Survival horror

The guys over at Renegade Kid and Southpeak Games have finally unveiled the official Dementium II website, and I'm going on record as saying it's quite creepy.

The new site (which replaces the teaser one from a month or so ago) starts out as a page for the title's fictional Bright Dawn Treatment Center for the Criminally Insane. There's nice classical music and lots of cheery looking photos, but clicking on the patient webcam is your first hint that something's amiss beneath the placid facade. Further clicking eventually reveals the real site, a bloody and gruesome page with details about the game's story, screenshots, and a webcam featuring staff dealing with one of the facility's numerous corpses.

The title is a sequel to the cult Nintendo DS first-person horror title, Dementium: The Ward. In this new outing players take the role of William Redmoor, the recipient of radical brain surgery at the institute. Unfortunately, said surgery doesn't seem to have worked as Redmoor is still seeing demons and now believes his doctor is out to get him as well. Work to uncover what's really happening at Bright Dawn by literally confronting his demons and trying to learn once and for all if he's truly insane.

Dementium II is set to make its North American debut on February 16th.

One of my favorite games of late 2008 was EA's Dead Space, a sci-fi survival horror title set on a spaceship overrun by mutant monsters. It was creepy and occasionally challenging, plus the main focus of the gameplay involved dismembering said mutant monsters with weaponry improvised out of tools found on the shit. Nothing quite says "awesome" like chopping limbs off an enemy with a tractor beam gun that shoots whirling saw blades...

It's no secret that developer Visceral Games is hard at work on a sequel, but until recently details have been fairly scarce. That's changed with the debut of this eight minute interview segment over at Game Informer's website. I have to admit, EA does great promo videos for their titles--this and the countless Dante's Inferno developer diaries they've shared over the course of the past year are fantastic.

Anyway, the team talks about what players can expect from Isaac's second battle with the Necromorphs. I'll not spoil everything, but the game appears to be shaping up as an organic advancement to what Dead Space started. The crew talks about new weaponry and a new suit for Alex, how the story will tie into the ancillary Dead Space franchise (which includes comics and an animated feature), and reveal that Isaac will speak in this outing.

No official word yet on when we might get our hands on this title, but rest assured that you'll read it here when it's announced.

Jump past the break to check out GI's video interview with the Visceral Games team.

Last week I posted news concerning the release of Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition, Capcom's downloadable add-ons to the popular survival horror title that debuted earlier this year. At the time, details were fairly scarce. That changed yesterday when the popular publisher issued a press release highlighting what gamers can expect when the new material becomes available next year.

The main component of the new content is going to be the side episode "Lost In Nightmares, which finds BSAA agent Chris Redfield working with his partner, Jill Valentine, as they investigate Ozwell E. Spencer's hideaway."

Details about the second episode content still haven't been revealed (all we know is that it has a March 4th release date), but they did unveil "a new refresh of Mercenaries Mode, The Mercenaries Reunion, gives players new playable characters and weapon load outs which provide players additional challenges as they aim to shoot down as many enemies as they can within a limited time."

If you enjoy playing dress up with your online avatars, then the addition of new costumes should also make you happy.

Capcom also announced that all of this content will not only be available for download, but also offered on disc. The physical media release will be called Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition and be available for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The kicker here is that both formats feature the entire game and the new content, so those who own RE5 would have to buy the game again.

Jump past the break for pricing details, the trailer, and release dates.

Survival horror games are everywhere these days, but that hasn't stopped developer Access Games from jumping into the pool with their newest title, Deadly Premonition.

The game, which is slated for release on the Xbox 360 in March of next year, has a decidedly Silent Hill feel to it in the new trailer. Gamers will take control of FBI agent Francis York Morgan, who's been sent to investigate a murder in a rural town. Naturally, some sort of supernatural shenanigans are going on and it's up to the decorated detective to get to to the bottom of it all.

The trailer does a nice job of selling the game's atmosphere while keeping the narrative shrouded in mystery. Early commenters have taken swipes at the title's graphics (which are admittedly a bit underwhelming for an Xbox 360 game), but as anyone who's been a controller jockey for years knows, gameplay trumps graphics. Unfortunately, we won't know how Deadly Premonition measures up in that category until later next year.

Jump past the break to check out the trailer. Be sure to check out the official website for more info on Deadly Premonition.

I first saw footage of Hudson Soft's survival horror game Calling like nine months ago. I then promptly forgot about it, which probably tells you how excited I was about what I'd seen. It wasn't that Calling looked bad so much as it looked like it took One Missed Call and about a dozen other Japanese horror films that I didn't enjoy and turned them into a game.

Don't believe me? Check out this excerpt from the synopsis:

"When tales of 'The Black Page' start circling, curiosity gets the best of you. Although 'The Black Page' is just an ink black website with an ominous hit counter, rumor has it that if you see 'something', you'll die within a matter of time of visiting and you'll be added to the death count."

Calling is a survival horror offering wherein the player takes on the role of different characters as the story overlaps at various junctures (think Pulp Fiction or Trick 'r Treat). The game has a new trailer that's turned up online today, and the guys over at Destructoid got some hands-on time with the title and have written some early impressions.

Destructoid's reaction is one of mild indifference, mostly because they feel the game is too simplistic and bound to become repetitive. Based on what I've seen and read, I'm inclined to agree. We'll all be able to find out if that assessment was accurate or not when the game releases sometime in spring 2010.

Follow me to the magical land beyond the jump for a look at the trailer.

Capcom, creators of the wildly popular Resident Evil series of survival horror games, invites Nintendo Wii owners to take a trip down memory lane this holiday season with the debut of Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil 0. The second release in the Archives series (the first was a port of the GameCube's Resident Evil remake) will have players killing zombies and collecting herbs on December 1st, 2009.

A prequel to the original game, Resident Evil 0 highlights the events before the STARS team's arrival at the mansion. Medic Rebecca Chambers is forced to team up with a convict marked for execution in order to find out why the dead are returning to life. Basically, if you ever wondered about the origins of the T-Virus, this is it.

It's easy to bag on the Wii for the amount of shovelware and ports that get approved for the system, but this is one instance where a re-release of an old game feels warranted. Resident Evil 0 was a game that a lot of people missed out on (it was a GameCube exclusive) and since the Wii's market penetration rate is far more impressive than the 'Cube's ever was, it seems likely that this title will find a receptive audience. Of course, other Mature-rated Wii titles haven't fared well, but this is Resident Evil...

This new version of the game features reworked controls and gameplay that will take advantage of the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities and will retail for the discounted price of $29.99.

Click past the jump to check out the new trailer.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I still haven't played Dementium: The Ward--a first person survival horror game on the Nintendo DS from back in 2007. I own a copy of the title, but my gaming backlog is the stuff of legend (I have over 100 games still in shrinkwrap...), but several of my colleagues who did manage to play it tell me it's a lot of fun and doesn't suffer at all from the DS's hardware limitations.

Developers Renegade Kid have returned to the dark and twisted world of the original game for their follow-up, Dementium II. The game's first trailer debuted at this year's E3, but the developers have released a brand spankin' new clip on Youtube for Halloween just so we don't forget the game is out there.

The sequel finds players taking on the role of William Redmoor. You've just undergone some experimental brain surgery to cure you of your mental illness and you're recovering at an Bright Dawn Treatement Center for the criminally insane (never a good sign...).

Unfortunately, your period of convalescence isn't a smooth one--soon you're seeing demonic monsters everywhere, and if that weren't bad enough, your physician (known only as The Doctor) wants to perform extreme experimental surgeries on everyone in the center. Can you kill the demons and stop the doctor's nefarious plan? You'll have to wait til sometime in the first quarter of 2010 to find out.

The graphics look surprisingly good for a 3D Nintendo DS game, and early previews indicate that the sound component of the game adds a great deal to the experience. Fans of horror who like to take their games on the go will want to keep an eye on this one.

Click past the jump to see the trailer for yourself.