Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
Before I begin proper, here's some recommendations from me to add to the bunch:
DreadOut
DreadOut is an Indonesian survival-horror game that takes inspiration from the Fatal Frame franchise, and pulls a lot from Indonesian myths and folklore.
You play as a non-talkative protagonist known as Linda, who with a few friends is on a car trip, but they stumble upon a weird deserted city that isn't marked on their map. The friends go to investigate the town, and soon get wrapped up in some severe hauntings from the strange ghost that start coming out when night falls.
The game has a low-budget, and it shows. Graphically everything looks outdated, with low-res textures, odd character animations, and the like. There's also no real-time shadows. The game also has a few bugs. I didn't encounter anything game-breaking, but a few 'look through the wall with the camera', 'get stuck on an object for a moment', 'that character is levitating,' type of bugs, However, something I found interesting was that they didn't copy and paste many models. There were a lot of posters around town, and each one was legitimately different. Same with pictures, and just small details all about.Outside of a few chairs or piles of garbage, most of the models were unique to each other, and I was surprised the developers didn't take many shortcuts.
Mentioning this, something I noticed about the game is that there were a lot of secrets and original assets used for things that most players would probably not even end up finding or seeing. There's more I have to say on the topic, but I'll get back to this in a bit.
The game has legitimately great atmosphere. There are some fantastic scares, the feeling of unnerve that is caused by the game. It has an atmosphere to it that most horror games these days are missing from the days of old, sort of a combination of dread and excitement for what's going to come next. The atmosphere and scares are more akin to something like Fatal Frame or Kuon than Amnesia or Outlast, I should mention. Recommended at night and in darkness, with headphones.
This is backed by fantastic audio design. The music is great, the sounds are great. Voicing is okay, a bit cheesy but enjoyably so. However, with the music, how it is and how it's used in the game, is really effective, and also I can mention unique. The music is very different than any other horror game I have played, but very effective. And how the music transitions with events going on is very well-done. The audio is also unnerving, and sometimes hearing a weird sound, even without knowing its source or even without it leading to anything, raised the tension. It sometimes gets hard to tell if a sound you just heard is part of the music, or something in the environment, but I say this as a good thing.
And the game does not lie on its laurels. By this I mean a lot happens, and the game never throws the same thing at you twice. I was honestly surprised by the number of ghosts there are in this game, there were a lot more than I was anticipating. Some great enemy variety, and you fight each ghost really only once or twice, there was not a single ghost I think the game threw at you a third time. And the 'events' that happen, like scares or atmospheric additions, were all incredibly varied too. This definitely helped to raise the intrigue as you never knew what might be coming next, and some of what happens really goes into the unexpected.
Combat is similar to Fatal Frame, but a bit more simplistic. There isn't a charge rate like Fatal Frame, or a point system, but the closer enemies are, the more you damage them when you take a shot. And if you attack them right before they attack you, you deliver additional damage.
Even the puzzles are well done and intelligent. Figuring out what to do is fun, and they do a good job at laying out clues to what you need to do to help piece it all together. They have clever hints and details, while not being extremely obvious either. However, it should be mentioned that those with less patience and less of a desire to figure out cryptic clues may not like how they're handled. But if you loved puzzles from horror games in the 90s (which have been notably absent in recent years), then you'll likely be quite happy to see some return to form here.
One of the game's biggest draws is some absolutely memorable moments. Several of the ghost encounters are absolutely fantastically handled and designed, the pacing of the game is wonderful for the most part (though may some end up stuck in the school for a while), and there's good variety with all of it. Some of the moments, such as the sit-down with Ira or the whole Mansion location, are absolutely stellar, and strike me as quality horror moments, something that has been missing from so many horror games, the sort of intrigue, weirdness, and execution that leads these moment to be gripping and chilling.
What they have here is fantastic, it legitimately is one of the best classic-styled survival-horror games to release in the last few years, and I think genre enthusiast who like certain elements of horror games that have been absent since the days of old will really appreciate the game. It's well-paced, well-executed, and well realized. It's low-budget, but those who enjoy the genre likely won't be bothered by this, some absolutely fantastic horror games over the years have been decidedly low-budget. The developers only had $26k to make the game, but they have managed to with that make a very confident horror game, and honestly some of the most fun I've had in a horror game in a while.
The weird thing is the secrets I mentioned earlier. There are complete sections of the game you could miss if you don't do some exploration. There are ghosts you won't fight unless you go off the beaten path. A tip to the wise is when it turns night-time and before you enter the school, don't enter the school like the game suggests and instead head back towards the town you just came from. There are different types of ghosts if you head backwards at this point that you'll never encounter in the main game. And little hidden areas and easter eggs to uncover all about. So on that front, there is some really cool optional content to explore in the game.
There's also a few cool unlockables. Once you complete the game, you unlock additional outfits, all of which are actually pretty well designed, and can be used on a second and later playthrough.
There's also a few side areas you can explore right now that don't really lead to anything, which I can only guess are there right now for the possible future Free Roam Mode (a lot of buildings and side-areas off the beaten-path are currently inaccessible or kind of barren right now, and I assume will be open in the free-roam mode the developers are working on).
I want DreadOut to succeed. I really liked what was here, I'd even go as far to say this is the best attempt at making a 'classic' style horror game to release in the last few years, really having an understanding of those gripping elements that made those games enjoyable (a deeper level of meaning and not just superficially being classic styled with fixed camera angles and tank controls). The whole game will probably take someone 4 - 9 hours, depending on how much they explore and find hidden areas and how long they take on puzzles.
DreadOut is completely worth experiencing. It's tense, sometimes terrifying, has the right amount of weirdness to it, some absolutely stellar moments, and is actually a lot of fun. Its low budget shows, especially in the graphics department, but through clever design, good execution, and variety at hand, manages to be a fun and memorable experience.
---
Similarly, I would recommend its sequel/spin-off:
DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark
If you liked the original game, it picks up during the 'mirror' segment of the game, and features a more open-world style with multiple missions and more variety than the main game, all new ghosts, boss battle scenarios with real variety, as you visit new and remixed locations. Adds some new fun elements to the story, and features the same sort of intrigue and use of creativity and design like the original game, even if its not stylized as much like the horror games of old. I still would seriously recommend it!
---
Resident Evil Revelations 2
Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a decidedly low-budget affair, it's not particularly graphically impressive and there is a level of jank to it all. However, behind this lays what may be one of the stronger Resident Evil games in years that manages to be a solid episodic title, a solid survival-action game, and more atmosphere and horror-oriented and feeling more like 'Resident Evil' than probably the last several RE games combined.
Now I say that as someone who actually liked Resident Evil Umbrella+Darkside Chronicles, RE5, Revelations 1, and Resident Evil 6 well enough for what they were. RE5 and RE6 were fun action co-op games for me, RE5 was a fun arcade shooter with some fun monsters, RE6 had some fun combat mechanics with a sort of uneven-quality campaign but great Mercenaries. Revelations 1 was okay, I enjoyed it well enough, but its handheld origins showed strongly and really, the design of the game was kind of dull at times, and it never quite gave that classic Resident Evil feel it claimed it would. But Raid Mode was a joy for me.
However, I think with this title it's helped me better understand what element is missing from those games, besides the obvious flaws that something like Resident Evil 6 has, Revelations 2 comes as something of a reminder of elements of RE I deeply appreciate and love that have been mostly absent in recent years. That's not to say this is some complete return to form or a classic-styled survival-horror game, but it recalls back to the older series while also not quite feeling it's living in the past.
While the graphics leave some things to be desired, the sound design is well-handled. It doesn't quite have the memorable moody tunes of the original series, but the dynamic shifts of the music, the audio design of ambiance and monsters is well-handled, with good depth of audio for headphone users, and a good layer of subtlety which help propel the title further to a more engaging experience.
This is a much slower experience than recent Resident Evil's. That's not to say it doesn't have its action-full moments, but even those comparatively to recent RE titles feel more constrained and leveled, and a lot of the time you find yourself scouting locations, looking for hidden items, sneaking past or onto enemies with a new stealth system (that's a bit flawed sometimes, but functional).
Before I continue, I shall mention like I do with most Resident Evil titles, I played this game on the hardest difficulty available from the start, Survival. I did my first run in Revelations 1 on Infernal, I played RE6 on Professional on the 360 before No Hope existed. However, this is probably tied for me right now with Code Veronica as the most challenging RE on Hard difficulty. Revelations 1 had some artificial difficulty spikes on Infernal (the first chapter and final boss fight come to mind), but this feels more like a challenge. I've discovered Survival both lowers the amount of ammo you get, and adds specific trickier enemy placements. I wouldn't recommend it for the easily frustrated, but for those who like a challenge and an amplified survival element, I would recommend it.
And maybe in part to this I found the game to have a bigger survival aspect than the recent RE's, I found myself struggling more for ammo and health than I can recall in any recent survival-action, horror, or the like games. Even in a lot of older RE's I would be stockpiled with a lot of supplies past the very beginning, but here I found myself aching for specific ammo types and herbs on a number of occasions. But not to my lament, I found it a joy, with the slower-pace. The lack of constant action with more of a focus on survival and playing more intelligently and preservative brought back certain feelings I haven't felt from the series in a while.
The element I was most surprised by though was the story. This isn't some masterfully crafted tale, but the story feels like a Resident Evil story. One of the single most disappointing elements of RE6 and Revelations 1 for me happened to be their narratives, the characters lacked playfully fun tones often, the files were a bore, the stories delved into the ridiculous, and not in a good way, and often came up as boring and forgettable. This game has single-handily pushed Barry as one of my favorite characters in the series, had a child character in Natalia that is actually not annoying and enjoyable, the ridiculous cussing of Moira actually didn't totally turn me off from her character and she became likable by the end of it, and it has what in my opinion is the best villain the series has had in years. Claire unfortunately is missing some of her charm from RE2 and Code Veronica, but I also find herself in this game fairly unoffensive. Unlike the first 'Revelations', this game actually feels super connected with the rest of the series, episodes end with actually impactful cliffhangers, and the overall story feels like actual revelations to the series that makes me interested to see where they take it in the future. The story managed to be enjoyable throughout, make me care, make me laugh, and unexpectedly delivered a few moments that put me on the bit of the edge of feelsy and realizing I actually like these characters, something no recent RE has been able to afflict on me.
It's also notable that there's only a small handful of QTEs in the game, that aren't harmful, and it happens to be the only game I can think of that got forced walking sections correctly. That's usually a huge game design sin for me, but the moments are very rare and when it happens it both makes sense and actually works.
One of the game's finer strengths is its monster design and encounters. Some of the monsters found in the game are among some of my favorites in recent RE's, and they're backed with memorable and some of the most tense encounters I feel in the series history. Boss encounters are infrequent, but the few that are here managed to be good ones in my opinion, with a few maybe being some of my favorite tense boss encounters in the series. While not specifically a chainsaw, this game probably has my favorite 'chainsaw enemy' since Dr. Salvador, and a boss fight in Claire's Chapter 3 is a fun and wonderfully RE-styled boss fight. I even thought the final boss was the best final boss the series had seen in the last few years, and I agree with others, the good ending was probably the best ending a Resident Evil game has had in over a decade.
Then there's small touches that bring the game together. Certain things you do in Claire's scenario affects Barry's, some being as subtle as picking up ammo and herbs not making it available for Barry/Natalia, to minor cool things, like turning on the flamethrower to aid Claire in episode 1 causes there to be an additional obstacle in Barry's episode 1, to nice subtle things like a certain monster you can fight or run from in one of Claire's episodes will change completely what Barry has to do or encounter... The episodes get progressively better in my opinion, and some of the later stuff feels a lot like older RE, including a few light, easy, but fun puzzles in episode 3, and a certain fun section in the last episode...
One disappointing thing is, despite spending hours in it already and enjoying it well enough, I think I've concluded that Raid Mode in Revelations 2 I don't find as enjoyable as Raid Mode in Revelations 1. There's aspects I like about it more, like character-specific abilities, the new monster buffs, the higher number of stages... But most of the stages being from RE6, as well as just not as well designed or varied as Revelations 1, and the whole thing lacking an over-arching fun challenge like Ghost Ship, I think is deeply felt.
Probably the most 'Resident Evil' the series has felt in years, and a fantastic budgeted spin-off.
---
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
For the obvious, Call of Cthulhu is a game inspired by Lovecraft. It's called Call of Cthulhu, but that's more of a marketing thing, as Cthulhu actually plays a very little role in the title. The game is more about a few of Lovecraft's other novels, the most notable one being Shadow Over Innsmouth. However, if you don't know the difference between a Cthulhu and a Dagan or a Xa'ligha, that's okay as the game doesn't expect you to know these things, as you play as a character who knows nothing about these things either.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first-person horror-adventure game. It has elements of a first-person shooter, an adventure game, and a survival-horror game. It's also a really tough cookie, it's not an easy game, and there is a legitimate survival element, as well as a few tough puzzles, and some pretty fantastic atmosphere and scares.
You play as a man named Jack Walters, who's a detective. The game starts with a prologue section when Jack helps a local police force he's acquainted with break into a house run by a group of cultists. They're shooting-up the police... However, when Jack infiltrates, the cultists don't seem to be hostile towards him, but rather actually welcome him with open arms, as they commit a mass-suicide ritual. And when he enters the basement, he witnesses something strange, and everything becomes a blur. He becomes conscious six years later, when he finds out he spent the last six years in a mental asylum. He has no memory of this time, and to him he was just at the cultists house. He of course is really curious about this time, but tries to resume his detective agency. He receives a letter and takes on the requested case to investigate a missing persons report of a Brian Burnham, a man who tried to start a grocery store chain in a nearby coastal town of Innsmouth. He goes to investigate.
Gameplay has a lot of variety, and fantastic pacing for the most part if you can accept it moves at a bit of a slower pace, a more slow-burn type of game (which benefits it rather than hurts it, I feel). The game has sections of exploration and interaction with townspeople. You actually have a big portion of the game at the beginning when you're defenseless, and have to master skills of stealth, evasion, and survival with taking advantage of the environment and lowly tools you have that are hardly murder weapons. There's puzzles, both in the on-the-fly gameplay sort and the 'need to solve this puzzle to continue' variety. And the game isn't full of scripted scenarios either (though a few do exist), so a lot of the survival has to be taken from your own wits and cleverness.
Survival is important. Gun bullets don't graze you, they can seriously damage you. The game has a mechanic where you bleed when shot, as well as where you are shot effects your damage reaction to being shot. You heal it with limited healing items you get, some to stop bleeding or mend wounded appendages, others to recover blood and health. You also need to be careful as some weapons can inflict poisoning on you to recover from. Eventually you do get a gun though, but the game hardly becomes a run-and-gun, you have to be really strategic and know when to let-go of being undetected to fire, and which enemies are really worth taking out. You have limited ammo, and the enemies can seriously kick your ♥♥♥ if you're not careful.
But the game isn't all about combat and stealth. There also are areas and levels with almost no enemies at all, and some fantastic horror scenes, strange sanity moments, and just some atmosphere and sequences that go in very different directions. The character also has a sanity feature, which makes it so the more he's around unpleasent things, the more weird things may become for him. Certain areas, imagery, and the like help his sanity, while others break it.
The game also has some memorizing music, graphics are obviously a bit outdated but do the job, and as the game continues, situations open up a lot more to how you can approach them. And the game continues adding new elements, additions, and set-piece like moments all the way through to the end to prevent it from becoming too much of the same, and leaving you to continually wonder what might be coming next. It's pacing can be argued is slow, but I think works very well for the title and what its trying to achieve.
I also can mention that this game I would label as a scary game, it is absolutely tense a lot of the time, and some segments legitimately scared the crap out of me. But part of the way it pulls this off is that they're not over-abundant or consistent, and don't rely on the same few tricks or overly on cheap scares.
There is some jank here though, with some bugs, sometimes you may be detected by enemies when they really shouldn't of detected you, and there's a few frustrating parts of the game that are kind of trial-and-error, where basically you need to do what the game wants you to do or you'll die. There are some fan patches to address some of these issues, however. On a similar note, the game has some bugs for Windows 7 users, as the game was designed around Windows XP. I suggest doing some homework before you play the game to find some fan patches that fix a number of issues on newer machines, make some trial-and-error parts of the game easier, and make the game look better graphically.
It's not perfect, but I do think it's a good horror title, and worth checking out if you either have interest in horror games or Lovecraft mythos (as its mine and many others personal favorite Lovecraftian-inspired game). It does require some patience though, but there is an excellent experience here if you enjoy this sort of thing.
---
Few more recommendations coming.
DreadOut
DreadOut is an Indonesian survival-horror game that takes inspiration from the Fatal Frame franchise, and pulls a lot from Indonesian myths and folklore.
You play as a non-talkative protagonist known as Linda, who with a few friends is on a car trip, but they stumble upon a weird deserted city that isn't marked on their map. The friends go to investigate the town, and soon get wrapped up in some severe hauntings from the strange ghost that start coming out when night falls.
The game has a low-budget, and it shows. Graphically everything looks outdated, with low-res textures, odd character animations, and the like. There's also no real-time shadows. The game also has a few bugs. I didn't encounter anything game-breaking, but a few 'look through the wall with the camera', 'get stuck on an object for a moment', 'that character is levitating,' type of bugs, However, something I found interesting was that they didn't copy and paste many models. There were a lot of posters around town, and each one was legitimately different. Same with pictures, and just small details all about.Outside of a few chairs or piles of garbage, most of the models were unique to each other, and I was surprised the developers didn't take many shortcuts.
Mentioning this, something I noticed about the game is that there were a lot of secrets and original assets used for things that most players would probably not even end up finding or seeing. There's more I have to say on the topic, but I'll get back to this in a bit.
The game has legitimately great atmosphere. There are some fantastic scares, the feeling of unnerve that is caused by the game. It has an atmosphere to it that most horror games these days are missing from the days of old, sort of a combination of dread and excitement for what's going to come next. The atmosphere and scares are more akin to something like Fatal Frame or Kuon than Amnesia or Outlast, I should mention. Recommended at night and in darkness, with headphones.
This is backed by fantastic audio design. The music is great, the sounds are great. Voicing is okay, a bit cheesy but enjoyably so. However, with the music, how it is and how it's used in the game, is really effective, and also I can mention unique. The music is very different than any other horror game I have played, but very effective. And how the music transitions with events going on is very well-done. The audio is also unnerving, and sometimes hearing a weird sound, even without knowing its source or even without it leading to anything, raised the tension. It sometimes gets hard to tell if a sound you just heard is part of the music, or something in the environment, but I say this as a good thing.
And the game does not lie on its laurels. By this I mean a lot happens, and the game never throws the same thing at you twice. I was honestly surprised by the number of ghosts there are in this game, there were a lot more than I was anticipating. Some great enemy variety, and you fight each ghost really only once or twice, there was not a single ghost I think the game threw at you a third time. And the 'events' that happen, like scares or atmospheric additions, were all incredibly varied too. This definitely helped to raise the intrigue as you never knew what might be coming next, and some of what happens really goes into the unexpected.
Combat is similar to Fatal Frame, but a bit more simplistic. There isn't a charge rate like Fatal Frame, or a point system, but the closer enemies are, the more you damage them when you take a shot. And if you attack them right before they attack you, you deliver additional damage.
Even the puzzles are well done and intelligent. Figuring out what to do is fun, and they do a good job at laying out clues to what you need to do to help piece it all together. They have clever hints and details, while not being extremely obvious either. However, it should be mentioned that those with less patience and less of a desire to figure out cryptic clues may not like how they're handled. But if you loved puzzles from horror games in the 90s (which have been notably absent in recent years), then you'll likely be quite happy to see some return to form here.
One of the game's biggest draws is some absolutely memorable moments. Several of the ghost encounters are absolutely fantastically handled and designed, the pacing of the game is wonderful for the most part (though may some end up stuck in the school for a while), and there's good variety with all of it. Some of the moments, such as the sit-down with Ira or the whole Mansion location, are absolutely stellar, and strike me as quality horror moments, something that has been missing from so many horror games, the sort of intrigue, weirdness, and execution that leads these moment to be gripping and chilling.
What they have here is fantastic, it legitimately is one of the best classic-styled survival-horror games to release in the last few years, and I think genre enthusiast who like certain elements of horror games that have been absent since the days of old will really appreciate the game. It's well-paced, well-executed, and well realized. It's low-budget, but those who enjoy the genre likely won't be bothered by this, some absolutely fantastic horror games over the years have been decidedly low-budget. The developers only had $26k to make the game, but they have managed to with that make a very confident horror game, and honestly some of the most fun I've had in a horror game in a while.
The weird thing is the secrets I mentioned earlier. There are complete sections of the game you could miss if you don't do some exploration. There are ghosts you won't fight unless you go off the beaten path. A tip to the wise is when it turns night-time and before you enter the school, don't enter the school like the game suggests and instead head back towards the town you just came from. There are different types of ghosts if you head backwards at this point that you'll never encounter in the main game. And little hidden areas and easter eggs to uncover all about. So on that front, there is some really cool optional content to explore in the game.
There's also a few cool unlockables. Once you complete the game, you unlock additional outfits, all of which are actually pretty well designed, and can be used on a second and later playthrough.
There's also a few side areas you can explore right now that don't really lead to anything, which I can only guess are there right now for the possible future Free Roam Mode (a lot of buildings and side-areas off the beaten-path are currently inaccessible or kind of barren right now, and I assume will be open in the free-roam mode the developers are working on).
I want DreadOut to succeed. I really liked what was here, I'd even go as far to say this is the best attempt at making a 'classic' style horror game to release in the last few years, really having an understanding of those gripping elements that made those games enjoyable (a deeper level of meaning and not just superficially being classic styled with fixed camera angles and tank controls). The whole game will probably take someone 4 - 9 hours, depending on how much they explore and find hidden areas and how long they take on puzzles.
DreadOut is completely worth experiencing. It's tense, sometimes terrifying, has the right amount of weirdness to it, some absolutely stellar moments, and is actually a lot of fun. Its low budget shows, especially in the graphics department, but through clever design, good execution, and variety at hand, manages to be a fun and memorable experience.
---
Similarly, I would recommend its sequel/spin-off:
DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark
If you liked the original game, it picks up during the 'mirror' segment of the game, and features a more open-world style with multiple missions and more variety than the main game, all new ghosts, boss battle scenarios with real variety, as you visit new and remixed locations. Adds some new fun elements to the story, and features the same sort of intrigue and use of creativity and design like the original game, even if its not stylized as much like the horror games of old. I still would seriously recommend it!
---
Resident Evil Revelations 2
Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a decidedly low-budget affair, it's not particularly graphically impressive and there is a level of jank to it all. However, behind this lays what may be one of the stronger Resident Evil games in years that manages to be a solid episodic title, a solid survival-action game, and more atmosphere and horror-oriented and feeling more like 'Resident Evil' than probably the last several RE games combined.
Now I say that as someone who actually liked Resident Evil Umbrella+Darkside Chronicles, RE5, Revelations 1, and Resident Evil 6 well enough for what they were. RE5 and RE6 were fun action co-op games for me, RE5 was a fun arcade shooter with some fun monsters, RE6 had some fun combat mechanics with a sort of uneven-quality campaign but great Mercenaries. Revelations 1 was okay, I enjoyed it well enough, but its handheld origins showed strongly and really, the design of the game was kind of dull at times, and it never quite gave that classic Resident Evil feel it claimed it would. But Raid Mode was a joy for me.
However, I think with this title it's helped me better understand what element is missing from those games, besides the obvious flaws that something like Resident Evil 6 has, Revelations 2 comes as something of a reminder of elements of RE I deeply appreciate and love that have been mostly absent in recent years. That's not to say this is some complete return to form or a classic-styled survival-horror game, but it recalls back to the older series while also not quite feeling it's living in the past.
While the graphics leave some things to be desired, the sound design is well-handled. It doesn't quite have the memorable moody tunes of the original series, but the dynamic shifts of the music, the audio design of ambiance and monsters is well-handled, with good depth of audio for headphone users, and a good layer of subtlety which help propel the title further to a more engaging experience.
This is a much slower experience than recent Resident Evil's. That's not to say it doesn't have its action-full moments, but even those comparatively to recent RE titles feel more constrained and leveled, and a lot of the time you find yourself scouting locations, looking for hidden items, sneaking past or onto enemies with a new stealth system (that's a bit flawed sometimes, but functional).
Before I continue, I shall mention like I do with most Resident Evil titles, I played this game on the hardest difficulty available from the start, Survival. I did my first run in Revelations 1 on Infernal, I played RE6 on Professional on the 360 before No Hope existed. However, this is probably tied for me right now with Code Veronica as the most challenging RE on Hard difficulty. Revelations 1 had some artificial difficulty spikes on Infernal (the first chapter and final boss fight come to mind), but this feels more like a challenge. I've discovered Survival both lowers the amount of ammo you get, and adds specific trickier enemy placements. I wouldn't recommend it for the easily frustrated, but for those who like a challenge and an amplified survival element, I would recommend it.
And maybe in part to this I found the game to have a bigger survival aspect than the recent RE's, I found myself struggling more for ammo and health than I can recall in any recent survival-action, horror, or the like games. Even in a lot of older RE's I would be stockpiled with a lot of supplies past the very beginning, but here I found myself aching for specific ammo types and herbs on a number of occasions. But not to my lament, I found it a joy, with the slower-pace. The lack of constant action with more of a focus on survival and playing more intelligently and preservative brought back certain feelings I haven't felt from the series in a while.
The element I was most surprised by though was the story. This isn't some masterfully crafted tale, but the story feels like a Resident Evil story. One of the single most disappointing elements of RE6 and Revelations 1 for me happened to be their narratives, the characters lacked playfully fun tones often, the files were a bore, the stories delved into the ridiculous, and not in a good way, and often came up as boring and forgettable. This game has single-handily pushed Barry as one of my favorite characters in the series, had a child character in Natalia that is actually not annoying and enjoyable, the ridiculous cussing of Moira actually didn't totally turn me off from her character and she became likable by the end of it, and it has what in my opinion is the best villain the series has had in years. Claire unfortunately is missing some of her charm from RE2 and Code Veronica, but I also find herself in this game fairly unoffensive. Unlike the first 'Revelations', this game actually feels super connected with the rest of the series, episodes end with actually impactful cliffhangers, and the overall story feels like actual revelations to the series that makes me interested to see where they take it in the future. The story managed to be enjoyable throughout, make me care, make me laugh, and unexpectedly delivered a few moments that put me on the bit of the edge of feelsy and realizing I actually like these characters, something no recent RE has been able to afflict on me.
It's also notable that there's only a small handful of QTEs in the game, that aren't harmful, and it happens to be the only game I can think of that got forced walking sections correctly. That's usually a huge game design sin for me, but the moments are very rare and when it happens it both makes sense and actually works.
One of the game's finer strengths is its monster design and encounters. Some of the monsters found in the game are among some of my favorites in recent RE's, and they're backed with memorable and some of the most tense encounters I feel in the series history. Boss encounters are infrequent, but the few that are here managed to be good ones in my opinion, with a few maybe being some of my favorite tense boss encounters in the series. While not specifically a chainsaw, this game probably has my favorite 'chainsaw enemy' since Dr. Salvador, and a boss fight in Claire's Chapter 3 is a fun and wonderfully RE-styled boss fight. I even thought the final boss was the best final boss the series had seen in the last few years, and I agree with others, the good ending was probably the best ending a Resident Evil game has had in over a decade.
Then there's small touches that bring the game together. Certain things you do in Claire's scenario affects Barry's, some being as subtle as picking up ammo and herbs not making it available for Barry/Natalia, to minor cool things, like turning on the flamethrower to aid Claire in episode 1 causes there to be an additional obstacle in Barry's episode 1, to nice subtle things like a certain monster you can fight or run from in one of Claire's episodes will change completely what Barry has to do or encounter... The episodes get progressively better in my opinion, and some of the later stuff feels a lot like older RE, including a few light, easy, but fun puzzles in episode 3, and a certain fun section in the last episode...
One disappointing thing is, despite spending hours in it already and enjoying it well enough, I think I've concluded that Raid Mode in Revelations 2 I don't find as enjoyable as Raid Mode in Revelations 1. There's aspects I like about it more, like character-specific abilities, the new monster buffs, the higher number of stages... But most of the stages being from RE6, as well as just not as well designed or varied as Revelations 1, and the whole thing lacking an over-arching fun challenge like Ghost Ship, I think is deeply felt.
Probably the most 'Resident Evil' the series has felt in years, and a fantastic budgeted spin-off.
---
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
For the obvious, Call of Cthulhu is a game inspired by Lovecraft. It's called Call of Cthulhu, but that's more of a marketing thing, as Cthulhu actually plays a very little role in the title. The game is more about a few of Lovecraft's other novels, the most notable one being Shadow Over Innsmouth. However, if you don't know the difference between a Cthulhu and a Dagan or a Xa'ligha, that's okay as the game doesn't expect you to know these things, as you play as a character who knows nothing about these things either.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first-person horror-adventure game. It has elements of a first-person shooter, an adventure game, and a survival-horror game. It's also a really tough cookie, it's not an easy game, and there is a legitimate survival element, as well as a few tough puzzles, and some pretty fantastic atmosphere and scares.
You play as a man named Jack Walters, who's a detective. The game starts with a prologue section when Jack helps a local police force he's acquainted with break into a house run by a group of cultists. They're shooting-up the police... However, when Jack infiltrates, the cultists don't seem to be hostile towards him, but rather actually welcome him with open arms, as they commit a mass-suicide ritual. And when he enters the basement, he witnesses something strange, and everything becomes a blur. He becomes conscious six years later, when he finds out he spent the last six years in a mental asylum. He has no memory of this time, and to him he was just at the cultists house. He of course is really curious about this time, but tries to resume his detective agency. He receives a letter and takes on the requested case to investigate a missing persons report of a Brian Burnham, a man who tried to start a grocery store chain in a nearby coastal town of Innsmouth. He goes to investigate.
Gameplay has a lot of variety, and fantastic pacing for the most part if you can accept it moves at a bit of a slower pace, a more slow-burn type of game (which benefits it rather than hurts it, I feel). The game has sections of exploration and interaction with townspeople. You actually have a big portion of the game at the beginning when you're defenseless, and have to master skills of stealth, evasion, and survival with taking advantage of the environment and lowly tools you have that are hardly murder weapons. There's puzzles, both in the on-the-fly gameplay sort and the 'need to solve this puzzle to continue' variety. And the game isn't full of scripted scenarios either (though a few do exist), so a lot of the survival has to be taken from your own wits and cleverness.
Survival is important. Gun bullets don't graze you, they can seriously damage you. The game has a mechanic where you bleed when shot, as well as where you are shot effects your damage reaction to being shot. You heal it with limited healing items you get, some to stop bleeding or mend wounded appendages, others to recover blood and health. You also need to be careful as some weapons can inflict poisoning on you to recover from. Eventually you do get a gun though, but the game hardly becomes a run-and-gun, you have to be really strategic and know when to let-go of being undetected to fire, and which enemies are really worth taking out. You have limited ammo, and the enemies can seriously kick your ♥♥♥ if you're not careful.
But the game isn't all about combat and stealth. There also are areas and levels with almost no enemies at all, and some fantastic horror scenes, strange sanity moments, and just some atmosphere and sequences that go in very different directions. The character also has a sanity feature, which makes it so the more he's around unpleasent things, the more weird things may become for him. Certain areas, imagery, and the like help his sanity, while others break it.
The game also has some memorizing music, graphics are obviously a bit outdated but do the job, and as the game continues, situations open up a lot more to how you can approach them. And the game continues adding new elements, additions, and set-piece like moments all the way through to the end to prevent it from becoming too much of the same, and leaving you to continually wonder what might be coming next. It's pacing can be argued is slow, but I think works very well for the title and what its trying to achieve.
I also can mention that this game I would label as a scary game, it is absolutely tense a lot of the time, and some segments legitimately scared the crap out of me. But part of the way it pulls this off is that they're not over-abundant or consistent, and don't rely on the same few tricks or overly on cheap scares.
There is some jank here though, with some bugs, sometimes you may be detected by enemies when they really shouldn't of detected you, and there's a few frustrating parts of the game that are kind of trial-and-error, where basically you need to do what the game wants you to do or you'll die. There are some fan patches to address some of these issues, however. On a similar note, the game has some bugs for Windows 7 users, as the game was designed around Windows XP. I suggest doing some homework before you play the game to find some fan patches that fix a number of issues on newer machines, make some trial-and-error parts of the game easier, and make the game look better graphically.
It's not perfect, but I do think it's a good horror title, and worth checking out if you either have interest in horror games or Lovecraft mythos (as its mine and many others personal favorite Lovecraftian-inspired game). It does require some patience though, but there is an excellent experience here if you enjoy this sort of thing.
---
Few more recommendations coming.
pls put the appropriate genre; Tactical Espionage Prinny Stratigic RPG
