Monster Mania is a weekly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming. There is no other way to put it; the fine folks of Red Hook Studios are nothing short of masochists, sycophants to eldritch horrors behind the crushingly dark hardcore RPG series Darkest Dungeon. The original game was a maddening slice of rogue-lite perfectionism that thrust players into the darkest depths of dungeons and pummeled them into submission at every turn. And while the game’s sequel ditches the traditional dungeon crawl aspect in favor of a treacherous caravan mini-game, Red Hook Stu ..read more

Gears of War is the kind of game where you character is so strong and well-armed that it doesn’t seem possible to feel afraid. I mean, the protagonist, Marcus, is just a wall of muscle. He uses a machine gun that is also a chainsaw. What’s to be afraid of in this bloody shooter? Well, the developers in the game felt the need to inject some horror into the experience, using an early boss fight to add a sense of vulnerability into the game. The Berserker fight is an excellent demonstration on how, with careful design, you can spice up a shooter with a little terror. Up until this point, you’ve s ..read more

Monster Mania is a weekly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming. I don’t subscribe to the idea that spinoffs can damage a series’ legacy. And while it certainly helps when the legacy in question is one as storied as Resident Evil’s, I view spinoffs in the same vein as remakes of beloved films. Like remakes, spinoffs allow creatives to explore an established I.P. through a lens or design background that may significantly differ from those behind a series’ foundation. Does that always work?  An emphatic, “Hell no.”  Just look at the recent cluster fu ..read more

Monster Mania is a weekly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming. Stop me if you have heard this one before: An astrophysicist walks into a top-secret government facility to perform an experiment that accidentally opens a portal to an alien dimension, flooding the facility with hostile alien forces, and then a government-sanctioned black ops team shows up to murder your coworkers in an attempt to cover up the accident. /Scene. Half-Life’s Headcrab and their zombie ilk were the first monsters I covered for Monster Mania. So, yes, my love for Half-Life runs dee ..read more

King’s Field is one of the earlier games from the developers of Dark Souls. It’s probably not surprising to hear that it is very hard and unforgiving. It happily tosses you onto a hostile shore and leaves you to figure everything out. Besides a bit of guidance from a local fisherman, you’re on your own and will be for quite some time. It can feel downright unfair. It can be nerve-wracking due to how much danger is all around you that you know nothing about. But it can also feel inspiring with every successful step you take. Once the game begins, you find yourself on the coast of Melanat. If yo ..read more

Monster Mania is a weekly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming. Left 4 Dead couldn’t be a more straightforward shooter on paper. The player and up to three friends fighting through zombie-infested maps searching for safe houses are about as straightforward as objectives get. And yet, despite the game’s simplicity, 15 years later, Valve’s Left 4 Dead remains one of the most influential horror multiplayer games ever made, thanks to the game’s industry-setting standard approach to special infected.  One of the series’ most notable features is its A.I. dir ..read more

While I love horror, I also have a soft spot for Final Fantasy and RPGs. Especially turn-based ones. Being able to attack monsters at a slow, thoughtful pace was a tremendous help when I was learning to play games as a kid. While I’ve had some pulse-pounding encounters with many RPG bosses, there’s been very few instances where I felt anything like fear while playing an RPG. That said, there was a place I was afraid of while playing my very first RPG. Marsh Cave, the poison-drenched death trap from Final Fantasy still makes me hesitate every time I try to play that game again. While nowhere ne ..read more

Remnant 2 successfully delivered more of the same multiverse-hopping, Dark Souls-inspired third-person shooter action that its predecessor pioneered. Now, its first piece of major DLC sees players returning to the gothic world of Losomn, boasting new enemies, new weapons, and a new class type. While serviceable, I found that its somewhat lackluster offerings left me wishing for something more Soulslike than Souls-lite.  The Awakened King’s story revolves around The One True King, a semi-divine figure encountered in Losomn during the base game’s campaign. Left comatose by a failed assassi ..read more

Monster Mania is a weekly column celebrating the unique and varied monster designs in horror gaming. While describing most games as “repetitive” can be the kiss of death for them critically and otherwise, for roguelites, it is essential. What allows the genre to thrive in its repetitiveness is that even in death, something is still gained, often in a meta aspect of the game’s design.  In Hades, the player’s abilities continue to grow despite starting from square one upon dying. In Darkest Dungeon, the player’s camp retains its upgrades, making jumping back into the fray much easier. In Vo ..read more

The Immortal is a pretty funny name for a game that kills you as much as it does. While I’ve played many NES games that will happily snuff out your life in seconds, this one is somehow worse. Filled with cryptic puzzles, deadly traps, and challenging fights, it’ll take an incredible effort to see our frail wizard hero survive until the end. You’ll do so often and so fast that sometimes you might not even know what killed you. That proximity to death makes for a tense experience the whole time you play. It can literally all fall apart in an instant. You’ll likely have been playing for three sec ..read more