When I was eleven years old, I was obsessed with Alone in the Dark. It came on five 1,5 megabyte diskettes and featured a 1920s protagonist trying to escape a haunted mansion. The game scared the living bejeezus out of me, and disk five was broken, so in the tunnels beneath the mansion, it would freeze and lock up my mother’s pc, which honestly was the true scary part of the whole ordeal because man, she had accounting software on there.

This game was pretty much the last time I actively enjoyed playing a horror game – I steered clear of the genre because I’m a scared little boy. That is, until the Resident Evil 2 remake came out. This game – a, you guessed it, remake of a playstation era survival horror game – drops you inside a police station with limited ammo and less limited zombies swarming around you. It is creepy, atmospheric and one little change they did in the remake (having a giant unkillable creep in a trenchcoat patrol the narrow hallways) scared me shitless.

It was then I noticed something: Yes I am a scared little boy. But shitting bricks is kind of fun.

So this year, I’ve been catching up on the Resident Evil series, a gaming mainstay that’s been off my radar since it came out. It’s such a nice feeling discovering a slice of gaming that’s been around forever, and being wrong about it not being for me. I’ve finished a second playthrough of the Remake, moved on to three and four (which are also expertly remade, especially the fourth entry, an over the top campy action flick which goes all-in on the survival aspect of the genre), and then tackled the eight entry, Village, which is best described as “a potpourri of dumb Eastern Europe cliches but the vampire is a sexy giantess instead of Count Dracula”. It’s not really scary – except for the part where the protagonist looking for hissing missing wife and newborn stumbles into a house and this thing happens:

What the fuck is that? Who the fuck came up with this? Thanks for the nightmares, sicko. (Also please make another game right now)