Inti Creates and the publisher PQube have announced the details for the sequel to last year’s excellent Castlevania homage, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge titled Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark, and also provided the date when we can expect to have the game in our hands in the near future.

Servants of the Dark promises to not only bring more of its cheeky gothic horror anime adventures into the new game but also states that this sequel will be a full Metroidvania-style game that’s closer to Symphony of the Night and other later titles, with a full map and exploration, unlike the old-school Castlevania: Rondo of Blood-style that the first Gal Guardians game featured.

Just like the first game, Servants will also have full co-op for the whole campaign, making it one of a short list of Metroidvania games to feature multiplayer for the entire experience, also adding online play to the co-op mode, which the first game didn’t have.

Servants has two new main characters, with different playstyles than the girls from Demon Purge, with fully upgradeable stats and abilities, offering lots of new gameplay possibilities between them.

The digital release for the game is due out on March 27th on all the major platforms, with details about physical editions for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 coming soon after.

Stay tuned for our review when Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark launches in a few months. Don’t forget to check out the reveal trailer below:

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Forever Entertainment has finally revealed more details and a trailer for the upcoming House of the Dead 2 remake, after being announced in 2019, sharing that we won’t have to wait very long to get the game in our hands.

The new teaser trailer shows a lot of footage from the game, clearly showing it’s using the same engine and visual style as the first House of the Dead remake, with a more realistic and dark tone compared to the original Dreamcast version.

The game will feature a handful of upgrades as well as some new modes, including things like a remastered soundtrack (with the classic soundtrack still available as an option), a boss rush mode, and a training mode, in addition to the classic campaign that stays faithful to the original game. The voice acting has also been updated, but is still awkward and cheesy, from what the trailer has shown so far, so at least we know they’re trying to keep it weird just like they did with the first remake.

As for whether the game will have relative light gun or mouse support on the different platforms is yet to be seen, but if the remake of the first game is any indication, we’ll likely be able to use gyro or mouse aiming on most platforms.

The House of the Dead 2 Remake will launch on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC this spring, with a specific release date yet to be given. Stay tuned for more updates and our comprehensive game review when it launches in the next few months. You can watch the trailer below for yourself.

Let us know what you think about the game and we’ll see you this spring with more coverage.

The post The House of the Dead 2 Remake Gets Trailer, Release Window appeared first on Rely on Horror.

In a surprising turn of events, more than twenty-two years after its original release, we’ve now received a rebuilt and remastered version of 2002’s video game based on the iconic 1982 John Carpenter film, The Thing, entitled The Thing: Remastered.This is something I truly never expected to see, given how complicated the rights usually are to re-release licensed properties in the video game world.

This is my first time replaying it since it’s original release, so I’ll be reassessing the game to see how it’s held up. I’ll also be evaluating how well the remastered elements of this new release help to bridge that gap of the gaming technology over the last two decades.

Story

The story of The Thing game essentially acts as a sequel to the 1982 film, where you play as a team sent to investigate what happened after the events of the film. In it, you’ll explore the same Antarctic bases that you see in the film, and even encounter some of the characters (or remnants of them) as you explore.

Overall, the narrative sticks very close to the events of the film in some ways and rehashes many of the same story beats, but it’s different enough that it feels just like another installment in a somewhat formulaic franchise. It’s nothing that’ll blow you away, even though you do find out the ultimate fates of some of the film’s characters, if this game is to be considered “canon.”

There’s a decent soundtrack that repeats a lot of the basic themes and style from Carpenter’s film soundtrack, but it’s used very sparingly, since much of the game focuses on the quiet or environmental noise instead.

There’s lots of corny military dialogue and tough guy exchanges with some pretty terrible voice acting to go with it, and some silly characters, including a character that looks just like John Carpenter himself, but at the end of the day, it’s mostly just periphery to drive the gameplay forward and not terribly important to the experience.

Gameplay

The Thing is essentially a horror-themed third-person shooting game, and a good amount of what you experience here is still very much a product of its time. This includes some relatively rigid character models and animations. Despite these things being improved on for the remaster, you’ll definitely feel the age of the game and its engine once you start playing.

Despite feeling somewhat primitive in its engine and technical presentation, it still has a handful of gameplay features that make it stand out from the crowd to some extent, and that have held up decently with time. The gameplay manifests as a sort of squad-based shooter, complete with different classes, each with their own specialties, and while the mechanics aren’t terribly deep, it’s not too common to see this element in a single-player experience.

You’ll have to manage your team as you go through the game, with certain character classes being needed to progress the story in certain parts or to access specific areas that you can’t do alone, and you’ll actively need to manage several aspects of each character. This includes their health, ammo, fear/sanity, and trust relationships that hinge on different factors. Many of these are pretty basic overall and only have 2 or 3 aspects or actions that can affect them, but they still need to be managed, either way.

Some of the shortcomings of the game design tend to step on the toes of the team management elements in a negative way, especially since teammates will come and go throughout your journey, some because you let them get killed, and others are scripted to leave or die at certain points. Unfortunately, any equipment you gave to your teammates will need to be re-collected after their death, otherwise you can get stuck without some critical weapons at certain points, and sometimes those weapons will even glitch out or go to a place that’s unreachable, causing some major issues.

These team dynamics can make for some unique gameplay situations, but can also be a burden at times, so it’s a divisive thing to assess, overall. It mostly balances out, but there will be times of frustration guaranteed for most players when managing these elements.

Another aspect to mention in this section is the general game navigation, and the fact that the game does very little to guide you in the right direction when it comes to finding objectives or where to progress, with only some vague text objective descriptions in your pause menu to figure these things out. Some of the cutscenes will have conversations that also vaguely tell or show you where you should be going, but they can be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of situation if you’re not paying a ton of attention to the relatively boring dialogue scenes.

There’s also no map whatsoever, so you’ll usually have to do some meticulous trial-and-error when trying to find your next objective and how to accomplish it. While this does cause the game to feel more complex in a certain way, as this can almost qualify as a meta-puzzle in itself, it gets tiresome at some of the more obtuse objectives.

The next major part of the gameplay is the combat, which is generally quite basic and clunky third-person shooting combat, with auto-aim always active unless in the first-person aiming mode, and it’s usually a struggle of juggling many different aspects during the combat. For instance, if you have team members at the time, you’ll need to avoid accidentally shooting your teammates, which not only kills them, but also ruins your trust relationship with them, and since fire is needed to kill a good amount of the game’s enemies (and fire also remains on screen for a long time before disappearing and it hurts everyone,) combat will quickly become chaos, especially in tight spaces.

Healing and dispersing ammo to teammates during combat adds another layer of complexity and frustration, and if a teammate is killed, they also turn into a pretty strong enemy at that point as well, just adding more to the chaos. While all these aspects to make the combat and gameplay pretty unique, they also feel like a double edged sword of more stuff to worry about and get frustrated by. Many of the combat encounters involve fighting enemies in large groups, creating horde-like scenarios that you’ll need to survive to move on, so the combat also gets fairly repetitive at a certain point, especially with the small enemies.

Technical/Presentation

On the technical side, The Thing: Remastered is a bit of a mixed bag, since the new visuals and performance in general are quite an upgrade from the original, with new models, animations, textures, and lighting effects, and these things make the game look and play a bit better than its original version, but it does come with some down sides as well. As mentioned before, the engine the game was built on shows its age in general when playing through a modern lens, even though it’s still quite playable overall.

The controls do feel improved, and there’s lots of customization with key and controller bindings, which is a nice touch, even though they’ll still feel slightly clunky just due to the engine itself. This especially manifests in managing your teammates, where the controls get awkward and you’ll usually have to navigate through several menus just to accurately give them commands or help them out.

Unfortunately, there’s also a handful of bugs and glitches that I encountered during my playthrough, from the weapons and items glitching through floors or objects, enemy or teammate AI getting broken or stuck, character models disappearing, and other little things here and there. It was nothing terribly game-breaking, and thankfully the game has auto-saves after most major events, but having to reload checkpoints because of glitches is never fun. There’s also just a general level of hit detection and collision being a little off, as it was in the original game, with only marginal improvements in this department.

Conclusion

The Thing: Remastered is a nice repackaging and facelift for a curious game based on an iconic horror film. There’s a lot to like here, especially for fans of the film, but it still has a lot of the same rough edges that it had back in 2002, even if some things have been improved.

It’s a relatively short adventure at around 5-7 hours on a first playthrough with not a lot of replay value, but the relatively low price of this remaster makes it an easier sell. It’ll probably be a tough pill to swallow for players who aren’t experienced with games from this era or the films, but it’s still nice to have a more accessible way to experience the game on modern platforms.

(7 / 10)

Good

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

A review code for the Xbox Series X version was provided by the publisher.

The post Review: The Thing: Remastered appeared first on Rely on Horror.

Back in 2015, indie studio Psychose Interactive released their first game, which was exclusive to mobile platforms at the time, titled Forgotten Memories. The game is a third-person survival horror title that’s a love letter to the Silent Hill series, and even features the Remothered series’ Chris Darril doing the art design and Silent Hill 2‘s voice actors for James and Eddie voicing some of the characters.

There were plans to port and remaster the game on PC and some consoles in the late 2010s, but lots of complications arose and those plans had to be canceled for the time being. Now, several years later, the team has finally finished the remastering and porting process for some platforms, and it’s now available on MacOS and Nintendo Switch, so we’re taking a look at the first console port, on the Switch.

Story

The narrative of Forgotten Memories is a fairly sparse one that feels like a very simplified version of a Silent Hill narrative, and is interesting, despite not being terribly deep or complex overall. Its short length also doesn’t give you too much time to get immersed in it or expand upon it, so it comes with the territory, to a certain extent.

It’s still relatively cohesive overall, even if it won’t blow you away, and it serves the gameplay just fine, so there’s not a lot to complain about here. Just temper your expectations for that of a small indie mobile game to get the best experience. The voice acting is solid across the board, though audio quality can fluctuate slightly between lines and none of it is particularly nuanced or emotionally-delivered overall, but it does a good enough job of adding a little immersion to the world.

Gameplay

The gameplay is where Forgotten Memories benefits the most when it comes to the new console port, since you can use some proper physical controls instead of the touch screen analog sticks. While a lot of the game consists of just exploration, where the controls aren’t quite as important, there is a combat system you’ll use throughout the game, and it definitely makes things handle better in these situations.

The game starts with many of the potential enemies lying dormant or frozen in the scenery, with a system that makes many of them jump to life and attack you out of the blue, which is a pretty creepy effect. None of the combat is all that difficult, but it does raise the stakes a bit, especially since you’re mostly relying on a manual save system with very few auto-checkpoints.

The general gameplay and exploration here is fun and a callback to classic survival horror titles, with puzzles and routes to find, and most of it is pretty straight-forward for the genre, but compelling enough to keep going. One caveat to this is the lack of a proper map, which can slow things down or make progress more muddled than it should be. Even though the whole game world is relatively small and fairly equal to a single one of Silent Hill’s main labyrinths, it would still be nice to have a visual reminder of the layout.

The experience is rather short, usually taking 90 minutes to two hours to finish, but there’s new game+ content and additional difficulties to play with if you liked the experience enough to go through it again. After finishing the game, it does mention that the devs are working on a sequel that aims to be a bit bigger, but this first game serves as more of an intro to the world, so we’ll see where it goes in the future.

Performance/AV

As far as the visuals, this is a good-looking game that nails a lot of the hallmarks of the classic Silent Hill aesthetic while also throwing in some newer horror gaming influence and a lot of Twin Peaks aesthetic, for one reason or another. The art direction from Chris Darril makes this game stand out among the many homages to Silent Hill that have come out of the horror scene in the last several years, and is one of the best aspects of the game without a doubt.

As far as performance, it’s a bit of a mixed bag on the Switch hardware, since while there are several options for graphics options and performance in the menus, it does struggle to hit 60fps on any of the graphical settings in docked mode, and will still have occasional stutters and dropped frames here and there, even though it does run a bit better and at a higher res than the original mobile version. The graphical options are nice, so you can customize it to a way that fits your preference, but it struggles to hit the fairly standard modern benchmarks of performance, even if it doesn’t ruin the game.

In handheld mode, the results are a bit better, since it’s generally running at a slightly lower resolution, and optimization may have been more targeted at this mode to begin with, even though it will still have some small stutters here and there. Granted, a more cinematic game like this benefits from the big screen, so it’s a bit of a pick-your-poison situation.

Forgotten Memories is a pretty neat little homage to the survival horror titles of the past, but its short length and lack of general complexity leave a little bit to be desired compared to the many other similar games that have been made in the nine years since its original release.

However, if you’re just looking for a new title that’s an homage to the Silent Hill series, this could give you a few hours of enjoyment, especially if you want one on-the-go with the Switch’s portable capability. The price feels just about right, if slightly on the higher side for the two hours or so of gameplay on an initial playthrough, but the New Game+ feature and in-game achievements add some extra replay value if you like the core experience.

(7 / 10)

Good

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

(NOTE: The game currently has a Halloween-themed skin to celebrate the holiday, so the screenshots all feature an alternate costume for the main character and masks on all the enemies that are not normally present in the game after Halloween.)

A Nintendo Switch review code was provided by the developer.

The post Review: Forgotten Memories: Remastered Edition appeared first on Rely on Horror.

Human Entertainment’s 1995 horror adventure classic Clock Tower needs nearly no introduction to most fans of the genre, even though the game was never released outside of Japan. Its reputation preceded it as one of the earliest examples of cinematic survival horror, built on an aging and limited hardware platform on which most wouldn’t think it possible to produce a convincing and immersive cinematic horror game. It defied the odds of its ambitions and technological limitations to become something of a legend among fans of the genre, so this year’s Clock Tower: Rewind release is a bit of a big deal since it’s making the game officially available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.

In approaching this remaster, the studio and publisher worked together and contributed to what would hopefully become a complete, cohesive package that would have something to offer for long-time fans and first-time players alike. With 2D gaming masters, WayForward, handling the gameplay part, and the publisher handling the extra features and new bonus elements, Clock Tower: Rewind was promised to be a great look back at the game as well as its history, and a new way for the world to experience the a seminal game in the horror genre.

I was first introduced to the game back in 2002, shortly after the English fan translation patch was released, and it changed my perception of how horror could be conveyed in the medium of video games. Even though I had already played many other horror games on PS1 a few years earlier, including its sequel, Clock Tower 2 (confusingly titled Clock Tower in Western markets,) playing the original 1995 Clock Tower gave me much more perspective about horror games and what makes them tick.

Director Hifumi Kono’s clear inspiration from American and European horror movies of the 1970s and 80s struck a chord with my pre-existing love of those same films, and the game managed to merge the bizarre-yet-grounded worlds of those kinds of films with the immersion and interactivity of video games and the chilling soundscape to make what could only be described as transcendent of the medium at the time.

Needless to say, I approached this new remastered version with a little apprehension but also excitement that it would present a new way to play the game and add several new features to experience, so I’ve gone through with a fine-tooth comb as far as what this package offers to examine what it presents us in today’s gaming landscape.

Presentation:

Starting with the general presentation, we can start with how the game greets you, which is with an all-new anime-style intro cutscene with a fun and well-animated art style, and a new theme song made for the game, written based on the main musical theme of Clock Tower, and with new lyrics and vocals by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. The song is generally a little underwhelming, but it’s nice to have some new content for the release that acts as an homage to the original game’s art style and mood.

Afterward, you’ll get to the main menu, which brings us to the subject of the menus in general, and as a whole, the menus are pretty well-done, with a few little caveats. The menus look great, but the controls on them can be a bit confusing when using a mouse and keyboard, even though they’re quite intuitive with a controller. KB&M forces you to use some awkward keyboard controls to navigate, constantly switching between requiring the WASD keys and the arrow keys, and then navigating the in-game controls is a whole other ordeal that will be discussed further in the controls section.

Another lacking feature of the menus is how some of the text descriptions of what different menu options mean or what the differences are between the “Original” and “Rewind” versions of the game are pretty lacking in clarity or detail. Additionally, the “How To Play” section is lacking clear explanation on some of the game’s more nuanced features, which might be a little confusing for new players, and can hopefully be updated at some point.

Game experience:

As previously mentioned, it’s worth delving into what the differences are between the two game modes this package offers, where Original mode is simply the original Super Famicom version of Clock Tower, exactly as it is on its original hardware. The only exceptions are the additions of mouse support, the save state feature, and the not-too-useful rewind feature, which allows you to rewind about 15-20 seconds of gameplay in case you made a bad choice, but it tends to only be of much use in a few specific situations, with the gameplay of Clock Tower being so slow in general.

On the other hand, the Rewind mode is closer to the PS1 remaster of the game, titled The First Fear, where many updates were made to the game, but this is absolutely not a port of the PS1 version by any means. While Rewind mode does put back in a deleted room and few of the minor deleted scenes that were restored for the PS1 version, most of its other quality-of-life features or updates were not brought along.

However, the ability for Jennifer to run up and down stairs and move faster in certain animations is added, and she heals faster, which makes a big difference in the gameplay, plus Scissorman’s aggressiveness has been amped up, his frequency has been made more frequent and random, and he can now climb stairs. However, the other features from First Fear are not present, including the improved visuals and sound, unique FMV cutscenes, and improved mouse controls. This makes the Rewind mode much closer to the “Deluxe” fan patch that was released by fans in 2023 with a few tweaks, rather than being more like the PS1 version.

This is a bit of a disappointment since The First Fear version improves the experience in every way, but for one reason or another, that version was not included in this package, even though the Rewind mode is still much better to play than the original.

Regardless, the core game experience is still here, plus the save state and rewind features which can come in handy or might be essential for some new players, and it’s still one of the best horror adventure experiences of all time, so there’s not much else to complain about here besides the “what could have been.”

Controls:

The controls are another source of contention here, specifically when it comes to the PC version, which could and ideally should be the best platform to play the game on, since most of the games in the series were designed to be played with mouse controls, but there’s a few botched opportunities here that muddle what could be the best way to play.

Unlike in the PS1 version, which made the game entirely playable with only the mouse, Rewind requires you to use the mouse and keyboard simultaneously, and the keyboard controls are awkward, with no ability to remap keys or commands whatsoever. There’s also no option to use a combination of a controller and mouse, so your only options are either the poorly-laid out keyboard controls with the mouse or just using a controller instead.

Hopefully, these control shortcomings can be fixed later, but right now, it feels like a blemish on what could’ve made this an ideal way to experience the game, so as it stands, the keyboard and mouse controls need some work. On a controller, everything works just fine, since the game isn’t very demanding or complex as far as controls go, as long as you don’t mind moving an on-screen mouse pointer with an analog stick or d-pad.

Either way, the game is still playable, but hopefully they can fix the keyboard controls or provide more options of how to customize your play in the near future.

Extra features:

The extra features here are great additions, starting with a fun set of clips from a recent interview with director Hifumi Kono (done specifically for this release) about the history of the game and his thoughts on how this remaster was being handled. This results in somewhere around 30 minutes of footage to watch, and it’s a worthy extra to have.

There are also new motion comic adaptations of the original manga that were included in the First Fear booklet and a Japanese book for the game, with full voice acting and neat animation to go with it. These are nicely done, even if they’re fairly short, but similarly are a nice addition to the package.

Lastly, there’s the included “Commercial Sample Demo” which was a demo version of the game that was sent to gaming publications and in some store kiosks that features a few small playable snippets of gameplay, which only amounts to a 10-15 minutes of extra play, but it’s nice to have it included in the package, even if it’s still in Japanese.

Despite a few perplexing decisions on how to approach this remaster of a classic, it opens the game up to an entirely new audience and still contains the core of the Clock Tower experience, which is just as fantastic of an experience after all these years and deserves a look from anyone who has or hasn’t played it yet. Especially for the low price, this is a no-brainer for fans of horror adventure games or for those wanting to experience a well-preserved version of an important early horror classic.

With a few updates to the PC version, it could be the best way to play the game outside of the PS1 port, so hopefully these updates will be made soon. But, regardless of how you choose to play, Clock Tower is still an experience any fan of the horror game genre should experience at some point in their life.

(9 / 10)

Amazing

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

A PC review code was provided by the publisher.

The post Review: Clock Tower: Rewind appeared first on Rely on Horror.

When the original Shadows of the Damned launched in 2011, it stood out as a unique take on the horror action genre, since it infused so much of director Suda 51’s comic book punk-horror style and aesthetics into a game that looked and played like a later Resident Evil game, thanks to the influence of producer Shinji Mikami, and sounded like a Silent Hill game, thanks to composer Akira Yamaoka’s sound design.

The game’s bizarre, crude, and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor along with its general wackiness showed that horror action games don’t always have to take themselves so seriously, and it launched to pretty good reviews at the time, despite being compromised from the creator’s original vision by their big-budget publisher for the game, the infamous Electronic Arts (EA). Now, thirteen years later, Grasshopper Manufacture has decided to release a remastered version for modern platforms, since the game had been previously stuck on the Xbox 360 and PS3 only.

We won’t spend too much time talking about the game itself, since little has been changed from the original version here aside from a few small additions like bonus costumes and a new game+ mode, but I can definitely say the game has held up better than I thought it would. Aside from a few lines of the dialogue not aging particularly well, which don’t really lessen the enjoyment of the game overall, it’s still a blast to play. Shadows of the Damned‘s unique brand of horror action still stands as an unconventional take on the style, and as something that could’ve only resulted from a collaboration between its three main creative minds.

That said, the visuals for this remastered version generally haven’t been touched in any way aside from having higher resolution and framerate than the original, with only some very minor texture cleanup, so it still looks very much like a game from 2011, rough spots and all. However, its charm still shines through and generally makes some of its small rough spots easily-overlooked on the visual front.

Aside from the visual datedness, there’s also still a lot of rough edges in the form of bugginess, much of which was present in the original game as well, and it treads a fine line between being slightly annoying but also amusing and charming at the same time. Though, this is fairly common for Grasshopper’s games in general and if you’re on board with their style at all, you’ll most likely be accepting of the strangeness of their style and un-polished nature of their games.

Some of this bugginess might be patched at some point before launch or shortly thereafter, and it would be nice to see a few of those rough edges ironed out, but they may choose not to change much so as not to tamper with the game experience itself.

The performance on the Xbox Series consoles and PC were very solid across the board, but the PS5 version had some massive framerate issues that should be fixed before launch, judging by how those things usually go. The improved performance definitely helps with a lot of the enemy encounters where things can start to get overwhelming, and where dropped frames can become a source of frustration during combat.

As far as the controls, they do feel more smooth and responsive in general because of the improved performance, but the aiming still feels slightly hard to wield at times when using a controller, especially given the jumpy nature of the game’s enemies. On the PC front, it’s very nice to be able to use keyboard and mouse controls for this game after all these years, and it makes the aiming feel much nicer if you’re able to play on your PC. The PS5 version also added gyro aiming, which is fun to try out and it may be your thing, but with how fast the action of the game is and how precise the aiming needs to be, you’ll likely find yourself not playing with it for too long.

At the end of the day, Shadows is still a hell of a lot of fun and a relatively snappy adventure, at around 7 or 8 hours for a first playthrough, and its style carries it through the whole way, still playing like a punked-up and even more gothic version of Resident Evil 4 with a Silent Hill-esque soundscape.

Especially for the very reasonable price tag, Hella Remastered is definitely worth picking up if you’ve never played it before or are just looking for an excuse to play it again on a new platform. It didn’t innovate the genre and isn’t the most shiny and polished game of its kind, but its individualistic sense of creativeness makes it a journey that’s still worth taking all these years later.

(8.5 / 10)

Great

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

Review codes for Xbox Series, PS5, and PC provided by the publisher and developer, NetEase Games and Grasshopper Manufacture.

The post Review: Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered appeared first on Rely on Horror.

The film franchises of Halloween and Evil Dead are certainly no strangers to being adapted to video games, as both have been featured in various video games over the years, spanning a large amount of time and different styles of games, including iterations all the way back on the Atari 2600 up to the current generation of hardware in 2022.

Despite having so many previous appearances in games, both franchises are getting new adaptations in this year’s RetroRealms project, where 2D gaming veterans WayForward (Shantae, Bloodstained) collaborated with Boss Team Games (Evil Dead: The Game,) planning to bring together several different horror icons or franchises into a shared video game universe that doesn’t interfere with the respective canon of the properties themselves.

Though there may be plans for more games added to this universe later, to start out, the RetroRealms series is releasing these first two games, based on the original 1978 Halloween film and the 2015 Ash vs. Evil Dead series, respectively, and making them into 2D pixel-platformer action games. This marks the first attempt at this style for both franchises in video game form, and now we’ve had time to play through what this package has to offer and see if they’re worth a look as new ways to interact with the classic horror franchises.

When first booting up the game, you’re greeted with a first-person 3D hub world that looks like a 1980s arcade warehouse, and features a few extras that we’ll talk about later, but it’s a fun setup and a clever way to introduce the universe of these games to new players. After choosing which game you’d like to check out first, you’ll be thrown into the world of RetroRealms.

Both of the games in this package take form as 2D action platformers, with heavy influences from especially the Mega Man and Castlevania side of things, which makes for a rather fun gameplay style, with relatively well-designed levels and mechanics, even if it isn’t the deepest or most complex system out there. It finds a nice blend of elements from various 2D action games and manages to feel like something of its own, to a certain extent, while also featuring a lot of options of how to play, based on the different character abilities available.

Speaking of the character options, it’s worth mentioning that you can technically purchase only the Halloween or Ash vs. Evil Dead games separately, but if you purchase both of them together, you’ll be able to use any of the characters from both games interchangeably as you like, allowing for currently four different characters to be used in each game. Both the Halloween and AVED games come with ten unique stages of their own, making for a total of twenty stages that can be played with four characters each, which creates technically a lot of content, even though most of it will be comprised of replaying levels you’ve already played with a different character.

Thankfully, each character also does have a unique story to go along with their trek through each subsequent game, even though it’s mostly just relegated to some text dialogue before and after each stage and boss fight, but it does give something unique as a motivation to keep playing the same stages over again. The stages all run fairly short, at usually no more than 7-10 minutes each, depending how much item and collectible hunting you do.

The character abilities are upgraded by collecting currency in the game, which allows for more combat options as well as abilities to reach previously unreachable areas in certain stages, giving a little more motivation for replays overall. Granted, your mileage will vary, since the stages will still be the same, even if there’s a little room for trying new strategies with each character’s move set, but it won’t vastly change the experience.

The difficulty of the game is relatively low for this type of action platformer and the action feels a little slower-paced than many others, most likely to make it more accessible for more casual gamers who are just fans of the film series, but it will still have its occasional moments of challenge even for veterans of the genre, especially when going for the collectibles. The stages all feature some fun characters and references to their respective source material, which are a treat for fans who know the franchises well.

The collectibles allow you to unlock a handful of extras in the arcade hub world, including a 3D model museum featuring artifacts from each game and franchise, interactable dioramas, and behind-the-scenes videos about the making of the games, which are all fun additions to the package.

Overall, this package is rather enjoyable if you’re into 2D action games, and provides a decent amount of content if you purchase both games, but that is a bit of a caveat, since the whole package together costs $50 USD. This might be a little steep for the amount of truly unique gameplay here, but if you’re a fan of either series, $25 each might not be too steep if you’re just excited to have a new experience within the franchise you love.

This certainly doesn’t feel as impactful as some of the more recent fleshed-out film-to-game adaptations like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th, or Blair Witch, but it still feels a little more meaningful than something like a Dead By Daylight appearance from your favorite franchise. This will still be a fun time for fans who are either starving for any new content from their favorite horror franchises or who are already 2D action fans to begin with, but might be a hard sell for more hardcore horror fans looking for a more cinematic or narrative experience out of the Halloween or AVED series.

(7.5 / 10)

Good

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

A PC review code was provided by the publisher.

The post Review: RetroRealms Halloween & Ash vs. Evil Dead appeared first on Rely on Horror.

The original Silent Hill 2 is widely considered one of the greatest horror games of all time. It has garnered a notorious reputation and a massive following that includes a radicalized, cult-like fanbase. When it was announced in 2022 that the game would be getting the remake treatment similar to its contemporaries like Resident Evil, Dead Space, and Alone in the Dark, the gaming community went wild with anticipation. However, this excitement unfortunately led to internet bullying.

Since the reimagining of the game was being developed by the horror veterans at Poland’s Bloober Team, whose previous work was already divisive among horror curmudgeons, lots of racism and hate was thrown at the developers, despite them working hand-in-hand with Konami and even some of the Team Silent staff who worked on the original game. Despite all the ignorance, the development pressed forward and now we’ve had a chance to sink into the reimagined Silent Hill 2 for quite some time, so we’ll take a look at how it fares against its peers and as the first full-length game in the series for nearly 15 years.

Story

In terms of the narrative or story, this is easily where the game sticks most closely to its original version since there’s rarely a single line of dialogue changed throughout any of the character interactions. This is a good thing since the original narrative is one of the most beloved and harrowing psychological horror stories of all time. As such, too many alterations would surely incite an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob.

However, the microscopic changes that were made as far as the script is concerned were all for the better and just edged it towards being just a hair more relevant without losing a lot of the more esoteric elements of the story’s presentation. There’s been a number of added documents and puzzles, which do contribute to a little bit of what might be called “lore,” but don’t change anything involving any of the major characters or their stories.

One of the biggest changes in the story’s presentation is the new voice acting and motion capture for all of the characters, which are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time and are handled with such precise care and diligence so as to not step over the original. The characters all feel more emotional and alive, and the cinematic framing of cutscenes is improved in drastic ways, letting the story seep out and be even slightly more impactful than before, which is a hell of a feat.

Overall, I’d have to say that this reimagining fully harnesses the cinematic knowledge and skill that Bloober Team has and the technological improvements of video games over the years, and uses them to improve and deepen the experience just a little more than the original. This new version will surely resonate more with a modern audience, not because it dumbed things down or changed things egregiously, but merely updated it with the visual and storytelling techniques that have been honed in video games over the last 23 years since Silent Hill 2‘s release.

Gameplay

Now we can really dig into some of the bigger changes, as the gameplay experience is vastly changed compared to the original, and I’d have to say, it’s generally all in positive ways. To begin with the most obvious, this reimagining does away with the cinematic fixed camera angles that so defined the early 3D generation of horror games that the original Silent Hill 2 was a part of. This was hard to get used to at first and it felt a little underwhelming in the beginning, but it soon started to sink in and be a wholly immersive experience.

In general, the whole beginning section of the game before arriving at the apartment building was a pretty big adjustment period of learning to view the world of SH2 through a new lens and not just expecting it to be exactly as it was before. This can be a hard thing for fans to do, but something clicked after arriving to the first major “labyrinth” of the game that made all of those fears and expectations leave my mind, where I could just be immersed and begin to truly enjoy the game as it is.

Once I got past the initial change and shock of the presentation, this new SH2 gradually just kept getting better and better, and soon the care and absolute devotion to the craft of making a terrifying and enjoyable video game became very palpable. The amount that’s changed here as far as the presentation and progression of the game is staggering, but I was hard-pressed to find any of those elements that felt like it made the experience worse.

If you think you’ll be able to hop into the experience with all your speed-running skills from the 2001 Silent Hill 2, you’ll be in for a rude awakening, as there are frequent new areas, objectives, and buildings to explore, new notes and puzzles to find, and a general expansion of the gameplay experience. This new version even likes to throw in occasional little nods to the original, where you’ll find an old puzzle object or item lying around that looks exactly the way it did in the 2001 version, though the game presents them as a non-interactable, nostalgic reminder of the past, a stark reminder that you are not playing the 2001 game anymore.

Combat

Aside from the changed camera angles and general game progression, this comes along with several other changes, including a very different approach to the lighting and an entirely new combat system. The new lighting system essentially makes the game even darker than the original, with the flashlight being even more dim than in the original game. Combined with the over-the-shoulder camera, this makes for some absolutely terrifying exploration of the world, and the game exploits the low visibility in very clever and nasty ways.

For instance, the low visibility is used in tandem with the new combat system to make it so enemies are much more hidden from view and can launch sneak attacks (and scares) on you anytime and from anywhere. Even after fighting with an enemy, they may scurry away in the middle of combat just to find a new hiding spot to jump out and surprise you from, making it never feel safe.

The game uses every tight corner of a room to give heavy potential for sneak attacks and scares, whether it’s behind a shelf in a tight hallway, under a desk or table, or blending in with the scenery, and it never fails to startle me. This system of enemies being able to consistently and dynamically hide creates more natural tension and scares than the typical scripted ones we’ve come to expect from modern over-the-shoulder horror games.

The new combat system is streamlined similarly to the recent Resident Evil remakes, allowing you to instantly switch between melee and ranged weapons without using a menu, making for much more dynamic combat overall. This also means that enemies are much more of a threat in their behaviors and that encounters with them will be much more plentiful, making for a very different experience when it comes to combat.

In general, the combat feels just clunky enough that you don’t feel like a superhero, and leaves just a tinge of vulnerability that constantly reminds you that James is just a regular, human guy, not a trained soldier or a person who’s particularly skilled at combat. It is still particularly visceral and cathartic, as it was in the original, and it’s good that this element stuck around, as it also plays a subversive role in the game’s story as well, on a deeper level.

The relatively scarce amount of resources available compared to the combat difficulty strikes a nice balance, and requires you to think more closely before rushing into an encounter. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by more than one enemy at a time, and you’ll need to have your dodging skills about you, since many fights that seem like they’ll be one-on-one at first quickly become a crowd when previously hidden enemies jump out to attack from behind you or from the dark corner of a room.

The new dodge button can be a great help if you look for the audio and visual cues of when and where to dodge, but it’s not just a simple way to avoid damage by spamming the dodge button, since it has relatively short range and stops you from doing any other actions while in the dodge animation, including running.

The revamped puzzles and exploration feel great across the board, with James having to actively pull out the map in real-time to check directions and mark down any important clues or updates, which is a nice touch that adds a little bit of immersion and keeps you on your toes. The new puzzles will keep you moving along relatively swiftly most of the time if you’re familiar with classic survival horror puzzles, but they’re just tough enough on the standard puzzle difficulty to keep you scratching your head every once in a while or getting stuck from time to time and having to retrace your steps to find what you missed.

The expanded areas also cause the game to be around double the length of the original SH2, clocking in around at least 15 hours for a first playthrough, and every minute of it feels compelling and exciting. This is a testament to the work that went into the game, that it can still stay as alluring even with around twice as much of a run-time.

Overall, the new gameplay is greatly improved from not only the original SH2, but it even feels a step above its recent contemporaries like the remakes of Resident Evil and others, most likely having learned from all those other recent similar games to fine-tune the experience.

Audio/Visual

As expected, the audio and visual presentation here is at the top of its class, with the teams at Bloober and Team Silent alumni working together, it feels as perfect as a remake could be, from an artistic standpoint. The sound design is tense and oppressive throughout every second of the game where sound is present, and the remixed/rearranged soundscape from Akira Yamaoka is some of the best in recent memory.

The visuals, despite being so dark for 75% of the game, are stunning and done in a way that lets you sink into the world and take in its visual splendor while also never feeling comfortable, safe, or too familiar. This is generally the best-case scenario that no other similar remake has nailed quite so well, especially while adhering so closely to the general aesthetics of the original game.

Across the board, the teams have created something that feels wholly faithful to its source material from an aesthetic standpoint, while also improving and embellishing things enough to where it feels like a new experience.

Controls/Performance

The game controls are generally well-executed, with combat, exploration, and most other actions feeling quick and responsive. The only minor issue is that sometimes it’s necessary to adjust the camera to a very specific angle to pick up or interact with certain items. This can be a bit frustrating, especially during intense moments, and it seems like it could be easily fixed with a little effort.

When it comes to performance, this is the only category where SH2 2024 gets any kind of negative mark, at least when it comes to the PS5 version. Whether you’re running the game on Quality or Performance modes, it’s never able to keep a consistent framerate for very long. Random choppiness and stuttering occur frequently, with it being worse in some areas than others.

There are also frequent issues with the camera getting stuck on walls or objects and causing strange image jumping and stuttering, which can be off-putting and cause moments of lost immersion. Although these issues won’t ruin the overall experience, they are quite noticeable throughout the game, and I hope they are all patched and improved soon.

Conclusion

The reimagined Silent Hill 2 is an experience that truly understands and honors the original game. It deconstructs and rebuilds the experience from the ground up, creating something that feels familiar yet also like a whole new game.

It takes inspiration from the classic 2001 original and incorporates the many advancements made since its release. Influences from games like Condemned, RE, Dead Space, The Evil Within, Alan Wake 2, and even later Silent Hill games are collected and honed to make something very fresh and extremely polished.

It may not be pushing the genre forward, but Silent Hill 2 (2024) feels like the peak of what the current horror remake movement of the last five years can accomplish. It’s an experience I confidently recommend to anyone looking for a shining example of what the horror genre has to offer.

(9.5 / 10)

Amazing

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The post Review: Silent Hill 2 (2024) appeared first on Rely on Horror.

In 2015, Supermassive Games unleashed Until Dawn onto the world, kicking off a series of horror-themed narrative gaming experiences. This included The Dark Pictures Anothogy, The Quarry, and The Casting of Frank Stone, all of which built upon the template established by Until Dawn. This set a standard in modern narrative gaming that’s still going strong nearly ten years later. The original game demonstrated significant leaps forward in facial capture, lighting, and various other elements, pushing the technology of its time to its cinematic limits. The game excelled at creating a captivating and surprising story throughout.

Each entry was executed to varying levels of success as they’ve tried to keep this formula going and have small steps forward as they go, but it’s always felt like the follow-up experiences have left a little something to be desired compared to Until Dawn. Whether that is just because it was the first, or maybe because the writers have changed so much or the studio has possibly been wearing themselves too thin at times, but every game since has had just a small tinge of feeling like a slightly-lesser copycat of Until Dawn.

In early 2024, it was announced that the game would be remade. The remake would be built from the ground up using the new Unreal Engine 5 to take advantage of modern graphical and performance techniques. It was said that the game would mostly remain the same as the original, with the changes being described as “enhanced” without much additional context. Now that we’ve had some time to review this new version of the game, we can evaluate how its update compares to the original version.

Visuals

The visuals in the game are vastly improved across the board, with stunning high resolution, advanced lighting, and a solid visual presentation of the already-gorgeous characters models, and details of the world of Until Dawn. However, this isn’t quite as innocuous as you’d be led to believe at first, for many reasons. A heavy amount of the visual elements of the game have been modified in ways that change the entire tone of certain scenes in ways that seem inexplicable or off-putting.

For starters, a good amount of the camera work and cinematic elements were changed in ways that feel somewhat confusing and disorienting, and the effect of the changed scenes generally seems to not be for the better, making things more disjointed and harder to follow, visually. This includes removing most of the fixed camera angles that gave such a great cinematic feel to the original version, opting to make most of the scenes where you’re controlling a character into an over-the-shoulder perspective instead.

Many of the camera movements that frame shots or draw attention in a certain way have been altered, featuring many more fast cuts that just give you visual whiplash and the atmospheric, moody hues and filters that were present in the original game as a stylistic choice have now been removed in favor of generally pure photo-realism. These changes alter the whole visual language of the game in a way that feels lesser than its original version.

Not only this, but many of the scenes towards the beginning of the game that are clearly supposed to be taking place pretty late at night, with a clock stamp on-screen clearly showing the time, are now brightly-lit scenes that look like mid-day. I imagine the idea here was to “show off” all the new lighting effects, but it generally breaks some of the immersion and the foreboding feel of the early scenes that are supposed to be quite dark.

One other strange part of the visuals is that many of the animations of the characters run at a lower framerate than what the rest of the visuals in this remade version run at, with some animations feeling slightly choppy compared to how the rest of the game looks and runs. While the general fidelity of the visuals has improved from a technical standpoint, the choices made to change many of the visual elements of the game are perplexing and strange from an artistic standpoint and don’t quite fit with the game’s narrative or setting very well.

There are tons of accessibility and visual options here, including the option to set the game to a more theatrical ultra-wide aspect ratio to see more of the framing in the scenes or play it in the 16:9 ratio that the original game was presented in.

This is a personal choice of how you’d like to play, and it’s at least nice to get another perspective of some scenes with the wider aspect ratio.

Narrative

You will find a similar narrative presentation here, with largely the same story beats as before, although there are also several heavy caveats on the narrative side of things as well. This is likely behind why they chose to call this a “remake” as opposed to being called a remaster, as there are a decent amount of scenes or conversations that were heavily edited or removed and a few new scenes added that were not in the original game, almost like a “directors cut” of sorts.

This might be a big point of contention among fans of the original, as for me, I didn’t feel like any of these edits helped the narrative or pacing at all, they mostly seemed changed to better suit modern audiences, and they feel like they’ve dumbed certain things down too much or made it more “safe” by modern standards. These changes come up many times in each chapter and are fairly small in the grand scheme of things, but for someone who has the original fresh in their mind, it might be a bit of a shock and confusion as to why these things were changed or added.

The new ending scenes feel a bit like what might be called “sequel-bait,” as they show what happens after the events of the original game, in a way that may hint that there’s a sequel currently in development, which may be the case, according to some recent reports. These change the original story in a way that opens things up for another game but feels slightly disingenuous to the original story.

Soundtrack

Another large elephant in the room is the puzzling decision to completely remove the original soundtrack of the game in favor of adding an entirely new one that seems to miss the mark at most points lessening the effect of many scenes and entirely changing the tone at times. The score has been altered, and the original opening song, which later became the main theme song of the Dark Pictures series, has been removed. Additionally, all other vocal songs featured in the original game’s script are also gone.

Some might not notice this or consider it a minor change, but again, if you have the original version fresh in your mind and are someone who pays close attention to the audio presentation, this will be another factor that makes you truly question what the intentions of this remake really are.

Controls & Optimization

At the moment, there seems to be a general lack of optimization in the performance department, even on the PS5 version, as there are frequent micro-stutters, mouths getting off-sync from dialogue, and all sorts of strange little elements that make it look like the game is struggling. It’s hard to truly tell what kind of framerate the game is running at without some deep Digital Foundry-esque technical digging, but it definitely doesn’t feel consistent here. I hope this issue will be fixed soon. However, the game being featured in the recent marketing for the PS5 Pro console seems suspicious.

Some elements of the controls were improved and many options to change control elements to your liking are included here, plus the motion control segments function much better with the DualSense controller than they did on PS4. There are not many other new features of the DualSense here, unfortunately, which feels like a missed opportunity as the advanced rumble haptics and controller speaker have added an enhanced experience in some other recent PS5 games.

Unfortunately, despite some small improvements in the controls, other issues detract from the experience. For example, the ability to walk faster has been completely removed from the game, only turning on automatically at certain points. The controls also feel less responsive than the original, which is potentially related to the performance being a little more spotty in general, as previously mentioned.

Conclusion

Overall, the Until Dawn remake seems to lack a clear purpose beyond making more money and potentially setting up a sequel. However, if you’ve never played the original game, you can still enjoy the core experience. But if you’re a fan of the original, you might find the changes confusing and not as enjoyable, especially when it comes to the visuals, camera changes, performance, music, and controls.

The $60 price tag doesn’t feel justified. While it may be more accessible for modern audiences, is a lesser experience overall by my standards.

(7.5 / 10)

Good

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher

The post Review: Until Dawn (Remake) appeared first on Rely on Horror.

When Capcom unleashed the first Dead Rising game in 2006, it utilized the hardware capabilities of the new console generation. It launched on the Xbox 360 and allowed for a more densely populated and immersive zombie survival experience previously not thought possible. On top of the great technical accomplishments of the game, it allowed players to sink themselves into an interactive zombie survival experience similar to one of the most famous and influential zombie films of all time, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

Although the first game in the series had its rough edges, some strange technical hiccups from time to time, and a difficulty level that was higher than many were expecting, as games were starting to shift to become more passive, cinematic experiences at the time, its charm generally shined through and it stood the test of time. As the series continued and many more Dead Rising games were released, many fans of the series still clamored for Capcom to bring the series back to the general feel and clunkiness of how it felt in the first game, but the series never went backward in this regard.

Flash forward to 2024, and Capcom announced they’d be doing a full rebuild and remaster of the original Dead Rising on modern consoles and PC, being re-created from the ground up in the powerful RE Engine and sporting a ton of new features and improvements over its original version. The early reports and previews (including our own) showed that the new remaster aimed to improve many things from the original without changing most of its core features or tone overall.

Now that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster has arrived and we’ve spent a great deal of time at the newly facelifted Willamette Mall, we can assess whether this remaster faithfully updates the original or treads too far away from its source material.

If somehow you’ve never played the original Dead Rising, it’s a third-person sandbox-style zombie survival game with tight time mechanics and objectives, hundreds of different items and things to interact with, and dozens of zombies on screen at once at most times. None of these core elements have changed with Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, even though many of them have slightly changed as a result of some of the quality-of-life improvements.

So instead of spending too much time covering how the original game plays, we’ll focus on the improvements or changes and whether they turned out to be a good thing or something that may be a detriment to the experience.

Visuals

Starting with the improvements, one of the first things to mention is the updated visuals, which have been completely rebuilt and upgraded. This includes new textures, models, user interfaces, lighting, and almost everything else you see being improved in some way. This is generally a very positive thing across the board, and it makes the world feel just a little bit more immersive, but it admittedly does lose just a tiny bit of its original charm of feeling like a late PS2-era game with slightly simplistic visuals overall. In the end, it will really come down to personal preference as to whether this will greatly impact your game experience negatively or positively.

The revamped visuals do end up making some sections of the game that take place at night feel much darker as a result of the updated lighting effects, to where some areas do feel slightly too dark, even with the brightness of the game turned up higher than the default setting. These are the only parts of the new visuals that felt like just a slight downgrade from the original, but again, how much it affects your experience will be down to preference or your monitor setup.

Gameplay

As far as the upgraded game mechanics, this is where many old fans may be split on the release since the massive amount of quality-of-life improvements in the gameplay makes your trips through Willamette much less challenging and smoother around the edges. The addition of being able to fast-forward time and skip conversations makes the game much more streamlined and less clunky overall, taking out some of the difficulty and patience required to get through Frank’s adventure.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster also auto-creates checkpoints every time you enter a new area of the mall, making getting through difficult sections or psychopath encounters much less frustrating since you can just reload the checkpoint from usually only a few minutes back if you happen to fail. For those who enjoyed the tension and frustrating elements of the original game, this may affect your enjoyment to some degree, or you may find yourself enjoying it more because of this. I found this a refreshing and fun way to go through the game, with less meticulous planning and precision execution required to complete many of the encounters.

Improved navigation and UIs, improved control elements including being able to move while aiming, a dedicated dodge roll command, new weapons and magazines, and lots of other features round out the experience to feel more like a modern action-adventure game, but I’d still argue it doesn’t hold your hand too much. Some of these options can be turned off in the options, allowing you to tailor your experience, to a degree, but others are simply built into the new experience and cannot be disabled.

Audio

As far as the audio, thankfully all the classic sound effects and music are still exactly as they were in the original game, but the voice acting has been re-recorded entirely, and I can’t say it’s for the better. Most of the performances are very straight and maybe a little too dramatic for their own good, in a game that clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The majority of the quirky charm of the original voice acting is lost, and those who enjoyed watching the cutscenes may be disappointed. I’d argue that the voice acting is one of the least important aspects of the experience overall, even if there’s a lot of additional voice acting here, since all the radio calls and survivor conversations are fully-voiced now, but it’s still of relatively little consequence, as you’ll generally be immersed in the gameplay, anyway.

In addition to the original music, you can now change the main mall music to whatever you want, including many new downloadable options featuring songs from other Capcom games, which are paired with all of the game’s new Capcom-themed costumes. It’s a fun little option if you just want to add to the silliness of some of the new costumes, especially the ones from Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Megaman, and others.

It would have been nice if they had included an option to return to the original voice acting or visuals, but this isn’t the case, even though there is a costume that brings back Frank’s original 2006 character model. However, If you still want the original experience, you can play it on any of the many platforms where it is now available.

Performance

As far as the general performance, it’s a solid positive across the board, as we were able to test the PS5 version as well as the Series X and Series S versions, and all ran at a solid 60FPS across the board, despite the improved visuals, and this makes a game like Dead Rising much more playable and enjoyable, essentially eliminating any of the small technical hiccups that would occasionally appear in the original version.

Another major bonus factor of the performance is the speed of the modern consoles’ SSD hard drives, which makes the load times in DRDR nearly non-existent, and it makes the whole flow of the game much more enjoyable as a result. After having played through the original game within the last few months, the difference is night and day, even when running the 2016 re-release versions on PS4 and Xbox One.

Conclusion

Overall, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster makes the original game far more accessible to a much larger and more modern audience. Players who appreciate those new elements will absolutely fall in love with this remaster. The $50 price point is a bit steep for what is technically a remaster and the new elements may hold back some older fans from picking it up on a whim, but it’s a great new way to experience the game for those who are open to it.

This new version makes one of the most unique games of its generation that much more enjoyable and gives Dead Rising fans a new way to experience a classic, with not much to dislike.

(9 / 10)

Amazing

Rely on Horror Review Score Guide

Review codes for PS5 and Xbox Series were provided by the publisher.

The post Review: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster appeared first on Rely on Horror.