survival horror
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is free through OnLive
Who doesn’t like free games? Today OnLive has a special offer to thank fans for their involvement in the service. It all started in late 2010 in the OnLive Fans forums. A user started a tread saying how great it would be if Amnesia: The Dark Descent were to appear on OnLive. That got the ball rolling and today, that very game is free.
E3 2010: Dead Space 2 release date announced
Electronic Arts has announced that Dead Space 2 will be creeping and crawling in North America on January 25, 2011 and January 28, 2011 in Europe.
Gamertell Review: Calling for Wii
Hudson Soft’s Calling is the latest survival horror game for the Wii. There have been plenty of these as of late, and Calling is happy to wedge itself somewhere between Ju-On: The Grudge (a haunted house simulator) and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (a psychological thriller), except that Calling is actually better than both. You heard me…Calling is better than Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and that’s simply because it’s scarier. Much scarier.
Sexy Excella Gionne to be playable in Resident Evil 5′s “Mercenaries Reunion” mode
We previously told you about Resident Evil 5′s Gold Edition, including a “Mercenaries Reunion” game mode with new playable characters. Capcom has released screenshots revealing that one of those characters is Excella Gionne, the gorgeous CEO of the Tricel pharmaceutical company’s African branch.
From the looks of this photo, she will defy both protocol for executive behavior and a few laws of physics.
You will have access to Capcom’s new content in two different ways. First, it’ll be available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in two downloadable installments (February 17, 2010, and March 2010). Each installment contains a costume pack ($2 or 160 Microsoft Points) and a new story episode ($5 or 400 Microsoft Points). The second way is to purchase the Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition for $49.99 for both 360 and PS3. The PS3’s version will have additional content on the disc and the 360 version will contain a token to download the content via Xbox Live.
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition coming 2010
Capcom has announced that new downloadable content will be released for Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 next year (2010). Also, a “Gold Edition” of the full game and downloadable content will be available March 2010.
That DLC includes two new episodes, new costumes and a new game mode called “Mercenaries’ Reunion” featuring eight new playable characters and weapon load outs.
Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition will be $49.99 on both 360 and PS3. The PS3′s additional content will be on the disc and the 360 version will be released with a token to download the content via Xbox Live.
Horror games rack up big sales in 2009
It’s been a really good year for games about really bad guys, according to data from everyone’s favorite industry pundit Michael Pachter.
According to the Wedbush Morgan securities analyst, horror-based video games account for more than $147 million in sales this year through September 2009. Horror games sales for all of 2008 totaled only $131 million.
Leading the pack was Resident Evil 5, the newest installment in the Capcom franchise credited with starting the “survival horror” genre. RE5 moved 1.94 million units according to data from market research firm The NPD Group. Pachter said that accounts for more than half of the horror genre sales to this point. That genre number is certain to grow November 17, 2009, when zombie sequel Left 4 Dead 2 hits shelves, along with Wii exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
Fond memories of Fatal Frame
I am a coward.
At sleepovers in my childhood, I’d close my eyes during particularly scary portions of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, I’m 25 years old and still can’t listen to Reagan’s “possessed” voice in The Exorcist and I only was able to watch about a half hour of the remake of The Omen. For a brief time after watching all of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I would make a conscious decision to be in bed and asleep by 3am.
But I’d like to think I’m getting better, and its all because of Fatal Frame.
It all started around Halloween in 2002. I was in college, and taking a night Japanese class with my friends Shawna and Vivienne (not their real names). Often, when class would get out, we’d feel like actually doing something, rather than going home, studying and getting to bed. You know – productive stuff.
Shawna was, and still is, a horror game fan – and good at it too. She suggested we rent Fatal Frame from Blockbuster and return to Vivienne’s nearby home for a game-a-thon. Vivienne and I had never heard of the game, but Shawna made it sound interesting, so we instantly agreed. We figured it may help us get in the spirit of the season…
Horror in the Himalayas with Cursed Mountain
We’ve seen horror video games take place in the arctic (The Thing), creepy rural villages (Fatal Frame 2, Silent Hill and Siren), haunted houses (Fatal Frame) and high schools (Obscure), but now there’s a new setting – the Himalayas. Deep Silver has announced that it is working on Cursed Mountain for the Wii, a survival horror title which takes place in the Himalayan mountain system and should be released in 2009.
In Cursed Mountain, players are a mountaineer who is searching for his lost brother in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, there is an ancient curse on the range – every person who has ever died in the Himalayas is still there. So the mountaineer is assaulted by demons, ghosts and zombies as he searches to find his brother, who might even be one of them.
New screens emerge for Fatal Frame IV
Good news for fans of spooky survival horror: new screens and details about the latest Fatal Frame title have just emerged. Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse will be coming to the Wii (date is TBD) and Destructoid is reporting that it will be developed by Grasshopper Manufacture (No More Heroes) and will (of course) utilize the Wii’s motion controls. The new screens are coming straight from Famitsu, from a two minute teaser video that shows off the wonderfully creepy, washed out graphics and overall style of the new game.
The new game will be the fourth in the series, and will incorporate similar gameplay and atmosphere of the previous titles. The premise puts the player in a spooky house full of unhappy ghosts and tasks them with snapping ghoulish photos (a sort of combat system for photographers).
