Looking at: Banished

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/242920/header.jpg?t=1392746087

Wagon Train

http://media.gamer.nl/site/dump/20140225162457-ban4.jpg

You'll need to keep an eye on citizen's health and happiness.

Banished is a the first ever survival-horror-city-sim game ever, at least as far as I can tell. All of those genres already exist, and they all have standout titles, but Banished is the first game I can honestly say combines all those elements together at the same time. The question is, does it do it well, and is it worth playing?

The first answer is, yes it's an incredibly well designed game. Coming to us from one man developer Lucas Hodorowicz's Shining Rock Software, Banished is a testament to what can be accomplished when you really put effort into a project. The game was in development for three years before release earlier this year, and the effort shows greatly. The last few years have given us a lot of great one man games like Braid, Cave Story, and (despite Phil Fish being Phil Fish) Fez, and Banished is just another great example.

Died of Dysentery

http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/A4-1024x576.jpg

Creating a well functioning city is difficult, but rewarding.

The easiest way to describe Banished is a combination of Dwarf Fortress and Anno 1404. The problem with that explanation is that both of those are incredibly niche titles, especially the later title that was actually re-named in the west. At a glance, it's Sim City, circa 1400's. You construct a city, taking care to provide needs to it's citizens both basic and luxury, and try and see how far you can get before your hard work inevitably implodes on you. It's a complex game that embodies everything PCgaming stands for. 

Like so many managerial games, Banished is a mess of menus. Thankfully, this shows off one of its strengths: the UI. Designing a good UI can be difficult, especially for a game like Banished where so much of the game takes place in various menus, and it's great to see how much effort has gone into making everything accessible. The various buildings are all categorized according to their functions, with a separate menu button for all your various managerial tools. You can assign people to do jobs from one overview menu, or select specific buildings and add workers there. Constructing a town hall will grant access to various charts, and there are simple to use tools for checking happiness and health of your citizens. 

Hard Core Agriculture

http://www.incgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/A2.jpg

Winter slows production to a crawl, and often brings with it death.

Where Banished differs from its contemporaries is its adherence to a hardcore nature. You will fail in Banished, quite often really. It's taken me somewhere close to ten tries to get a town to function successfully, and even then it's problematic. It all comes down to properly balancing everything. You'll need to provide food and warmth for everyone, but to do that you need to build houses and workshops, and to do that you'll need resources, and to get that you'll need properly maintained tools, and to do that you need people to work, and to get that you need to provide food and warmth for everyone. You'll constantly have several dozen plates spinning at a time here, and balancing them gets trickier the longer you survive. 

That's really the gimmick of Banished, just survive. The title of the game is derived from the proposed back story where your settlers are banished from their former home. You're abandoned in a forest with little resources and a steadily approaching winter, and all you need to do is survive. In a lot of ways its reminiscent of old frontier stories of the first settlers to America, sans the native slaughter, and its refusal to be anything but obtuse does a good job of reinforcing this motif. Doing repetitively simple things feels like an accomplishment, and surviving a winter or constructing a huge project gives you a feeling akin to Dark Souls. 

The Fire Consumes us All

http://i.imgur.com/IvxKe10.png

Fires can wipe out whole cities in seconds, and there's very little you can do to stop them.

Unfortunately Banished is problematic. There's a huge barrier to entry, despite the games modest price tag, and it's very hard to recommend it to people. I've always hated the way so-called "casual" gamers are portrayed by the gaming community, since I believe that games are for fun or interesting experiences, and nothing else; but I really can't recommend Banished to anyone who plays games casually. The managerial sim genre of games is already fairly niche, with only a few standout titles like Crusader Kings 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or the previously mentioned Anno series, so trying to talk about a game even more hard core then the norm becomes more difficult. Furthermore there's issues with the game itself, likely due to it's development. Like I said, it's a very well designed game, but graphically it's indie nature betrays it. There's a nice level of detail in things like trees changing colour with the seasons, or snow on the ground in winter. Like so many games before it, zooming in and trying to observe the little things is disappointing. There's very little detail put into the characters, and building are largely static. The different professions don't change what people look like, and there are only a small handful of animations for various actions. Landscapes can be difficult to read, and it can be hard to tell what's a buildable surface and what isn't.

Banished's biggest issue is it's balancing. It can be brutally difficult at times, and pleasently simple at others. Its a constant roller coaster, and you can't always control the speed. Citizens have a mind of their own, and construction projects will go unfinished for months without any explanation. Despite having a small army of people working to provide resources, you'll constantly receive messages telling you the stocks of food or firewood are low. You need to know exactly what to do from the first seconds of the game, and one small mistake, like queuing up a house rather then a fishery can cause everything to fall apart. Disasters like fire or disease can occur randomly, and there's very little in the way of proper prevention you can prepare. 

Banished is a good game, but only if you like games exactly like Banished. Considering how barren the world of managerial sims is, it is nice to get one that tries to add new ideas, and once you get on its wavelength there really is a great game here. Is it well made? Yes. Is it fun to play? Not always. 

Looking at: Resident Evil 4

http://k3ithq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pmUsXaN5bv3RpkSQfz-xt8yQ7owcsc11-P8oGAv5VSKdnBoAb-9HFoGs1YeTBqZGzXHFwNlkF9Hk/Resident_Evil_4_Leon_oyun_resimleri_posterleri_masast_duvar_katlar.jpg

King of the creeps

Resident Evil 4 is, in my opinion, the single greatest survival horror game ever made. It's also one of my three favorite games of all time, and has remained so for a long time. It's turning ten next year, and has been ported eight different times, more then most games, and is considered one of the most influential games of sixth generation. It also killed it's own franchise and changed the face of survival horror and third person shooters forever. It's Halloween today, so I decided to talk about RE4 and why I still think it's one of the best games ever made. 

The first time I played Resident Evil was in grade six. I was twelve years old and it was a sleepover at my friends house. My parents had never been expressly against violent videogames, having given up around the time my oldest brother bought Diablo 2, but we didn't have RE4 for our Gamecube because my older brother thought it was to scary. My older brother is an idiot. At that sleepover we played most of the first half of RE4, getting all the way to the castle that marks the half way point of the game. I was in love with every second, running away from hordes of enemies, getting my head cut off with a chainsaw, and landing those sweet, sweet headshots with the bolt-action rifle. It was love at first decapitation. 

playing it again almost a decade later I was pleased to find that it completely holds up. I recently picked up the PS2 version of the game, although I had also played through a large chunk of the HD version on PS3. I know sometimes people remember games from their past and think the game is great no matter what, but a lot of times these games just don't hold up as well as they did when we were kids. For example, as a kid I played the hell out of Diddy Kong Racing on N64, but trying to play it now I found it was an aggravating experience and horrible un-fun to play. A lot of classic PC games I find are now impossible to enjoy because the mechanics in these games have been greatly surpassed by modern games. But RE4 is like a painting, never getting old, always being awesome. 

Built like a tank

http://www.nintendojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/scrn_residentEvil4-01.jpg

Every interaction with my grandmother.

RE4's controls handle...interestingly. The term "tank controls" usually gets tossed at it, and this is pretty fitting. There's no denying it, your character of Leon Kennedy handles like a tank simulation, moving only able to move forward and backward with no option to strafe. You also can't shoot from the hip at all, and aiming your weapon stops you dead in your tracks. The camera is constantly looking forward,  although you have the option to look to your left or right. All of this might sound archaic, but it actually all feeds back into the horror feel of the game. Not being able to see behind you means that enemies can get the drop on you if you aren't paying attention. Having to stand still while shooting means that you have to carefully conduct your combat, firing a few shots, running away, spinning around, rinse and repeat.

What really makes RE4 shine is your interactions with the environment. Not since Duke Nukem 3D have I seen this many intractable objects in a level, all with fantastic animations. The level design in general is fantastic, mixing wide open areas, enclosed arena, and claustrophobic halls all in equal measure. Best of all is that most levels have multiple paths, allowing you further control over how you choose to fend off the hordes of enemies. Part of the fun is figuring out how to utilize the environment to your advantage, finding choke points to set up kill zones and using various objects around the map to thin out the enemy. 

Fight for your life

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/6/65194/1848314-resident_evil_4_hd_1.jpg

The Blind Claw, one of the more interesting encounters in the game.

Combat itself is an interesting beast. I already explained how you need to stop and shoot, but I really can't stress how important proper planning becomes latter in the game. Many of the later levels will toss you up against dozens of enemies at once, and you won't always be properly prepared. Much of the game is made up of improvised solutions, like using a shotgun to blast back a group and picking of stragglers with pistol shots, or using kneecap shots to slow enemies down. Thankfully combat never gets stale, with each encounter differing slightly from the last, and plenty of enemy types mixed in at regular intervals. 

The bosses of RE4 deserve special mention as well, as each of them is memorable and awesome. While all the boss fights boil down to "shoot/stab the weakspot" how you go about that differs wildly from fight to fight. One boss starts off normal and goes all the way to batshit halfway through, while another one starts crazy and ramps up from there.They all require some planning on the part of the player, and they play out like jigsaw puzzles with guns, making the pieces line up just right before shooting them to bits. 

This isn't to say that the common enemies of RE4 are boring. RE4 breaks from it's predecessor by not having zombified enemies. This time around you're fighting the Ganados, villagers from the unnamed European country the game takes place in that have been infected by a mind controlling parasite. The Ganados are smarter then the zombies of previous RE games, able to communicate with each other and operate objects in the world. They can open doors, climb ladders, thrown blades at you, and even use crossbows and explosives. Because of this facing a Ganado is often freakier then the zombies of old, since now they can think and react to your actions. 

Ranging from crazy to insane

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/6/65194/1848316-resident_evil_4_hd_3.jpg

Occasionally, the game manages to up the creepy factor in the level design alone.

The plot of RE4 can best be described as "80's action horror as interrupted by Japan". Think John Carpenter meets Kōji Shiraishi. The setup is that you are Leon Kennedy, survivor of Raccoon City that has taken a job as the President of America's bodyguard. You're first assignment is to rescue his kidnapped daughter from an insane cult in an unnamed small European country near Spain. That actually the primary plot throughout the entire game, and there's very little deviation, even once things start to go really, REALLY south. There's character to meet, places to explore, and enemies to fight, but your purpose is always to find and protect the girl. 

Where it gets weird is in it's presentation. The first third of the game takes place in the villages and farms of the country side, drawing creepy likenesses to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Children of the Corn. You'll face off against angry farmers, cross snake infested swamps, and kill chickens for eggs. Then it changes quite abruptly when you enter the castle. Suddenly it turns into an escape from the castle, filled with ancient traps, hidden pathways, and at one point, I'm not kidding, a giant stone golem robot. It's a weird shift in tone, but it remains spooky thanks to the feel of being in a haunted castle surrounded by things that want you dead. Then chapter three kicks in and you find yourself in a military base, with a science lab, and there's a chase with a bulldozer, and it's just all very weird and very confusing. You literally escape the game by driving off on a jet ski, followed by a snappy one liner as the island explodes and the sun comes up.

It's constant shift in tone is a bit jarring, but it's not a horror game because it's scary. RE4 is a proper survival horror game, where the horror is your constant survival. There are one or two jump scares here and there, and the infamous Regenerator enemies in the late game are down right terrifying, but most of the horror element comes from you figuring out how to survive every encounter. Even on normal difficulty RE4 is brutal, constantly giving you just barely enough ammo to survive. Surviving a battle is truly rewarding because you feel like you accomplished something. Even better is when all your hard work pays off and you save up enough ammo to go on the offensive, daring the game to throw more enemies at you and you eat through your shotgun shells. It's this constant ebb and flow that really makes RE4 great, constantly teetering between "Oh god, how am I going to get through this one" and "Let them come! I got enough for everybody!".

Legacy of champions

http://images.eurogamer.net/2014/usgamer/RE4-HD-Screenshot-01.jpg

The always terrifying Regenerator, still one of the creepiest enemies in gaming.

RE4 was a huge success when it came out in 2005. It revitalized a dying IP, brought some real credibility to the Gamecube as a serious gaming platform, and reworked how we looked at horror games and third person shooters in general. People quickly started aping it, from the direct ripoffs like Dead Space or Cold Fear, to games that just used it's ideas of over-the-shoulder camera and set piece moments like Gears of War or Army of Two. Horror games stopped being about scaring people with spooky moments and became more about asking the player to survive an extra-normal situation with limited resources.

It's truly unfortunate that it's own follow ups haven't exactly been stellar. RE5 was a muddled co-op mess of racism, with half baked ideas and a fraction of the game time of RE4. RE6 is...unknowable, Ranging from second rate to outright stupid in terms of story. RE: Revelations was surprisingly good, so I'm interested to see how the sequel -which isn't getting a 3DS release despite the first one being a launch title- will inevitable screw everything up.

Why can't anything match the brilliance of RE4? Perhaps it was just lighting in a bottle, the perfect mix of new ideas, new gameplay mechanics, and a new plot right when the series needed it most. Now it just feels like every RE game is just trying to hard to be RE4, trying to recapture that perfect mix of awesome and crazy that they had once.

We may never see another game like RE4, and given the current state of survival horror, the chances of anything coming close seem less and less likely every year. It's spirit lives on, most recently in it's own spiritual successor The Evil Within, but RE4 is a time capsule, perfectly capturing the exact moment when, just once, everything just kind of worked. As for the game itself? Well, Capcom seems hesitant to let RE4 slip into obscurity, so they keep reworking it and porting again and again. Most recently we saw an updated PC port, mostly as an apology for the original PC version, often considered an atrocity, and there have been numerous rumors about a new IOS port of the game, as well as an Android version for certain devices. RE4 will live on as the perfect survival horror title, a monument to how it should be done.

Looking at: State of Decay

When Hell is full

http://www.enizr.com/media/53575/State%20of%20Decay%20Weapons%20and%20Tactics%20gameplay.jpg

guns are a great way to thin the horde, but can be more trouble then they're worth.

Readers, you may have noticed that I've talked quiet a bit about State of Decay in my last two posts, calling it one of my favorite survival horror games, and also one of my favorite zombie games in recent memory. I feel, though, that a single paragraph doesn't do State of Decay enough justice, and since it's Halloween tomorrow and I'm doing a different article on a different survival horror title tomorrow, I thought I'd expand my thoughts on State of Decay and explain in greater detail why I love this game so much.

As I explained already, I really like anything to do with zombies, often giving otherwise mediocre or even bad games a pass, as long as I get to kill a whole lot of the undead. When SoD was announced for Xbox360, and subsequently PC I was overjoyed. This sounded like the game I had always wanted to make: an open world survival game with a greater emphasis on survival then just murdering a billion zombies. When I got my hands on the PC version it was love at first bludgeoning.

The dead walk

http://elder-geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/melee_2.jpg

An average day out in State of Decay.

The campaign for SoD follows a small group of survivors on their quest to escape from Trumbull valley, a huge plot of land encompassing three small towns, a couple dozen farms, and is completely isolated from the rest of the world thanks to mountains on all sides. It's a bit of a dumb reason, but there's so much stuff in the map that you don't really care. There isn't much plot beyond "how do we get out" and most of the story is delivered through your groups interaction with other groups. Like Mount and Blade before it, the best stories in SoD are the ones you create. Like the time I was going for a scouting run and had to outwit a horde because my wooden bat broke and I ran out of ammo. Or the time I was hiding in a house only to be ambushed by a feral zombie and torn to shreds. SoD is great at creating scenarios of pure terror completely by accident and letting you figure a way out.

Obviously, there are zombies. There are a lot of zombies in SoD, and the variety in the zombie models is pretty impressive. It's rare to see the same model twice in a horde. And the zombies are creepy, ranging from recent dead to walking skeletons with meat dangling off the bone. There are a number of special zombies to present unique challenges as well: the armored zombie, immune to bullets; the feral that strikes fast and knocks you down; bloaters filled with poison that damages your health and stamina over time, and The Big Bastard, a giant zombie that takes an enormous amount of firepower to bring down. The fact that all of these can spawn randomly in the world means there's an extra layer of horror in every encounter.

Blood in the eye

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIHz5kwyva2jqo1I_oiz0jbqngEuY_dkbo8AUmas7PxcBk15C6hrAWWgdQvgKXaO4Y9d-39hlXiZaes0qCjAAQWeeUROWtD2RICFS1z4J-na8Qhsd4oPndaWwdSyEodaSBuQsv40hUAiFr/s1600/State-of-Decay-ScreenShot3.jpg

You'll need to learn the land in order to survive.

If there is one thing wrong with SoD, it's that the whole game feels like an indie game in the worst possible way. The idea is there, and it's executed with a decent degree of proficiency, but it's so rough around the edges you'll need a belt sander. Graphically SoD looks... strange. It's running on the CryEngine3, the same tech that ran Crysis 3. It has this weird, psudeo-realistic look to it, but only from a distance, like the devs got a demo version of CryEngine 3 and decided that was enough. What's really strange about it is that it kind of works, especially the game's lighting. Due to the outbreak there's no more electricity in Trumbull valley, so all the interiors are pitch black even during the day. This helps to create a sense of tension, as you'll feel safe keeping your flashlight off, only to suddenly get attacked from a ghoul hiding in the shadows. I strongly recommend the PC version of this game, as it's by far the prettier version. Here's a comparison video courtesy of VideoGamerTV:







What I truly love is that there's a day-night cycle. Not enough games have this these days, and it's refreshing to see. It affects gameplay too, since your flashlight isn't all that great, and vehicle headlights can't be kept on after exiting. You will stumble around in the darkness and it will be terrifying.

They're coming to get you

http://www.incgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/state-of-decay-3-1024x576.jpg

Interacting with human factions often leads to the most interesting stories.

SoD offers you two ways to deal with the zombies: Flight or Fight. As you progress through the game there's a balance tip from one end to the other, offering you a tangible feeling of accomplishment as you acclimate to the new world. Just starting off, you'll be lucky to find a gun and a good stick to beat back the hordes. As you progress you'll get braver and better equipped, taking on infestations and roaming zombie hordes single-handily with high explosives and Molotov cocktails. Near the end of the campaign you'll be so adept at killing zombies, that you'll start going out of your way to kill them. The game wisely balances this by making the best items hard to find, ammo scarce, and every weapon is breakable over time. Zombies will attack from all sides, and there's no way to actually clear a zone, so prolonged slaughter is just a waste of ammo and time.

Unfortunately combat in SoD, like it's graphics, asks that you remember it's an indie game. Animations are jankey, and you can often see individual animation frames processing. There's also a very limited number of animations, so be ready to see the same ones play out a thousand times. Zombies have a tendency to act weird too, glitching through walls or killing themselves on the environment. Perhaps worst of all is that the collision detection can sometimes bug out, and attacks, both melee and ranged, just won't connect for no real reason. All of this is manageable, and never really breaks the game, but it is unfortunate to see, especially given how good the game is as a whole.

That's really the big thing with SoD, is that it's really good as a whole, but the individual parts don't always spin the right way. It's great that it gives you so many different weapon options, but they all operate the same way making combat repetitive. It's great that the game dynamically creates drama within your group of survivors, but there's only maybe ten voice actors all delivering the same lines of dialogue again and again. It's great the game requires you to scavange to survive, but there's almost never a penalty for taking to long to gather food or medicine. Don't stare to long at one particular section of SoD, lest you loose the magic of the game.

Expanding infestation

http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/entry_photo_images/10115297/kelly_1920.jpg

Sasquatch, one of the more interesting Lifeline characters. 

As of this writing, SoD also has two DLC expansion packs I feel are worth talking about. Both of them bring something new to the game, and if you enjoy the base SoD I strongly suggest getting these.

The first DLC is Breakdown, a sandbox version of the main game. There's no story to Breakdown, rather it progresses like an arcade game. You are plopped down on the map with little direction and only two objectives:
1) Survive
2) Escape
You'll need to find and repair an RV, then you get to level up, taking only six survivors and a handful of supplies with you. Leveling up resets the map, but ramps up the difficulty, spawing more zombies, more special zombies, less weapons and fewer vehicles into the world. You can level up six times, each time getting harder and harder, and see how long you last after that. There's special rewards for accomplishing certain tasks, meaning that your never completely out of things to do, and it's a great way to experience the best parts of SoD without putting up with the crappy plot of the main game.

The second DLC is Lifeline, which sees you as a military operation sent to retrieve data about the infestation in the new area of Danforth city. Lifeline introduces some neat ideas, like starting out with an armory of equipment that drains overtime, and the sieges, massive base defense missions against the largest hordes available in the un-modded game. The new map of Danforth's outskirts is also a pleasant change, swapping the open fields of Trumbull Valley with cramped streets and deserted highways. It's unfortunate that you never get to enter Danforth proper, but the idea of having to constantly skirt around the edge of the map helps reinforce the claustrophobic feel.  Lifeline also has a better plot then the base game, sticking you with just a small handful of recognizable characters rather then randomly generated ones, and giving most of them actual personality. Overall, it's a great addition to SoD and well worth the money.

Save the last bullet

http://sheattack.com/myblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/pax_east_screen_001.jpg

Plumbing has never been so useful.

State of Decay is a fantastic game, standing head over shoulders above most other zombie games. It's ability to organically create horror, coupled with the complete freedom it gives to the player mean that it's worth playing again and again, just to see how things can be different. Brutally difficult, but well balanced, and really rough around the edges, this is certainly a game any fan of zombies should consider getting, if they somehow don't have it already.

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

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/5512/870950-resident_evil_4_box_pal.jpg

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

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120831200213/stateofdecay/images/d/d9/XBLA-boxart.png

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

http://pics.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1097538674-00.jpg

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

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/117/1176938/dark-souls-box-art-revealed-20110616113307578.jpg

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

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtmZTY1sFWe4czkuFc_ppIJA9f0bmGzq4ttBVl_e_HU6bf05kI00YpKY3BOe1oel1E-sOan1oojCxzsZM86vvjlcuqyjTTKz0tgHZEaPGUI8ZVV9mnV191wUFFF1WmavWC3b61OhMI8AK/s400/Metro+2033+Cover.jpg

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

http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2012/12/8252729323f94854ba6ebjpg-84366d_800w-610x769.jpg

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

http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/19/18111/MISERY_mainmenu_111205.jpg

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.