Last week, the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo had plenty of new titles in the horror genre to check out on the show floor, and while in attendance, Daily Dead had the chance to get our hands on a few games that we’ll be sure to play with the lights off when they come out later this year.
Here’s a look at several notable horror game titles we spent some time with last week, including Outlast II, Let It Die, and Dead by Daylight.
Outlast II: First up is Outlast II, the first-person survival horror title from Red Barrels Games, which is a direct sequel to 2013’s Outlast. Playing investigative journalist Blake Langermann, you are separated from your wife, dropped into a strange situation, and must use clues to unravel a mystery involving the murder of a pregnant woman deep in the Arizona desert.
As the demo begins, I awake after falling down a rocky ravine. My vision blurred, I reach for my glasses and noticed a nearby video camera. Much like the original Outlast, large parts of the world take place in very dark areas, so it is essential to use night vision on the camera to see. Of course, this depletes the battery power of your camera, so you are in a constant search for more batteries and must ration the time spent actually using the device. As I make my way unarmed through a small, seemingly abandoned village, I discover several unsavory things: a bloody pile of body parts, a sacrificial altar, and figures in the darkness around me.
After some time I discover an old well, which I’m prompted to investigate. Suddenly, huge tentacles rise from the blackness and pull me in. Somehow I end up transported into an air vent, and as I am crawling around in the dark space, I finally break through and realize that I’m in some kind of school. A well-lit room complete with the 1980s classroom staple: the TV/VCR cart. I head out the door and back to the darkness of the hallway.
Now, this where it all goes to hell. Making my way through the obviously haunted and abandoned school, I am attacked. Breaking free from this person or creature, I find a way out of the school and into a cornfield. Earlier in the demo, I caught a few glimpses of people eerily watching me, but not interacting with me at all. Now, I am actively being hunted down, and just when I think I’m safe and out of harm’s way, I’m knocked down by an attacker who proceeds to slam a medieval axe between my legs. Looking down at Blake’s horrific wound that is shooting blood everywhere, it’s apparent that there will not be any children in his future and I’m left feeling a bit startled as the demo winds down.
Outlast II does a great job providing the player with lots of jump scares and creepy situations and environments, all while having a disturbing and original story. Look for it on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC this fall.
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Let It Die: Up next, from GungHo Online Entertainment is the free-to-play PlayStation 4 exclusive Let It Die. In what can best be described as an action-oriented hack-and-slash game, I start the demo in a decrepit amusement park wearing only underwear and a gas mask (not exactly typical). Walking towards the entrance of the park, I encounter a couple of mutated creatures, so I just dive right in and with a few calculated punches, my enemy’s head explodes in a bloody heap.
I continue on, scavenging the area and taking out a few more baddies. I finally find some clothes and a weapon called “Circular Saw Knuckles.” Let It Die has a wealth of different weapons and armor pieces allowing you to gather a battle set Frankenstein-style to use fairly quickly. Needless to say, the weapons and kills in Let It Die are super fun and do not let things like realism get in the way. For example, health is supplied by eating small animals found around the world, like frogs or rats. You don’t have to eat the little guys immediately if your health meter isn’t low, so you can just put that live animal in your pocket and save him for later when you happen to need a snack.
Fighting isn’t all about button mashing, either. Of course, you can charge an enemy with your weapon drawn, but as each encounter in the game awards you with XP (experience points), it pays to go the extra mile and use stealth to sneak attack your enemies, giving you critical hit points and access to different types of attacks. As you progress through the game battling these forces, a “rage meter” fills up, storing up to five charges, and once it’s full, you can unleash a rage move, which is a power move specific to whatever weapon you may have. Weapons aren’t always needed, as hand-to-hand combat is also an effective way to dispatch an enemy. In one instance, I use a pro wrestling move to dropkick a mutant before hitting him with a German suplex, completely crushing his head with a generous explosion of blood in what the game calls a “gore finish.” It is as cool as it sounds.
An interesting aspect of Let It Die is that when you do die, you must start over without any weapons or gear, alone and in your underwear once again. But your deceased character lives on in the game’s “death data”, which places an AI version of your old character as an enemy in other people’s games, and you receive a brief period of invincibility afterwards to allow you to get your bearings.
Also, players will find great replay value in each map, as some areas are randomly generated on every playthrough. I enjoyed the variety of what I saw in the demo, as there are plenty of great possibilities for mayhem when it comes to Let It Die.
Look for Let It Die when it’s released for PlayStation 4 in late 2016.
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Dead by Daylight: Lastly, we had some fun with Dead by Daylight, an asymmetrical four-versus-one multiplayer game with heavy survival horror elements. In what essentially is a slasher movie within a game, each matchup pits four random people playing as survivors in third-person view versus another random player taking on the role of a killer in first-person view. In the E3 demo, the killer was a character by the name of “The Trapper”, a rather large gentleman with a creepy doll mask and spikes sticking out of his shoulders. I only experienced this big guy during my demo, but I later learned that the full version of the game has multiple killer characters that players can choose to chase down victims.
In Dead by Daylight, the survivors cannot kill or harm the killer, they can only do their best to survive long enough to escape or be the last one standing when the round is over. Each round takes place within a defined area that is locked off, and when you’re a survivor, the main objective is to activate five generators. Once they are all repaired and started, you can make it out of the area or stay alive until the round ends. Sounds easy enough, right?
I begin the demo as a survivor in a spooky wooded area at night. There are plenty of places to take cover, so I carefully skulk my way through the environment. Then I hear a faint heartbeat. It grows louder and faster and is followed by a sudden music cue, meaning the killer is close! I make a break for it, but he takes a swing with his machete and gets me. I escape, now injured, as indicated by the status bar on the HUD (head-up display), which shows the health statuses of all survivors, whether they are injured, near death, or trapped in some way.
As much as it’s every survivor for themselves, teamwork definitely comes into play during Dead by Daylight. While running, I step right into a bear trap, which I could struggle to get out of, but a fellow survivor comes by and helps free me in much less time. The generators that require repairs can also be worked on alone or with a partner. They do, however, have a tendency to backfire, making a loud noise that obviously attracts the killer to your location.
Once you are actually caught by the killer, it’s not pretty. His objective, I gather, is to place the survivors on giant meat hooks hanging all over the area, and when you die, as I did, you are swallowed by large tentacles that impale and take your body. But you are able to survive injured for much longer than I expected. I had been stabbed multiple times and was placed on the previously mentioned meat hook before being saved by a fellow player. While injured, though, the body of the character reflects the level of injury by how well you can function, whether you’re limping, crawling, or just lying there bleeding out.
Playing the killer is as much fun as you would expect, as you get to stalk your victims in an unrelenting assault. Although as the killer you’re faster than the survivors, they are more nimble, so it takes you longer to move around objects, allowing them a few seconds to escape. That’s where your traps come in handy. Playing the killer, I have a special vision that allows me to see infrared outlines of all the meat hooks in the area, as well as any of the bear traps I laid down. Once the survivors are trapped, it is much easier for me to grab and carry them over to my old friend, the meat hook. Once stuck on the hook, the survivor has a certain amount of time to struggle off of it before being consumed.
Dead by Daylight has a lot of style and is a must-play for any fan of the horror genre. The game was released on the first day of E3 and is currently available on PC through Steam.
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