I’m going to start off by saying two positive things about Dead Space 3. The graphical quality lives up to the year’s standard, which developer Visceral Games hasn’t had a problem with before in this series. The other thing this game has going for it is diversity of character design. The human characters aren’t just all muscular white men - there, I said it. This is a pervasive problem in a lot of games, so seeing some different-looking people was refreshing.

But that’s about all I like about this game. Time for the criticism. I’ll try to keep it concise.

Take a look at the USG Ishimura above, because that’s the last you’ll see of her full glory.

Let’s talk about Dead Space 2. I talked it down quite a bit beforehand, but I’d like to say right now that it’s not all bad. In fact, there are things that I really like about this game. But compared to its predecessor, it’s just good. Not great, good. But I’ll say some good things about it anyway.

Oh, Dead Space. You truly are a game to remember. You’re the first game I ever played where decapitation wasn’t the monster killing strategy. Your version of jumpscares somehow, somehow, didn’t get old to me. You never lost sight of what you were truly trying to be: a survival horror game set in the monumental expanse of space.

So why did you stray from your golden path? Why did you put more emphasis on the guns and the thrill of shooting as you advanced your series instead of finding more clever ways to terrify your audience? Why did you sacrifice environment and monster designs for what appears to be just like any other action shooter? You had a good thing going, Dead Space, a real good thing. Shame on you.

I’m pulling out all the stops, now. As a followup to the last two blog posts (day 2 and day 3), I’m now going to go into detail about what makes Resident Evil 7 a staggeringly great example of what modern horror games should be.

Yesterday’s post was an intro to a game that I, among millions of others, very much enjoy: Resident Evil 7. Now, I’m going to go into a bit of detail about what I think makes this game stand out on top.

Note: this should be obvious, but this is my opinion and you shouldn’t treat it as fact. Some people probably disagree with me, and that’s okay. Read the following with this in mind.

The thing about horror is that not one thing will effect everyone the same way. Some people are afraid of clowns, some of spiders, some of death itself. There are a lot of things that spark fear in the hearts of people. For me, it’s parasites. Tapeworms and ringworms make me absolutely frantic with disgust and abject horror. Not everyone feels the same way, but I suppose their feeling is similar when someone describes their fear of snakes and I internalize that I think snakes are actually kinda cute.

Video games seem to have a default idea of what people are scared of. I won’t be the first one to admit that my complaint is not original - the industry uses jumpscares way too often. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve played a horror game recently. Have you? Well, there’s plenty of them if you haven’t. But I’m here to talk about the one that doesn’t fall into that trap.

This is the beginning of a string of daily posts one month long. Expect…content. I don’t do a lot of planning with stuff like this. When I write, it’s with the energy of suddenly realizing that you’ve left the stove on. I’m not going to try and explain myself, things just happen and I go “okay cool.” This is an introductory post - expect there to be a bit more clarification coming.

So after that short intro, I’d like to take a moment to talk about something that’s been a big part of my life for a while: video games.