lighting, somewhat stilted combat, key-oriented puzzles, you know the drill. But it is improved upon somewhat with more friendly-3D control as opposed to the classic tank controls of its ancestors. It also lets the camera flow around most areas, creating a smooth transition from one angle to the next instead of the sudden cuts that can make walking around in some survival horror games a little disorienting and jarring at times. The game is also broken up into separated levels which minimizes backtracking and your chances of getting lost. This general attitude of taking the groundwork of classic survival horror gameplay and improving on it in subtle – yet effective – ways is a big part of why Eternal Darkness works so well.

The combat system in Eternal Darkness contains perhaps the more interesting and engaging tweaks it introduces into the survival horror framework, and it’s certainly the element you’ll notice first, and most often. Eternal Darkness’ melee weapons as well as projectiles and firearms have a nice aiming mechanism that helps you direct your blows without breaking immersion like, say, Parasite Eve did with it’s almost turn-based JRPG approach to combat. While survival horror games of that era and before it did technically usually allow you to aim a weapon up or down, they rarely gave you much of an indication of how that shot would impact the enemy you’re aiming at without breaking the mood of the fight with complex interfaces and stopping the moment. Usually, games with this combat would just stay on the safe side and let you figure out the rules of aiming on your own. While that did protect the fragile purity of the horror, it would come at the cost of a steep and occasionally frustrating learning curve. Sometimes, you’d get the headshot of a zombie that’s right in front of you, sometimes you’d miss, it was just a crapshoot a lot of the time.

But Eternal Darkness approached that problem with an elegant solution of highlighting the exact body part you’re aiming at and letting you select the portion of the body you wanted to attack with the GameCube’s analog stick in real-time. This would result in the game highlighting the enemy’s torso, head, or other extremities for a quick and simple indication of what you are poised to hit should you choose to hit the attack button at that time. This does perhaps come at the cost of a little bit of immersion for some horror enthusiasts, but I think it’s a fair trade for how much more playable it makes the combat. Infact, I think this simple solution makes the combat in Eternal Darkness one of the best combat systems in the entire adventure/horror genre. At least from this era. It lets you have your cake and eat it too, with the atmosphere and tension that a fixed camera can provide, but minimizing the stiffness and imprecision that it can bring to the combat of so many other similar games.

Of course, this isn’t nearly as big of a deal as the sanity meter in Eternal Darkness. The sanity meter is something that can make or break you during play, as it goes down with every monster encounter and other moments. This is something you want to avoid as much as possible, as the game will absolutely start turning your experience upside down with more disorienting camera angles, strange voices, and even your items disappearing from your inventory. It messes with you the player more than with your actual character in a way that reaches near Hideo Kojima levels of wackiness. If you’ve ever played a Clock Tower game or Amnesia, you’ll probably recognize the general idea of how the sanity meter works, but Eternal Darkness turns this up to 11 and really leans into it to, I think, great effect.

This is where a lot of the game’s finer audio and visual design elements start to show themselves with cool effects and noises that you rarely saw or heard in games from this time, and even less often on the GameCube. Some of them are so fun and entertaining that you might want to play through certain sections multiple times just to see more of them. However, as these “sanity effects” are technically not regarded as a good thing by the context of the game, you do eventually need to snap out of them or avoid them to progress as intended. Your character’s grip on reality can be repaired through either executing enemies or casting one of the game’s many spells. Spells are also used for solving puzzles, revealing doors, and even buffing weapons, so there is that little dash of fantasy in the mix that makes the game all the more unique among its contemporaries.

Overall, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is a game worth playing for many reasons. It’s not the scariest horror game, nor is it the most intuitive action game, but it’s ability to improve on some of the blind spots of survival horror gameplay while providing some fun action and a well-paced story do make it stand out among both genres. While the plot does bounce around the timeline a bit much for my taste and the horror isn’t particularly scary most of the time, it’s still an incredibly unique game that manages to gracefully meld many great ideas that normally wouldn’t go together at all. For all of this, it’s definitely one hell of a game.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Valkyr-Induced Nightmare – Max Payne

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again – Max Payne has had it rough. After his wife and daughter were brutally murdered by junkies high on Valkyr, Max devotes himself to finding out who’s behind it all. Once that’s revealed near the end, Max is injected with Valkyr and starts reliving the memories of his family’s death. Except it’s incredibly nightmarish and full of such facets as walking a blood trail to his  room and walls oozing blood.

The Hall of Bodies – Metal Gear Solid

Throughout Metal Gear Solid, the atmosphere is one of danger and thrills. Then, you come across an entire hallway littered with bodies, the walls painted red with crimson. The battle with Gray Fox, the cyber ninja that cleaved off Revolver Ocelot’s hand, is coming. The situation was dire enough but the red hallway turned it up a notch.

Shadows of the Eternals, the planned spiritual successor to the seminal GameCube horror game classic, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, has failed to meet its crowdfunding goals on the website Kickstarter. A lot of reasons are being floated for this rare high profile Kickstarter failure, everything from the original game being a niche hit with not a whole lot of mainstream appeal, to Dyack’s involvement in the game, especially so soon after his role in the Silicon Knights debacle.

On their Kickstarter page, Precurson have now posted an update regarding the game’s future:

‘After we take a one week break, we will be upgrading the forum software to help improve the experience of our community. The Order forums will remain open for all those who have pledged on the Kickstarter for the next few weeks.

It is unfortunate that we were unable to crowd-fund this project at this time, but we have not given up. We intend to pursue other avenues with the ultimate goal of having our games come to fruition. Please feel free to migrate over to our Community Forums at www.precursorgames.com/forums, as we will be keeping our forums open for people to enjoy and discuss everything Precursor Games.’

It sounds like they do not intend to try crowdfunding the game again, and they might explore some other options. Maybe some deals with some publishers might be a good idea, although again, this game would be a fundamentally risky project.

Shadows of the Eternals is slated for release once it begins (and finishes) development on PC, Wii U, and PlayStation 4.

Whatever this could indicate is currently unknown. When GameSpot asked a Nintendo representative about it, “We have no comment regarding this trademark matter,” was the reply.

Is Nintendo interested in bringing back the Eternal Darkness series, perhaps as a series downloadable games split into chapters or episodes like The Walking Dead? It would certainly make for an interesting situation, considering Precursor’s on-going work with the franchise. We’ll have to wait and see what comes of it, but for now, Eternal Darkness is a big deal. Who thought that was possible a year ago?

Today we had reported that Shadow of the Eternals was revealed. Now we have some new details about it.

Comprised of veteran game developers, with Silicon Knights’ Denis Dyack acting as Chief Creative Officer, Precursor Games has launched their crowd-funding campaign for Shadow of the Eternals, the spiritual sequel to Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.

The game will consist of twelve episodes (comprising the first season), with the first episode to be launched in the second half of 2014 for PC and Wii U. In a statement, the studio says, “Featuring an ensemble cast, Shadow of the Eternals will span over 2500 years of human history. Players will question their own perception of reality as they progress through this mind-altering psychological horror.”

Episode one will have you playing as detective Paul Becker who must investigate a massacre at Pleasant View Hospital, Louisiana with the two survivors having no memory of themselves or what occurred. The investigation will lead players to Cachtice Castle, Hungary in 1610 – and to the sinister Erzébet Bathory.

The current goal for episode one is set at $1.5 million, with 30 days remaining. Crowd-funding is happening through the developer’s site, with $39,525 pledged by 618 individuals as of now.