Zardy’s Maze
This game is pretty much the concept Baldi’s Basics created, but enhanced to a sharp point. It does have a small amount of RNG dependence, but most games do. The people you see complaining about RNG just don’t know about how the enemies act, which, to be fair, is not taught by the game, due to it trying to be a cryptic, trial and error experience.
This game is a really good time killer, especially with the challenge mode, since it changes up how the game functions, i’ve already almost wasted a day of my one life on this earth on it, and with it being free, you can’t really go wrong with it. You can support the creator on the itch.io page for Zardy’s Maze or at their merch store. I’d give it a 8.25 out of 10.
– Real player with 38.7 hrs in game
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((Full disclosure; I am friends with the developer of this game, so that will no doubt affect my review. Also, the vast majority of my playtime was not through steam.))
Still, I enjoy Zardy’s Maze, and would definitely recommend it.
The game was definitely made with past survival horror games in mind like Baldi’s Basics & Slenderman: The Eight Pages. I think this helps it.
Zardy’s Maze, at least initially, is spooky, unsettling, and deadly. However, once the confused panic from your first few attempts begins to wane, you realize the game is relatively straightforward.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Dread X Collection: The Hunt
I do think this is one of the best collections Dread X has released, and it is a great game, however, I can’t in good conscience recommend it, because I literally can’t beat the game.
I can’t finish story mode (at least not without cheating) all just because of one game in this collection; The Fruit.
Now, the The Fruit itself is incredible. The graphics (especially the nature) look absolutely stunning! The letter at the beginning literally made me shed a couple tears for both it’s great writing and the excellent somber voice acting. The absolutely best parts of this game were the opening letter (and the writing in general) and the reloading mechanic; I’ve seen games where it takes forever to reload because of the time period or otherwise, but I’ve never to manually do every step of reloading myself. It’s hyper realistic in and of itself, and you can even stop in the middle of reloading if need be- however, you will naturally want to finish loading the bullet without stopping, even if you see the light of somebody’s torch coming around the building, looking for you, and it adds SO much tension! I hope to see something like this more often. The story itself is interesting and unique, I STILL really want to know what happens next!
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
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I’ll review each part separately as usual. Though I wanna say right off the bat this is the best Dread X so far.
Possible ratings are: hated it, meh, okay, good, great
ARK 2 Research Base (hub world) Part 1 by Dread XP
Rating: great
The frozen tundra base you see the story through is probably the best hub yet. If you recall, Dread X1 didn’t have a hub, it was just a menu. Dread X2 put you in a puzzle house where you played games on VHS tapes. Dread X3 put you in a spoopy castle where you would put ritual candles on graves to play games in ghosts' memories. Dread X4’s Ark Base presents the games in case files. What sets X4’s hub apart from X2 and X3, though, is just how thick they lay on the atmosphere. Exploring that base is a tension-filled and immersive experience.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
Alan Wake
Alan is a famous writer of psychological horror books who goes with his wife to vacation in Washington, more precisely in a small town called Bright Falls. In this place the protagonist begins to experience episodes of its last book published and about which he does not remember to have it written. However, all the current events in your life are directly and indirectly related to this book. Here could be a lot more said, however they would be spoilers of the game.
Alan Wake’s graphics are very beautiful, well rendered and polished. The detail levels of various objects are quite high. The light and shadow effects are exceptional and the textures are very well crafted. Details such as the reflections of light over the water and the light of the lantern illuminating the setting or even focusing on objects through a glass are excellent. Undoubtedly graphically the game is very well done. The fictitious and mountainous town of Bright Falls with its native forests, abandoned and old mills, empty houses and sheds made of wood and weathered are exceptionally well portrayed. When you are driving a car, a pick up or a jeep very fast pop-ins are present, but do not even bother.
– Real player with 190.0 hrs in game
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Alan Wake is a psychothriller game based on supernatural powers. It shows how powerful darkness really is. The game is set in a rural town called Bright Falls in Washington state, USA. Alan Wake is a professional writer from New York City who decides to go on a vacation in a small town. However, his vacation turns into a nightmare as he is attacked by possessed beings known as the Taken. Wake’s wife is apparently kidnapped from their cabin located in a nearby lake, encouraging Wake to look for her in the wilderness. The game is spread across six episodes that feel like a TV show.
– Real player with 73.9 hrs in game
DOOM 3
Phil loves DOOM 3, and the vanilla game is far superior to the BFG edition.
– Real player with 41.3 hrs in game
Has no gurls.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
123 Slaughter Me Street 2
This game is very unique I have to say.
It has a decent amount of challenge, not too challenging that you will be stuck on a level for hours, but enough to make it beatable and fun.
This game is a hide and seek kind of game, where you hide from up to 3 monsters or puppets in various places, find a mysterious item, and then continue to the exit without getting caught.
This game is the perfect horror game, its fun, scary, and challenging. Also it’s a game that you can play over and over because it is almost always different each time you play.
– Real player with 40.8 hrs in game
This game isn’t all that bad. It’s basically hide and seek where if you get caught, you die. Once you’re done hiding, it’s your turn to seek! Now, you gotta find a randomly appearing floating pink orb somewhere in the house, while still being chased by the creatures. Hey, I thought I was the seeker this time, you fuckers.
The jumpscare animations though, are a bit lackluster, but I appreciate the devs for using a reasonable volume for them and not an ear raping screech that leaves you deaf after the first two.
– Real player with 26.3 hrs in game
Condemned: Criminal Origins
“You belong to us, Ethan. You have always belonged to us…”
Playing this game as a teenager on a PC that could barely run it made me think that it was the scariest game I’d ever played. Ten-plus years later, I’d pick it up again and play through it from start to finish, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well it’s held up. While some aspects of it have dated pretty hard, the overall package has aged quite well, a fact owed heavily to its core gameplay, which still shines, even in today’s market. Or, perhaps, because of it.
– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game
An absolute gem of a horror game.
I remember first hearing about Condemned in the Xbox magazine when I just started High School. Practically every student I talked to was stoked for the new Xbox 360 and were hyping up the new launch titles and I couldn’t help but join their enthusiasm as me and a few buddies overlooked a magazine in the school library. One game in particular caught my eye, a game simply called “Condemned”. Accompanying the blurb was a series of grungy pre-release screens of gnarly enemies and at the time STUNNING lighting effects. The next month was a full-on rundown of the games mechanics, graphics and horror elements that ended with the writer admitting at the end of his demo that he fired his last shotgun shell into an enemy that wasn’t even there.
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
Cold Fear™
Introduction
A game doomed by its release date, Cold Fear is a surprisingly very unique game resulting from coming such an odd transitional spot in genre history. To get it out of the way, despite the constant referrals to RE4 in discussions of it (often calling it a clone despite that fact that cloning and releasing a game in 2 months in 2005 is not even slightly possible), there’s… basically nothing in common, not in level design, controls, combat design, movement, or enemy design; the only points of comparison are that this game has an over the shoulder camera mode with laser pointer aiming, you fight parasite zombies, and I guess you escort a woman for like 2 minutes… that’s it. This game got killed for daring to having an over the shoulder camera angle in 2005.
– Real player with 25.8 hrs in game
Cold Fear by technicality is an RE4 clone. I say ‘by technicality’ because the game does play eerily like Resident Evil 4, and yeah, in functionality it is almost identical, but it likely wasn’t intended that way. Cold Fear came out roughly two months after RE4. I’m not a game developer, nor do I have a team of a coders on standby who I can ask as to whether or not it’s feasible to copy another game in such a short time span, but if I had guess, despite how uncannily akin the two games are, I would still say it’s completely coincidental that they’re so similar. It wouldn’t be a good idea to try and bank off of the success of RE4 at that point in time cause it wouldn’t be noticed, which is sort of what happened anyways. You may see the screenshots in this store page and think it’s more like RE:Revelations if anything, but keep in mind that game didn’t exist yet and this game also featured ‘head-parasites’ too, another trademark mutation and continued enemy type through out the Resident Evil games after RE4 and it’s many clones. I’d also wager that anyone who did find this game probably did so because they wanted an RE4 clone to enjoy, and let me tell you, the best features in this game is where it draws its differences to the one that overshadows it.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Realms of the Haunting
Wow! What an amazing game! I’ve never played it before or back in the day so this was a first impression. It’s such a huge 20 chapter adventure of FPS, scares, puzzles, cutscene movies and story, that you get so engaged in it, it really feels like you are controlling a character in a movie.
The graphics are impressive for the time, the mapping especially is so well thought out and designed that I was always amazed whenever I arrived at a new location. It’s not all hallways and darkness, there’s such a variety of fantasy like locations that it never gets dull.
– Real player with 25.7 hrs in game
This game took me about 20 hours, I wouldn’t say it necessarily earns all of that length. You should know before you get into this that this is not really a horror game, it’s an adventure game where the first half has heavier horror elements than the second, which leans more into the surreal cosmic world that it builds up.
Most people’s gripe is with the controls, but honestly it only took me a little bit to adjust to the antiquated first-person movement, although you SHOULD absolutely read the manual before playing to get an idea of how to play.
– Real player with 19.8 hrs in game
Resident Evil Revelations
General info
~Genre: Action game with survival horror elements
~Number of players: 1-2
~Completion time: 8-30 hours
~Multiplayer cooperation mode
~Originally a Nintendo 3DS title
~Downloadable content: available
Strong points
+Atmosphere: _Resident Evil: Revelations (RE:R)_offers a combination of survival horror elements and action sequences. Explore an abandoned ship, read memos of former events, examine corpses, solve puzzles along the way, but be ready to survive a relentless undead assault at any moment.
– Real player with 112.0 hrs in game
Resident Evil Revelations is Capcom’s attempt at a modern ‘survival-horror’ game, and makes claims to go back to the series roots. This isn’t completely true, but that also does not mean this game isn’t worth your time.
Resident Evil Revelations primarily focuses on Jill Valentine before the events of Resident Evil 5. Chris has gone missing (which if Claire has anything to say on the matter, is not an uncommon thing), and a distress signal has been sounded off on a cruise ship left out on a stormy sea. Jill, and new-comer Parker, go in to investigate. And what commences is probably one of the cheesiest plots to exist in the whole series. Resident Evil being cheesy isn’t anything new, but this is usually a result of voice acting or nonsensical doors. The plot of the game is just ridiculous, with over-the-top plot twists, extravagant characters even by the series standards, and almost feels like it’s convoluted for the sake of being convoluted. But that’s not to say it’s bad. In a B-Horror sense it’s actually rather entertaining, but I suggest you don’t come to this game for some deep drama or serious tale and take it for the off-the-rails ridiculous story that it is.
– Real player with 63.3 hrs in game
Obscure II (Obscure: The Aftermath)
Obscure 2 is a refined example of the good effort turns bad and unsuccessful sequel, which made a big question of any further titles in the line. What we had in the first Obscure game? Old-school TPS “survival horror” ala Resident Evil 3. Fixed camera action, some monsters to beat with baseball bats and shoot with pistols and shotguns. Some not too hard puzzles to solve, some missed keys to find, some really bad big freak to finish in the end… Not perfect, but quite working recipe. As a bonus, there was a unique good soundtrack and overall athmosphere, which was really fitting the setting.
– Real player with 18.5 hrs in game
First off, I’m someone who has played the first game on the original PS2 Release, which was why I was excited for actually giving this game a shot.
Dislikes:
-Multiplayer-
- I didn’t enjoy that they didn’t manage to incorporate Steam-Multiplayer, which would have made this game 10 billion times better.
This also means that I bought the game twice, when I didn’t have to. No big deal as the game itself is only like 10 bucks, but still, it was a bit of a problem for me.
- I didn’t like that you needed to re-add player 2 each time a save was re-loaded, either by dying, or what have you. It also doesn’t have FULL controller support, as player 2 can’t just press start and join in that way. So you need to have a keyboard plugged in even when using controller.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game