It’s not a stretch to say we’re presently experiencing the very best run of horror video video games for the reason that PS2 period. The previous few years have seen the style revitalised, partially because of nostalgia for a time when survival horror was at its peak. The consequence has been cutting-edge remakes, retro throwbacks, and new experiences that discover recent methods to ship shivers down our spines.
Things within the horror house are so good that final 12 months, for the primary time, IGN launched the Best Horror Game class for its annual awards. And it was fairly simple to convey it again for a second 12 months, so good has the number of spooks been in 2024. We had been handled to the uneasy, claustrophobic terror of Still Wakes the Deep and its contaminated oil rig; the grisly Saw-ish challenges of The Outlast Trials; Bloober Team’s spectacular recreation of Silent Hill 2, and the horrifying twists and turns of Mouthwashing, amongst others.
But just one will be topped the very best horror recreation of 2024. What did the IGN workforce decide to be essentially the most worthy? Let’s check out the outcomes…
Honorable Mentions
Thanks to the expansive array of experiences provided up by the present horror recreation renaissance interval, the IGN workforce’s votes went to a variety of 2024 releases. While not getting sufficient votes to safe runner-up standing, we’d like to offer honourable mentions to 2 additional video games.
Still Wakes the Deep from developer The Chinese Room is a beautiful narrative horror set on an oil rig that’s been contaminated with a The Thing-like creature. It’s enjoyably Scottish in tone, painted within the miserable shades of Seventies Britain and powered by the unknowable worry of Eldritch literature. It’s way more participating than its strolling sim fundamentals would counsel, too, with thrilling chase set-pieces and creepy stealth encounters.
We additionally should tip our hat within the course of Slitterhead. While our reviewer in the end struggled to fall in love with it, a number of IGN workforce members loved its idiosyncratic method to an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers-style state of affairs. The newest recreation from unique Silent Hill director Keiichiro Toyama definitely has its fair proportion of quirks and strange presentation, however there’s one thing essentially fascinating about its core idea. Hijacking our bodies and utilizing totally different folks to additional your investigation into Lovecraftian monsters that put on people like pores and skin fits is in contrast to something we’ve ever carried out in a horror recreation earlier than. In an trade that performs it more and more protected, Slitterhead is unafraid to embrace the weird.
Runner-up: A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
The power of the unique A Quiet Place film is in its easy idea: a world the place it’s important to keep silent to outlive. A snapping twig or a rustling snack may very well be your downfall. On paper that’s not only a good elevator pitch for a narrative, however the driving mechanic of a fantastic online game. And so, considerably unsurprisingly, we’ve landed a fairly good film companion recreation in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.
As you’d count on, this can be a tense survival recreation rooted in stealth programs. Stalked by the identical alien creatures seen within the motion pictures, you have to fastidiously navigate by ranges stuffed to bursting with noisy objects. Every opened drawer and door is a dangerous transfer, lest the squeak of a hinge alert the beast. Adding much more stress to the scenario is the truth that your protagonist is asthmatic, which means strenuous duties like climbing over obstacles can push you nearer and nearer to a loud respiratory assault that can summon your hunter.
Developer Stormind Games clearly had a restricted funds for this challenge and so The Road Ahead is usually a bit tough across the edges. Its cat-and-mouse gameplay isn’t fairly the Alien: Isolation successor you’d hope for (see final 12 months’s Amnesia: The Bunker for a greater various). But regardless of that, this can be a nice proof of idea as to how effectively suited A Quiet Place is to the online game medium.
Runner-up: Crow Country
Much of the horror style’s latest success will be attributed to builders wanting again to earlier generations and discovering methods to recreate these unique scares. That’s precisely what’s happening in Crow Country, an indie spookfest that pays homage to Nineteen Nineties PlayStation classics Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The low-polygon visuals, restricted stock house, overhead digicam, and foot-anchored capturing all seize the timeless essence of early survival horror.
But it is the brand new concepts injected by developer SFB Games that improve Crow Country above and past a easy train in nostalgia. Being in a position to rotate the digicam a full 360 levels brings trendy edge to a historically fixed-view system, and the flexibility to freely goal weapons equally uplifts the in any other case old-school capturing system. These in flip enable Crow Country’s puzzles and battles to really feel freshly invigorated, be that by spinning the digicam to search out new clues and gadgets, or lining up a headshot to shortly neutralise an approaching monster.
While it does channel among the unsettling environment of its retro inspirations, Crow County isn’t afraid to have greater than somewhat enjoyable. Set in an deserted theme park, there’s a degree of caprice that penetrates the darkness, whereas protagonist Mara at all times has a comedic line up her sleeve to convey a little bit of levity. The consequence isn’t precisely cosy, however there’s a sure consolation to be present in Crow Country – a kind of gross nostalgic hug.
Runner-up: Mouthwashing
Mouthwashing is the word-of-mouth horror hit of 2024. It’s a kind of video games that comes coupled with “learn nothing, simply play” recommendation, so if a twisted narrative journey that exposes the depravity of human nature is the type of factor you go for, then you definitely’ll wish to cease studying, open Steam in a brand new tab, and hit the purchase button proper now.
But now we have to supply particulars to justify Mouthwashing’s place because the IGN workforce’s second-favourite horror recreation of the 12 months, so right here we go. On the floor, developer Wrong Organ has made a easy strolling simulator during which you jog to-and-fro between the totally different rooms of a crashed house ship finishing primary errands. There’s little within the type of basic horror recreation mechanics – you gained’t discover any zombies to shoot, enemies to cover from, or useful resource administration right here. But because the story pushes ahead, you end up falling down an more and more distressing rabbit gap. What occurs when a stranded freighter crew faces little hope of survival? Sanity turns into a valuable, dwindling useful resource.
A story triumph, Mouthwashing drops horrifying new reveals at simply the fitting moments of its ever-building rigidity curve. And because the layers are peeled again, you start to take a look at not simply your crew mates in a really totally different gentle, but in addition your individual protagonist. This is a horror story the place force-feeding painkillers to your mutilated captain is simply the appetiser to the grotesque late-game important course. It’s as disturbingly scrumptious because it sounds.
Winner: Silent Hill 2
It’s protected to say that there have been no ensures for Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2. Team Silent’s timeless survival horror basic was, to some, thought-about unimaginable to remake. Others had been cautious of Bloober’s capabilities after The Medium (itself an underwhelming homage to Silent Hill) and a really up-and-down again catalogue. But after we lastly had Silent Hill 2 put in on our consoles – a recreation that’s concurrently shiny and rusty – it was instantaneously clear: Bloober didn’t simply get Silent Hill 2, it spoke it fluently.
Silent Hill 2 follows within the footsteps of final 12 months’s Dead Space in being a remake that stays nearly fully trustworthy to the unique recreation whereas including trendy enhancements in a tasteful method. It options all of the dread-inducing, tense exploration of the unique – this can be a recreation largely about exploring horrible buildings room-by-room and digesting the horrible secrets and techniques inside – simply this time round you are able to do all this with a 3D digicam and trendy over-the-shoulder fight. The result’s an expertise that appears like a throwback to the height of survival horror in its design, however is totally trendy in its execution. For many individuals, together with a lot of the IGN workforce, that is the precise candy spot a remake ought to goal for.
Bloober sticking so near the unique system means Silent Hill 2 isn’t fairly as transformative a piece as, for instance, Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, which re-thought the whole recreation from the ground-up. As such, we all know this may very well be thought-about one thing of a controversial selection. Should a trustworthy remake be thought-about for an end-of-year award when a lot of the artistic work was carried out by totally different folks in a unique decade? While that’s a worthy query, it’s plain that Bloober’s efforts on this challenge is a priceless addition to the horror canon, making a real titan of the style accessible to trendy audiences. Its heavy, bleak story stays as timeless right now because it did again in 2001, and that fear-inducing exploration loop is a reminder of the everlasting qualities of excellent recreation design. As such, Silent Hill 2 was the very best horror recreation we performed in 2024, and this contemporary automobile for such triumphs deserves to be recognised no matter its roots.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
