If you already own Days Gone on PS4, you'll be able to upgrade to the remastered version for $10, which has become pretty standard for this sorta thing. If you don't already own it, the remaster will run you $50. For your money, you get Days Gone buffed up with better textures, better shadows and lighting, "increased foliage draw," and support for stuff like Tempest 3D Audio and VRR.

On top of that, there's some new features coming exclusively to the Days Gone remaster, including DualSense support and new accessibility features like High Contrast mode, Game Speed, UI narration, collectible audio cues, controller remapping, a field of view slider, "and more." Photo mode has also been expanded with a time-of-day setting, a three-point lighting system, and new logo options.

Additionally, there are three new modes. Horde Assault is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: hordes of undead close in on you and you have to survive as long as possible, with the goal of increasing your high score with each run. Permadeath mode, again, is pretty much what it says on the tin. You die once, and you start over from scratch. Finally, there's the new Speedrun mode, which – you won't believe it – tasks you with playing through the campaign as quickly as possible and sharing your times with a special endgame graphic.

All of this will also be available to Days Gone PC players day and date with the PS5 remaster, with the same $10 upgrade charge.

Days Gone Remastered is just one of many upcoming PS5 games we can't wait to play.

A new Resident Evil 5 ESRB rating was noted by Wario64 on Bluesky earlier today, and curiously, this rating is only for Xbox Series consoles. The content description is quite similar to that of previous versions of the game, though the text is slightly different, just as it subtly changed between the original PS3/Xbox 360 release, the later Gold Edition, and the PS4/Xbox One port.

What's odd here is that this Resident Evil 5 rating is, again, only for Xbox Series consoles, just like the Resident Evil 6 rating that popped up back in January. In a world where publishers like Square Enix are embracing multiplatform releases - and heck, even Xbox itself is doing the same - what sort of Resident Evil rerelease might only come to Xbox Series consoles?

It's certainly possible that the PS5 and/or other versions of these games just haven't been rated yet, but we're still left to wonder just what these implied new versions actually are. If Capcom continues its trend of remaking numbered entries in the Resident Evil series, 5 would be next in line, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that they'd let a full-on remake be outed by an ESRB rating.

The smart money is on remasters or current-gen patches for RE5 and 6, but exactly which platforms these games come to remains to be seen.

The Resident Evil deathmatch game that flopped is going offline as Capcom says it's "served its original, celebratory purpose admirably."

The publisher announced that its multiplayer shooter Resident Evil Re:Verse, which let you pit fan-favorites like Jill Sandwich and Leon Kennedy against each other in iconic locations, will go offline on June 29 at 23:59 PT (that's June 30 at 02:59 ET, or 07:59 GMT). That means you won't be able to play the game after that date, and any in-game goodies you spent real-world money on will simply disappear.

Resident Evil Re:Verse served as a competitive multiplayer shooter to celebrate the series' quarter century milestone, packing in a bunch of familiar characters, locations, and monsters on PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4. It was available as both a standalone purchase and given away with Resident Evil Village, but you won't be able to buy the game or any of its DLCs after March 3. Again, it's essentially being deleted from existence and completely removed from storefronts. Any existing download codes will still work until the end of service, but new ones won't be included with Village from now on.

Capcom says the game was "developed in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Resident Evil series, and your overwhelming support for the game has far exceeded our expectations since the time of its release." According to the company, the game's only being killed because "we've reached a new turning point for the series" and Re:Verse has apparently "served its original, celebratory purpose admirably" - not because it barely has any players and the fans that did check it out left mostly negative reviews on Steam.

To say Resident Evil Re:Verse was disliked by most of the fandom would be generous. The reaction was mostly apathetic. But those who did dip their toes into its blood-soaked maps complained about a lack of meaningful modes or content, dodgy servers, and aggressive microtransactions. To see any game simply disappear is sad from a game preservation standpoint, but it stings extra hard in this case since Capcom is seemingly not refunding players for in-game purchases or allowing them to use their purchased content to play offline, as is the case for MultiVersus' upcoming shutdown.

Check out the best FPS games you can play right now if you’re craving a slightly better shooter.

The Resident Evil 2 Door & Cutscene Skip mod, courtesy of Resevilnemesis30, does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: every single cutscene in the game, no matter how small, can be skipped using the main action button, and the little animations that play when you interact with doors are instantly skipped. It's pretty easy to see how this paves the way for significantly more seamless speedruns and, of course, new records.

"Begone, doors! Begone cutscenes! 27 years later, this mod for the Sourcenext version brings the single most needed QoL feature for the vanilla game," the modder says. "It allows you to finally enjoy your favorite game without having to see your RTX 6090 struggle with a 200kb file, or watching Annette and Irons narrate their dramatic childhood."

The mod was only uploaded around a week ago, and we're already seeing the fastest Resident Evil 2 play times ever recorded be more than halved by players using the new mod. Over on Speedrun.com, Resident Evil 2 speedruns are now broken down into two categories: Vanilla and Cutscene Skip, and at the time of writing, the fastest Vanilla run is 48m 32s and the quickest Cutscene Skip run is just 19m 39s. For a game that's now, somehow, 27 years old, that's an extremely significant development in the speedrunning scene and will likely be the biggest advancement to arrive for years to come.

Read next: YouTuber reinvents the modern speedrun by chugging laxatives and shocking himself with a dog collar while playing Five Nights at Freddy's most disappointing sequel, and I can't stop watching.

Per THR, Cregger's involvement has sparked a bidding war between four companies, including Netflix and Warner Bros., for the Resident Evil reboot's distribution rights. Cregger, who's both writing and directing the project, is a hot commodity after successfully transitioning from comedy to horror with Barbarian.

Constantin Film, the production company behind all of the Resident Evil movies including 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, is back for the reboot alongside PlayStation Productions.

Although the Resident Evil IP has yet to produce a financially unsuccessful movie, THR reports that it's Cregger's involvement specifically that's enticing to bidders.

What makes me personally excited about Cregger's involvement is two-fold: Barbarian is a wild good time that manages to be scary and funny in near-equal measure, and also, THR describes his Resident Evil reboot as "a revamp that will take the title to its horror roots and be more faithful to the initial games." Heck. Yes.

All seven movies released since the original Resident Evil in 2002 have been action-horror movies with the emphasis on action. I've always felt the Resident Evil games were at their best when they were focused on the scares, and it sounds like this new reboot will capitalize on that.

Here's hoping this next Resident Evil flick joins the ranks of the best video game movies, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

"There's a ton of different speedrun categories," Wigglesworth says in his debut laxative video. "All are very cool, but I want to push the limits of the speedrunning world by introducing my own category dubbed laxative%, wherein you must consume a copious amount of laxatives."

"The one and only rule of the category," he continues, "is, if you explode, you lose."

But don't dwell on the laxative runs – or laxative runs, as it were – because there's more. Mr. Wigglesworth's YouTube channel is a vortex of suffering. He almost exclusively plays Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, the 2021 survival horror spin-off about a child trapped in Freddy's Pizzaplex murder emporium with evil animatronics, like an alligator with a mohawk named Monty.

"There's so many Monties," Wigglesworth cries during a chaos modifier challenge run in which enemies can be randomized and he chose to, in addition, electrocute himself with a $244 shock collar for Saint Bernards every time he died.

While playing Security Breach – which I can further describe in no other way than it looks how beef jerky tastes – Wigglesworth has also attempted EggRoulette%, for which he crushed raw and boiled eggs into his mouth, GivingBirth%, where he was glued to a labor pain simulator, and ExplodingHead%, when he tried to find out how many rubber bands it would take to pop his head like bubblegum.

Through it all, Mr. Wigglesworth has become my unlikely, favorite speedrunner, a sadistic impulse I owe to my ranking both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Jackass as five-star cinema. Why do we subject ourselves to so much pain? Of course, it's to feel something, and to play Five Nights at Freddy's.

Ahead of Five Nights At Freddy's 2, star Matthew Lillard talks reprising the role of supervillain William Afton after "being left out of many a sequel."

You'd be forgiven if you'd forgotten all about Silent Hill f. The mysterious game – which is being written by the creator of the Higurashi When They Cry visual novel series, Ryukishi07 – is set in 1960s Japan, but after its reveal in October 2022, news has been (fittingly) silent. With no rough release window or even any known release platforms, Silent Hill f has remained an enigma, but its new rating seems to prove it's still alive and kicking.

As spotted by Gematsu, Silent Hill f was rated by South Korea's Game Rating and Administration Committee last month. A list published by the content rating board showing December's ratings reveals that the rating was applied for on December 4, before being issued on December 12. As for the rating itself, Google and DeepL translations suggest that the game isn't suitable for children, which, uh, is to be expected given the series' history. 

While the rating doesn't give much away, the fact that it's being rated at all could suggest that it's not a massive way away from being released, but that remains to be seen. Silent Hill f isn't the only interesting name in the ratings list, of course, with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 applied for a bit later in the month, and its rating (which appears to be the same as Silent Hill f's) issued on December 26.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is in a slightly different boat to Silent Hill f, simply since more information about it was already available, including the fact that it's set to be released in the first half of this year. It was actually supposed to launch sooner, but has been hit with multiple delays – the latest pushed it back from its planned fall 2024 release window. Needless to say, the action RPG getting a rating is more of an expectation at this point than a complete surprise, but it's still a promising sign for the game – hopefully we'll find out soon when exactly we can get our hands on it.

For more games like Silent Hill, be sure to check out our roundup of the best horror games you can play right now.

Early ideas, such as introducing co-op with Anne or a Fitbit-like heart monitor, shook up the Silent Hill formula. But in the end Silent Hill 2 provided the light the team set out to follow. "From the beginning we knew we wanted to play with the idea of the town itself being the main antagonist," says producer Devin Shatsky.

"I was a huge fan of Silent Hill 2, and it was pretty clear that it was the consensus favourite among fans as well. I believe a big part of that is because – as opposed to the original Silent Hill, where the monsters and environments were real, and everybody can see what's happening – in Silent Hill 2 the town draws upon the psyche of its visitors and ultimately forms alternative versions of itself, which differs depending on the characters."

While the game retains the town's signature fog, it's augmented by a rain that forms the game's namesake. The dynamic heavy showers herald the arrival of more numerous and aggressive monsters. It has a semi-open world structure – optional side-quests lie off the beaten track, while the linear chapters take place in hitherto-unseen areas. These include an abandoned mine, the Devil's Pit, and an impressive building home to the local radio station. It's a very different Silent Hill, informed by the culture of the Czech Republic.

Something new

"In the early versions of the game I saw, it felt like the team were just trying to copy Japanese horror," recalls design director Brian Gomez. 'But when we were in Brno, Tomm and Devin and I would go looking around the town at lunchtime, and it was a beautiful country, but it's also really scary. It's got this Gothic architecture mixed in with Soviet-era concrete brutalism and remnants of a big military-industrial complex from World War 2. I remember having a creative meeting with the team and telling them to stop trying to be Japanese scary, and just be Czech scary. Let's lean into that. So there's bits of Silent Hill: Downpour where it's more closely modelled on the streets of Brno than a town in the midwest US."

Intended as something of a mid-point between Shattered Memories' dodge-and-run activity and Homecoming's more action-oriented approach, Downpour's combat primarily revolves around picking up objects in the environment and using them as makeshift weapons (which are once again breakable). While it all looks good on paper, the system is clunky, and – by the developer's own admission, the weakest gameplay feature in Downpour.

While this is forgivable, given that combat has never been a highlight of Silent Hill, less so are the lacklustre enemies. Compared to the macabre beauty of Masahiro Ito's creations, Downpour's monsters are somewhat uninspired, using straightforwardly humanoid shapes and clichés like gas masks and dolls.

"I don't mean to talk trash about Devin, but you could kind of tell what he was watching in his hotel at night based on the ideas that he brought in the next day," laughs Gomez. "There were inspirations like Walter White from Breaking Bad and Pris from Blade Runner – just these random designs that he kind of imposed on the design team."

Despite these shortcomings, Downpour was a spirited attempt by a small team to take what worked with Silent Hill and do something new and fresh with it. The game would be the last entry in the series for over a decade, barring the lamentably cancelled PT (though the less said about that tragedy, the better).

In the town of Silent Hill, you never know what's quite around the corner. And while all four of these Western-developed titles have been mixed bags, they've kept the town alive, continuing to lay foundations for what Silent Hill can become in the future. Welcome home – you never really left.

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. Silent Hill: Downpour wasn't the first in the series to jump to HD. "At the time survival horror was changing. 'How action-oriented do we get?'": 16 years on, Tomm Hulett reflects on Silent Hill: Homecoming

The first full trailer for Sony Pictures' Until Dawn movie is here, and it's a gruesome murderfest centered around a time-twisting mystery.

Fans of Supermassive Games' hugely popular original have been wondering how the film would incorporate its "choose your fate" mechanics, which see the players' run-through determined by certain decisions they make along the way. Well, now we know: it's taking inspiration from the likes of Final Destination and Happy Death Day to present a slasher that's centered on a time loop.

"One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers," the official synopsis reads. "Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one… only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.

"Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn."

Judging by the promo, which you can watch above, said threats have been lifted straight from the source material, including the Psycho and the Flamethrower Guy, as well as the dreaded wendigo.

Lights Out' David F. Sandberg directs, working from a screenplay by Annabelle's Gary Dauberman. As for the cast, Maia Mitchell and Ella Rubin play Melanie and Clover respectively, with Michael Cimino, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, and Odessa A'zion rounding out the supporting players. Peter Stormare reprises his role as Doctor Hill from the game.

Until Dawn releases in theaters on April 25. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way, or the best video game movies.

Shattered Memories stands out among the Western games as the title that most clearly breaks with tradition. Though it features characters from Silent Hill, there's nary a cult to be found. Instead, the story the game tells is a much more intimate affair. Its demons are personal, its themes universal aspects of the human condition: childhood, family, loss, and coming to terms with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

It's a narrative designed to get inside your head, and a key component of this is the unique profiling mechanic. Between chapters, the story cuts to the office of Dr Kaufmann – here presented as a professional psychiatrist – and the player is subjected to a series of tasks and personal questions. How you deal with these affects the story, from the way certain characters interact with you to the appearance of the monsters, and even which ending you get.

"This idea of a therapist framing things and an unreliable narrator was a fun thing for us to play with," says Barlow. "Because for people who played Silent Hill, if they're walking through this experience where character names and locations initially seem similar, but then realise they're very different, they'd have this interesting sort of déjà vu where they're questioning what's really true."

Hell freezes over

Even the series' characteristic fog and gore is minimised; Shattered Memories' take on its Otherworld is a frozen wasteland distorted by ice. "We very clearly wanted to stake the claim that Silent Hill could have this range," says Barlow. "So we needed our own hell world that was unique… [In the game] we have these characters that have these psychological problems – buried memories, repressions, traumas. The idea of a nightmare world that was cold and frozen and desolate fit the theme of these characters who are trying to isolate themselves from their emotions."

Combat is ditched entirely as well, monsters only appearing alongside the ice, forcing Harry simply to leg it. "The big bugbear of survival horror games was always combat," says Barlow. "After Resident Evil every horror game had this kind of medikit-collecting survival template, which fits with Romero zombies. But then you look at Silent Hill and say, 'This is a psychological thing. These monsters are in your mind, yet my character is still hoarding medikits and weapons and whacking things as if they're in a zombie movie, right?'… We talked a lot about it and realised that if you look at a lot of other horror media, or think about your own nightmares, the dominant action component of horror is running away. So we tried to create something that evoked the primal fear of being chased."

Despite its many innovations, Shattered Memories didn't see impressive financial returns. Although it eventually broke even, this was mainly thanks to its PlayStation 2 port (it was first released on Nintendo Wii), which out of necessity had an awkward replacement for the original version's motion control mechanics. But for Barlow, Climax's work was vindicated by the impact its story managed to have on those who played it.

"I think ultimately, for me, the success was the fan letters," says Barlow. "I had people telling me that Shattered Memories made them cry, or it made them pick up their phone and call their dad. There was one person that wrote to us saying that they hadn't spoken to their father in ten years, and that Shattered Memories was the game that made them reach out and try to heal that relationship."

Silent Hill would go on ice after the release of Shattered Memories. It would take three years for the thaw, which would see the water come rushing down in the fourth and final game from this era of the series; Silent Hill: Downpour.

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. What about Climax Studio's first game in the series? 17 years on, Sam Barlow reflects on Silent Hill: Origins: "To pull it out of the bag with a seven-out-of-ten game was incredibly rewarding"

While Friday the 13th was removed from storefronts in 2023, players who already owned the game had access to it through the very end of New Year's Eve 2024. So, instead of choreographing their midnight kisses, fans decided to put on their best ass-breaking dance emotes and shimmy throughout a forlorn Camp Crystal Lake. 

It's been a difficult journey for Friday the 13th: The Game. It succeeded in collecting a dedicated fanbase upon its release in 2017, but franchise creator Victor Miller's legal battle over copyright first killed its ability to release new content, then Friday the 13th closed its servers in 2020, enabling only peer-to-peer matchmaking. That brings us back to the game's permanent shutdown on December 31, 2024. 

Immortal hockey mask killer Jason and his victims put aside their differences for the end of an era, snapping celebratory pics and solemnly gyrating in their cabin's living room. Some people got to play a few final matches – in the asymmetrical game, a team of counselors try to kill Jason before he slaughters them – and others just kept thrusting in their swimsuits until their screens went black. 

"What I would give for one more hour," one player despaired on Reddit. 

"That 12:01 cutoff time hit like bricks for a lot of long-time players," agreed another fan. "My only hope is that someday we see a new title for Jason that’s like this. [...] If done right, it could be something truly special. But it’ll never be as special as what we had."

Weeks before it dies for good, Friday the 13th: The Game isn't just surprisingly active - it's the most fun I've had with a multiplayer horror game all year. 

Put into production at roughly the same time as Origins and released on PS3, Homecoming was Konami's first true attempt to give the series the triple-A treatment. "[For Konami US] it was like, 'Homecoming is the Big One,'" recalls Tomm Hulett, who worked as a producer on most of the Western Silent Hill games. "[They were saying,] 'This is Silent Hill Five: it's going to be the first one on a next-gen platform, it's going to be where you can finally get to see Silent Hill in HD and so on.'"

With this ambition in mind, it was clear that fixed cameras and tank controls wouldn't cut the mustard, especially for a survival horror title in the post-Resident Evil 4 world.

"Design-wise, there was a lot of thought about 'How do we modernise this?'" recalls Hulett. "Because at the time survival horror was changing. 'How action-oriented do we get?' People might not remember, but Resident Evil 4 was really controversial within the Resident Evil fanbase. There were questions about whether it was even survival horror any more. So when we asked ourselves whether we should follow in those footsteps we decided, 'Well, probably not – we should do our own thing.' But then that raised the question, 'What is our new thing? How do we make this game not old? What's there for tradition, and what shouldn't be there because it's outdated?'"

Silent but deadly

The answer was something of a compromise between old and new. As in the original Silent Hills, ammo and healing kits are generally scarce, the HUD is mostly nonexistent, and the inventory lacks any sort of management mechanic. At the same time, Alex is controlled from a fully third-person perspective, the game features a quick-select weapon wheel, and aiming with firearms uses the over-the-shoulder Resi 4 method. The biggest gameplay shakeup is the close combat. Being a military veteran, Alex is no slouch when it comes to a punchup and can chain together basic one-two combos, perform finishers, and even duck back with a handy dodge move.

"[The Silent Hill games] were always designed with combat in them," says Brian Horton, lead artist and core member of Homecoming's creative team. "So we decided if that was an element in the games, we'd want to have something that felt survival-ly and not be too overpowering. We were really striving to come up with a system where skill felt important, and defensive moves allowed you to keep in the fight as much as possible. We were trying to figure out that feeling of a true spar."

When it came to Homecoming's other elements, the developers took a more tried-and-true approach. Early in development the game was to be connected directly to the established lore, as the first in a trilogy that would see the story culminate in a "Super Saiyan" (Hulett's words) battle between Alessa Gillespie and Josh over Toluca Lake.

While this idea was mercifully dropped, Homecoming's story nonetheless still focusses on the existing lore of the cult. And it features series' hallmarks, including the fog world, rust-and-blood otherworld, and iconic monster designs such as the Nurses, an equivalent to Lying Figure, and – controversially – Pyramid Head, here renamed the Bogeyman.

Like Origins', Homecoming's reviews tended to hover at around seven out of ten, with a consensus that the game was a solid, if somewhat predictable, entry in the series. Fans can certainly have fun with the game, and for those who enjoyed Christophe Gans' 2006 Silent Hill movie (from which Homecoming's art direction took inspiration), the game is a visual treat. Still, to date no developers had attempted to reimagine Silent Hill from the ground up. That would all change with the next game: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. Feeling like braving the titular town's foggy and dangerous streets? Then check our best Silent Hill games list!

However, there are indie developers who have been embracing this early low-poly style in their games, which have begun surfacing into the mainstream consciousness – titles such as this year's Crow Country, as well as Fear The Spotlight, coming later this month [it's out now! - ed from the future]. That said, this affection for low-poly visuals is nothing new. It can be traced back to Back In 1995, which was released almost a decade ago (although not ported to PS4 and Vita until 2019).

While all those games take quite different approaches, it's perhaps no coincidence that these purposely lo-fi productions do all happen to be horror, or are at least inspired by PS1-era survival horror games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

It's always spooky season somewhere, so we're speaking to the developers of all three games to find out what makes low-poly a good fit for the horror genre, what goes into replicating that early PS1 feel (while also accounting for how modern audiences should experience it), and whether there's more to the aesthetic than mere nostalgia.

Team retro

While 'retro-inspired' games have been popular throughout the past decade, the phrase is usually used to refer to games that employ a distinctive pixel art style similar to the one that was prominent in the 8-bit and 16-bit console eras – think of 2010s indie classics like Shovel Knight, Undertale, and The Messenger. However, around the same time those games were released, Back In 1995 developer Takaaki Ichijo was more interested in exploring how to recreate the early polygonal visuals of 3D games he grew up obsessed with on PS1, games like Silent Hill, Tenchu, and Metal Gear Solid.

"Back in 2015, no-one was paying attention to retropolygons," he tells us. "At the time, I felt like the expression of my beloved generation of game consoles had been skipped, so I first experimented with whether I could express those graphics in Unity."

Although Ichijo describes Back In 1995 as more 'mystery adventure' than 'horror', it nonetheless bears an uncanny resemblance to the original Silent Hill, not only in its polygonal character models and environments but also in the overall presentation. "We paid attention to the menu structure, save slots, and operation sluggishness. For example, the framerate is 20fps, which may be lower than the actual PS1!"

Perhaps the most characteristic aspect of PS1 visuals that devs trying to recreate the feel of the console need to get right is the way the co-processor (the Geometry Transformation Engine, or GTE) calculated vectors, which resulted in 3D polygons having a warped or wobbly effect whenever models moved or the camera rotated. Some critics might point to this side-effect as a flaw in PS1 3D graphics, but others consider it one of its charms.

That PS1 wobble is something Bryan Singh, co-founder of Fear The Spotlight developer Cozy Game Pals, speaks of fondly, even as we find it amusing contrasting the thought of him strategically choosing how to replicate the effect that PS1 was "bad at representing very granular numbers" with his previous role as a game designer and programmer on glossy Sony blockbuster series The Last Of Us and Uncharted.

"We're almost recreating the working environment that the developers of the time had, where they're working against some real difficult technical limitations and everything's so new to them," he says. "In a way, we're kind of in the same boat, because it's just Crista [Castro, co-founder] and I making this game – we're the whole team."

That team dynamic is the same at SFB Games, which is essentially made up of two brothers. Of the pair, Adam Vian is creative director of Crow Country, which marks the studio's foray into making 3D games. And what better way to start making them than to learn from the early years of 3D graphics?

Ghost protocol

For those of us who grew up in the '90s and so lived through the 3D revolution, everything was exciting and groundbreaking, but technology was also not without its limitations as developers were still adapting and trying to figure things out.

"That's specifically what makes it special, not the fact that the games were 3D – we live in that world now, and it's boring – it's the fact that it was a change, and people were working it out, and they were floundering, and it was amazing," Vian explains. "So I actually think those limitations encourage weird, unique compromises that are still interesting and iconic to this day."

Crow Country makes an intriguing case study of capturing PS1 nostalgia because while it's a survival horror clearly influenced by Resident Evil in its abandoned setting and brain-teasing puzzles, it also echoes two other visual styles from the PS1 era. The 3D environments and all the items littering this derelict theme park are far more detailed than you'd see in a genuine PS1 game using real-time graphics, but it was a happy accident that Vian used a shader that gave the environments the appearance of pre-rendered backgrounds, which were commonly used in PS1 games – the twist is that here you can rotate the camera to reveal that they aren't pre-rendered.

Crow Country's chunky character models, however, are more reminiscent of the field models in Final Fantasy 7, which, while a jarring contrast to how cutting-edge that game was said to be, Vian unapologetically loves. However, the reason Crow Country's characters have this look is because he started making the game without any dedicated 3D modelling tools, instead putting together spheres, capsules, half-spheres, and whatever 3D shapes the program already had plugged in. "That's all I had, but I liked that look," he says. "When the characters are behind a layer of abstraction, they're more appealing. It's the reason that a smiley face emoji is more appealing than a photograph of a man smiling – your brain responds to it better."

The abstraction of low-poly visuals is also another reason why the aesthetic is such a perfect fit with the horror genre. "When a movie shows you the monster, you're kind of less scared of it, because you already know 'That's what you look like', but when they withhold it for a lot longer, you imagine something even worse," explains Cozy Game Pals co-founder Crista Castro. "We think the [low-poly] aesthetic looks great, and it also is scary. It really plays into that feeling where you're like, you'll see something off in the distance, and the polygon wobble is just enough for you to think that there's something there, but you're not quite sure what it is."

Past discretions

Ichijo prefers not to focus on retro polygons being defined as something 'lesser than'. While our discussion is mostly about horror games, which can arguably be more effective when room is left for the imagination to fill the gaps, he adds, "I think the look is beautiful, incorporating exaggeration and omissions that are typical of games, with some like Vagrant Story reaching the levels of what could be called artisanal craftsmanship."

A lot of intent comes into emulating that style too, such as the wobble mentioned earlier. Back In 1995 is perhaps faithful to a fault in replicating the experience of gaming in the PS1 era, implementing tank controls because the game has been designed as if it had existed in the pre-DualShock days (in other words, without analogue sticks), while also including artificially long loading times.

Other developers, however, place less stress on being totally faithful to the experience. As Singh puts it, it's all about getting the right "vibe", just enough to scratch the nostalgia itch but then incorporating elements that make the games more accessible to modern audiences.

Certainly in the case of Fear The Spotlight, we can state that the narrative and voice acting are a cut above what passed for voice acting in Resident Evil, even if Castro humbly admits, "It's very tropey '90s horror movie things, where dumb teen kids are gonna mess around with stuff that they shouldn't."

The former Nickelodeon art director isn't simply replicating the past, but is adding what she felt had been missing from those early PS1 horror games, which were centred on adults. "One of the inspirations for this game was to make a game that I would have loved when I was 13 years old, so that's why it feels a little bit more young adult," she explains. "There's a lot of horror media from that time that we're also very inspired by, like Are You Afraid Of The Dark? and Goosebumps, all these things that I remember growing up with."

With Crow Country SFB Games likewise adopts a modern approach in contrast to the "spiky and uncomfortable" experiences of PS1 games Vian believes probably weren't tested for general audiences as they are today. On top of being lax with things like inventory and saves, and giving you the option to play with tank or free-moving controls depending on whether you use the D-pad or stick, it includes an Exploration mode that allows you to enjoy the game without the monsters. "I just wasn't interested in making a game that hates you, I wanted to make a game that likes you!" he says.

Beyond horror

Given there's a series of videogame compilations called Haunted PS1 Demo Disc (incidentally, where Fear The Spotlight made its debut) there remains a strong correlation between horror and PS1-era polygons. Of course, that's scratching the surface when Crow Country takes influences not only from Resident Evil but also Final Fantasy 7.

These days, Ichijo runs Japan's Indie Game Incubator where he tells us many entrants are also using retropolygons in their games, which cover a diverse range of styles and genres. "There are a growing number of creators in their 20s and younger who are using retropolygon expressions, so it is not just nostalgia," he says.

While we might have seen low-poly visuals some years ago, it was in the context of 'demake' videos reimagining modern games like The Last Of Us and Bioshock, and had the air of a joke rather than taking the style seriously. On the internet, it's not always easy to parse what's ironic and meant for meme and what is a sincere artistic expression, but these developers are optimistic that the PS1 aesthetic isn't just a fad but will become as enduring as pixel art.

"I think even young kids now, when we post videos of our games, we know our inspirations are Silent Hill, but when a younger generation looks at it, they're like, oh, that's Puppet Combo," says Castro. "So they have different ties to what this style means, but I think that they're going to also have their own connection to it. I think people are going to be drawn to it, no matter what."

Meanwhile, Vian feels the low-poly look is a reaction to the triple-A space. "I think it's a response to overly bloated, overly complex games. One of the things I like about PS1 is there's less stuff on the screen, and then what is there is more meaningful," he explains. "Even if you're not someone who grew up with PS1, you might be yearning for that simpler, more meaningful experience. Across the industry, I think basically people have gotten bored with the ceiling of modern graphics, and we're just going to be seeing more weird stuff."

Of course, one issue is that many people creating low-poly games are hobbyists, and so despite the name, things like Haunted PS1 Demo Discs are only available on PC. Here's hoping that more PS1-inspired games make their way to PlayStation!

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. Looking for something scary? Our best horror games of 2024 will chill you!

Remedy games always had easter eggs and mysterious references to other stories in the studio's gameography, but the connection was made 'canon' in Control's AWE DLC, which either stands for Alan Wake Expansion or Altered World Event depending on who you ask. Last year's excellent Alan Wake 2 then fleshed out that interlocked story further, and even informally (for probably legal reasons) tied it back to Max Payne and Quantum Break - both of which are owned by Rockstar Games and Xbox respectively.

But when asked about if there's an endgame in sight - an Avengers Endgame type of conclusion, if you will - Sam Lake told IGN that the studio are "just getting started" and "it's too early to start talking about an endgame."

"I love tying these things together," he said. "I love making it deeper and expanding on the lore. It really feels like this kind of opportunity to take these strands that we have put there, expand, entertain different ideas. It feels really exciting. And the way we are looking at it is, every game needs to be enjoyable on its own and stand on its own feet, but then, for our fans, for people who have been playing other Remedy games, we want to put in a lot of content for them to discover for the ongoing universe story."

Lake also explains that newcomers can jump into any of their games, and then hopefully dip back into the other, older Remedy games to "dive deeper into that rabbit hole."

For now, Remedy will continue tugging at these threads in its first ever co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak coming next year, paranormal sequel Control 2, and maybe even with its Max Payne 1 and 2 remakes in collaboration with Rockstar Games.

Check out more upcoming games of 2025 and beyond to not miss a single beat. 

The remake of Silent Hill 2 is just the latest game for which Western talent has been brought in to continue the series. To ensure the developers are not left lost and alone we're stepping back into the mists of time to talk to those who have stewarded the series throughout those years. We're also looking ahead to a future that seems just as kaleidoscopic – we know Silent Hill f and Silent Hill: Townfall are in production, though details have yet to be revealed. Perhaps Silent Hill has no essential element, no single defining feature, only ever-shifting aspects that merge and split like restless dreams.

Silent Hill: Origins puts you in the worn boots of Travis Grady, a lonely trucker who, one fateful night, takes a shortcut via the infamous resort town. After rescuing a horribly burnt Alessa Gillespie from a burning building he quickly becomes embroiled in the town's sinister cult dealings, and is forced to face the horrors of Silent Hill while confronting his own tragic past.

Origins was produced by Konami's US office, which would handle all subsequent Western-made Silent Hill games. Initially conceived as a remake of the first game, it was changed to a prequel when it became clear that the scope of a remake meant it would be prohibitively expensive. From there, Origins is a tale of two games: an early build by developer Climax Studios' Los Angeles team; and the final version, completed by Climax's Portsmouth-based outfit in Britain. The original American version was – put bluntly – a mess, featuring a Resident Evil 4-inspired over-the-shoulder perspective, zombie-like enemies, and a hammy, B-movie like approach to its narrative.

"The game was supposed to be silly," recalls Sam Barlow, then lead writer and designer in Climax's Portsmouth office. "It was supposed to be like Evil Dead 2, with the dark humour of the TV show Scrubs."

Back from the dead

This early build made major changes to the lore and tone established by the four previous Silent Hill games. The members of the town's cult – Origins' central antagonists – were presented as clichéd robes-and-skulls villains ("Like Scooby Doo characters" says Barlow), while some vital characters underwent complete revisions.

"There were characters like Dr Kaufmann, who in the original game is presented as this young, Bill Pullman-like, Lost Highway-looking guy who's being introduced to supernatural elements for the first time and is freaking out. Except in this version, he was 60 years old and a professor of quantum dynamics. You'd find him experimenting on zombies and saying things like, 'Fascinating, this shows the quantum sphere has broken' – it was totally nonsensical for Silent Hill."

Barlow and the team pushed back, insisting that this goofy take on Silent Hill would be a disaster. Konami accepted the need for changes, but with a caveat: the original budget and release window would still apply. In addition, Origins would have to include several FMV cutscenes that the US team had already gone to the expense of producing. These largely determined the core narrative elements that define the final version – Travis the protagonist, the inclusion of Alessa and the Order, the presence of the Butcher (an obvious riff on SH2's Pyramid Head), and the 'Flauros', the magical macguffin that drives most of Origins' plot.

Within two weeks, Barlow had feverishly rewritten the game's plot, script, and storyboard around the existing elements. Travis went from being a blank-slate everyman to someone with a connection to the town and the locations he moves through. Zombie-like foes were ditched, reworked into Barlow's own designs, which were meant to be in keeping with previous entries. (Some ideas didn't quite work: one scrapped idea for a final boss was of an enormous chair with the face of Travis' father on it.) Mechanically, Origins is very similar to what came before, with the addition of breakable weapons and the ability to use mirrors to enter and leave the Otherworld version of Silent Hill at will. Revisiting ideas from the very first PS1 game, Origins is the closest a non-Team-Silent-developed entry has come to replicating the classic Silent Hill mechanics.

At launch, the game received generally positive reviews, although it didn't have the impact of the Japanese games. By their own admission, this was something the developers had been realistic enough not to expect, and it's a testament to their ability as a team that they managed to produce a decent Silent Hill title within the constraints they'd been given. "Sometimes people ask me, 'What's the game I'm most proud of?'" says Barlow. "Creatively, it's probably a different answer. But in terms of what we achieved in such a small period of time, it has to be Origins. Because to take something where there wasn't really a game – that was just going to be a tragedy – and to pull it out of the bag with a seven-out-of-ten game was incredibly rewarding." He'd be back for more.

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. In the mood to explore some foggy streets? Then check our best Silent Hill games list!

Speaking to Dan Allen Gaming (in a video shared on ResetEra), some of the game's original creators, Glen Schofield, Christopher Stone, and Bret Robbins, say EA wasn't interested in their ideas.

"We tried actually, the three of us," Schofield says. "We tried Dead Space 4. We're talking this year. We didn't go too deep, they just said 'we're not interested right now'. We know who to talk to, so we didn't take it any further. We respected their opinion. They know their numbers and what they have to ship."

"The industry's in a weird place right now, people are really hesitant to take chances on things," Stone explains. "Take it with a grain of salt. Maybe one day, I think we'd all love to do it."

"We've got some ideas," Schofield teases.

When Allen asks if they'd go back to make the sequel "in a heartbeat," Schofield responds, "Yes," and Stone says, "I'd make a Dead Space 4." Schofield adds that "Bret might have trouble right now, Bret's got a good gig going." Robbins is currently working with former Rockstar developer Dan Houser at Absurd Ventures, which is now working on a new game set within the universe of it's audio fiction series, A Better Paradise.

Dead Space has been the cornerstone of these developers' legacy, especially Schofield's, who made the similar but not as well-received Callisto Protocol. It was also a third-person sci-fi horror game set aboard an abandoned location in space and featured incredibly violent death scenes, but it just didn't find the same success.

Our Callisto Protocol review reads "There's an impressive game here," but "while the story's fine, and it looks incredible, The Callisto Protocol is constantly derailed by an unforgiving combat system that feels badly designed for the vast majority of the encounters you have to deal with."

I saw the original Dead Space on the shelf at Game many times over the years, but I always avoided it because, for some reason, I just didn't think the cover art of a severed arm floating in the void of space looked that interesting. Younger me was clearly an idiot, and my punishment for literally judging a game by its cover was not experiencing that wonderful, scary story until a friend of mine shook some sense into me years later and lent me his copy.

Now, I'd love to see Dead Space 4, so hopefully EA listens to the original team's pitch or makes a new one itself. We might also be getting remakes of Dead Space 2 and 3.

In the meantime, check out some of the best horror games you can play right now.

"The setting of Cronos will let you visit 1980s-era Poland," Bloober writes in its Steam update post. The game's fictional district New Dawn "itself is a monument of Brutalist architecture. It was once a place filled with people and life, but when The Change occurred it turned into a hollow, barren wasteland." 

Accompanying concept art shows a stone street ruined by craters and fine sand. In the background, a murky, dark ocean sky casts blue shadows over dilapidated buildings that defy gravity and crumble upwards. 

Though my life has thankfully not been the sci-fi horror experience Cronos promises itself to be, the sight of this melting district is a nostalgic image for me; when I visit my Bulgarian mother's family by the Black Sea, the city I love to roam seems perpetually submerged in dust. There are chunks missing from the sidewalks, and I trip on the gaps. 

In time, I've developed an appreciation for the embarrassing and profound sense of humanity disintegrating Soviet towns provide me with, which is enough to make me excited for Cronos. But, obviously, Bloober's promise of "NIGHTMARISH ABOMINATIONS" is what takes my enthusiasm over the edge. 

Under this title on Steam, Bloober includes concept art for what appears to be an enemy. Smeared in shades of oatmeal, the creature slumps toward the floor with its two human heads, arms reaching out of its thighs, stems of flesh making twisted patterns on the wall like a peeled orange's connective tissue. 

"The enemies you will encounter while roaming through the grim wastelands of New Dawn are born from the remnants of humanity," Bloober says. "Navigating the world will require focus, a tactical approach and the ability to plan ahead." I'm guessing that includes adding Cronos to my wishlist.

Silent Hill 2 remakers Bloober Team say they're done making "shitty" games after turning over a new leaf with the horror classic.

Stalker 2's publisher, GSC World, recently announced "a million copies were sold" since launch, not to mention "much more stalkers" playing on Game Pass. All in all, it's a tremendous success for a game facing the unprecedented headwinds that Stalker has with the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Douse took to Twitter in the wake of Stalker 2's release to explain his perspective on its success, saying there's been a "seismic" and silent shift in what players want from games.

"People are more hungry for hyper-engaging, focused experiences than they are shiny prepped up retail product and this is the underlying seismic shift behind so much, and nobody is talking about it," Douse said. "The increased prominence of digital over retail and the ability to access audiences directly is a threat traditional publishers cannot keep up with."

Douse has been extremely outspoken about other releases and the state of the industry generally, making headlines back in April for proclaiming "marketing's dead" because players don't want to be "bamboozled," and again in August when he backed Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer's idea for his dream RPG, and again in September when he called Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii's quick turnaround "genius sh*t," and again in October when he said if Ubisoft wants "subs over sales" then "developers must get used to not having jobs," and again... well, you get the point. Dude says a lot of stuff.

After a lengthy and, again, troubled development cycle, Stalker 2 finally launched this week to largely positive reviews. The most prevailing criticism of the game is its lackluster performance, with our verdict reading "the best but most broken game I've played all year." All in all, it sounds like the actual meat of the game is survival horror FPS nirvana; it's just buggy, which isn't the worst way a game has ever been received.

Stalker 2 is secretly a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas, and after 45 hours in The Zone I'm ready to die on this irradiated hill.

Stalker 2 has only been out for a day, barely over 24 hours, but there are already 19 mods available for it on Nexus. Honestly, I can see why. As Andy wrote in his three-star review, it's "The best but most broken game I've played all year". It's a demanding game, and even though I played it with the recommended hardware specs I got a lot of texture pop and frame rate drops. Luckily, most of the mods out for it aim to optimize its performance on PC.

Two of the hot mods on the page right now are Stalker Optimizer and Optimized Tweaks. They have 11,647 and 10,621 unique downloads, respectively, and both aim to make the game run more smoothly. The first "reduces stuttering considerably by optimizing shader compilation and assets streaming," and the second "boosts CPU and GPU efficiency, reduces latency, accelerates loading and boot times."

There are also a couple of mods that tweak the gameplay. One is Reasonable Weapon Degradation. Weapons in the Zone degrade with use – being fired in an area full of anomalous energy and constant radiation storms will do that – and it's expensive to keep them in good shape, but it's a part of the game I actually quite enjoyed. It makes fights tenser, knowing your gun could jam because you opted to buy ammo or some medkits instead of fixing it.

There's another, No Weapon Durability Loss, that simply removes the mechanic and adds the option to remove it from your gas mask and armor, too, but I think that seems overkill. 

There's one that makes some enemies easier: Grok's Less Tanky Bloodsuckers and Poltergeists. This quarters the health bars of two of the most annoying and spongy mutants in the game. They're a real drain on your ammo, but again, that's the point. They're meant to prevent you from ever amassing so much ammo you stop feeling afraid of the Zone. You have to scavenge to survive. Once you take that away, Stalker 2 loses some of its character.

If you don't want to use mods, you can play Stalker 2 with GeForce Now to simply stream the game using Nvidia's beefier tech, which is a great option if you've got a crappy laptop but a good internet connection.

If you're just getting into the game yourself, check out our Stalker 2 guides to help give you the best chance at surviving the hostile Zone. 

In Stalker 2 review, Andy wrote it was "The best but most broken game I've played all year." After reviewing the game myself, I agree. I played on a laptop with an i7 core and an Nvidia RTX 2070, but even on medium settings there was frequent texture pop, my frame rate tanked whenever I went to an area with a lot of NPCs, and I lost track of how many times the audio for my guns simply stopped working.

I'm back to using my crappy writing laptop which only has an integrated graphics card, but what I do have is a fast internet connection, which is all you need to stream games via the cloud on GeForce Now. It's an Nvidia service that allows you to stream games you already own using the company's servers, meaning you can play on your phone, mac, laptop, and even smart TV without needing to buy expensive hardware.

There's a free tier you can use if you want to just trial it. This has ads and limits you to one hour play sessions, but it's a good taster. The performance tier has no ads, six hour play sessions, and Nvidia RTX, so the game will look better on it. The ultimate tier has eight hour sessions (though you should probably take breaks) and gives you DLSS frame generation as well, meaning even the busiest parts of the Zone should look smooth. You can check out the tiers for yourself here. I use the ultimate tier, but the premium tier will be perfect for most of you and it's half the price of ultimate.

There's also a deal on right now for 25% off a day pass so you can try out the premium and ultimate memberships and see which you prefer. It's only available until Friday, November 22, so check out the details here if you're interested.

As of January 1, 2025, GFN will be implementing a playtime limit of 100 hours per month to ensure queue times are low for everyone. One caveat is that you can roll over 15 hours. That means if you play for 85 hours one month, you can play for 115 the next. It only rolls over for one month, though, so if you then play for 99 hours, you'll get 101 the next month, not 116. I've asked, and the reverse doesn't work, so you can't play more hours one month in exchange for less play time the next. If you become a GFN subscriber in 2024, though, this change won't affect you until January 1, 2026.

Also being added to GFN alongside Stalker 2 are the game of the year editions of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Fallout 3 is my absolute favorite Fallout game – and yes I've played New Vegas and the originals, I said what I said.

If you'd prefer to just upgrade your hardware instead, you should check out the best PC graphics cards available this year. We've also got a comprehensive list of Stalker 2 guides to help you survive the brutally oppressive Zone.

Remedy reported earlier this month that it had recouped "most" of its development costs with Alan Wake 2 sales more than a year from launch. That doesn't necessarily make the game a flop, as it's very possible it'll have a long tail that eventually turns more and more of a profit, but it also doesn't make it a guaranteed commercial success.

Speaking during Remedy's Capital Markets Day on Tuesday (1:44:50 here), Lake addressed the presumably challenging art of balancing creative freedom with market viability.

"Games require long, complex productions. Games are cutting edge technological achievements. Games are business. We strive to create commercial hits," he said. "All of this is true, all of this is needed, all of this must be in balance for us to succeed. What else is true? Games are ambitious, passionate, works of creative expression. Games are high quality entertainment. What we create at Remedy is special, and we must never lose that."

As a massive fan of Remedy's catalog, I'm comforted by Lake's commitment to preserving what makes the studio's games special despite thus-far lukewarm sales, and doing so in a room full of investors who are counting on the commercial success of his games no less. It's also worth noting that Alan Wake 2, undeniably Remedy's weirdest, most Remedy game yet, is also its fastest selling game ever.

When I caught up with Lake just ahead of Alan Wake 2's launch last September, he told me he was emboldened to make "crazy" games by the positive response to Control, which in its five years since launch has sold 4.5 million copies and made Remedy more than €100 million in net revenue against a €30 million budget — proof that Alan Wake 2 still has time to prove itself to Remedy's investors.

If they need any more convincing, just remind them Alan Wake 2 is on our list of the best horror games and they'll come around.

But it’s not over yet. Playing as Michelle – rocking iconic bright blue hair and a pink fur coat combo – I can switch up the situation. With a snap of her fingers, her third eye opens, the jagged spikes and rusted floors giving way to the grimy-yet-normal metro we know, and the demon’s form is cast in neon-silhouette, a glowing heart revealed within. Aiming down sights with an equally demonic pistol (the hellhound – which growls on reload), I blast the heart, a dinging noise ringing out as it's shattered, and it’s stunned in a keyframe pose briefly as another heart appears. Like pinball – bling, bling, bling – I light it up, a “perfect” appearing on screen as it tumbles to the ground. That’s heartbreak.

Now the deliverer of heartbreak to demons, Michelle’s had her fair share of it. Spending three years in a daze after a bad breakup with a now-famous ex, who plays Epiphany Oxblood in the mega popular Dying Petals soap opera, she’s not sure what she’s still living for. Yet, something is off about the corner of London she lives in as she goes through the motions working her corner shop job and chatting with her local friends – the sense there's something lurking just out of sight.

Killer Queen

It all spills over when Michelle encounters the Duchess, on the meet-cute-side of receiving a night terror with a demonic entity which is to say “still a terrifying experience”. They’re tall enough to need to duck through Michell’s front door, has bright pink neon skin, and a constant fanged snarl on their face.

The Duchess has become famous among the demon realm, as they pursue the solution to filling the gap left after the infamous Biblical fall from Heaven – an absence of love. The Duchess has been attempting to obtain it at any cost. Cursing Michelle with a third eye, it is their hope that this way Michelle can come to love them. Witnessing the Duchess with this altered sight, the hellish nightmare falls away to reveal a more idealized form (becoming scary in a whole other way).

Left to live with this curse, Michelle realizes that not only are some of her neighbors more deeply connected to the world of angels and demons than she thought, but that the Duchess has cursed others. If she's going to have any hope of lifting it, she needs to follow in the footsteps of what happened to her fellow cursed.

Punctuating these levels are moments to chat to everyone on the street on which you both live and work. The gorgeous low-poly designs are wonderfully expressive, and the writing is funny and sharp. Quickly, it becomes clear that many could use Michelle's assistance, giving you the chance to help them out as you complete your own quest.

Often, these come at the cost of others, and rarely do you feel like you're making the best choice. Largely the content you play remains the same, but the path you've taken smartly recontextualizes what happens and leads to unique endings – it's well done.

Anytime an invitation

Naturally, tracking down other cursed humans means rocking up to some deserted and dangerous locations and having to fight demons. While out on the street you walk around the real world you know, and only unveil the hidden one with your third eye. This is inverted in each level proper where you explore in the demon realm first, your third eye showing you the human equivalent. These spaces have been invaded by the nasty stuff.

Silent Hill is an obvious comparison point, with that first level in the Underground station impossible not to compare to Silent Hill 4's own subway opening. Industrial soundscapes add to the atmosphere in a very similar way, too. While each level has a distinct visual identity, the demon realm versions are always rusted, gross, and punctuated with instruments of torture from walls of thorns to demon bodies hanging from chains.

For the most part the geometry is one-to-one. You can't pass by those aforementioned hanging bodies, and in the real-world you may reveal that space to be simply filing cabinets. However, some obstructions can only be navigated this way for some lightweight puzzle solving – thorns retract in the real-world, for instance, or it may reveal the safe path on a floor-spike trap.

The catch is your third-eye only ever reveals a small bubble of the other world around you, and you must walk while you have it active otherwise it deactivates. Walking through thorns is one thing, but doing so while an enemy you can't kill through normal means lumbers your way while scraping a big knife and trying not to break out into a sprint is another.

Gunpowder, gelatine

Using that power to reveal the glowing weak spots of enemies is also another double-edged rusty sword. For starters, it means you have to let them get close to use it, and for another, they will only take damage through direct hits to those hearts, your bullets otherwise passing through them. While enemies can be shot like normal without the third-eye, you need to deactivate it to blast at distance otherwise your shots fizzle out of existence.

It's a terrific twist on the Resident Evil 4-style "stand-your-ground" action, as you must plant your feet to aim – going from third-person Silent Hill 2-like navigation with fixed cameras to first-person shooting. You trade the greater accuracy of being close to enemies for the chance to deal extra damage, and as the heart weak spots move around a demon's body with each hit you have to pay attention to chain your shots together to finish them off. Activate your third-eye when a demon is already in range, and they'll receive a small stun you can use to your advantage to clear groups or get the drop on an enemy. With a slight stun each time they're hit in the heart, you'll sometimes have to use that to juggle a group in one go.

Mechanically, it's extremely satisfying to get the drop on demons in this way, growing familiar with each one's pattern of hearts and beginning to feel like you're bossing around the forbidden realm. Yet once they start jabbing you, you'll quickly feel the pain (and have to chug water to recover health). The third-eye doesn't just add a really cool way of exploring two versions of an environment in real-time, but it's vital towards introducing this whole new cadence of survival horror shooting that almost always ends up leading to encounters that feel scary, clutch, and satisfying.

It's got the kind of punk rock flavor you might expect from Suda51's best works, applied to a mesh between Silent Hill and Resident Evil that manages to evolve beyond those games. The rhythm of play really is that transformative. Any fan of those games needs to try Sorry We're Closed to marvel at the creativity in play.

Currently the controls are tuned to be a bit easier with mouse-and-keyboard on PC (where I played), but it also feels pretty good with a controller, if a bit tougher to keep up with combos just due to the longer aiming time. Though I'm told by the publisher this is still being fine-tuned.

Boss fights pull this all together at the end of each stage. Only properly able to be damaged by Heartbreaker shots, you have to chain attacks to charge this meter before initiating the blast, where time freezes and Michelle pulls out a comically large gun, the world becoming a stark contrast of silhouetted black shapes against neon pink as you absolutely demolish a larger heart (many bosses have about three of these). These clashes feel high-impact not just because of the larger action, but because the atmospheric soundscapes give way to thumping vocal tracks that lyrically play into the situation. All underscored, of course, by coming face-to-face with new facets of emotional turmoil.

That's what Sorry We're Closed is all about. Bright neon colors. High impact, inventive mechanics. And emotionally charged introspection. Rather than clashing, its immaculate vibes and almost arcadey shooting suit the dourer, sadder aspects wonderfully – it's all about the space between.

Need to get through more terrible situations? Our best survival horror games list is for you! Or more interested in love? Our best dating sims might offer something a little different.

Over on Reddit, user Dale Robinson has worked out the true meaning behind the 'Strange Photos' collectibles introduced in the remake. There are 26 in total, and all of them include a bit of writing alongside the images themselves. It turns out that if you look at each picture hard enough, you'll see that there's a significant number of something visible – in the first photo, there are six open windows, while in the sixth one, there are four holes in the photo itself. If you then use this number for each picture to count along the letters on their accompanying writing, you'll end up with a message when looking at them in order – 'YOUVE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES.'

I SOLVED THE SH2 REMAKE PHOTOS SECRET from r/silenthill

Solving this was seriously impressive work, and it's not taken long for Bloober Team creative director and lead game designer Mateusz Lenart to weigh in and confirm that this is the exact message that the devs had hidden. "I knew it wouldn't stay hidden for long! (There was a theory in our company that the puzzle might be too hard)," Lenart says. "I really wanted to make it subtle when I was painting those photos... I think the timing couldn't be better for you to solve it. Congratulations!"

So then, what does this all mean? It'd be compelling evidence to support the time loop theory – the idea that protagonist James Sunderland is trapped, being endlessly tormented by Silent Hill's horrors. As @AestheticGamer1 on Twitter mentions, this was an existing idea before the release of the remake thanks to other clues, including original Silent Hill 2 art director Masahiro Ito previously proclaiming that "all of the endings are canon."

But does this mean that the theory is confirmed? Apparently not. Responding to one fan concluding that "the loop theory is canon," Lenart simply says, "Is it?" For some, this might be a relief, since not everyone is a fan of it – "I have never liked the loop theory. It feels so cheap," one player on Twitter comments. Instead, perhaps it could be a message for the players, who've also "been here for two decades" since the original game released over 20 years ago. Bloober Team clearly isn't going to say either way, but regardless, it's very cool that the new game's puzzle has been solved.

Be sure to check out our Silent Hill 2 Remake review to find out if the horror classic is worth returning to.

Look, I fully realize there's no shortage of low-poly indie horror games paying tribute to games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but I'm a glass half-full person; what some might call an oversaturated market, I'd call a feast for sickos that grew up playing horror games at too young an age and are forever chasing that same adrenaline-fueled high. Crow Country, Roost, and Heartworm are just a few that have wowed me recently, and now that I've played a little bit of the demo for Labyrinth of the Demon King, I can add another to the long list of upcoming horror games firmly on my radar.

My immediate impressions playing the demo were, A) it's absolutely soaked in dread-inducing atmosphere, which reminded me of playing Silent Hill for the first time as a child, and B) it's actually, genuinely scary. It's tricky for me to suspend my disbelief sometimes when playing games that look like they're 30 years old, but in Labyrinth of the Demon King, the minimalist sound design, tough but fair combat, and grotesque creatures from Japanese folklore combine to create a tense, unnerving experience.

FromSoftware fans will also pick up on some heavy King's Field vibes, and indeed, the game's official website lists the dungeon crawler as one of its main inspirations alongside Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

The game is set in a war, disease, and famine-ravaged alternate version of feudal Japan, and you play as a footsoldier named Ashigaru who will need to trudge through the Labyrinth of the Demon King in order to track down the demon who betrayed your lord and kill it. On the way you'll encounter all sorts of yōkai - ghosts from Japanese folklore - that from my experience don't go down without a fight.

Usually, I'd say Halloween should be strictly reserved for watching the best horror movies and carving Jack-o'-lanterns, but I'll make an exception in this case and heartily recommend you take half an hour out of your day to play this seriously spooky demo. 

I'll also accept you picking something from our list of the best horror games.

Once a POW camp for Civil War soldiers, then a correctional facility with a habit for executions and disposing of corpses in deep holes, Toluca is saturated with bad memories. Fittingly for the spooky season – and faithfully to Team Silent's original rendition – Toluca Prison is the point at which Silent Hill's dimensional spectrum ventures towards the spectral, with Bloober retaining the little touches that made the prison feel haunted (by forces other than James' own guilt and horniness, that is). Long-dead prisoners whisper in clammy cells, invisible horses can be heard trotting to take prisoners to the gallows, and a scream from beyond the grave – a shameless jump-scare made all the more effective by the fact that the game contains so few of them – await those descend into Toluca.

Hell in a cell

Bloober's rendition also takes a few departures from the design of the original Silent Hill 2, which used a tight, top-down perspective that made it hard to see the scuttlers and other creatures coming your way. With the limited control that we had over the camera in Silent Hill 2, we were often at the mercy of Team Silent's creative cinematography, which it deftly exploited to claustrophobic effect. Even now, there's definitely some weight to the contention that a fully controllable all-angles camera is an aspect of modern game design that's anathema to effective horror. To counter this, Bloober exploited an aspect of modern game design that was notably lacking back in the days of the original: verticality.

Instead of looking downwards in Silent Hill 2 Remake's Toluca, your attention is turned upwards this time. At first you just hear something moving up above you, but when you look up, you see nothing but dim lights dangling by cords that disappear into the darkness. As you try to get your bearings while radio static signals threats you can't yet see, you get some respite when you find a lever that switches on all the lights in the cell block. But that relief is short-lived when you realize that these lights are on a timer, which audibly ticks down faster and faster until you are plunged into near-total darkness once more. In the end, the precious seconds I'd spend pulling the lever, compounded by that dreaded countdown, would slather on so much tension that I'd opt to just sprint through the darkness rather than burden myself with the additional stressors.

Eventually, maybe as the ticking lights start to sputter, you see them: the deadly new threats that have been stalking you. They are in fact a new form of an existing enemy, the Mannequin – four prosthetic legs adjoined by a torso, essentially. Utilized up to this point in the game as hidey-seeky purveyors of jump-scares tottering around on two gainly legs, Toluca gives the Mannequins a horrifying refresh just as their original form might have started to grow overly familiar. This variant scurries along walls and ceilings on all fours, like cockroaches skittering in and out of ceiling vents in a damp motel room, before leaping at you from all angles.

Once this insectile new form of the Mannequin catches your scent, it's as if it sends a signal to the others, because they all seem to descend on you at once. Within moments, you're blasting them off the walls with your shotgun while straight-jacketed Lying Figures spit venom at you from their cells. In these moments, Silent Hill 2 Remake's horror veers into Resident Evil 4 territory, as you're besieged from all sides and – for the first time in the game – are anxiously watching your ammo supplies dwindle. This gear-shift towards a noisier, swarming kind of horror is a creative liberty on Bloober's part, but it works precisely because it's an outlier to the rest of the experience. It also fits thematically with a setting that's steeped in violence, as you try to traverse what feels like an otherworldly prison riot. You can't possibly quell it, you can only hope to survive it.

Even in the quieter moments wading through Toluca, the protracted industrial notes of Akira Yamaoka's score reverberate through and grind down your psyche (you know you're in a bad place where the only relief from the barrage of noise and monsters comes by standing in a pitch-black execution yard). At one point, you pick up a paranoid note from one of the prisoners claiming that another prisoner can get to him through the walls. When you get to this prisoner's cell, you find that they've created a hole in the wall through which to escape, and as you squeeze yourself through this escape route, that note about the prisoner stalking others through the walls lingers in your mind.

Maybe Toluca is a reflection of James' repressed conscience reaching breaking point, tearing to get out, or maybe there really is some kind of paranormal activity here. The beauty of Bloober's remake is that it retains the mystery surrounding this forsaken place, while adding a few astute elements that elevate it into one of the most stress-inducing horror sequences you (or James Sunderland) could imagine.

Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 2's introductory sequences showcase two different approaches to the survival horror remake, and both of them are valid

Pyramid Head began life as hellish penance personified. A walking manifestation of someone's guilt, ready to serve punishment to those who crave it the most with eery groans and a rusted cleaver. But the big boss has since become the closest thing Silent Hill has to a series mascot, so publisher Konami can thank 1990's Jacob's Ladder for its cash cow.

Over on social media, original Silent Hill 2 artist Masahiro Ito once again gushed over the cult classic. "If I had not seen a teaser of that on my TV, I would never have gone to watch the film, never have made the other world school in SH1, or never have come up with the background of Pyramid Head," he tweeted. "Goose bumps!"

Jacob's Ladder might not be the most common cultural touchstone - it was barely a success at first - but it's pretty easy to connect the dots between the two projects. Jacob's Ladder follows a Vietnam war veteran who becomes haunted by otherworldly apparitions, tentacled monsters, and alternate realities that blur the line between what's real and what's just a manifestation of Jacob's psyche. Very Silent Hill-y. 

When it comes to Pyramid Head in particular, Ito says that a very specific line in the film gave him the idea to create a physical representation of guilt and judgement. "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you. They're freeing your soul," is the line, which is itself a quote from German philosopher Master Eckhart.

On the topic of influences, Ito also said that Silent Hill’s Fukuro Lady was actually inspired by a BDSM magazine. 

It's a hook that's become easier to pull off in the modern era as game technology has gotten better. Yet it's remained a hard trick to pull off for a long duration. But what if I told you one of the earliest games to do it, Clock Tower on the SNES, wasn't just one of the most influential horror games ever in how it pulled it off; but that even today it still terrifies me to my stainless steel core? The series has long had a cult-following, but the very original, released in 1995, has only just been officially released outside of Japan with Clock Tower: Rewind.

The set-up is simple. Jennifer and her fellow orphan friends have been led by their tutor, Mary, to a mysterious manor in North Europe known as Clock Tower, in order to meet their new adoptive parent. Not only is this massive manor in the middle of nowhere, but its innards feel just as empty – nobody is there to greet them. When Mary goes to find someone, she doesn't come back, and when Jennifer goes to look for her, she returns to find her friends have also vanished.

With multiple routes, what follows as Jennifer tries to survive with as many friends intact as possible is a mix between Schrodinger's serial killer and throwing darts dripping with blood at a target. Which of your pals die is determined by which events involving their distressingly mangled corpses you end up witnessing, and to add to this each playthrough randomizes the placement of key rooms and items. It gives the sense that these deliberately repetitive hallways are truly hard to follow, a noose-knot you must untangle.

Scissorman cometh

That alone would be bad enough. But being alone is not a luxury Jennifer is allowed. On a primarily 2D plane, she walks through the halls as disconcerting sounds punctuate the otherwise silent score, from screams to distant telephone ringing. Her walk speed is glacially slow, and jogging quickly uses up stamina. Controlled like a point-and-click game (the PS1 box art calls it a "horror adventure" – survival horror wasn't an established genre at the time), Jennifer has to return to the front of the room every time she interacts with something further in the background. It's all very sedate.

That is, until Scissorman arrives on the scene: a pursuing stalker enemy whose appearance is always punctuated by harsh synths and a rising tempo. A tiny, well-dressed boy whose face looks somewhat distorted in the detailed pixel art, he clutches a massive pair of scissors that constantly snikt-snikt-snikt as he relentlessly walks your way.

Sometimes he'll simply be inside a room or hallway you enter, turning his sights on you as you stumble in. But, more often than not, he has several dramatic entrances he can make throughout Clock Tower's many rooms. He'll crash down from a skylight right in front of you; he'll emerge from a tub of water in which a victim's body has been left to rot; he'll be standing behind a curtain when you check it (which, devilishly, is also a the spot in which one of the most important items in the game can sometimes be found). He'll even drop a ceiling panel in the music room to play a jaunty song with his feet on the piano as he sidles toward you.

Scissorman's even been made slightly smarter in Clock Tower: Rewind's eponymous 'Rewind' mode (the very original SNES experience is also an option), pursuing Jennifer more relentlessly from room to room – thankfully, her stamina recovery has been tweaked slightly to match that as well.

Meet him head-on, and you can mash the action button to try to knock him over and run past. After all, you can only move left and right and in and out of doors, so there's only so many avenues to make your escape. Jennifer's stamina and health are one-and-the-same. Get too low, and she'll trip over as she runs, and be unable to fend off the Scissorman's attacks. If he gets you from behind, it's an instant Game Over.

Various rooms can contain hiding spots, such as behind cupboards, under beds, or just by locking the door to a bathroom – Rewind even includes some that were cut from the original release. Use one, and you can hunker down until he leaves. But they won't always work. Scissorman can smash down that bathroom door, for instance. While fans have swapped tips and tricks for ensuring you remain undetected over the years, director Hifumi Kono insists in Rewind's supplementary interviews that whether these hiding spots work is just as "random" as many other elements of Clock Tower.

Hide and seek

On a mechanical level, it kind of sucks, right? It's frustrating. It's slow-paced. It's deliberately unfair. But I love it. I'm obsessed! Considering all the limitations Clock Tower developer Human Entertainment faced, it feels wildly ambitious, from the dynamic chases to the gorgeously detailed artwork and soundscape (Kono cites Dario Argentino's films as a primary influence – specifically the likes of Suspiria and Phenomena).

Many of Clock Tower's tricks are, by the developer's own admission, relatively simple. But they all come together to create something that feels unknowable, mysterious, and genuinely arcane. While you can certainly learn how it all fits together to breeze through playthroughs, the 16-bit presentation manages to successfully blur the line for me in a way that modern games still struggle to do. After a while, in Resident Evil 2, you know where Mr. X is and isn't allowed to patrol. But in Clock Tower, I'm still not sure where Scissorman is going to come from next, and yes, he will make me scream.

Thanks to the shuffled nature of each playthrough, I'm going to panic while I try to remember which room had the hiding spot I've yet to use. Kono can explain how Clock Tower works as much as he wants, but when I'm wandering those halls myself… I'm not sure my lizard brain is capable of believing him? It transcends its limitations to become a deeper experience, and one that will always make me gloriously uncomfortable.

Clock Tower and Scissorman have gone on to inspire numerous other horror games and their stalker enemies. But it's not been easy to replicate. Even Clock Tower's own sequels, which moved to 3D, couldn't hit the same – though they're charming in their own ways. Pondering whether he'd ever like to return to the series in Rewind's interviews, even Kono seems to feel similarly, suggesting he'd rather return to it with a retro-style closer to the original than chasing bigger budget realism.

Lovingly presented, Clock Tower: Rewind is a wonderful release that doesn't just allow for an official way to enjoy the horror that started it all, but thanks to its enhancements it's the best way to play it. While its titular rewind feature is actually a bit rubbish – offering roughly five seconds to scrub through, it barely covers Jennifer's slow movement to look at a single object – the simple save system can still make the game a bit more approachable.

But it's a great fan package too, from the previously mentioned interviews with Kono, to new animations and motion comics, booklet scans, and even a fresh arrangement of the theme song Sharp Laughter with vocals from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn of Silent Hill fame. But most importantly, it recognises one of the most influential horror games of all time, finally giving the game its moment in the spotlight, and making it easier than ever for me to goad my friends into playing it. Walk, don't run (because of the scissors), to enter the Clock Tower.

Looking for more to play? We've picked out the upcoming horror games that need to be on your radar. For right now? We have our best horror games right here! Looking for something scary that has some movie-like flair? The best games based on horror movies might be worth a look too!

Ito played a huge part in the creation of the early Silent Hill games, having gone from a monster designer in the first game to the art director for Silent Hill 2 and 3. Now, he's given a bit more insight into the design of one of the female character models he created, which the models for Silent Hill 2's Maria, Mary, Angela and the Bubble Head Nurse were all based on. The original one eventually became known as Fukuro Lady, and was featured in the short film Fukuro alongside Pyramid Head and other Silent Hill 2 monsters. 

In this original model, which shows her in a red dress and heels with her sleek dark hair styled as a bob, it'd be totally understandable if you thought Ito might have taken inspiration from a certain Tekken character, Anna Williams, when it came to her design. However, enough people have clearly had that exact same thought that Ito wants to clear things up once and for all. Sure, the two might look similar, but Fukuro Lady's actual inspiration was very different. 

"Some have replied [saying that] this lady reminds them of Anna Williams from Tekken and come to think of it, maybe they are right," Ito begins. "But the inspiration was a photo picture from a BDSM magazine that I used to read."

Not quite from a fighting game series, then. The magazine in question wasn't Ito's only influence, though, as he also notes that her hair was based on "Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction," and yeah, you can definitely see that when you compare them side by side. 

Even if Fukuro Lady didn't make it into Silent Hill 2 as a full-fledged enemy, Ito says the graphic test model he made for her was partially used in Silent Hill 3. In the thread, he adds: "The face of the nurse in SH3 was from that PS2 graphic test model." The more you know.

For more games like Silent Hill 2, be sure to check out our roundup of the best horror games.

It's generally well-known among fans of the game that Pathologic's blocking mechanic, which throws your character's fists in front of your face, does nothing at all. Well, it turns out that isn't just bad game design — it's due to a typo in the game's code, and you can officially fix it with a fan-created mod.

"IT'S BECAUSE THEY SET IT TO 0.25 INSTEAD OF 25.0," says a modder going by RoSoDude online. "All I did was change the instruction at 0x0A20 to use 25.0 and now blocking works lol.

"Nearly 20 years later, this oversight is fixed."

RoSoDude is the modder behind the Pathologic Classic mod Reputation Survival and Disease Overhaul, which is described as "the first mod of its kind to alter the underlying game systems and bring out the potential depth that was hinted at but never fully realized in the game." 

Specifically, the mod's aim is to "rebalance the economy and survival gameplay of Pathologic Classic." RoSoDude says much of the original game's notorious difficulty is simply due to "its failure to communicate some of its more obtuse mechanics and systems," and that too many of its systems are "highly abusable", making the original game more like a "walking simulator in which you "tediously grind resources while walking between (admittedly very well-written) character dialogues."

Basically, the point of the mod is to make players experience the game how it was meant to be played by removing various exploits that are used to get around the game's systems. It just also happens to fix blocking, which is a nice little added bonus.

Just in time for Halloween, here are the best horror games to play right now.

I sit up straight as an arrow in my seat, inhaling a deep breath like I'm preparing to bolt forward to relative safety in reality. Steeling myself, I push Alan forward, beelining it past every shadow as they angrily yell "WAKE". It's not until some time later, when I stand in the now empty theater and watch a short live-action film play out on the screen inside the game, that I remember why I'm doing all of this in the first place.

Since this month marked one year since the release of Alan Wake 2, I set myself the goal of at last seeing it through to the end. I don't handle horror all that well, and after a particularly unsettling section of the game, I took an extended break from the terrors lurking within the Dark Place and Bright Falls. But upon returning, I've come to find that making it through every scare as Alan and Saga is completely worth it when I'm continually met with yet more examples of Remedy's creative flair for storytelling. No one is more surprised than me to find that making it through the survival horror has not only been personally rewarding in a very unexpected way, but it's also been the most enjoyable experience I've had with the genre to date.

The Dark Place

I'm not one who gravitates towards playing horror games. In fact, I generally avoid them, preferring to stay a safe distance away from the scares. When I first played Alan Wake on my Xbox 360 many years ago, I was surprised by how engrossed I became in the weird goings on in Bright Falls. Even though it's not strictly speaking a horror game, it felt about as close as I wanted to get to the genre. You can only imagine, then, that if I found Alan's previous thriller unsettling, I would be a tad apprehensive about stepping into Alan Wake 2 – which promised to ramp things up in the fright department.

But even with the shift into survival horror territory, I was determined to reunite with the troubled writer and find out how his story continued over a decade later. Before I knew it, I was facing the terrors of the Dark Place, making my way through the eerie forestlands of Cauldron Lake, and even braving the unnerving attractions of Coffee World. While I was absolutely afraid a lot of the time, I was also proud of myself for getting past every jump-scare and frightening foe.

It was only once I reached the Valhalla Nursing Home in Saga's shoes that I was really pushed past my limits. Even now, the thought of that haunting place and the encounter with Cynthia makes me actively shudder and want to run away and hide. My scaredy-cat heart couldn't take anymore, and I took a long break from Alan Wake 2. Months and months passed, but it was never far from my mind.

Back to the light

I kept thinking about all of the memorable creative moments I'd seen so far in Alan Wake 2 – such as the incredible live-action musical number, as well as highlights like the commercials I'd come across by the Koskela Brothers. I just knew there was more in store for me to discover, and I was so curious to see how Saga and Alan's respective journeys would come together and conclude. The impending one year anniversary since the game's release was the final push I needed.

But if I was going to face my fears to finish Alan Wake 2, I was determined to go all in with it. Not only did I see it through to the end, but I also set out and successfully found every collectible. I spent a large chunk of time revisiting areas that had previously terrified me – including the dreaded care home – to find every lunch box, nursery rhyme, and cult stash. Earning the trophies for my efforts and seeing all of the collectibles laid out on Saga's caseboard was an added serotonin boost, but the best reward was yet to come.

In spite of the scares, I unexpectedly found the experience of finishing Alan Wake 2 oddly comforting and encouraging. Just as I don't want to be in a horror game, Saga and Alan want out of the horror story they find themselves in. In a strange way, their journey mirrors my own goal to get through it. As I push them to keep moving forward and find a solution both in and out of the Dark Place, I'm also pushing myself to overcome my fears. The fact that I also relate to both characters in unexpected ways also makes me become so attached and invested. I want to keep fighting to bring light back to their lives, and see the light at the end of the tunnel myself.

When I at last saw the credits roll, and roll, and roll, the sense of accomplishment was unparalleled. Getting through every jump-scare and unnerving location, and facing each hair-raising enemy was completely worth it, because I got to experience a journey that became so personally meaningful to me in more ways than one. From memorable live-action scenes to wonderfully weird action sequences, Alan Wake 2 pushed me into a genre I tend to avoid and opened me up to in the most surprising ways.

But the biggest shock was just how much I ended up enjoying the experience, despite my accelerated heart rate. I'll never forget my time with Remedy's survival horror, or the way it helped me on a personal level. If this experience has taught me anything, it's that sometimes it really does pay to face your fears.

Here's how Alan Wake 2's Lake House DLC sold our very own features editor Andy Brown on Control 2 quicker than playing Control did.

Speaking in a recent post online, the developer first discusses a song he wrote for the DLC - End of an Era. "End of an Era, the final song of the final DLC chapter of Alan Wake 2, beautifully composed by Petri Alanko and sung by Amelia Jones," says Lake. "I wrote the lyrics thinking about this long journey, from 2010 on, trying to get the sequel made, being very aware that in life nothing is guaranteed."

The lead continues: "Many times it seemed the game would never get made. It was a long and winding road. We lost wonderful friends along the way. No one knows about the future. But here we are and we made this, and no one can take that away from us. That's worth celebrating." Lake then closes his statement, writing that he hopes the community can "enjoy Alan Wake 2, now that with The Lake House, it's finally complete."

His message is heartfelt, to say the least, and it seems to be reaching quite a few fans. One commenter tells Lake his post "encapsulates so much of this journey you've taken us down, and also your personal journey through it all." Others speculate about what his reference to the "future" could mean, writing that they "can't wait for what's next." There's no telling just yet - but it certainly is exciting to consider the possibilities.

If you loved Alan Wake 2, here are some of the other best horror games around to play right now.

"There was obviously a lot of discussion between the two teams about how we can utilize the kind of core themes of those individual franchises in each other's games," says game director Kyle Rowley, as we ask about the experience of collaborating for Control's AWE DLC during a roundtable discussion. "They leaned quite a lot on the idea of light versus darkness. Obviously, they brought one of the characters back from [the first] Alan Wake to kind of cross the bridge there. It was very much the same for [The Lake House]."

Even with the RCU, the teams behind the Alan Wake and Control games are separate, meaning "it's very much a collaboration between the two teams" according to Rowley. Though it certainly helps that they're within the same studio and even in the same building. 

"One of the things that we've tried to figure out is actually, like, how do we schedule the work? [...] They have their own stuff that they're working on, but we're like, 'Hey, we kind of need help on some of these things'. So it's like, 'Oh, yeah, but we don't really have time, go to that producer' [who says] 'What the hell is this?' Those production difficulties come from trying to get help from other projects on your own projects," says Rowley. Though he notes that the experience across both Control: AWE and Alan Wake 2: The Lake House means "we've been getting better at [it]."

Take Control

Even though it's a crossover, both teams have been conscious to try to avoid locking out those less familiar with Remedy's other games. "When we were developing even Alan Wake 2, we were quite aware that there may be people who've not played Control, who've not played [the first] Alan Wake, and we wanted to make sure that this game was accessible for them [...] it should be a cool experience for everybody," explains Rowley.

But that hasn't stopped the studio from adding in things that long-time fans will enjoy, which also provides the hook that its RCU is bigger and deeper than any one game. "I think that's how we've always approached it – on the surface level, it's accessible for everybody, but the deeper you kind of go and explore the world the more rewarding it can become. Especially if you're heavily invested in our previous games."

The Lake House itself, as a structure, is an off-site FBC facility from Control plonked down into the middle of Alan Wake 2. "The world design director that we had on Control was working with us on the world design for The Lake House in terms of its architecture and how it's built," says Rowley. It retains the "brutalist nature" of The Oldest House, Control's primary setting.

"But at the same time Control's gameplay was very fast paced. Jesse could move and fly through the air so the space is very wide and open," says Rowley. "We wanted to look at that same architecture, but through what it would look like in Alan Wake 2's camera. How do those spaces feel when they're slightly more intimate? You kind of feel enclosed by them more than you kind of got with the world of The Oldest House when you were playing Control." 

Existing within the format of Alan Wake 2 is like viewing elements of Control through a different lens. Importantly, though, The Lake House is not The Oldest House. "[The aesthetics] still feel like they're part of the Alan Wake 2 game world, just with that slight Control flavor," says Rowley. "We want to make sure [it feels like] it's not exactly the same because it's not the same location – but it has that kind of that throughline."

The Wake Files

Helping to bridge that gap between Alan Wake 2 and Control is The Lake House's protagonist: FBC Agent Kiran Estevez. Just as both Alan and Saga have their own flavor across each thread in Alan Wake 2, Estevez also brings plenty new to the table.

With Alan and Saga "most of the gameplay differences in the base game came through the Mind Place and in the Writer's Room, and how that is interpreted on each character," says Rowley. In the former, Saga could connect clues and evidence on a mental corkboard, and in the latter, Alan could rewrite the world around him as long as it made sense within the genre he found himself.

Estevez doesn't have that. Her own mechanical twist is subtler and takes a page from Silent Hill's (Shakespearean) book: a map. At first, it's blank, but "you get her perspective on what's happening inside The Lake House through the notes that appear on the map" as she scribbles things down. "That's how we've tried to bring some of her character into that side of the experience," says Rowley.

Simply being along with Estevez for the ride is a big differential in itself, though. "She gives a quite different and unique perspective on the paranatural and the supernatural, just being part of the FBC," Rowley notes. "I think, you know, a normal person who sees a painted being coming out of a wall would kind of freak out a little bit more than maybe Estevez does. [...] She almost has a tiny bit of a jaded look like, 'Eugh, I have to file another report on these stupid paranormal things going on.'"

Yet again, it's an area where Alan Wake 2 is able to allow players a different perspective into the FBC than you could get within Control where you played as Jesse. "When you're in Control, you are interacting with a lot of other people inside the bureau, but it's in the context of the events that are taking place inside The Oldest House, whereas here we're kind of coming from a slightly different outside perspective," says Rowley. "What is the FBC like outside of that headquarters? How does the FBC operate as an agency throughout the United States? That's where some of these narrative objects that we scattered throughout the experience come into play," Rowley continues. "There's a lot more of that, you know, office politics."

The Lake House doesn't just bring a slice of Control into Alan Wake 2. Like Control did with its AWE expansion, Remedy is able to use these unique settings to shift the perspective a little to give a fresh look at the familiar. And by the time we get to visit the FBC again, having had The Lake House as a palette cleanser is sure to help us settle in for even more.

In the mood for something unsettling? Check out our best horror games list! Another option is to dive straight into our best Silent Hill games (I'm feeling a Silent Hill 4: The Room replay personally!).

Ito was art director on Team Silent and served as creature designer for Silent Hill, art director on Silent Hill 2 - a role in which he came up with the iconic Pyramid Head monster - and art director on Silent Hill 3. He also played an active part in the development of the recently released and highly acclaimed Silent Hill 2 Remake.

According to Ito, in all the time spent studying art and then creating some of the most nightmare-inducing monsters the gaming medium has ever produced, he never once had a girlfriend.

"As a side note, all the time I was attending my art university or was developing Silent Hill 1/2/3 & a cancelled title, I never had any girlfriends," Ito offered up on Twitter. "Coz I had no time for it."

Frankly, the fact that Ito made this substantial sacrifice for the sake of straight-up defining PS1 and PS2 horror is iconic and makes him even more of a legend than he already was. Ito is fairly private about his personal life, but he's very outspoken when it comes to his work. He recently affirmed his GOAT status when he took Silent Hill weirdos to task over their criticism of some of the character models in Silent Hill 2 Remake, saying, "I really wish they were not children but adults".

Ito originally didn't want the Silent Hill 2 Remake to happen, but decided to cooperate to "make sure the core was preserved".

The Lake House is just as petrifying as I feared – lanky paint monsters tend to have that effect – but I've found myself almost enjoying those moments of tension, chuckling after jump scares rather than sitting in stunned silence. Rather poignantly, Alan Wake 2's final DLC is proof that Remedy has opened my heart to horror – besides coming back willingly, in the last year I've played through both Resident Evil 2 Remake and Dead Space, games once considered off-limits due to cowardice. But even more surprisingly, The Lake House has left me pining for Control 2 in a way that Control itself never quite managed.

Reaching my threshold

Say what you will about the Federal Bureau of Control, but it's got character. The clicky-clacky '90s computers. Custom-made elevator dings. Little jingles that play before each of the Bureau's charming home-made PSAs and video logs. Yes, there is an alarming lack of precautions around its meddling in powers unknown, but I'll take style over safety any day of the week.

The Lake House, the Bureau's lab for researching Cauldron Lake's supernatural Threshold, is no exception. You're here as FBC agent Kiran Estevez, who – upon finding that Lake House has been overrun by monstrous art brought to life – manages to keep her seen-it-all-before attitude in the face of sentient walls of screaming paint. Her goal is to stop this wayward experiment, but my goal is to scour the place for lore. I adore Remedy's brick-by-brick approach to worldbuilding: information is fragmented across discarded documents, projected videos, and email chains, adding up to create the larger Remedy Connected Universe we know and love. Lake House scratches this itch – yes, there's a very amusing HR disaster involving nut allergies and pie, but we also get a deep dive into how the Bureau works outside of The Oldest House, and see the events of Alan Wake 2 from their perspective.

Through this, The Lake House feels like a bridge for Alan Wake fans to cross into Control territory ahead of the sci-fi shooter's in-development sequel. That includes me. Following Alan Wake 2, I was keen to learn more of Remedy's meta-bending universe, which meant playing Control several years too late. I predictably loved hoovering up the FBC's every case file, but didn't gel as much with its awkward soulslike checkpointing or slightly-floaty shooting mechanics. When it comes to combat, Lake House has its feet in both worlds: guns feel as weighty as they do in Alan Wake 2's base game, but the DLC also draws from Control's wave-based ambushes to create more challenging fights. It's a slick pairing that's left me excited to see how Control 2 evolves from here. I don't expect it to drop everything and go full survival horror, but I do hope that it takes cues from Lake House's more grounded texture.

From a narrative perspective, Lake House raises so many questions about the FBC that I hadn't even thought to ask. When an experiment like this goes wrong, who's watching the watchmen? How deep does the Bureau's unethical streak run? What other dangers exist beyond the Oldest House and Cauldron Lake? With Alan Wake 2 and its DLC setting up events that reach far beyond Wake's personal stake in matters, Control 2 seems best-placed to explore the Remedy Connected Universe at a much broader scale. If Alan Wake is Remedy's spin on Stephen King's small town America, Control is the studio's answer to the author's Dark Tower series: a meta-bending knot of strings that ties its entire universe together. We don't know everything about the Oldest House – and we likely never will – but Lake House shows that there's so much value in moving beyond the FBC's original stomping ground.

But on a shallower level, it's Lake House's supernatural bureaucracy that makes me want more Control. Unleash the bloodthirsty horrors in office cubicles. Give me more puzzles that require combining dates on the break room calendar with reference numbers for cursed paintings to crack computer login passwords. Dull gray elevators that lead to impossible floors? Don't mind if I do! Lake House is the best bits of Control combined with Remedy's learnings over the last five years, and because of it, I'll be counting down the days until I can enlist with the FBC once more.

Why not follow up The Lake House with one of the best horror games you can play right now?

How to work out the Alan Wake 2 Lakehouse computer password

The Alan Wake 2 Lakehouse computer passcode is 180738. Enter that when prompted and then you can access the security door controls.

The Lakehouse computer code can be worked out using the security memo on the desk to the left of the screen. The memo explains that the code must be changed daily and should use a permanent set of numbers to start with, followed by some that change daily, but not birthdays or the current date. So that tells us that we need to find a number that would be a good contender for something consistent and one that could change daily.

The calendar near the memo provides the changing number, specifically today's information about how the actress Hedy Lamarr was also an inventor who designed a torpedo guidance system aged 38. (We know we can't use the actual date so that big 14 on the calendar can't be used, as tempting as it might be.)

As for the consistent part that doesn't change, if you check the framed diplomas and certificates on the far wall, you'll see a Notice of Appointment that states the Lake House facility was completed on July 18, giving us 18/07.

Combining the Notice of Appointment's 18/07, with the calendar fact's 38, gives us a 180738 code for the Lake House computer. So enter that to unlock the security booth door, and grab the Security Clearance 01 Keycard for the lift.

Alan Wake 2 Lake House lvl -2 computer passcode

There's another password needed for the Alan Wake 2 Lake House lvl -2 computer code. You'll find this when you get the Security Clearance 02 Keycard, and find some notes about paintings. 

If you use the 02 Keycard to access the nearby door when you find it you'll find another computer with a note next to it saying an anniversary was a week from this Friday, while an email on the computer saying "Today's Password is the date of our SPECIAL UNFORGETTABLE ANNIVERSARY plus brown shape with horns." 

If you check the nearby calendar you'll see a week on from 'next Friday' is 09/22, going from the 09/14/23 dates on both the notes and email. While the 'brown shape with horns' is the last painting on page 2 of the notes next to the locked computer, with the number 25. Making the Alan Wake 2 Lake House lvl -2 computer code 092225.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission

"It's difficult," says game director Kyle Rowley when we ask how the team balanced making them effective with trying to avoid feeling cheap. "I feel like we kind of overdid it a little bit looking back." Whenever a new foe is on the prowl, you could be sure they'd pop up to say hello with a horror sting.

"Thematically, story-wise, they're meant to be like a psychological attack on the character who's receiving them," Rowley explains. "Especially in the base game, you know, where you're getting introduced to Overlap Guardians, whether that's Nightingale or Cynthia, they're meant to be this kind of mental assault."

Tech fear

But, as keen-eyed players would notice, the scares could be used as a sneaky little cover-up to adjust the environment around you, objects moving or your surroundings changing slightly in the mere seconds in which the screen is covered in a jump-scare. It's so quick that you end up doubting yourself a bit. Was that always there? It's a great opportunity for a horror game to unsettle.

"We do use them just for technical reasons as well, from a mission flow and level design and gameplay design perspective," notes Rowley. "We had these two reasons, and they kind of were serving slightly different purposes. But for a player, it came across basically as a jump scare no matter how we utilized it, whether it was through this story narrative reason or for gameplay reasons."

After all, no matter the intention of a jump scare, it can ultimately read as a simple trick for a standard playthrough. It's only really the game design nerds like me or you reading this that can chuckle and lean back with a nod, observing some smart and subtle shuffling of assets. To everyone else, they're just getting the rake.

Alan lake

For Alan Wake 2: The Lake House, with its tight and (presumably) single-area setting – an FBC facility in the outskirts of Bright Falls – retooling the jump scares was just one consideration for dialling up the chills. But make no mistake, jump scares are back, and even this early on with the DLC we've already been menaced by two sets of faces staring back at us through the screen – the cursed husband-and-wife overseers of the Lake House facility, and one of the absolutely terrifying goopy paint monsters. 

"For this one, we've tried to make sure that we utilize them – and maybe in a slightly more reduced manner – but they are still a key part of our way of getting across the mental state of characters and the way the supernatural works and the way the psychological elements of the game works," says Rowley. "We wanted to keep them as part of our repertoire of tools to kind of scare the player and get across some narrative beats."

Alan Wake 2: The Lake House is the game's final release before wrapping up work on the project (beyond smaller updates and patches). The Lake House itself was a concept from "very early on", which is why you could find it teased so heavily within the story itself. There's even the option to play it within its correct place in the storyline.

Triple threat

Within the DLC you play as FBC Agent Kiran Estevez, but the chance to inhabit this character wasn't the only plan to expand beyond the base game's Alan and Saga. The multiple heroes of the previous Night Springs DLC were also something the team wanted to explore from early on "as part of the core experience".

But, for project scope and pacing reasons, this was dialled back with a view to consider returning for the DLC. Between The Lake House and Night Springs' three characters, it made sense to focus on those ideas as expansions because, Rowley says, "they fit very well in that into the game, and then also as a set, as their own kind of separate pieces of content that can be consumed independent of what you experience in Alan Wake 2."

Saying goodbye to Alan Wake 2 will be a tough one. "It's been almost six years," says Rowley. Next January will mark the anniversary. "When I finished working on Alan Wake 2, the base game, I almost felt numb to it. I was like, 'Okay, that was a really hard project.' And then I was like, 'Okay, but now we have to start thinking about these expansions and stuff.' So I kind of couldn't stay in that phase for a bit too long."

Rowley will be taking a much-deserved holiday before moving onto the next project. "It's going to be bitter sweet in the sense that I've really enjoyed working with the team, and really enjoyed working with Sam [Lake], and I was very excited about the reaction and doing all [those] award shows and everything was amazing. Doing all the reveals like this kind of been a unique experience for me personally," says Rowley. "But, you know, it's good to kind of put a pin in it, and then start thinking about other things."

Looking for something else to chill you? Our best horror games list is here! What did we think of Alan Wake 2: The Lake House? Well, we're now even more sold on the idea of Control 2!

Fear The Spotlight was first released last year on PC, where it caught the interest of lo-fi survival horror fans, but was quickly delisted. Picked up by a mysterious publisher, developer Cozy Game Pals had the opportunity to further polish the project to turn it into the game they'd dreamt of releasing (and bring it to other platforms to boot).

That publisher turned out to be Blumhouse Games, with this being the first of several indie projects backed by the horror movie house's new branch. Fear The Spotlight's new release is certainly refined, and feels more complete thanks to a new storyline that almost doubles its length.

Take one look at Fear The Spotlight, and it's obvious it's a love letter to PS1 survival horror. The low-poly textures are one thing, but the dev has even recreated the way textures warped on original horror. No slavish recreation, this has actually been dialed up to give the world an unnaturally hazy edge beyond how it'd look on the iconic gray box (though you have the option to adjust this yourself if it makes you queasy).

Fantastic lighting effects also feel beyond the capabilities of PS1. Playing as Vivian – Amy having disappeared once things get spooky – you peer through the darkness for shiny clues using a candle or, later, a flashlight.

Very smart use of well-placed objects and corners ensure this darkness really does feel cloying, giving the sense that something might be lurking just out of sight. On occasion, you do actually catch glimpses of things watching, moving away just as you try to work out just what that thing was.

Knee-d to know

Playing on PC, the crouch-button toggle is just a right-click away, which instantly made me nervous about how much I'd have to use it. Beyond having to frequently duck through tight spaces, the crouch comes into play when the scariness of the darkness becomes inverted. When The Spotlight is on the loose, those shadows become your friend, as you're forced to scuttle behind or under desks to avoid the sweeping sickly orange gaze of the creature.

As he walks, he leaves a trail of fire behind him – referencing the fire that burned down the old, now-demolished version of the school in which you've found yourself. That trail of fire crackles and plays with shadows in its own way, and it adds just a smidge of complexity to playing hide-and-seek with the creaking, industrial monster as you avoid its snake-trail, though it's never really enough to frustrate.

Very little about Fear The Spotlight frustrates at all. Which may be a boon for scaredy cats like me in some ways, but a lack of friction can also detract from frights. Unless I missed them, there are no difficulty options at all. Each section of the school is snappy to polish off, never overstaying their welcome, and hallways are breezy to move through. There aren't even that many doors to unlock, many throughout simply requiring you to use one of several tools you obtain early in the game, like a screwdriver.

It also means there are only a handful of locations in which deploying The Spotlight really makes sense. His arrival, always marked by licking flames, consistently stops me in my tracks and causes me to panic, but he's relatively trivial to avoid and only becomes a threat in a handful of rooms. Perhaps the best moment in the game is the one that plays with The Spotlight as a pursuer the most, forcing you to stealthily avoid him within a relatively tight printer room as you juggle floppy discs in order to obtain a laminated sheet for an OHP elsewhere ('90s kids rejoice – this one is for us). 

It's the only time you're really forced to evade him for any length of time. Later on, a version of The Spotlight patrols a few hallways, but is simply an unexplained light source from the ceiling. It adds a bit of extra tension to a few corridors you have to backtrack down, but the mechanical nature of these sweeps is easy to predict, and the lack of embellishment makes it lose the impact of the more stompy and intimidating main lad.

Scare me twice

The second half of the game addresses some of these issues, elevating the experience as a whole. Set in a new area in which most rooms are much more contiguous without loads, there's a less clear delineation between when its own stalker monster will appear and where it can patrol, making me panic a lot more. Instead of a glowing light, this new stalker carries with it the sound of dripping water. But wouldn't you believe it, lots of other bits and bobs in this location are also exceptionally drippy, sometimes requiring you to add further water noises into the mix to progress. It's a rather mean bit of audio design that had me grinning and grimacing in equal measure as I tip-toed around.

The design of this second stalker is less striking than The Spotlight (and is, by design, a much closer reference to another horror property, though I won't spoil it), but it nevertheless provides an interesting counterpoint to what you've become used to. Though, like The Spotlight, it ultimately proves a minor threat. I wouldn't consider myself great at horror games, and I managed zero deaths, only being grabbed by each monster once.

While The Spotlight himself is less of a presence in this second half, one section calls back to the lesser hallway patrols. Mechanically simpler here, thanks to better visual and audio design it takes the concept from dull to freaky, its sinister creaking and whirring reminding me of some of Silent Hill's best moments as you snake your way around it from all directions. This second half also adds in a mobile phone item, which had me cackling after jumping in my seat as moments of quiet were punctuated with an upsettingly loud vibrating sound effect. Scares like this always feel deliciously deliberate and well-judged throughout.

Indeed, it's in this impeccable sense of atmosphere that Fear The Spotlight, ahem, shines. While what you do is so frictionless that the action won't stick with you, the vibe of Fear The Spotlight, pushing through these wobbly corridors in a mild panic, absolutely will. It's just a shame that the story accompanying this vibe is similarly frictionless.

While the dynamic between Vivian and Amy is cute, the first half's focus on uncovering the truth behind the old school's disaster is incredibly predictable, riffing on a few classic tales and ending up much as you'd expect. The second half has more of a focus on the history of our actual lead characters, and while it's better presented through more direct exploration and audio logs, it's also nothing particularly standout.

Considering you can roll credits in less than four hours, Fear The Spotlight is a great way to enjoy some chills across an evening or two. Its well-judged and expertly crafted visuals, sound design, and creatively deployed scares will stick with you. But, becoming quite predictable, and with a lack of friction in play, it's unlikely to be one that'll draw you back in for another go around.

Check out our best horror games list if you're looking for more to make you shiver. Alternatively, our best Silent Hill games list might be worth a look too!

"Our commitment to redefining the horror genre continues with this survival horror title, which represents a natural progression of our creative vision and our studio’s strategy," CEO Piotr Babieno says in a press release. 

The nasty time travel adventure is the first original survival horror game from Bloober, whose breakout titles Layers of Fear and  The Medium largely operate in the land of slow, sometimes lumbering, psychological creepiness. 

But a new cinematic trailer suggests that Cronos: The New Dawn will be more aggressively nauseating than that, with skinny H.R. Giger beasts and a desolate zero-gravity environment. 

"Cronos: The New Dawn is a twisted time travel story set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic future in 1980s Poland," the press release continues. "Players will take on the role of a Traveler, an agent of the enigmatic Collective with a mission to extract selected people who didn’t survive the apocalypse from the past."

"To complete the Collective’s mission, players will need to survive a deadly wasteland created by a cataclysmic event known as the Change, filled with monstrous abominations that will challenge players’ combat abilities," the press release says. 

As a huge fan of the first few Alien movies and, in theory, atrocious wastelands, I can't wait to let Bloober's Polish evils try to kill me when Cronos: The New Dawn releases on Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2025.

I don't say this lightly, but this Silent Hill-inspired Steam Next Fest survival horror is giving Bloober Team's remake a serious run for its money.

Alien Isolation absolutely rules, and even ten years later, remains my benchmark for high-budget survival horror: it's atmospheric, ruthless, organic, and stars a nauseatingly intelligent adaptation of one of cinema's greatest monster designs. But it does beg the question… where would a sequel go from there? One of the more valid criticisms of the original game was that it was just too damn long for its own good and didn't know when to quit, so just doing more of the exact same thing isn't what anybody needs. On top of that, going more action-heavy just feels unnecessary: there's already plenty of games like Fireteam and Colonial Marines inspired by the militaristic ethos of the second movie. I don't pick up the stealth-oriented survival cosmic horror game to start mowing down foes like it's nothing.

Let me instead suggest an alternative: picture a cinematic trailer showing a hapless human fleeing a Xenomorph, sprinting through a Weyland-Yutani facility. They burst out through the building's main doors into a shadowy, moonlight-dappled jungle, taking cover behind a tree, breathing hard, finally safe!

… Which is when a triangle of red laser dots appear on their chest. And in the rustling treeline above, a telltale shimmer moves in for the kill…

If it bleeds… we still can't kill it, actually

Yeah, I'll say it: bringing in the Predator for Alien Isolation 2 could be a gamechanger for all the right reasons. I know that the Alien vs Predator movies are not exactly good (well, not unless you're six beers deep) but that hardly matters. It's not like Alien Isolation's story is the timeless part of that game that people remember it for, it's an experience driven by moment-to-moment organic encounters. I couldn't name a single character in that game beyond protagonist Amanda, and the only two traits I remember her having are "not wanting to get eaten" and "white sneakers". You can't spoil the story of a game that barely had one in the first place.

I'm also certainly not suggesting a one-to-one translation of those AVP "classics", only a fresh, lean narrative about a long-suffering nobody trying to navigate around two monstrous horrors until they can finally find a way to escape. The Predator famously has its own unique hunting methods different to the Xeno: it has ranged attacks, doesn't bother to hide in cover when it can just cloak itself, and uses mimicry to lure and throw off targets. It means players' strategies would have to change depending on which of the two enemies you're going up against.

But when God closes a door, He also opens a sphincter-like air vent into abyssal blackness. Two enemies might mean twice the peril, but they're hardly allies. If a Xenomorph sees you, your best bet might be to sprint out into the open… at which point a laser blast knocks it flying, and the two monsters proceed to furiously tear into each other while you sneak away in the confusion.

My point is that Alien Isolation 2 (if it even ever happens) deserves more than to simply linger in the shadow of the original. Introducing a second, meaningfully different but equally lethal antagonist – especially an iconic one like ol' crabface – is the chance to not only forge a unique identity even in the current glut of survival horror games, but to prove that the whole "AVP" concept wasn't quite so doomed as we all thought.

Did you catch the Alien Isolation easter egg in Alien Romulus?

I first played Heartworm when its first demo launched as part of the retro-styled Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020, and I remember feeling really good about the atmosphere and overall direction, but also apprehensive about whether it could do justice to the late 90s/early 2000s classics it's so clearly inspired by. I no longer have those concerns after playing the brand new Heartworm demo as part of Steam Next Fest. Not even a little bit.

Actually, this latest version is one of the most moody, clever, and yes, genuinely scary indie horror games I've played in a hot minute. The story about a woman desperate to reunite with her lost loved ones had me instantly hooked, similarly to the way I felt both absorbed and incredibly vulnerable in the small, snowy town in which a house is said to contain a portal to the other side. Its inhabitants, formless humanoids made up of lost signal TV static, are as bad for my blood pressure as the mannequins of Silent Hill.

It's still early, and obviously I haven't had the chance to play the full game, which isn't out until 2025, but I've never been more excited about Heartworm than I am now. I just had a great effin' time with its new demo. I was smiling right from the start menu when I was presented with a list of options to either modernize aspects of the game or keep them faithfully retro. I'm a modern man, so I opted out of tank controls and the pixelated filter, and I toggled on the option that puts you into a first-person perspective when firing your weapon.

...Which is a camera. In a nod to Fatal Frame, your only defense (at least as far as the demo allows) is an old camera that uses rolls of film as ammo. There's a little reticle you use to target monsters and then you fire off a flash of light and record the bastards' deaths to film. It takes a few shots though, and with each blast of light the monster dissipates and respawns somewhere else, making combat erratic and tense in innovative way.

Gamepad controls are fully integrated too, which is a lovely quality of life feature for someone who prefers controllers over mouse and keyboard. The handy "survival guide" that walks you through the controls at the start of the demo includes both controller buttons and their mouse and keyboard counterparts so no one is left out.

The only thing Heartworm still has to prove, at least for me, is that it's the "reverent evolution of 90's survival horror" it claims to be on Steam. I'm absolutely sold on the "reverent" part. I mean c'mon, it's a survival horror game about a grief-stricken protagonist traveling to a mysterious town in search of their loved ones and finding it occupied by hostile creatures. Presentation-wise, there's more in common with fixed-camera Resident Evil, its menus, animations, and perspective bearing an uncanny resemblance to Capcom's flagship horror series, but tonally it's a love letter to Silent Hill.

What I haven't seen is a whole lot of evolution. In fact, when I'm not busy admiring everything I love about Heartworm, words like 'derivative' start to float around my head. I haven't seen nearly enough to make any definitive judgments, but I do hope the next demo, if there is one, teases a little bit more innovation beyond the unpredictable enemy design I mentioned before.

In the meantime, here are the best horror games to play today.

The 8 endings to Silent Hill 2 Remake all have very different requirements, whether it's the dark choices of the Maria ending or the surreal Dog ending, or even any of the new endings like Bliss and Stillness that build on the established lore and characters, we've got everything you need to know about how to get them below. Some will be gated behind New Game Plus and others will require hidden items, but whatever you need, we'll explain it all below.

All Endings in Silent Hill 2 Remake

There are 8 possible Silent Hill 2 endings in the Remake, all of which I've listed below, as well as if you can unlock them on New Game Plus or a first playthrough:

The last two of these endings - "Bliss" and "Stillness" - are new, and specially made for the Remake. However, all the others are recreations of possible endings in the 2001 version.

The first time around in Silent Hill 2 Remake, you'll be able to complete the game and get any of the first three endings – Leave, In Water, or Maria – while in subsequent playthroughs of New Game Plus, you'll have the option to unlock all eight of them, including the first three.

Below, I'll go through the requirements to unlock them all, without spoiling what the endings actually are.

How do the Silent Hill 2 endings work in the Remake?

The "Leave", "In Water" and "Maria" endings in Silent Hill 2 work on a behind-the-scenes points system. The Remake is constantly judging certain actions in-game, with the idea being that Silent Hill 2 is trying to work out how James is feeling about himself, his situation and others, based on the actions you make him take, both in and out of combat.

Some endings are based on him caring about the people he meets or not, so helping Mariah if she's attacked, for example. While how much he works to defend or heal himself, demonstrating a sense of self-preservation, can also have an impact.

It's a hard to read system, least of all becauses there's no visibility on what's tracked, but I'll lay out the basic steps that are being measured, and what they contribute to below.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Leave ending in the Remake

The Silent Hill 2 Leave ending is achieved by completing the game normally under the following conditions.

• Heal frequently so James spends as little time as possible injured.
• Do not examine Angela's Knife, or Mary's Photo, Letter or Handkerchief in your inventory.
• Do not visit Maria at the Hospital 2F bed, or the Labyrinth prison cell.
• In the Silent Hill 2 Remake coin cabinet puzzle, pick the "Snake" coin at the end when asked to choose who's responsible.
• In the corridor at the end of the game where you can hear Mary speaking, make sure you listen to the whole thing before moving to the next area.
• Don't go out of your way to protect Maria from threats or stay close to her when she's following you.

The goal here is to meet two criteria: have James show a high level of self-preservation, while showing as little uninterest as possible in either Maria or Mary.

Healing frequently is the easiest way to ensure this - don't spend a lot of time in low health, and you should be fine, even if you break some of the other rules.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 In Water ending in the Remake

The "In Water" ending in Silent Hill 2 is achieved by completing the game normally, under these conditions:

• Heal yourself rarely so James spends as much time as possible at low health.
• Examine Angela's Knife, Mary's Photo, Letter and Handkerchief in your inventory multiple times across the course of the game.
• Do not visit Maria at the Hospital 2F bed, or the Labyrinth prison cell.
• At the Coin Cabinet, pick the "Man" coin at the end when asked to choose who's responsible.
• In the corridor at the end of the game where you can hear Mary speaking, make sure you listen to the whole thing before moving to the next area.
• Don't go out of your way to protect Maria from threats or stay close to her when she's following you.

This time around, you need to complete the game while showing James as somebody with low self-preservation, while also focusing on Mary - but NOT Maria.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Maria ending in the Remake

The "Maria" ending in Silent Hill 2 is achieved by completing the game normally by doing the following:

• Heal frequently so James spends as little time as possible injured.
• Do not examine Angela's Knife, or Mary's Photo, Letter or Handkerchief in your inventory.
• You SHOULD visit Maria at the Hospital 2F bed, and the Labyrinth prison cell, multiple times each time. Make sure you visit her in the hospital after locating the Marked Bracelet, and in the Labyrinth even after something bad happens to her.
• At the Coin Cabinet, pick the "Woman" coin at the end when asked to choose who's responsible.
• In the corridor at the end of the game where you can hear Mary speaking, DO NOT listen to the whole thing before moving to the next area.
• Prevent Maria from taking damage wherever possible.
• Do not make Maria uncomfortable by physically bumping into her, breaking a lot of glass around her, or being separated from her for long periods of time.
• After meeting Maria in Rosewood Park, follow her obediently and DO NOT deviate from the pathways she suggests until you reach the hospital (this means not looking for the Silent Hill 2 Remake Garage Jack lever).

The goal here is to show high self-preservation for James while also making Maria a high priority, but not Mary.

This is probably the trickiest of the three "first playthrough" endings to achieve, as keeping Maria safe and happy is pretty fiddly, especially when something as minor as bumping into her can have a negative effect.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Remake Rebirth ending

The Silent Hill 2 Rebirth ending can only be achieved on New Game Plus, and involves having to find four special items as you play.

1. The Crimson Ceremony is found in the cemetery where you first meet Angela, on a grave by the lakeside.

2. The White Chrism is on a table outside of Baldwin Mansion after you first solve the Silent Hill 2 Remake motel safe code puzzle with Maria.

3. The Obsidian Goblet is inside the Historical Society you enter after the hospital, inside an alcove on the wall.

4. The Lost Memories book is in the "Lost and Found" on 1F of LakeView Hotel. Breaking a wall in the cafe will allow you to access this.

Once you have all four items, completing the main story will automatically trigger the "Rebirth" ending, regardless of the choices or actions you've made along the way.

This can only be cancelled by triggering the specific conditions for the endings that are listed after this one.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Remake Dog ending

The legendary Silent Hill 2 Dog ending in the Remake is specific to a New Game Plus playthrough, and is unlocked through this process:

1. Find the Broken Key Part 1 on top of a desk in the backroom of the Pet Center in the South Vale, which you can explore while fixing the Silent Hill 2 Remake jukebox.

2. The Broken Key Part 2. can be found after going through the locked gate in the Motel with Maria - turn right three times to find a doghouse in a dead-end path. The key part is there.

1. Combine both key parts to make the Dog Key, then use it to open the Observation Room on 3F of the Lakeview Hotel. This will trigger the Dog Ending.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 UFO ending in the Remake

The Silent Hill 2 UFO ending in the Remake is another specific to NG+ and achieved through the following method:

1. Get the Blue Gem from the window of a jewellery store North of Big Jay's when you're doing the Jukebox repair. Just crack the glass of the store to take the gem.
2. "Investigate" the Blue Gem in your inventory at these locations throughout the game (there'll be a symbol on an eye drawn somewhere nearby to mark you're in the right spot):
   1. The Rooftop of Saul Street Apartments (while fixing the Jukebox)
   2. The Pier to the Northwest of Rosewood Park after meeting Maria.
   3. The dock at the South of LakeView Gardens you moor at after rowing over the lake.
   4. Room 312 of LakeView Hotel, before you watch the Video tape.Empty list

Fulfil all these criteria and the last time you investigate the Blue Gem, in room 312, it should immediately trigger the UFO ending in Silent Hill 2.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Bliss ending in the Remake

The Silent Hill 2 Bliss ending is a new option created especially for the Remake, and also specific to NG+. Here's how you get it:

1. In the Northwest corner of the 1F Hospital Garden, while solving the puzzle of the Silent Hill 2 Remake Director's Office hand, you'll find a Small Chest if you crawl through a hole.

2. In Pete's Bowl-O-Rama, just South of the Historical Society after the Hospital, there's a safe you can open with the code 1887 to get the Rusted Key.
3. Combine the Key and Chest in your inventory to get the White Claudia.
4. Progress through the game until you reach room 312 of the Hotel.
5. Select the White Claudia from your inventory to drink it.
6. Watch the video tape, and this time you'll get an alternate ending.

How to get the Silent Hill 2 Stillness ending in the Remake

The Silent Hill 2 Stillness endings is another new one made specifically for the Remake, and requires NG+. Here's how you get it.

1. Get the Chainsaw at the very beginning of NG+ (our guide to the Silent Hill 2 Remake weapons will show you how).

2. After leaving the Ranch, smash the window of the green car on Wiltse Road to get the Key of Sorrow.

3. Later in the game, after watching the video in Room 312, go to the Manager's Officer on 1F and use the key (and the code 314) to open the safe and get the Toluca Postcard.
4. Inspect the postcard in your inventory at least once.
5. Complete the rest of the game to get the Stillness ending.

What is the best Silent Hill 2 ending in the Remake?

Warning: this section of the guide has spoilers for the plot of Silent Hill 2 Remake and its Endings.

The Silent Hill 2 Remake doesn't really have a best ending, as it's all a matter of opinion. It depends on what you think of James, his actions, and what he really deserves after what he did.

Some endings are undoubtedly darker than others. The "Maria" ending has James not only still ignoring the worst elements of what he did to Mary, it implies those awful events may repeat themselves.

Given that it sees Maria coughing on the way back to the car, and James telling her to get that sorted in an ominous tone of voice, it's hard to think of that one as the best option.

Meanwhile, endings like "Leave" see him absolved and free to move on with his life, while "In Water" ends in suicide James consumed by what he did and unable to go on.

"Rebirth" implies, but stops short of outright confirming James uses the old gods to bring Mary back, which would presumably have hideous consequences.

Beyond that, the new Silent Hill 2 Remake endings reach both ends of the spectrum: "Bliss" gives him the outright happy endings of living in the past, while "Stillness" is basically an enhanced version of "In Water".

There just is no clear good or bad ending to a game as complex as Silent Hill 2 - and there probably shouldn't be. What the 'best' ending is all depends on your interpretation and feelings about the terrible thing that James has done.

Whether you think he deserves to go free and live his life, to continue to punish himself, or to be abducted by aliens - what you think of as the best ending is up to you.

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That's why Capcom took a gamble when it decided to remake its most famous game ever. Thankfully, when Resident Evil 2 Remake landed in 2019, it pretty much wrote the book on how to remake one of the best survival horror games of all time. It's all about a fine balance of innovation, homage, and evolution – and with Silent Hill 2 Remake now launching to similar acclaim, it demonstrates how both Konami and Capcom went about the act in two different ways. You don't even need to play the games in full to see what I'm talking about. The evidence can be found in the first half hour of each.

Worlds apart

Resident Evil 2 is flat-out iconic. Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield's first foray onto our consoles was atmospheric and creepy enough back in 1998, building the air of suspense and horror that went on to edify its place among the survival horror greats. But in its 2019 remake, Capcom went the extra mile to pad the experience out further still by adding something very important: context. Both games begin, more or less, with a man in a truck. The original sees the trucker driving alone while grumbling to no one in particular, staunching a wound and complaining about the nasty bite he just received. But in the remake, we get to see how this man got bitten in the first place.

A conversation on a radio talk show about a man getting attacked himself is interspersed with the trucker chowing down a grey-tinged hamburger, foreshadowing the zombie-infested streets of Raccoon City before we even see them. When he accidentally runs over one of said zombies and gets out of the car to help her, his fate is sealed. Even tiny moments like these feel important to Resident Evil 2 Remake. Brave, even, considering that Capcom was reworking the most famous Resi game ever, showing no qualms about expanding on its work at the same time. Capcom wanted to take time setting the scene, giving us some more exposition before introducing Leon, and it absolutely pays off.

The effect is that Resident Evil 2 Remake doesn't come across like a beat-for-beat copy of the original game, but an honest move to evolve it. We see this commitment to subtle yet meaningful changes again in Leon's introduction. Both games see him pulling up to an abandoned gas station – in his civvies in the remake, rather than already kitted out in his RCPD uniform. Upon hearing a strange noise, though, the 2019 version has Leon venture inside to investigate. Not only does this open up more of the world surrounding Raccoon City for the player to examine, giving us a greater understanding of its inhabitants as well as a richer sense of place, but it teaches us more about our playable character. Leon is a courageous rookie cop, sure, but his frequent expletive cries also prove him absolutely terrified – though Capcom makes sure to signpost that he's still the same flashy bastard we know and love from the original, as he orders Claire to "get down" before shooting the lunging zombie behind her square between the eyes. All of this happens in the first ten minutes of Leon's path A variant, and already, it's doing everything a remake should: innovating with something new, evolving what's already there, and paying homage to the brilliance that came before.

Deja-view from the bridge

Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, feels a little more hesitant. Where Resident Evil 2 Remake allows for moments of complete newness, reframing and expanding upon its narrative to add as well as recreate, developer Bloober Team goes easy on the newness in the name of accuracy. Aside from some clever Easter eggs, Silent Hill 2 is such a faithful remake that it shies away from adding almost any new context clues or narrative threads to its mysterious world, preferring instead to flesh out existing details lifted from the 2001 original and translating them to Capcom's third-person action perspective as popularized by the RE2 Remake. 

Again, we see as much in Silent Hill 2's opening salvo. From the grimy public bathroom to the letter from Mary, Bloober's commitment to source text loyalty has been acknowledged and appreciated by ardent fans. Everything about the first half hour plays out almost identically to the original, with the exception of some new puzzles and areas of exploration. While these moments do help situate the game,  giving the town distinct a personality as we uncover more of its nooks and crannies, they feel more decorative than active. I don't feel I understand James any better than I did before. I don't feel the world of Silent Hill 2 has changed or evolved since 2001. Nothing is ostensibly new to me in Silent Hill 2 Remake, and if that level of content preservation was kind of the whole point, then Bloober smashed it out the park

I understand the hesitation on Bloober and Konami's side when it comes to rejigging anything from the original. The hair-trigger sensitivities of Silent Hill 2's passionate fanbase makes touching anything at all a bit of a risk. You only need to look at the discourse surrounding Mary's wardrobe change and Angela's character model to see how much this game means to its fans, and there's something refreshing about how both Konami and Bloober Team respect them so much. 

Silent Hill 2 is a remake in its purest form, down to a shot-for-shot story trailer. It's the ultimate homage to its source material, so much so that it purposely sidesteps the need to evolve or innovate. On the other hand, Resident Evil 2 Remake ambitiously pushes all three factors for a very different mix. Neither is the right or wrong way to concoct a survival horror remake, necessarily, but it never ceases to fascinate me how malleable the horror genre can be – especially when it comes to reworking the greats. 

There's plenty more where Silent Hill 2 came from on our list of upcoming horror games to watch for this year and beyond.

How to get equipment back after the hotel basement in Silent Hill 2 Remake

After leaving the hotel basement in Silent Hill 2 Remake, to get your items, weapons, maps and equipment back, you need to find the cabinet in the employee elevator section, where you left that gear before you went down and encountered challenges like the ceiling-walking monsters and Silent Hill 2 Remake gem box puzzle. If you want a straightforward sense of where to go, take the following route:

1. After getting the Mermaid Figurine for the Silent Hill 2 Remake music box puzzle, you'll leave the Venus Tears Bar and emerge into a hallway. 
2. Go up the stairs ahead of you and you'll be at the entrance to the hotel.
3. Turn around and you'll see the music box itself. Rather than interact with it, just go up the stairs to the next floor (2F).
4. At the top of the stairs, turn left, and then immediately turn left again (you should be staring at a window down a corridor now), as seen above.
5. Walk up to the window and turn right to see a door marked "Employee Elevator".
6. Walk through the door and there'll be a save point in front of you. More importantly, on your right is the Cabinet.
7. Interact with the cabinet to get your equipment, items and weapons back. 

With this done, you should now be fully equipped with all the Silent Hill 2 Remake maps and guns as you were before going down into the basement, along with any items you found while down there. At this point we suggest heading back down to the music box to install the new figurine, or working on solving the Silent Hill 2 Remake Suitcase puzzle if you haven't already.

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How to fix the broken mirror in Silent Hill 2 Remake

The broken mirror puzzle in Silent Hill 2 Remake is effectively as straightforward as it seems, at least at first: to solve it, put the pieces of the mirror back together like a jigsaw and reassemble the full thing. The only initial caveat is there's a piece of the mirror in the bedroom behind you that you also need to go and fetch, as you can't piece the whole mirror together without it.

We've got the solution to the puzzle and where the mirror pieces go laid out in the image above - the numbers on the pieces corresponding to where you place them.

Afterwards, you need to place an apple on the plate in front of the mirror. There are two options - the Ripe Apple in the 2F Hall, or the Rotten Apple found in the East dead end path of the Hotel Gardens.

Both of these apples will solve the puzzle in the same way, causing the Snow White figurine to spawn in Room 201 next door. If there is a difference to using the two different apples, we never figured out what it is, despite having tried both. It's possible it's a choice that influences what ending you'll get, but we cannot confirm that with any certainty.

After this, we recommend heading off to solve the Silent Hill 2 Remake Suitcase and Vanity Mirror puzzle - a much larger and more lethal section of the Hotel.

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I pin a photo on Saga's case board in Alan Wake 2. I've done this many times before, building up cases to progress through Remedy's creative survival horror, but this time it's very different. Instead of leading to more deductions, the evidence plants accusations that shine a light on Saga's innermost fears. I'm really not in the Mind Place anymore. I'm in the Dark Place, an amplified manifestation of every doubt and anxiety Saga has. When I hover over clues, capitalized words angrily radiate blame, with criticizing notes appearing on the board to link more evidence to. This room that used to be a refuge from the terrors of Bright Falls has transformed into the worst kind of nightmare, and I keep seeing reflections of myself within it. 

Because, as I well know all too well, sometimes your own mind can be the scariest thing of all. "I'm my own worst enemy," Saga says as her doubts drown out her deductions. "The fears in my head are stopping me from trying". I sit on that line for some time, thinking about how often I've let my own fears hold me back. There have been many times I've listened to that ugly voice inside my head that keeps me from opening myself up to new opportunities. Over the last few years especially, I've shut myself away from a lot of things, and I'm still trying to find my own way out. When you fall into the darkness, it can be hard to find your way back into the light, but every time Saga retaliates and pushes away the words that feed into her trepidation, I feel a second-hand sense of reassurance. 

As I dispel pockets of the encroaching darkness with my torch in her Mind Place to piece more clues together, the cathartic release hits me like a wave. If Saga can get out of the Dark Place, maybe I can start fighting to make it out of my own. 

"I'm in the Dark Place, I'm lost"  

Generally speaking, I don't play horror games. I have an odd relationship with the genre, preferring to, on rare occasions, watch someone else play out the terrors than experience them directly myself. Alan Wake 2 is something of an exception, and even then, it's taken me a year to pluck up the courage to see it through to the end. After braving my way through the frightful Coffee World theme park and the overwhelming unease of the Valhalla care home in Saga's shoes, I needed a break. I never in my wildest dreams expected that when I did eventually return and finally complete the game, that I'd actually find some comfort in it. Don't get me wrong, I was still afraid and on edge a lot of the time, but there's so much about the experience of Alan Wake 2 that I could relate to in unexpected ways. 

I love the way, for example, the sequel shifts from the thriller action of 2010's Alan Wake to a survival horror because it's a part of the narrative. As Saga, you're pulled into a horror story written by Alan Wake against your will, and forced to take on the role of a hero to try to change the outcome to save your daughter. On the flip side, Alan is trying to get out of the Dark Place and put a stop to the Dark presence by rewriting the story he penned. Of course, there are a lot of revelations along the way about the true nature of the story and the Dark Place, but buried beneath the horror and the darkness, a hopeful, encouraging message kept on shining through for me. 

This is just my interpretation, but the very fact that Saga and Wake - albeit in their own ways - fight to rewrite the story constantly instilled in me the idea that we can always try to change the course we're on. It's not easy, of course, and my fears, doubts, and anxieties may sometimes pull me down into the darkness and hold me there, but I can't let them rule the story of my life. Every time I use the light to cut through the darkness, fighting against terrifying shadows, I'm not only conquering my fears by taking on a horror game, but I'm also thinking about how to overcome my own in reality. I am my worst enemy a lot of the time, and just as Saga does, I too want to push back against that angry, mean voice inside, and find my way back to the light. 

"I'm my own worst enemy"  

Wake is also arguably his own worst enemy in the Dark Place, as he constantly battles with himself through an evil doppelganger known as Scratch. I think the very name Scratch plays on Wake's own doubts as a writer, which I also connected to as someone who writes for a living. With lines scratched off the pages of Wake's manuscript, and the physical character constantly trying to stop him, the onomatopoeic name perfectly captures that sense of frustration you can feel when you just can't quite get the right words down on the page to finish a draft. Even then, Wake keeps trying, and I'm actively pushing him as well as myself  through the scares of the horror story as the player, which again brings a feeling of catharsis. 

While there's a lot more to it, at the heart of Alan Wake 2 are two people who both have to fight against their own separate fears and doubts. It's a horror story of the mind, and it's one I never thought I would resonate with on such a deep level. Trying to piece together Saga's final case board is one of those moments in games that will always stay with me. Her own mind turns against her, transforming her Mind Place - which before then always reflected her detective skills and cunning deductions - into a Dark Place, where her deepest fears take root and manifest. But she doesn't let it overcome her, and helping her escape that room and see her exit through the door felt so meaningful. I hope someday I can open that door myself, and push my own fears aside. 

A fan of scares? Here's our pick of the best horror games you can play right now. 

Like the Silent Hill 2 Remake rotating cube puzzle, the music box is your main focus throughout your time in the hotel, with numerous puzzles you'll complete towards the larger goal of solving the box itself.

Your overall goal is to find three princess figurines, of Snow White, Cinderella and the Little Mermaid respectively. Once you find them all, you can install them in the music box, and solve it by winding the different mechanisms just the right amount, using the clues of the poem below. It's a Silent Hill 2 Remake classic.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... Here's how you solve the music box puzzle in Silent Hill 2 Remake, and find all the princess figurines in the hotel.

How to solve the Music Box puzzle in Silent Hill 2 Remake

The music box in Silent Hill 2 Remake is solved through the following process:

1. Open the music box with the Ornamental Key, found in the Check area.
2. Locate the three Princess Figurines around the hotel: Snow White, Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. This will take a lot of time.
3. Install the figurines into the Music Box.
4. Rotate the sections of the pathway so that each of the princess figurines has a track directly to one of the built-in doors.
5. Wind up the three keys that appear below to differing amounts, to control the speed that the princess figurines move along the track.
6. When the mechanisms are wound so that the three princesses each enter the doors at the same time, you'll have completed the puzzle.

I'll cover each of these stages in more detail below, but again - keep in mind that this will be a long process.

The different princesses are spread around the hotel and you'll have to do a lot to find them, but keep in mind that you're in the final stretch of the Silent Hill 2 Remake now – this is the last major area of the game…

How to find the Ornamental Key and open the music box

The ornamental key that opens the music box is found in the "Check" reception area just Southeast of the music box itself.

You'll find it under the counter, bundled with the key to room 312. Bring it over to the music box and you'll be able to open it properly.

All Princess Figurine locations

There are three princess figurines you need to find across the hotel, but each of them is locked behind a series of puzzles and obstacles.

Here's where to find them all, and what you need to do to reach them – we also recommend doing them in the order we've written them out in.

• Snow White Figurine (2F, Room 201)
  • The Snow White figurine will appear in room 201 when you complete the mirror puzzle in Room 202 in the next room. That means assembling the pieces of the mirror to reform it (including the loose piece in the bedroom).
  • Place the Ripe Apple you get in the 2F hall in front of it (you can also use the rotten apple in the garden). This will cause the Snow White figure to materialise on the other side of the wall in 201.
• Cinderella Figurine (3F, Conference Room)
  • The Cinderella Figurine is inside the fireplace of the conference room on the third floor, but it's locked when you reach it. You'll open up the fireplace in the process of solving the Silent Hill 2 Remake Suitcase and Vanity Mirror puzzle, but you need to search the Gazebo in the Eastern Section of the hotel Garden for the fireplace key.
  • This can be accessed through room 107, the key to which is in the conference room itself (it also goes without saying you'll have to solve the Silent Hill 2 Remake book puzzle that cuts off the suitcase itself, if you haven't already).
• Little Mermaid Figurine (Basement, Venus Tears Bar)
  • The basement of the hotel is accessed via the employee elevator on 2F (which you get the key for by opening the suitcase), but you'll have to leave your weapons and gear in the cabinet next to it. Down below, you'll have to stealth around foes and solve the Silent Hill 2 Remake gem box puzzle to progress, then use a valve to reach the Venus Tears Bar.
  • Once inside, the Little Mermaid is lying just in front of the jukebox. Make sure you get your gear back from the cabinet when you return to surface level! We put together a guide on where to get your items back in Silent Hill 2 Remake if you find yourself getting turned around.

Music Box puzzle solution

After you bring back all the figurines and install them, you'll have the option to rotate the circular sections to control the paths the figurines move along.

We've got the correct layout on the image above; the goal is to make sure that each of the princesses can reach one of the doors, all at the same time.

After that, you need to turn the three keys below to wind up the motion for each of the princesses. They innately move at different speeds, which changes how much you need to wind up the keys for each of them.

Remember, they all need to go through the doors at the same moment that they open to receive them. The solution is:

• Left Key: 7 Turns
• Middle Key: 5 Turns
• Right Key: 1 Turn

This isn't something you guess randomly - each poem mentions several numbers, but only a certain number is mentioned positively.

"Seven kindly souls opened up the door" for Snow White, "The love of five would bring her back home" for the Mermaid, and "Leaving one behind, she has found a way" for Cinderella.

Turn the keys accordingly, and the three princesses will traverse the music box and enter the doors at the right moment.

Complete this, and the Music Box will give you the 3F Corridor Key, which will finally allow you to access the other half of the Hotel's highest floor.

I'm sure there's only good things in there...

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How to solve the Gem Box puzzle in Silent Hill 2 Remake

To solve the puzzle of the gem box in Silent Hill 2 you need to find three gems in the Hotel Basement and plug them into the gem box. After that, changing what socket of the box they're plugged into will move sections of the symbol in the middle - the goal is to recreate the symbol on the whiteboard behind the gem box. 

To do so, place the gems in the following sockets, as written below and shown on the image above:

• Green Gemstone: Upper left corner
• Red Gemstone: Upper right corner
• Blue Gemstone: Lower left corner

Solve this and you'll be given the code to the safe back near the door in the Break Room. Keep in mind that this is as the puzzle appears on Standard / Normal puzzle difficulty - it might change along with other difficulties.

All gem locations in Silent Hill 2 Remake

The three gemstones in the Silent Hill 2 Remake are distributed around the hotel basement - the Red Gem is much easier to get, but the other two will require you to go through the more dangerous area on the South side of the basement.

• Red Gemstone: In a box in the Manager's Room East of the Gem Box puzzle itself.
• Blue Gemstone: Inside a refrigerator in the Freezer Room. You'll need to go through the pantry and down to get inside.
• Green Gemstone: On top of a counter on the South side of the kitchen. You'll need to go through the cafeteria and East to reach this room.

After this, you'll be able to progress through the region (stealing some valves and avoiding more monsters, before getting the Little Mermaid Figurine, an essential component to completing the Silent Hill 2 Remake music box in the hotel lobby. You'll also have to work out how to get your items back in Silent Hill 2 Remake after leaving them behind in the cabinet - we can help with that too!

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Below we'll lay out all the steps - if need be you can always skip the Vanity Mirror and lightbulb puzzle and just use the suitcase combination code if you want to unlock it immediately, but you'll be missing out on some of Silent Hill 2 Remake if you do. But whether you want to know how to unlock the suitcase or how to solve the vanity mirror puzzle, here's what you need to know.

What is the Suitcase code in Silent Hill 2 Remake?

The Silent Hill 2 suitcase code is "DEED DONE" in Room 208, at least on standard puzzle difficulty. This combination is something you discover by completing the Vanity Mirror puzzle nearby, as we'll lay out below. 

You can enter it straight away, but you'll miss out on a lot of game in doing so, and still have to do some of the involved steps anyway.

How to solve the Mirror puzzle and replace the lightbulb in Silent Hill 2 Remake

If you want to go through the full process of solving the Vanity Mirror puzzle in the Lakeview Hotel, you need to replace the broken bulb with one that will create red light, as indicated by the photograph nearby. 

To do that, you need to do the following:

1. Go up to floor 3F of the Hotel.
2. Take the outside steps going down from between Rooms 318 and 319.
3. Go into Room 217 and onto the balcony.
4. Ahead you can see a glass roof with a red book. Shoot the glass so the book drops down.

5. Head down to 1F and into the Lake Shore Restaurant.
6. Open the book - which is now down there - and get the Can Opener.
7. Get the Key to Room 107 from the 3F Conference Room, on the Fireplace.
8. Open Hotel Room 107 on 1F with the key.
9. Head through the room into the gardens beyond.
10. Obtain the Fireplace Key from the East section of the Hotel gardens, in the Southeast Gazebo.
11. Use the key to open the fireplace in the 3F Conference Room.
12. Pick up the Cinderella Figurine and defeat the miniboss that attacks you.
13. Squeeze through the southern wall.
14. Go into Room 318 via the balconies.
15. Here you'll find a can of blood red paint.
16. Combine the Can Opener and the Paint to open the can.
17. Get the boltcutters from the 3F Utility Room
18. Use the boltcutters to open the chained up gate outside the entrance to the Hotel, back in the main gardens.
19. Take the lightbulb from the mouth of the fish statue within.
20. Combine the lightbulb and opened red paint can in your inventory.
21. Head back to the Vanity Mirror and install the Red Lightbulb to reveal the code for the Suitcase.

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With the current trends leaning toward remake upon remake of the best survival horror games of yore, though, it's a relief that Creative Assembly is doing something different. Instead of rebuilding the 2014 original, fans are to be treated to a full-blown Alien: Isolation sequel – and hot on the heels of this summer's box office hit Alien: Romulus, the announcement couldn't have been timed better. There's not much else to go on just yet, but the raucously positive response from the horror community indicates to me that the genre might not be as stuck in the past as I'd feared. 

Ellen Ripley's believe it or not

You and I might consider Alien: Isolation to be a legendary survival horror game, but it didn't start off that way. That's because while critical reception seemed strong enough, with GamesRadar+ giving it a solid score in our Alien: Isolation review, it seemed a vast majority of mainstream gamers just weren't hungering for horror the way they are now. Let's Play content on YouTube allowed many to experience the terror without having to take part themselves, and what's more, it was the year of Far Cry 4, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Dark Souls 2 to name a handful of 2014's superstars. With no shortage of games on the table for players to devour, Alien: Isolation would slink into the shadows, finding success in a passionate niche of the community instead of the bottom line.

Today, the landscape looks a little different. True, horror is still not the biggest genre in the industry, but its fans have grown louder as the community swells with each passing year. One large, Tyrant-shaped reason for the sudden increased appetite? You can thank the litany of remakes over the past five years. Leon and Claire returned to our screens in Capcom's Resident Evil 2 Remake in 2019, and suddenly, it seemed that atmospheric, nostalgic, run-and-gun horror games were cool again. You only need to look at Silent Hill 2's immense critical and public success this month, despite years of wariness from its dedicated fanbase, or Motive's thrilling Dead Space remake back in early 2023, to see the trend for yourself. The horror remake renaissance has been upon us for years now. That much is clearer than the starry skies above Raccoon City.

But Creative Assembly isn't following that herd in particular. Rather, it's doing an Alan Wake 2 and promising to deliver a brand new terrifying adventure, building on its legacy rather than reconstructing it piece by piece. In a world where new horror IPs are hard to come by in the world of video games, I'll take it. 

There's something special about a long overdue sequel that broadens appeal tenfold. Drawing in fans of the original is one way, sure, but more importantly, these sequels offer an entry point for new players to get on board too. With enough time having passed since the previous game, there's enough room for developers to rehash, revise, or reinvent a series in a sequel to ensure the new entry feels relevant to modern audiences. I might be alluding to Alan Wake 2 here – specifically, its musical means of recapping events for new players and those with fuzzy memories alike – but this isn't something we only see in horror. Take Dragon Age: The Veilguard, for example, and how Bioware's confirmation that only a few player choices will be carried across from Inquisition effectively positions the game as a great place to start for newbies. If Alien: Isolation 2 plays its cards just right, opening up the field to temper the familiar with the novel, it could end up being a horror game for the many instead of the few.

That said, working with a blockbuster Hollywood IP like Alien indicates a level of assumed knowledge on the player's part. Having even a basic grasp of the context, lore, and events of the Alien movies might be helpful, but it shouldn't be a barrier. The inclusivity of the horror community has always been its biggest strength, and when the time comes that we learn more about Alien: Isolation 2, I'm hoping to see more of that welcoming spirit as we take on the xenomorphs again – or perhaps something else? – more than a decade later.

There are plenty of upcoming horror games to jot down as well as Alien: Isolation 2, from Directive 8020 to Dying Light: The Beast.

So if you're trying to work out where to put all the books in the Silent Hill 2 bookshelf puzzle, then here's the correct placement to continue.

Where to place the books in Silent Hill 2 Remake

The Silent Hill 2 book puzzle is in the reading room of LakeView Hotel 2f. Inside you'll find these four books, that you can place in specific slots in a bookshelf opposite a large painting:

• Stalwart to the End - the coffee table immediately on the right as you enter
• Revelations: A New Understanding - on a table by the bookshelf
• Pride Before the Fall - on the bookshelf
• The One Who Soared - the desk to the right of the save point

Once you place the books on the shelf you'll see they all have symbols - a lion, bull, eagle and angel - that arrange around a button showing two spears. These all correspond to the characters in the large painting on the wall opposite:

The correct arrangement of books is to translate the painting placement of inner and outer characters across to the books, using the spear button on the bookshelf to represent the man in the center of the painting.

So that means the Eagle and Angel go in the outer slots, matching their outer placement on the painting, while the Lion and the Bull go on the inside slots. Because the outer slots are on top of the bookshelf but on the bottom of the painting it means the arrangement feel like it's upside down.

The solution to the Silent Hill 2 book puzzle is this arrangement:

It's best not to ask why it's this out of all the possible options in the Silent Hill 2 Remake, but technically the image translates directly across to the bookshelf, only flipped upside-down. For reasons.

Anyway, once you've got that arrangement the bookshelf will swing open to reveal another room where you'll find a Silent Hill 2 Remake lightbulb puzzle that will ultimately give you the Silent Hill 2 Remake suitcase combination.

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Here's our Silent Hill 2 Remake review if you want to read more about what we thought of the whole experience.