New screams for Halloween
A timely countdown of the biggest horrors in PS4’s future
THE HILLS DO HAVE EYES IN RESIDENT EVIL’S REBOOT…
02All together now: this is Halloween, this is Halloween… Yes, it’s the time of the year when we’ve got only one thing on the brain: horror. So what tricks and treats does the future of PS4 have in store for us?
Way back in 2013, The Farm 51 announced first-person psychological thriller Get Even. A Saw-like premise sees you waking up in an abandoned asylum after a bungled attempt to foil an abduction, with a VR-like mask strapped to your face and a series of torture tests awaiting you. Why is it always us? But the mystery of what you’ve done to deserve this is exactly what you must solve in this frightfest, along with discovering who that abductee is, and who’s responsible for your holiday to Death Trap Central.
We might even take that over a ticket to Outlast 2’ s Arizona. Delayed until early next year, the sequel to 2014’s horror hit swaps psych wards for a remote desert town. As in the original game, you’re armed with nothing but a night-vision camcorder to help journalist Blake Langermann comb the cornfields. You need only scavenge for batteries and periodically glance behind you. The atmosphere is thick with dread, and the locals’ corpse-centric decor – not to mention the blood-hungry bloke hunting you – is hardly conducive to sleuthing. Gulp.
We’d like to go home now, please. However, inspired by Silent Hills’ infamous P.T. demo (much like cancelled, then revived, haunted house horror Allison Road), SadSquare Studios’ Kickstarted, hyper-realistic mansion of misery in Visage isn’t exactly the safe, warm space we had in mind. Jump-scares are few in this first-person sneaker: instead, a creeping sense of unease prevails as you wander around scouting for an escape. Combined with the psychological tricks your character’s mind plays on itself, the Phantasmagoria-inspired property is already giving us shivers.
HOME FREAK HOME
Skittering along in the wake of this madness is something (or someone) a little bit different: the yellow-raincoated, six-year-old protagonist of unsettling platformer Little
Nightmares (pictured). Tarsier Studios’ game drops you into “the worst place you can imagine.” (We bet there’s no Wi-Fi.) The Maw is a surreal, childlike dreamworld filled with physics puzzles – all oversized furniture, creepy nursery rhymeesque music and a giant, gelatinous chef who makes Jabba The Hutt seem positively svelte. He and his chums will be snatching you up and scaring you witless as you hop, sneak and hide your way to freedom.
But, of course, the undisputed winner of OPM’s ‘Run For The Hills’ award is the first-person, PS VR-compatible Resident Evil VII: Biohazard – although the hills do have eyes in this horror-focused, hillbilly-flavoured reboot. Maybe we should rethink our escape plan… Feeling brave? Turn to p54 to read our hands-on impressions of rebooted Resi.