Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion

Come on – it’s literally the name of the game. You traverse from room to room, waiting for the inevitable jump scare. Most of them are pretty harmless though, consisting of cut-outs of bread and other lame thing. Of course, you eventually encounter the sinister notes…and then the monsters. And suddenly things aren’t so lame.

Song of Horror

What if you faced a terrifying being that could also learn from your actions and plan accordingly? That’s The Presence, the antagonistic force of Song of Horror. The title features a number of characters, each exploring the house of Sebastian P. Husher and facing off against the terrifying Presence. When one character dies, the next continues the story, investigating in their own way. However, The Presence will learn from each incursion and hunt you down.

Super Shotgun – DOOM (2016)

The Super Shotgun in Doom 1 and 2 was revered for its close range devastation and this carried over beautifully to DOOM (2016). It may not be the BFG 9000 but the Super Shotgun can rip a hole through several smaller enemies at once, besides inflicting heavy damage on bigger demons. It’s the Slayer’s signature weapon and is only getting better in DOOM Eternal with the introduction of a grappling hook.

Xenomorph – Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation’s intelligent, menacing and nigh invulnerable Xenomorph is one of the more renowned stalkers in recent times. It can sense when you’re using the motion tracker nearby, will investigate any strange occurrences or noises made, and pounce on you when least expected. It even travels through the air ducts, making it all the harder to discern where it could be coming from. Yes, it’s scared of fire but limited flamethrower ammo means it won’t be long before it returns.

Bughuul – Sinister

Pretend the second film never happened and Bughuul is actually a very under-utilized villain. He specializes in hypnotizing children to murder their families and then stealing their souls afterwards. Maybe his Fatality could be filming an opponent being murdered and then stealing their soul away (before the obligatory jump scare on the player)? If the cinematography worked for Johnny Cage, it might work here too.

Short for First Encounter Assault Recon, the unique blend of first person shooting, sci-fi horror and lore tied together lovingly by the talented team at Monolith Productions. The ones owned by Warner Brothers, not the ones behind the Xenoblade series, to be clear. The game was developed with the PC in mind, and brought to PS3 and Xbox 360 afterwards, where the first game took off to great critical reception, likening the series to Half Life. Which is just about the highest honour you can receive as a PC focused shooter.

We haven’t see a new entry in this series since 2011, and before digging deeper, it might be easy to believe that the studio joining the Warner Brother’s publishing umbrella forced them into a licensed game purgatory. However, it’s worth noting that the first game, F.E.A.R., launched in 2005, following the acquisition. Unfortunately, we can’t really blame the disappearance directly on WB here. Through an exploration of the series history, we’re hoping to discover just why we haven’t seen any games in so long.

When the series launched in 2005, it was going up against quite a lot of other shooters with the rocketing popularity of the genre. However, Monolith smartly leveraged a few design decisions to make their horror game stand out, the first being the genre. Survival Horror games would usually be modelled after Resident Evil at the time, for no reason other than the fact it was the most popular series in the genre. More involved shooting mechanics than those common at the time made the game unique from a play perspective as well. The supernatural elements of F.E.A.R., which sees the player take control of the F.E.A.R. team’s point man and leveraged powers such as Bullet Time to give them a feeling of power against rather shockingly intelligent AI enemies. At least, all before the antagonist Alma takes it away.

Alma, and the intricate plot and lore that the series would grow and develop over its short run, stands as its legacy today. Throughout the first game, visions of a girl in a red dress haunt Point Man, and laptops provide insight on the terrifying experiments conducted on the woman named Alma. Her torture granted her frightening powers somewhat like the girl from The Ring and Slenderman – with an attitude. The entire plot of the third game takes off from a rather violent sexual assault she performs on the hero in the second game. Did I mention that this series is far less campy than its contemporaries?

Two expansions would come out of the original game that built on the story and characters, as well as fleshed out the also unique multiplayer modes on offer, which leveraged the shooting mechanics and Bullet Time, but it would be 4 years before Monolith would give us a true sequel in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Unfortunately for all the novel things the game did with its story, the genre had caught up to it in the interm. The beginning of an unfortunate drop in the Metacritic average began here, as the team just didn’t improve much upon the base foundation.

Taking place almost simultaneously as the events of the first game, players take on the role of someone new, Michael Becket, an operator on the Delta Force Team that was supposed to support the team of the first game, as he undergoes his own trials thanks to Alma, and discovers his own dark relation to the events that shaped her. As alluded to earlier, the game ends with Becket being forced to impregnate Alma, setting up the events of the third game. F.E.A.R 2 was generally liked and debuted at the number two spot in the US and UK sales charts for the platform, despite the critics finding that the game didn’t do anything that new.

By the time F.E.A.R. 2 came around, the unfortunate reality was that the landscape of the medium had been irrevocably changed. Publishers all wanted to chase that money, forgetting that they had an audience already there. This environment is where we now find the development of F.E.A.R. 3, or F.3.A.R., which was handled by a completely different studio and generally received the same critical reception as the previous game. The sales were a different story altogether.

Day 1 Studios had previously assisted with porting the first game to consoles, but otherwise was completely new to the series. This resulted in numerous changes to the formula, many of them based on popular ideas at the time, such as a game needing Co-op to be successful. This led to the game showing the hero and villain from the first game teaming up to find the pregnant Alma, both for their own reasons. Generally though, the team at Day 1 Studios failed to capture the spirit of the original 2 games, which reflected in the critical reception.

There is a distinct change in the tone of reviews from F.E.A.R. 2 to F.3.A.R, with outlets such as Gamespot and Eurogamer being generally unimpressed by the scares, and considering the core of the series, that psychological horror, as secondary to the action. IGN’s Colin Moriarty literally included the words “Something set in a unique, horror filled atmosphere” to describe the game as a shooter first. While strong shooting was in the DNA of F.E.A.R., it was never really the major draw.

Really, the story of why F.E.A.R. disappeared is much about the story of why Survival Horror games disappeared. Publishers went on the action gold-rush that defined much of the previous generation, but left the audience they did have out in the cold. F.3.A.R. sold very poorly, and saw the studio lay off 100 people following disappointing sales. A 2013 attempted free-to-play online multiplayer game called F.E.A.R. Online would never even make it out of open beta due to a lack of support and general apathy from a gaming audience.

Unfortunately, while both the lacklustre sales of F.3.A.R. and the total failure of F.E.A.R. Online might mean that it’s time to pour one out for Monolith Productions best known game series, things have gotten better. The era of shooters seems to have come to an end, leaving them to return to more interesting ideas once again. More importantly, some high profile successes in the indy market and even from publishers such as Bethesda with The Evil Within series have started to see the genre make something of a resurgence. Resident Evil 7 made a glorious return to form and we still lament the fact we’re in the darkest timeline where Silent Hills never happened. I guess the moral of this episode of “Publishers ruin everything” is that even a totally dead genre can rise again.

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.

Outlast

Outlast 2 may have seen a tremendous bump in visuals but the original Outlast is arguably scarier. There are so many things going wrong in Mount Massive Asylum from mentally ill inmates to grotesque oddities like Chris Walker constantly stalking you. The game is focused on stealth and fleeing from foes with the camera’s night vision offering an edge in the dark (though batteries are needed to recharge). From pure insanity to outright grotesque violence, Outlast is an experience that will stay with you long after it ends.

That was the day I learned that trailers can make a game look a LOT better than it actually is.

"Unfortunately, with Resident Evil 6, Capcom decided to go with all out action. Puzzles (and caution) were thrown to the wind."

First, some context: When Resident Evil Zero released, Capcom were shocked to discover that its sales were significantly lower in its home country than they’re used to seeing. The game more or less bombed in Europe and North America and the writing was on the wall: Fans wanted something different. They didn’t want the same tank like controls and improbable puzzles. They didn’t want to “survive” and run away any more. The environment was sure pretty thanks to some pre-rendered CG but it stopped feeling like, well, an actual environment that you inhabited.

It was Resident Evil 4 that eventually broke the mold and scooped up several awards as a result. It introduced the new famous (and infamous) over the shoulder shooting mechanic but interspersed the typical RE experience with tons more action, quick time events, water cooler moments and set pieces and just an outright insane abandon that made it all the more frightening. Resident Evil 5, though lambasted for not doing anything different, further evolved this model and gave it better visuals, a fairly reliable co-op mechanic, even more harrowing enemies and set pieces, and more action than its predecessor.

There was no doubt another crossroads reached by Capcom. Resident Evil 5 had performed decently sales wise but fans were beginning to tire of the same over the shoulder mechanic. You could blame Gears of War to some extent since it took the aiming system and made a whole other awesome franchise on it. But gamers had been saturated much faster than before. It was time for something new – some fans even wanted a game that felt more horror-oriented like classic Resident Evil titles.

Unfortunately, with Resident Evil 6, Capcom decided to go with all out action. Puzzles (and caution) were thrown to the wind. The pacing was all over the place, with long treks through corridors interspersed by cut scenes, followed by more long treks and more cut scenes. The new set pieces felt clunky. Stealth mechanics were thrown in and just felt awful, despite being some of the more unique sections in the game. Chris Redfield’s campaign felt out and out like a Call of Duty-esque romp with horrible controls and cover systems. The game’s visuals had somehow deteriorated from the fifth release but the expansive lore – something which should have been celebrated – was outright ignored in favour of a film plot that would have suited the works of Paul W.S. Anderson better. It wasn’t that this was a bad Resident Evil – it was just an overwhelmingly bad game in general.

"Resident Evil 7 needs to feel familiar and yet different. It needs to be scary, sure, but it can't just go back to being the plodding adventure title it was before."

Now with rumours of Resident Evil 7 abounding, Capcom is again left with a decision. Does it implement the same survival horror mechanics that defined some of its best games in the past? Does it try to use action-oriented mechanics that took the series to new heights but lead to admittedly one of the worst main titles of all time? Does Capcom try for an uneasy balance as with Resident Evil Revelations and somehow get by without offending anyone in the process? Does it try to blaze a trail and do what no one else has thought of?

The last point seems incredibly hard at this point. Trademark series like Gears of War and Dead Space transitioned to a more shooter-based approach with their last titles rather than falling back on horror. The horror genre itself has seen a renaissance but with first person exploration titles that emphasize atmosphere, audio design puzzle solving, survival and out-and-out scares over bleeding edge visuals. It’s obvious that Resident Evil won’t fall into the latter category – but then, there has been a game that managed to meld first person shooter mechanics with genuinely frightening gameplay. And that’s F.E.A.R.

This isn’t to say that Capcom should outright copy any one, as Resident Evil 6 has proved. But F.E.A.R. stands as a testament to properly implementing horror while balancing it with great shooting. Resident Evil 7 needs to feel familiar and yet different. It needs to be scary, sure, but it can’t just go back to being the plodding adventure title it was before. It can’t go full action either because my heart can’t take another Resident Evil 6.

"Whatever direction the developer may take, this will certainly be the most interesting Resident Evil in recent times."

There’s no denying that Capcom is at an impasse as to the creative direction of its next big sequel. One solution is to go with an open world sandbox style game but with straightforward missions. It could offer mechanics similar to Dead Rising 3, in which you make your own weapons and level up abilities, but in a more serious tone. There’s no better way to avoid long-winding cut scenes and implement as much of the series’ rich history. It could take an approach in this respect to GTAV, which had a strongly compelling story and missions even with a ridiculously large open world to it.

Or Capcom could just remake Resident Evil 2, slap on some open world mechanics and a revamped over the shoulder aiming mechanic and sell it to the public. That would solve a lot of problems.

Whatever direction the developer may take, this will certainly be the most interesting Resident Evil in recent times. Stay tuned for an announcement at E3 and hopefully whatever creative direction Capcom ends up with, it’ll at least attempt the same in a competent fashion.

Today Aeria Games, one of the best known names in free-to-play games announced that they will be releasing the upcoming F.E.A.R. game, and that it will be free online. F.E.A.R. will act as an online co-op extension of the 2009 console release, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, utilizing the same FPS style of game play and expanding on the Project Origins story. The story will again center on F.E.A.R. antagonistt, Alma Wade.

If the trailer is any indication, F.E.A.R. Online looks to be yet another psychologically harrowing installment in an already terrifying series.

Tom Nichols, Vice President of PC gaming at Aeria Games had this to say about the newly announced F.E.A.R. installment: “We are thrilled to present the next entry in one of the most popular horror franchises of the last decade. F.E.A.R. Online will bring back the tense, heart-pounding action that the series is known for and make it accessible to a huge online community of competitive players.”

Interested games can sign up for the F.E.A.R. Online Beta here.

Thanks to Siliconera for the info.