Ever since Resident Evil exploded onto the scene in 1996 and made stock reshuffling within the face of a zombie outbreak in style, gamers have been commonly preventing all the way down to their final bullet. 30 years later, survival horror is the dominant format for these searching for online game scares, as in style now because it’s ever been. And with a contemporary batch of nightmares to think about, there’s by no means been a greater time to rank one of the best video games of the style.
However what qualifies a sport to be thought-about as “survival horror”? Many video games are sometimes labelled survival horror, however lean a lot too closely into motion to be really thought-about a real instance of the style. For our cash, survival horror could be boiled all the way down to 4 key elements, all of that are very important parts of the classics that make up our checklist.
- There needs to be an influence dynamic weighted within the enemy’s favour.
- It’s essential to discover maze-like environments whereas fixing puzzles.
- There’s usually jeopardous useful resource administration.
- Relentless stress inflicted by both a pursuer or an oppressive area.
So with the foundations established and out of the way in which, listed below are our picks for the ten greatest survival horror video games of all time.
10. Clock Tower
Whereas 1989’s Candy Residence is usually thought-about the progenitor of survival horror, it’s Clock Tower, the 1995, 16-bit survival horror traditional that was solely ever launched in Japan, that maybe left an even bigger mark on the style. Its fingerprints could be simply discovered all through the whole lot of this checklist.
You play as Jennifer, a teenage orphan stranded in a Resident Evil-like manor, point-and-clicking your approach by way of a sequence of impressively detailed, oppressive rooms. However Clock Tower’s defining mechanic, and why it rightfully deserves its place on this checklist, is its pioneering stalker gameplay. 4 years earlier than Resident Evil’s Nemesis spent a whole sport shouting “STARS”, Clock Tower had us avoiding the dreaded “Scissorman”, who, very similar to Mr X, Pyramid Head, and Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph, is a near-unstoppable drive that’s all the time lurking close by. Quick ahead to immediately, and the stalker enemy sort has change into a staple of the survival horror style. We’ve got Scissorman to thank for all these enduring nightmares.
9. Silent Hill
Whereas Capcom was storming the charts within the late ‘90s with Resident Evil’s campy, zombie-focused tackle survival horror, Konami’s first stab on the style noticed the studio strive one thing very totally different. What it created was dread. Pure, unrelenting dread.
Silent Hill stars Harry Mason, an everyman who enters a fog-filled nightmare whereas looking for his lacking adopted daughter within the city of Silent Hill. What follows is an oppressive story riddled with unseemly horrors, the likes we’d by no means witnessed in a online game earlier than.
In contrast to its friends, Silent Hill offered a real 3D atmosphere to discover, moderately than the static, pre-rendered backdrops of Resident Evil. Because of the {hardware} restraints of the time, which struggled to render lengthy draw distances, the fictional city was caked in a relentless thick layer of fog that disguised the tech’s limitations. Serendipitously, this not solely grew to become the sequence’ signature look, but in addition demonstrated maybe the best marriage of tech and tone we’ve ever witnessed in a online game.
Silent Hill pioneered its personal psychological nook of the survival horror style, spawning many sequels and remakes that will go on to be thought-about a number of the most haunting video video games ever made.
8. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
It looks as if a distant reminiscence now, however there was a painful interval the place the Resident Evil sequence misplaced contact with its survival horror roots. Whereas Resident Evil 4 is rightly celebrated, it considerably ramped up the motion, which laid the groundwork for each Resident Evil 5 and 6 to virtually abandon the style altogether.
2017 lastly noticed Capcom return to that traditional survival horror feeling with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, nevertheless it did so from a wholly new first-person perspective and thru the usage of a grimier, Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath-like solid of characters. Our new protagonist, Ethan Winters, is compelled to tackle the Louisiana swamp-dwelling Baker household, who drive him to endure a gauntlet of grisly challenges. Gone have been roundhouse kicks, quicktime occasions, and off-the-charts bombast, and again was delicate useful resource administration, a reestablished energy steadiness within the antagonist’s favour, and the lengthy overdue return of a stalker enemy.
It’s unimaginable not to think about Resident Evil when speaking about survival horror, nevertheless it’s solely because of Resident Evil 7’s style renaissance that they’re nonetheless thought-about synonymous with one another, moderately than survival horror being only a footnote within the historical past of the sequence.
7. Outlast
Typically one of the best survival horror tropes are reflections of the flicks that impressed them, and there’s no higher illustration of this than 2013’s Outlast, a first-person descent right into a distant psychiatric hospital that took the discovered footage film style and expertly turned it right into a five-hour interactive nightmare.
Outlast is relentless, and in conventional survival horror style, offers you little or no to defend your self with. It does, nonetheless, successfully flip imaginative and prescient right into a useful resource; with nearly all of the gloomy hospital solely seen by way of the inexperienced, grainy lens of your digital camera’s evening imaginative and prescient, it is important you construct a stockpile of batteries to maintain it powered up. AAs are as vital in Outlast as bullets are in Resident Evil, and with out them, you’re utterly blind to horrors that lurk at the hours of darkness.
When you possibly can see what’s chasing you, Outlast is as scary as any sport on this checklist. When the lights exit, it stands practically in a league of its personal.
6. Alan Wake 2
Very like Outlast, Alan Wake 2 additionally commodifies mild, though in contrast to its extra action-led predecessor, it strikes an ideal steadiness of tense survival horror gameplay and a cinematic, surreal nightmare.
Developer Treatment’s unsettling story follows the intertwined journeys of titular author Alan Wake and FBI agent Saga Anderson. As Alan, you’ll blast ghostly figures and remedy Resident Evil-esque puzzles in a nightmare model of New York Metropolis. However the additional you enterprise, the stranger issues get; you’ll write new pathways by way of actuality, witness a weird Finnish horror film, endure an anxiety-inducing chat present, and participate in one of the best rock opera you’ve ever gunned your approach by way of.
Saga’s chapters, in the meantime, see the story remodel into a mix of Hannibal and Zodiac, with Silent Hill-like exploration and fight sitting neatly subsequent to police procedural work. As you examine a chilling chain of formality murders, you’ll want to rearrange clues in your proof board and drill deeper into the minds of your many suspects.
Alan Wake 2 finds a novel method to mix acquainted survival horror gameplay with Lynchian cinematic aptitude, leading to a deeply bold, incessantly disturbing expertise that each feels true to the style and one thing utterly contemporary.
5. Amnesia: The Darkish Descent
Because of its gameplay improvements that helped course-correct and spur a rebirth of a style that had drifted too far into action-game territory, virtually all fashionable survival horror video games are indebted to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at the least to some extent.
In Frictional Video games’ landmark 2010 first-person horror, you play as Daniel, who wakes up alone at the hours of darkness fortress of Brennenburg with no reminiscence of how he acquired there. As you discover, you be taught of a shadow that’s stalking you, and encounter different creatures that can give chase in the event that they spot you. Armed with nothing however a lantern, your solely type of defence is to run and conceal, usually at the hours of darkness. This cat-and-mouse expertise is a typical survival horror trait immediately, however again in 2010, it was a stark distinction towards extra action-oriented horror video games like Resident Evil 5, which was launched only one 12 months earlier.
Amnesia: The Darkish Descent isn’t only a sport of cover and search, although: it has an additional wrinkle, one which forces you to all the time be on the transfer. Keep at the hours of darkness too lengthy and also you’ll progressively lose your thoughts. This forces you into sustaining a fragile balancing act, avoiding the darkness that’s driving you insane however incessantly utilizing it to cover out of your pursuer.
Amnesia’s a number of sequels all construct upon The Darkish Descent’s mechanics in good methods, however maybe extra vital to its legacy is how different builders took discover, with Resident Evil 7’s determination to change to a first-person perspective owing lots to Amnesia’s success.
The Darkish Descent nonetheless holds up immediately, and its affect runs deep, paving the way in which for the first-person playstyle to obtain equal consideration subsequent to the style’s conventional third-person digital camera.
4. Resident Evil
It’s laborious to think about what horror in video video games would appear like with out the arrival of Resident Evil. The primary within the long-running (and very profitable) sequence arrived in 1996, inviting gamers to discover the zombie-infested, puzzle-riddled Spencer Mansion, and it’s honest to say the survival horror style hasn’t appeared again since.
Though primitive by immediately’s requirements, Resident Evil set the mildew for the whole lot that adopted. The isolation, the restricted assets, the relentless sense of dread, and the soar scares. Resident Evil pioneered the way in which for the style, and with out it, fashionable survival horror merely wouldn’t exist. Sure, Candy Residence outlined the blueprint, however Resident Evil masterfully executed the concepts and propelled survival horror to the plenty.
In fact, the method has since been commonly improved upon, and lots of of these video games are featured on this checklist, however each entry in Capcom’s enduring sequence owes a debt to the primary. Resident Evil is arguably weaker than most of its sequels, its own remake included, however none of them would have existed with out the progenitor, and its significance to the style (and this checklist) is unquestionable.
3. Alien: Isolation
1979’s Alien is a masterclass in concern, constructing uneasy pressure and suspense with the specter of its single, lethal Xenomorph. On paper, the movie’s idea is just not simply translated into online game kind, and there definitely have been many failed makes an attempt till creative Meeting’s Alien: Isolation arrived in 2014.
Alien: Isolation abandons pulse rifles, gung-ho Colonial Marines, and gallons of acid blood in favour of survival horror trappings, asking you to outwit an indestructible stalker that hunts you across the sprawling Sevastopol area station.
Powered by refined synthetic intelligence, the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation lives as much as its silver display screen relative, precisely making a terrifying gameplay expertise primarily based on the whole lot we noticed in Ridley Scott’s traditional. The beast fairly actually has a thoughts of its personal, able to studying your techniques and discovering new methods to hunt you. In a listing filled with video games with stalker enemies, it’s nonetheless laborious to look previous the proper organism as the greatest hunter of them all.
With solely stealth, guts, and some choose instruments that will help you survive, Alien: Isolation is a terrifying horror simulator that not solely immediately grew to become the best Alien video game of all time, but in addition one of many absolute best examples of the survival horror style.
2. Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is an more and more disturbing, psychological journey into the repressed ideas of its unassuming protagonist and the tortured souls he meets alongside the way in which. Emotional tragedy, guilt, anger, abuse, and the horrible methods the ensuing trauma manifests are dealt with with grace and maturity hardly ever seen within the style.
Silent Hill 2 is the whole lot a great survival horror sport needs to be, completely balancing a relentless sense of hopelessness with simply sufficient to maintain you within the struggle. James is a tortured soul, however one pushed by the need to proceed his path, regardless of how unlikely success appears, and though this isn’t the primary Silent Hill on this checklist, it’s unquestionably one of the best.
The unique Silent Hill 2, developed by Konami’s Workforce Silent again on the daybreak of the millennium, is probably the bleakest, most sombre sport ever made. 23 years later, Bloober Workforce efficiently recreated its depressing magic, crafting a remake that may be a deeply efficient descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror. With this 2024 remake, Workforce Silent’s nightmarish imaginative and prescient is preserved. It’s a contemporary reminder not simply of an period when Konami was a grasp of survival horror, but in addition of the numerous energy of Silent Hill 2’s timeless distress.
1. Resident Evil 2
While you consider survival horror, you consider Resident Evil, and though there are numerous contenders for greatest entry within the sequence, our vote, emphatically, goes to the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2.
The original Resident Evil 2 took the whole lot profitable in regards to the survival horror method established by the primary sport and refined it. The areas have been creepier, the enemies extra menacing – this was the introduction of the notorious Licker and Mr. X, the stalker enemy that set the bar for the style – and the scares have been larger and badder. The adventures of Leon and Claire in Raccoon Metropolis not solely grew to become a benchmark for Resident Evil however for the style as an entire.
Each approach 1998’s Resident Evil 2 improved on its predecessor, the 2019 remake replicated in variety, changing into not solely a main instance of easy methods to take an older sport and reanimate it for a brand new technology of gamers, but in addition how the unique guidelines of survival horror nonetheless stand sturdy to today.
Resident Evil 2 is the whole lot you need survival horror to be: a sport of fastidiously balancing your assets whereas all the time feeling such as you don’t fairly have sufficient, enduring relentless pursuits by way of maze-like environments, obtuse puzzles to resolve, and a relentless state of unease that makes it really feel such as you gained’t fairly survive by way of the entire ordeal.
Resident Evil 2 influenced not one, however two generations of survival horror, and regardless of being usually imitated, it’s hardly ever equalled. In our eyes, Resident Evil 2 is just not solely the perfect of survival horror’s most well-known sequence, nevertheless it additionally sits atop the style itself.
Should you preferred this checklist and are longing for extra survival horror, why not take a look at the 25 best horror games of all time, or our Art of the Level episode on Resident Evil 2, discussing how Capcom perfected the RPD Police Station twice.
