Looking at: My favorite survival horror games

I love survival horror games. Being a damn near sedentary human being, they allow me to experiance thrills and horror, without any of the danger of having my spleen ripped out. Today I'll be discussing some of my favorite survival horror titles and explaining what I love about them. In no particular order:

Resident evil 4

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flawless execution. 

Resident evil 4 is part of the trifecta of my favorite games, tied with Red Dead Redemption and Morrowind. It's nearly flawless in my mind, and this isn't a case of rose tinted nostalgia, RE4 is still as awesome a week ago when I played through it again as it was that first time I played in in grade 6. Everything about it is perfect, even the things that don't completely work. People have complained about the camera and the "tank controls" that restrict movement sightlines. RE4 doesn't have a full 3d camera, rather you can only see what's in front of you and to your sides. I say this adds to the horror and tension, knowing that at any moment you could be ambushed from behind. People have complained that it doesn't make sense for a merchant armed to the teeth to not sell ammo, but that would ruin the balance. Fights wouldn't have any weight to them if you could just fill up on ammo and plow through every encounter, instead you have to suffer through, earning your victory.

Perhaps what I like most about RE4 is it's sincerity. It doesn't have a heavy handed plot, and it's main cast consists of only a handful of memorable characters. Halfway through it turns into a weird 80's action-horror with you fighting your way through a castle and it just doesn't seem to care. It's goofy and strange, but it's a damn good time, and usually the first game I recommend when people talk about survival horror.

State of Decay

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Indie team showing how it's done.

This game came completely out of left field for a lot of people. The term "open-world-zombie-survival" is used way to much in gaming these days, but State of Decay absolutely nails it in every way. It doesn't try to have an particular emotion punch like a certain OTHER zombie game, but rather contents itself with the shotgun approach, mixing interesting characters, organic horror stories, and the glory of slaughtering thousands of zombies all at once. It's far from perfect, with only a handful of voice actors delivering the same lines of dialogue over and over again, and possible the jankiest looking animations ever, but for a relatively small price this game has a ton of content, and it's focus on group survival rather then just clearing the horde is an interesting departure from the norm.

System Shock 2

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No one will hear you scream.

The progenitor of sci-fy action horror, System Shock 2 is the scariest game set in space, period. You are a soldier aboard the Von Braun, a research vessel in deep space, that's in deep shit. There are mutant zombies walking around, crazed psychic monkeys, malfunctioning robots, and strange orders coming from an unseen voice. The atmosphere of tension and horror is complete, never once giving you a moment of peace. Weapons break and ammo is limited, meaning that your rarely comfortable taking on enemies. System Shock 2 earns extra points for being directly responsible for the Bioshock series, as well as a large source of inspiration for the Dead Space series as well (barring the third entry).

Dark Souls

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Prepare to die.

Some people will tell you Dark Souls isn't a survival horror. These people are wrong. Dark Souls is all about slowly and methodically progressing through a world filled with things that want you dead, with only limited support available. The levels are cramped and dark, and death awaits around every turn. With an intuitive multiplayer system that allows for co-op or PVP seamlessly, other players may help or hinder you at any time. Dark Souls does loose it's horror value with multiple playthroughs, espcially when you become so proficient at the game you begin toying with it, but for first time players it's a wonderfully frighting experience sure to leave a mark.

Metro 2033

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The Mad Russian.

Metro 2033 is a cold, somber, and lonely game that constantly reminds you of the horrors mankind can sow. Taking place twenty years after a nuclear war forces the residents of Moscow underground, you play as a young man that must save his home from the forces of evil. Along the way you'll be faced with terrors of both the physical and psychological kind as you delve deeper into a world living on borrowed time. I highly suggest playing the 2014 Redux rerelease, as it balances the game out, updates many of the textures to HD, and comes packaged with 2033 more action slanted sequel Metro Last Light.

The Last of Us

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Save the girl.

The only console exclusive entry on my list, this PS3 masterpiece comes to us from the masters of story telling at Naughty Dog. While the Nathan Drake series is often lighthearted and witty, TLoU is a decidedly darker game, examining humanity in a broken world, and what one man is willing to do to survive. Joel and Ellie are easily two of my favorite characters ever written, and their story is one of sadness, loneliness, pain, and suffering. TLoU is a brutal game in every sense of the word, from it's heart wrenching story, to it's visceral combat. There are no heroes in TLoU, only survivors.

STALKER: COP, Misery mod

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The warning's in the name.

I already wrote about the STALKER series here, but I wanted to make special mention of the MISERY mod for Stalker: Call of Pripyat. A massive overhaul of the base game, MISERY makes ammo scarce, money hard to come by, and the AI way more aggressive. It also offers a few new ways to play, allowing you to select a class with strengths and weaknesses before entering The Zone, or entering empty handed in the new Black Road option. Success is secondary to survival, and you'll find yourself doing whatever it takes to stay alive just one more moment. MISERY doesn't love company, because it doesn't love anything at all.

And the rest...

This is just a short list of some of my favorite survival horror games. I know I missed some, like Silent Hill 2 or Fatal Frame, but honestly I haven't been able to play those games for one reason or another. There are also so newer entries into the genre that didn't make the cut, so special mention goes out to:

The Evil Within
Dead Space 1&2
Resident Evil Revelations
The Forrest
Day Z
Outlast
Five Nights at Freddy's

All of these games are certified survival horror gold,  but just weren't good enough to make my list.
This should be enough games to get anyone spooked this Halloween, and keep you terrified long into the cold darkness of winter.

Looking at: The S.T.A.L.K.E.R series

Horrors from the East

Halloween is almost upon us (assuming I post this before the 31st) and like every other site right now I'll be taking a look at one of my favorite horror franchises in gaming: The STALKER series. This series of open-world-rpg-shooters has conjured up some of the scariest, and most organic moments in my gaming career, and I feel like sharing them with you all.

There are three games in the STALKER series, four if you count the fan made remake of the first game. I'll be taking a look at each of them, and discussing what I love, and hate, about this fantastic series of unconventional horror games.

From the Nuclear Ashes

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Man made hell.

originally announced in 2005 and released in 2007, the first game in the series is Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. Set in an alternate universe where a second Chernobyl explosion occurs and rather then obliterating everything, it creates an ecological wastelands known as The Zone. The Zone serves as the only location for the entire series spanning 60km around the ruins of Chernobyl. Filled with treasures to sell and monsters to hunt The Zone quickly attracts people from every walk of life to come and explore it. These explorers are refered to as Stalkers (Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber) and they've split into factions based around they're various ideologies concerning the Zone.

You play as The Marked One, a survivor of a truck explosion who wakes up with amnesia. You have only one objective at the beginning of the game: kill a Stalker named Strelok. In order to do so you must complete a number of tasks for the various factions in order to gain intel and access to various areas of the Zone. The story is a little hard to follow at times, not helped by some questionable translations and nonsensical cut scenes that don't reveal that much, but there is one twist, and it's pretty great.

What SoC does excel at is building it's world, and populating it with pure terror. The Zone is one of the most completely realized worlds in gaming, with every inch of it intricately mapped out. There's not one object out of place, and it all feels very surreal when looked at as a whole. It matches the familiar with the alien and creates a sense of unease as your mind tries to understand what you're looking at. A familiar looking factory torn apart by a swirling gravity well, or an average underpass literally spitting flames from no where are just some of the strange landmarks you'll run across. It's a somber and lonely place, with danger around every corner and no-one to help you out. The sun rarely shines in The Zone, and when it does it only illuminates the sadness.

Gameplay wise SoC, and the series in general, is a mix between traditional shooter and RPG. You'll shoot guns at things, that much is true, but there's a lot more to how the game handles your shooting. There's no skills to level up, but each piece of equipment can have an effect on your stats, meaning you'll have to balance out every gun, suit of armor, and buff item you find. The latter, in particular is interesting. The Stalker series contains items called Artifacts, strange alien items spit out by The Zone. These items can be used to buff your character, but often come with side effects. You can run forever, but a single zap of electricity will kill you; you can withstand a shotgun blast, but you constantly build up radiation poisoning. Trying to balance these can be tricky, and it's rewarding when your work pays off.

"Get out of here Stalker"

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maybe steer clear (sky) of this one.

Despite various bugs, and failing to live up to expectations, SoC was a success. A little more then a year later came STALKER: Clear Sky, a prequel to SoC that went more into the early days of The Zone. Unfortunately, you can't make a good game in that time, and Clear Sky was no exception, shipping in a barely functioning state, and filled with bugs for years to come. Often regarded as the worst entry in the series, Clear Sky does have some interesting ideas that largely fall flat. It's big gimmick is the Faction Wars sub-game, in which you can align yourself with any of the game's four "friendly" factions and help them to achieve dominance in The Zone. It's a fun little diversion, but doesn't pay off in the long run. Clear Sky also overhauls the game's human AI, allowing them to take cover and use grenades, making combat a little more hectic. Overall, it's not a horrible game, especially now that it's had upwards of 15 major patches, but probably not the best representation of Stalker available.

Back to The Zone

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Not pictured: abject horror.

After Clear Sky no one knew what would come next for the series. Then, in 2010 Stalker: Call of Prypiat was released, and boy was it ever good. This was finally the game we'd wanted from the start, a huge open world, quests with mutliple decisions, and a simple, easy to follow plot. CoP is, hands down, one of my favorite shooters and an awesome example of an interesting idea done right. Building on the foundations of the previous two entries, CoP doesn't add that much of it's own, but rather is satisfied with fixing the issues of the old games. There's only three levels this time around, but they're massive and filled with secrets to hunt out. This gives the game a much more open feel, and contrasts great when it does throw you into tight quarters. There's fewer sidequests, but each of them is more engaging and all of them have an effect on the world at large. For the first time in the series you get to make choices about where the story is going to go next, and it's a refreshing change from the linear progression of the old titles. Best of all CoP is stable, much more so then the previous games. There's still bugs, but the game rarely crashes, and progression is almost never broken. It's a huge step forward for a game renowned for poor QA.

The expanding Zone

All three games are great, but what really stands out for the STALKER series is the fan-made mods. Not to say that the games aren't good vanilla, but all three of them have exceptional overhauls that create truly amazing experiances.

SoC is enhanced by one of two major mods: either the Autumn Aurora or LURK mods will change the way you play SoC. Autumn Aurora is my personal favorite, overhauling the graphics, adding in new sidequests, and tweaking the AI to be more challenging. LURK, on the other hand, focuses on immersion, removing most of the HUD, giving all weapons their real-world name, and removing artifacts completely. Both are good and it's up to you to decided how you want to play.

When it comes to Clear Sky, the only mod worth talking about is the Road to Limansk collection. This takes all the most popular Clear Sky mods and makes them play nice with each other, adding better graphics, AI, more weapons, and a metric tonne of bug fixes to the game. I highly recommend playing Clear Sky with this rather then vanilla.

My favorite mod for CoP is the MISERY mod. If the name didn't sell it, this is a hard core survival mod, making food a commodity, and combat something to be feared. MISERY is as close, I believe, as we will ever get to a Dark Souls first person shooter. Alternatively, there's also CoP: Reloaded, a more traditional mod that adds new gameplay features, but retains the overall feel of the original game.

Finally, when talking about STALKER mods, a special mention goes to the Lost Alpha mod. What started out as a simple re-addition of promised game features has now spun-off into an entire stand-alone game. It's completely free, thanks to the STALKER IP being in limbo, and if you're thinking about trying out the series there's no better way. Aimed at being what the original version of SoC was, Lost Alpha is a great way to see the world of STALKER and experience the games on a budget.

The horror of being alone

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There's also the horror of being eviscerated, but that's less pervasive.

The STALKER series has always been one of my favorite horror series because of the way it organically creates it's horror. There are no intentional jump-scares in STALKER, only coincidence. STALKER is a true survival horror, in which your survival is one of being constantly scared. Every second could be your last, and every enemy could be your own personal grim reaper. I recommend playing the games on their hardest difficulties, since this really gives you the sense that you could die at a moment's notice. Overcoming this fear is great, but even with a maxed out assault rifle, 1000 rounds of ammo and more grenades then you can shake a pin at, you'll still be frightened by every sound you hear.

More terrifying then the various bandits and beasts that plague you is The Zone itself. There's a feeling of loneliness everywhere you go, and even when your surrounded by other Stalkers, you'll be alone with yourself. The Zone and it's people reject and ignore you, and you're own your own to persevere. You will likely die alone in The Zone, and it won't even register your name.

The STALKER series is far from perfect. Each of the games have some pretty substantial stability issues, and patches and mods only go so far to fix them. At time the AI is goofy, they're hard to understand, and none of the weapons are particularly accurate. What the STALKER series is instead, is unique, terrifying, and brilliant. They're not for everybody, hell, they not for most shooter fans, but people willing to look beyond will truly find some treasures hidden in The Zone.