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Telling the story of a frustrated writer who suddenly sees himself as one of his creations, Alan Wake is a great horror game that successfully operates under the logic of a nightmare, blurring fantasy and reality through the veil of horror.
Author of a couple of best-sellers, Alan Wake has been unable to write anything for almost two years, and because he’s getting increasingly frustrated with his writer’s block, his wife Alice decides to go with him on a vacation to a small, isolated town in Washington, called Bright Falls. They are to stay at a cabin on a lake, but as soon as they arrive, they start to quarrel and when Wake storms out of the cabin, furious at her, the lights [...]
Set in the Swiss Alps, Mundaun is an effective first-person horror game that boasts a unique visual style and a strong sense of mood and atmosphere. Even though it doesn’t exactly stick the landing, it still provides a unique and memorable experience.
When the game starts, a young man named Curdin is on his way to the mountains of Mundaun in Switzerland. He has received a letter from the local priest, Father Jeremiah, informing him that his grandfather has died in a fire, but that there was no need for Curdin to come for the funeral. Sensing something is amiss, to Mundaun Curdin goes.
One of the first lines of dialogue in Mundaun is about the uniqueness of the setting. [...]
Released alongside Nintendo’s biggest commercial failure, the Wii U, ZombiU managed to remain one of the best examples of its console’s unique features until the end of its lifetime. It uses the Wii U’s gamepad to great effect, providing a tense and unnerving survival horror experience that largely succeeds in turning zombies – gaming’s most popular cannon fodder – into fearsome creatures.
We play as a random survivor during the zombie apocalypse. In the game’s brief intro, this survivor comes across a safehouse in London, where a mysterious man, who calls himself “the Prepper”, speaks over the intercom, trying to offer some advice. At first, the Prepper acts like a guide, [...]
On paper, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is a perfectly competent entry in the series, getting a lot of the basics of a survival horror right, successfully building a tense atmosphere while giving limited ammo to the player. The problem is that, just like its many monsters, the game lacks a soul: its design choices and storyline are so bland and uninspired that, even though Revelations 2 is far from being the worst entry in the series, it’s certainly one of the most forgettable Resident Evil games.
The game opens with an ad about the dangers of bioterrorism, advertising how politicians and big companies should not be trusted. It’s selling a private organization called TerraSave [...]
Resident Evil: Revelations is a game of two halves: the first one is effective in building a horror atmosphere in a claustrophobic environment, but the second offers mediocre action sequences with endless amounts of similar enemies to be defeated.
The story begins when Jill Valentine and Parker Luciani – agents working for a counter-terrorism group – are tasked to investigate a drifting vessel on the high seas, a luxury ship named “The Queen Zenobia”. Bizarre carcasses carrying a devastating virus have appeared on a nearby beach and their colleagues, Chris and Jessica, have gone missing: their last know location is on the Zenobia. When Jill and Parker arrive on the [...]
The Medium tries to blend the point-and-click genre with survival horror, failing to live up to both. With a problematic story that quickly derails after a promising start and a main gimmick that is ultimately wasted by poor puzzle design, The Medium eventually falls short of its ambitions.
The game starts with Marianne, a young Polish woman, looking for a tie clip in her father’s house to adorn his body. After putting the finishing touches on the corpse – she used to help him in his Funeral House – the lights go out and Marianne sees herself in the “other side”: she’s a medium that sometimes, against her will, is pulled to this other plane of existence [...]