Resident Evil 5

"More and more I find myself wondering if it's all worth fighting for. Maybe one day, I'll find out."

An awful lot of games can trace back some of their DNA to Resident Evil 4, the third-person, over-the-shoulder survival horror that managed to merge the old with the new. Despite not quite liking how it feels to play and still stumbling to get to grips with it, I can see how it shines to many people.

But how do you follow RE4? Do you lean into that new control scheme, even if it means pushing the gameplay towards the action genre, potentially bringing you a new audience, but perhaps irking some of your old fans? Do you play it safe and stick with what works, tweaking what needs tweaking to keep everything up to date?

Resident Evil 5 had some big footsteps to follow, and from what I can tell, for every player that thought it succeeded, there's another player who thought it didn't. Maybe they should buddy up and work things out together in the scorching heat of a bio-terrorized Africa.

Left 4 Dead 2

Dude, haven't we been here before?

Less than a year after Left 4 Dead came Left 4 Dead 2, and there's probably some pun we could make about dealing with one group of zombies only to turn around and walk right into another, or that the dead aren't easy to kill, or that's always more where that came from.

I have a history of not liking it when this 1001 list says we need to play what are essentially identical games, especially sequels. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a sequel to Metal Gear Solid, but despite their similarities, you can find a whole bunch of reasons to put both forward as must-play titles. Halo 3 is a sequel to Halo 2, but we've got a harder time of things now, though 'finishing the fight' might be enough to sway it. Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to Left 4 Dead and it has, let's see... daylight, melee weapons, a few new monsters.

So who should we leave behind, this game or the first one?

Siren: Blood Curse

"Is this some kinda joke for TV?"

Source // PlayStation

Spooky horror games aren't my thing, but Siren: Blood Curse intrigued me for its approach to the genre. I've got this PlayStation 3 title through a PS Plus subscription, where it downloaded a whole bunch of episodes, rather than an individual game. Is this game a wannabe TV serial?

Set in a mysterious Japanese village where all kinds of 'not right' is taking place, Blood Curse follows the story of a few characters episode by episode, giving players plenty of perfect opportunities to take a breather and gather their wits once more, and the game itself an opportunity to stand out in bite-sized chunks.

Could this horror game actually win me over, simply because it is presented in an unusual way for a game? Let's find out.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

"Cheeki Breeki!"

When your most important survival tool is a rusty bolt, you know you're living in some sort of Hell. When you're playing the prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, you practically confirm it.

Not much has changed between Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl. The world is still full of other-worldly artefacts and an awful lot of radiation, death can still come for you before you know it, but entire factions are vying for control over whatever is left, and you're in the middle of it all, a walking anomaly.

I didn't have the most successful of times in Shadow of Chernobyl, but I was intrigued by what it tried to do. Is the expandalone story of Clear Sky an easier entry point into this harsh universe, or just more of the same?

Get your bag of bolts ready and we'll find out.

Left 4 Dead

"Dude, where's my thumb?"

Sometimes it feels like the world may be heading towards a zombie uprising. There are an awful lot of braindead individuals out there, that's for sure. What would it take for them to work together for the greater good? Co-operation, for starters, and an intelligent leader to push and pull everything in the right direction.

Co-operating can be hard for some, however, so we should probably get some practice in playing first-person survival horror shooter Left 4 Dead, where a handful of citizens have to rely on each other to wade through the onslaught that lay between them and their survival.

Can you wade through an onslaught, or do you wade through the blood and guts that come out of that onslaught? I'm not sure. Let's find out.

Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

Remember your rule of thirds now...

I don't appear in a great many photos. I prefer to be captured unexpectedly, in my natural state. Anything posed and co-ordinated is forced, serving more as a piece of evidence that something happened or someone was there. It feels cold and uninspiring, and so I suppose I'd rather be behind the camera taking the kind of photos I want to see. Also, as every cameraman will tell you, you are invincible behind a camera, and nothing can ever hurt you.

That's demonstrably false, but it's the comfort you'll need when playing Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the next survival horror title of the series famed for giving you a magical camera as your one and only defence against ghostly horrors of the past.

Last time out, in Fatal Frame II, I thought it was interesting enough to warrant a look. It was certainly different from anything I was familiar with. What's changed as we move onto the Nintendo Wii?

Dead Space

No-one can hear you scream. Or speak, even.

Survival horror is not my favourite genre of video game, not by a long shot, but since playing a fair few titles for this 1001 list, I've got more of an understanding about what it is that fans of the genre admire. 

Most of my issues with these games are the limiting controls, be they because of hardware limitations on the early consoles, for example, or design choices to keep you on your toes, and not let you get on top of your surroundings.

Resident Evil 4 was a turning point for the way the genre was presented and, importantly, controlled. It was easier for new players to grasp and it was still just as spooky to play as any other survival horror game, but for me, it was still a bit of a slog. I liked the over the shoulder camera, but not the controls that go along with it, even knowing they're a vast improvement over earlier titles.

What I need is Resident Evil 4 with a bit of refinement. And a plot that isn't too bonkers. And maybe set it somewhere that isn't brown? What's Dead Space?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

"Get out of here, Stalker."

As of 1986, 'Chernobyl' means only one thing, and it doesn't matter when you were born, you know what that thing is. The exclusion zone is still home to life but not quite as we know it, and the mysterious nature of an entire city being effectively frozen in time and swamped in radiation inevitably leads to other-worldly stories.

Video games are no stranger to the call of Chernobyl. We've already gone through the eery stillness in one of the greatest levels in video game history in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and now, sort of via a book and film, comes S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, an alternate reality first-person survival horror game set in a region where nothing is quite as it seems.

Do we have what it takes to survive?

Prey

"The world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told."

Video games and physics. Some games strive for realism and try their best to keep you grounded. Other games just don't care. Somewhere in the broad middle are games that have consistent, reliable physics, even if they are different from the values we're familiar with outside of video games.

So long as these predictable values stay the same, a game can make use of these 'strange' physics to give us a variety of experiences, from the wacky levels of Psychonauts to the mind-bending, portal-traversing, out-of-body moving Prey, a first-person shooter that will have you questioning what 'first-person' even means.

Tommy is dissatisfied with his life. He wants to venture out into the wider world. Unfortunately for him, higher powers have different plans...

Resident Evil 4

"I knew you'd be fine if you landed on your butt."

If there's one thing I know about the Resident Evil series, it's that Resident Evil 4 marks an incredibly important - indeed pivotal - moment. The switch from fixed cameras to an over the shoulder point of view. Finally, the gaming public would be able to play a survival horror title whose horror wasn't the controls.

This revolution wasn't enough to interest me to play it back in 2005. I had practically zero interest in anything Resident Evil, no matter how you were able to look at it, and in the decade and a half since that view has changed little. Well, no, I take that back, because I have seen some nice Resident Evil stuff thanks to this 1001 list, but I haven't dropped everything to carry on playing like I have with, say, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Which must tell us something about my gaming tastes...

Leon S Kennedy is a man on a mission in a muddy brown Europe, one that we can see from all kinds of new and exciting angles. Where are the zombie dogs going to jump out at us from this time, eh? Their jobs just got a lot harder, that's for sure.

F.E.A.R.

First Encounter Assault Recon

If there's one thing we know about fear, it's that eventually, it'll lead to suffering. If there's one thing I know about F.E.A.R., it's that I've never played it, mostly because I wasn't too interested in the idea of psychological horror creeping into my FPS.

There are genre crossovers that not only work, but perhaps make sense, and horror witnessed through the first-person viewpoint is definitely one of those merges that live long in the mind - providing, I suppose, that the game that comes out of that merger does something worth remembering.

Does F.E.A.R. provide us with something worth remembering other than all the periods in its title?

Gregory Horror Show

I'd make a good what now? Sacrifice? I see...

There are complete unknowns in this 1001 list, and then there is Gregory Horror Show, a PlayStation 2 game with cube-y looking rats running a creepy hotel. I read that it is based on a CGI anime series, which still gives me no clues as to what might go on in this game, though I suspect it's scary. Or maybe funny. Perhaps both.

So, with absolutely no idea what to expect, let's dive in.

Manhunt

Viewer discretion is advised.

Manhunt. The game that made Grand Theft Auto look like a cartoon. A grungy, gritty game of brutal realism presented as a survival-horror snuff film. There just isn't anything like it, certainly not in late 2003.

To say it was controversial is an understatement. Those who had an agenda against video games now had the most obvious target under the sun. Those of us who actually played video games just had another third-person game where you take out faceless goons for good. It was turning the violence up to 11, yes, but it was nothing too new, was it?

Well, despite there being two games, both of which appeared on the PlayStation 2, I have never played them. I know of them (who doesn't?), but never really needed to play them. To see them some more, yes, definitely. I want to know what all the fuss is about. But playing them wasn't urgent or essential back then, and it hasn't been ever since.

Until now, when the 1001 list strongly suggests we must play Manhunt.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

Say cheee--eesssus Christ, look out behind you!

It wasn't long ago when we were saving the world as a photojournalist in Beyond Good & Evil. I wasn't a massive fan of the camera mechanics, thinking it slowed down and interrupted the gameplay a little, though I suppose a lot of that was optional, to some extent.

Here, though, our camera really is our weapon of choice. An otherworldly contraption capable of snapping pictures of things people can't even see. A device that can trap the souls and spirits of all the inhabitants of the afterlife. This is Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly.

Cameras at the ready...

Resident Evil Zero

"Zombies and monsters?"

I haven't got a clue where one Resident Evil ends and another begins. I know characters appear in multiple titles, under various guises, and so I assume at least some games follow on from an earlier one, but I don't know the series' timeline and how everything fits together.

Perhaps the release of Resident Evil Zero will make things easier for me. Taking place a day before the events of Resident Evil, we'll get to see something significant happen, I suppose. I don't really know. Is this even an essential game for the story or just a little sidenote for the fans?

Whatever it is, you know the drill:

Disaster Report

"June. 2005."

A list of 1001 must-play video games is not a list of the absolute best video games, but a guide through the highlights and pivotal releases in gaming history. The first of a genre, the next big leap, the game-changer, the definition of what it means to be a first-person shooter, or survival horror, or a multiplayer racer.

After those entries, it's about games that have stories that are best told through interaction, with characters as fleshed out as those you'll find in film and television. It's about games that look unique or have soundtracks that defined a generation.

And then after all of that, when there's still a handful of gaps in the list, it's about putting in Disaster Report because nobody has bothered to take the disaster genre into videogaming.

I wonder why...

Silent Hill 2

Now with added fog!

The hills are alive with the sound of radio static and the heavy footsteps of James Sunderland, a man with a lot going on in his head right about now. Silent Hill 2 looks, at a glance, to be more of the same. More deserted towns, more nightmarish horrors, and, thanks to the increased power of the PlayStation 2, more fog.

It looks grim, grey and grainy. It frankly looks great. I didn't play anything like this back on the PS2. The games I played looked crisp and saturated, and you could see things further than twenty feet in front of you. But that's not what the Silent Hill series is about, is it?

Resident Evil - Code Veronica

"Don't think you can count on me in the future. Now get out of here!"

I can barely see what's going on too

Looking back, briefly, over my posts on Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2, I am reminded of two things: how awfully these games have aged in terms of controls, but how well they hold up in terms of their concept. I absolutely sucked trying to play them but wanted to see more in both cases, and with remakes for both, there was probably a version out there for me that'd just fit my wants and needs and allow me to enjoy these games.

Enter Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, a game that is a spin-off and a true sequel, depending on who you ask, that takes Resident Evil into the third dimension properly this time. Gone are the pre-rendered backgrounds of yesteryear, replaced by the very best in muddy, depressing concrete-coloured areas that the systems of the day could manage.

Will the new looks mean better gameplay? Will the story be as bonkers as ever? Will the voice acting be poor? It's time to pick a version of Code: Veronica and find out.

Oh, and remember...

Silent Hill

Where could Cheryl have gone?

Horror isn't exactly my thing. Surviving is something I'll do if I have to but otherwise isn't really my thing either. Survival horror as a genre then isn't what I'd call 'my cup of tea'. However, this isn't a list of games that are my cup of tea, it's a list of 1001 games I ought to have played before I can no longer drink tea, and my eyes continue to be opened with survival horror Silent Hill.

You are Harry Mason, a skinny dude with no useful skills relating to surviving or dealing with horror, save for empathy and devotion to finding a missing child. A noble cause for a normal man, but unfortunately for Harry it's all going to take place in the supernatural fog-covered titular Silent Hill, a town empty of people, but full of horror.

How's this one going to pan out...?

Resident Evil 2

What have we got here?

Horror isn't my thing. I've seen some stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's a genre that I can happily let others play around in. It's surprising that I got through more of Resident Evil than I thought I was going to, but I was still nowhere near close to knowing what it means to survive all this horror.

Enter the sequel then, Resident Evil 2. The Zombies return. The day is to be saved once again. This time, we're not confined to a mansion, but a city. Probably a small one, I don't know yet.

Before we find out, know that the warnings are out again:

Good to go?