026
OPINION
Rebecca Stow
Games do horror best and PS4’s library is scarily good
ACROSS ALL MEDIA
AND PLATFORMS, PS4
IS THE BEST PLACE
TO EXPERIENCE THE
HORROR GENRE.
F
rom monster movies to
zombie novels, I was a huge
fan of the horror genre
growing up. The experience
of being scared out of my
wits was perhaps an odd
thing for a child to seek out, but I
still spent a huge slice of my young
life doing just that. Like any
adrenaline junkie, however, I always
wanted more, and it was ultimately
gaming that provided me with the
best fix of frights.
I still love horror movies and books,
but the scares in those are indirect; it’s
all happening to someone else, the
main character in the story. Horror
games have main characters too, of
course, but you are usually in control
of them. And that’s the
difference. It means that the
monster, curse, or ghoul is
directly attacking you, not
someone else. If you’re
exploring a haunted mansion
and a zombie jumps out of
a cupboard, it feels like it’s
trying to bite you just
as much as it is your
character. A videogame
zombie is a direct
threat to your game
progress, and that
makes the stakes,
and therefore
the thrill of it
all, so much
more intense.
As a gaming
horror fanatic,
I pay close
attention to where
I’m going to get my
next dose of scaresfrom. I’ve been gaming
across multiple
generations and
platforms for years
now, and I honestly
believe PlayStation 4
has the greatest horror
library of all time.
There’s a huge variety of
terrifying titles available,
from the cartoony
Hello Neighbour to the
sublime and
photorealistic Resident
Evil 2 Remake. But those
are games you can
experience elsewhere too.EXCLUSIVE EVILS
What really sets PS4’s
horror library apart are the
exclusives; spine-chilling
adventures that can onlybe experienced on this system. Until
Dawn is a prime example: the story’s
filled with horror clichés and tropes,
but the game wears them proudly,
never shying away from its B-movie
mentality. Guiding a group of teens
down a monster-infested mountain
is honestly one of the most joyously
macabre experiences I’ve ever had. In
fact, I had to replay the game multiple
times to see all the different character
deaths just because I didn’t want to
miss a single gruesome thing. Not that
I’m, erm, weird or anything...
Bloodborne is another terrific
exclusive. The gothic streets of
Yharnam are filled with twisted
abominations, and these Lovecraftian
beasts were what initially drew me in
to the game. But it was the lore that
really snared me, the dark reasons for
the state of the world. In Bloodborne,
every alleyway and building has its
own blood-soaked history and I
needed to know absolutely everything.
And then there’s The Last Of Us
Remastered. Not your typical post-
apocalyptic adventure, it’s a beautiful
story of grief and parental love
coloured by the brutality of the world
around Joel and Ellie. There are other
excellent zombie games out on PS4 (I
really enjoyed Days Gone, for example),
but I believe that The Last Of Us is
the greatest post-apocalyptic story
ever told. I still think about it daily,
years after originally completing it.
And there are so many games I
haven’t even touched on: The Evil
Within 2, Inside, Alien: Isolation... too
many to list! If you haven’t already, do
yourself a favour and search for
‘horror’ in the PlayStation Store.
You won’t be disappointed!WRITER BIO
From triple-A titles to quirky indie gems,
Rebecca Stow is a huge fan of any game that
tells a compelling story or scares her
senseless. If there’s a story-driven title on the
horizon, chances are Rebecca will be playing it
and probably writing about it.