Grave Gamer News & Views — horror

Slender Man Arriving on PSN and XBL

Watch your back, folks. Something awful is coming to PS3 and Xbox 360. Did you see what I did there? Something awf– Nevermind. I only just Googled it myself.

Sequel to the indie horror sensation, Slender: The Eight Pages, Blue Isle Studios’ Slender: The Arrival is being ported to PSN and XBL. No mere copy and paste here, though; the console edition is being packaged with two brand new chapters, pitting players as previous victims of The Slender Man (spoiler: they fucking die).

The port is being published by Midnight City, an experimental branch of Majesco Games that allows indie developers to keep their independent label while Midnight handles public relations, marketing, community management, and a whole host of other duties that cramp a micro-dev’s style.

Oh, and PC People. Rest assured that The Arrival’s extra content ain’t console exclusive – the additional chapters will be made available for the PC version once the console edition is released later this year. So everybody gets to brown their pants in unison.

Alien: Isolation Officially Revealed

I’ve been following every space scrap of news on this project for a while now – Alien and its film progeny, Jimmy Cameron’s opus in particular, being my favorite series in the history of the silver screen – but it’s refreshing to have the loading bay doors officially blown off of Alien: Isolation.

Though the game is set in the first-person, don’t expect Isolation to be yet another Hoo-rah-tastic corridor shooter as hollow as the sound of pulse rifle fire. Creative Assembly is seeking to create the Alien game no other developer has tried before: a methodically paced, suffocatingly atmospheric love letter to the bump-in-the-dark horror Ridley Scott famously put to film back in 1979.

Fifteen years after the Nostromo vanished from the star map, Amanda Ripley finds herself aboard the Sevastopol Station, the floating husk of a former trading port. The Company says she may find an answer to her mother’s disappearance there. What she does find is one ruthless, near unstoppable killing machine of an extraterrestrial that will stalk her, find her, and end her unpleasantly unless she uses her wits and what little supplies she can scrounge up to survive. Like mother, like daughter.

As much as I’d love for a team of perfect fans to crack Aliens’ formula and deliver a riveting action game instead of a derivative train wreck, I’m glad we’re not gagging on another space marine shooter. The films are, and always have been, firmly rooted in horror. It’s time video games stopped treating xenomorphs as canon fodder, having you blast apart hordes of them. It’s time to be afraid of them again.

Alien: Isolation, expected for late this year, is releasing for PC, PS3, 360, PS4, and Xbox One.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream Watching This Trailer!

Halloween is just hours away, folks! While some of you are out there meticulously preparing a wickedly spooky costume to spill keg beer on, us introverts are lining up a marathon of murder, madness, and the macabre. That’s not some alliterated threat I’m making. I just mean we’re going to burn up the devil’s birthday watching horror flicks in the anti-social solitude of our darkened apartments.

As a habitual gamer, though, I grow restless passively watching blood and guts tossed about. I also like to take part in the blood and guts tossing (this article will be used against me in court someday…). I like to keep in season with a rotating program of horror video games. From Silent Hill to Dead Space to that one about the mid-western cops in a zombie filled mansion (why the hell can’t I remember that game’s name?), I just find interactive scares far more stool loosening than the static frights movies hold.

So, here I am, between a tower of Carpenter and Romero flicks on the one side, a separate stack of survival and action horror games sitting on the other. And, thusly, I had my peanut butter cup moment. We’ve already got ourselves some examples of horror films brilliantly adapted into games (2002’s The Thing hurt in all the right ways) but the industry’s still missing out on some killer properties to mine for inspiration. Here’s my top picks for a few more genre classics that deserve to cross mediums:

The notes convinced me to pre-order.

The Order: 1886 - First Screens and Story Details

This game has become my most anticipated next-gen title practically overnight. Game Informer’s feature in their November issue made sure of that.

Revealed at E3, Ready At Dawn’s trailer for their third-person shooter debuted devoid of info. Only two things permeated in the public’s mind: “It looks like Victorian Gears of War” and “Those can’t really be in-game graphics.”

Well, they are in-game graphics; brought to you by the stunning horsepower beneath the PS4’s hood. And, yeah, “Victorian Gears of War” is a tough comparison to shake, but The Order’s concept is wickedly cool and fresh on its own merits. While the game’s history closely mirrors our own, the key division revolves around the genetic split between us, humanity, and the “half-breeds,” a new sub-species of human beings that have taken on more animal-like traits.

Though we share the same gene family, the difference is enough to put both factions at bloody odds for centuries. Jump to The Order, or more famously, the fabled Knights of the Round Table. Instead of crusading for the Holy Grail, however, the Knights of this alternate history seek to protect humanity from the half-breeds.

Part of their calling requires these holy agents to imbibe a rare substance; “black water.” Drinking black water is just south of gaining immortality, allowing knights to serve for years beyond an average human’s lifespan. The result is highly tested guardians shaped and hardened by centuries of experience. Your character, Grayson, is one such veteran – the third man in history to bear the moniker Sir Galahad.

Galahad and his team’s fight is aided by a pivotal point in human achievement: the industrial revolution.  But with the war against half-breeds nearly won yet still in play, technology blossoms in volatile ways, meaning this version of 1886 sees you equipped with gatling guns, thermite tossing launchers, and electric arc guns that can cut an enemy down before they’re afforded a chance to blink.

RaD’s imaginative, gritty, and strangely captivating mix of real world history and grim fantasy are the right ingredients for a head-turning, new IP. An in-house engine capable of astonishing feats of real-time physics – like bending metal and wood that splinters and cracks before breaking – also make for some strong arguments in favor of next-gen tech. I can’t wait to see more. Really, though. I can’t wait. It verges on painful.

The Order is scheduled to hit in 2014, exclusively for the PlayStation 4.