If you’ve been impatient to get your hands on Resident Evil Village since it was featured in full detail at Capcom’s Showcase, and you don’t know how to fill your days until its launch, you’ve come to the right place!
Indeed, we invite you here to make your hair bristle with fear by venturing out on ten survival horror games that have managed to mark their time by offering unforgettable universes and particularly frightening atmospheres.
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Unsurprisingly, we start this list with the Resident Evil saga, a saga, which in 1996 finally gave a name to a genre that had been trying to find a place in the video game landscape since the launch of Alone in the Dark in 1992: the survival-horror.
It’s difficult to choose a particular episode, since each episode brings its share of ideas, but to make you wait until the launch of the eighth episode which should see the light of day on May 7, we have chosen to direct you to the remake of Resident Evil 2.
Released in the first half of 2019 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, this episode returns to the initial proposal of the series, and at the same time brings the touch of modernity imported by the fourth installment of the license.
The whole is more sublimated by an artistic direction to die for, and by an exemplary physics. To do and redo.
Dead Space
Now let’s leave Earth for this second horrific proposition and go into space to explore, in the company of Isaac Clarke, the USG Ishimura spacecraft. List dedicated to survival horror requires, this ship is unfortunately infested with Necromorphs, reanimated humans who have only one desire, to scare you and bone you, and for that, trust us, the Necromorphs have many ideas!
Fortunately, Isaac Clarke is a particularly well-equipped engineer. Thanks to his Plasma Cutter, a weapon that lives up to its name, our favorite engineer will not hesitate to cut the limbs of his enemies one by one to force them to crawl through the mazes of this dismal vessel.
Small welcome feature, the title of Visceral Games has managed to incorporate the ATH of the game in the armor of Isaac Clarke, ideas which always reinforce the immersion of the player. Dead Space is an unmissable production of the seventh generation of consoles.
Alien : Isolation
Let’s don our spacesuit once more and now venture out to the Alien Saga, a popular film saga that began in 1979 with Alien the Eighth Passenger. And that’s good, since Alien: Isolation takes place fifteen years after the events of the work of Ridley Scott.
He follows Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley, who tries to find her missing mother. Unfortunately, on the way, she will meet particularly tough androids, but also and above all a xenomorph who will not stop chasing her throughout the adventure.
Of course, Amanda will be able to defend herself to repel the hideous beast, but if she does not want to have her head unscrewed, the latter will especially have to learn to spot the monster using her radar and especially to hide in cupboards to do not cross his path. Everything is playable on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and even Nintendo Switch.
Obscure
If you’re the funky type and want an adventure with a sidekick, Obscure is for you. The title inspired by the film The Faculty and taking up to the letter the codes of the Resident Evil saga offers you to live the entire adventure (or almost) with a friend by your side.
Indeed, this horrific production released in 2004 on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox has a cooperative mode giving access to five playable characters, young academics with unique specialties. The latter will then have to walk the corridors of a huge faculty to find their recently missing friend.
Note that the whole has an irreproachable atmosphere, a thoughtful level-design and an original soundtrack that is cold in the back.
Alan Wake
We change direction again with this time a production by Remedy. With Alan Wake, the creators of the inescapable Max Payne seized the horror of the stories of Stephen King and the strange atmosphere of the Twin Peaks series to offer us a horrific tale, where our dear writer is desperately looking for his missing fiancée.
Of course, in his extraordinary journey, Alan Wake will have to repel supernatural forces with the help of his revolver and especially his flashlight. Indeed, your best ally here is light. For the more fearful, know that the creation of Remedy is not the scariest possible and that the latter is finely led by a successful suspenseful plot and by particularly endearing characters, which continually pushes you to continue your adventure.
The game is available on PC and Xbox 360.
F.E.A.R.
Let’s leave the die-hard survivors for a few lines and now go to FEAR, an FPS offering players memorable gunfights against an AI still considered exemplary today. In the game of Monolith Productions, the enemies, often in excess, will not hesitate to hide in the twilight, to bypass you or even to be forgotten to better surprise you.
Even if the FPS puts forward dynamic clashes unlike the other productions present in the list, the title available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will still make you jump from your seat multiple times. You have been warned!
Outlast
After the success of the very scary Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010, several developers have tried the formula offered by Frictional Games to in turn offer a first-person game where your only asset is being able to escape.
This is particularly the case with Red Barrels which, with Outlast, has succeeded in reiterating Amnesia’s recipe while enhancing it with a more modern plastic.
Outlast therefore, offers you to play the journalist Miles Upshur to investigate alone, at night (obviously), in a former psychiatric asylum which would have carried out atrocious experiments on many patients.
Armed only with a camcorder and a few batteries, your objective in this work available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch will then be to gather as much evidence as possible against the establishment while trying to hide or flee to stride the strange beings who have fun terrorizing you. Sensible soul to withhold !
Until Dawn
Even if Until Dawn constantly plays with the codes of survival-horror, sometimes offering fixed camera shots, sometimes taking your legs around your neck to keep you away from the threat, the title of Supermassive Games also borrows and above all the rules established by the different stories of David Cage, namely Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls.
Indeed, on this PlayStation 4 exclusive now available in the PlayStation Plus Collection, the survival of your various characters will depend in particular on your choices that you make throughout the adventure.
So it’s up to you to make the right decision if you want to save Samantha, one of the heroines of the game played in particular by Hayden Panettiere.
Project Zero 3 : The Tormented
For the ninth and penultimate proposition of this list, we suggest you stop on the third episode of the Project Zero saga, namely Project Zero 3: The Tormented.
This exclusive for the PlayStation 2 puts the player in the shoes of Rei, a young woman who is unfortunately struck by a terrible curse. This heroine, to try to escape her dismal destiny, will therefore have to go to the Manor of Sleep accompanied by her most beautiful camera to capture the many ghosts that haunt the place and thus lift the curse.
The title offering an irreproachable atmosphere likes to constantly put the player in uncomfortable situations in order to naturally create a feeling of fear in him.
Silent Hill 2
It was impossible for us to close this exhaustive list without stopping a little bit on the side of Silent Hill 2, a legend of the video game world who has succeeded has frightened several generations of players while focusing on mature subjects.
Masashi Tsuboyama’s nightmarish creation invites you to play as the brave James Sunderland who won’t think twice to set foot in the thick fog of the cursed city of Silent Hill to answer a strange question: how did his wife she could send him a letter when the latter died three years ago?
Obviously, during his adventure, James will have to face deformed creatures who will not hesitate to slash him in a corner of a dismal room when he is not paying them attention. Available on PlayStation 2 and Xbox first of the name, the title is also punctuated by the magnificent compositions of the master Akira Yamaoka. Quite simply the masterpiece among masterpieces!