Gamertell

Condemned 2 hits store shelves this week smashing together two no-brainers for gamers: frights and first-person combat. It’s a formula that’s looked tempting on paper for a number of developers over the years, and, from time to time, has led to some top-notch experiences. Here’s a short run down of other notable shots at the FPS horror sub-genre.

+Doom (MS-DOS, 1993)—Doom took a brooding, vivid depiction of hell, sprinkled in some fierce firepower and blew everyone away. It wasn’t just that it looked, sounded and played better than anything before, it also put you right in the middle of it. It seems like a foregone conclusion today, but the game’s message of immersion was so stark, it was frightening.

+Aliens versus Predator (Jaguar, 1994)—It wasn’t the $300 game to turn the masses on to Atari’s Jaguar platform. But those mysterious screenshots scared the crap out of a whole nation of game-magazine clutching 12-year-olds. Peering into that shot of darkness behind that ridiculous HUD, without a clue of how to fight aliens, predators or whatever was deeply disturbing experience. To this day, the game is fondly remembered across the Internet, but surely rarely played.

+System Shock 2 (Windows, 1999)—Before Ken Levine became a superstar with Bioshock, he built the Von Braun, a ship with a mystery and a ton of zombies. The game made the player feverishly grip his mouse as moans and unearthly bumps in the dark echoed down endless corridors. The only drawback was that all the leveling and menu-management could break the tension if you weren’t nerdy enough to suspend your disbelief long enough for a mend-weapon roll.

+Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (Xbox, 2005)—An under-the-radar classic, Dark Corners put the emphasis on sneaking around in the fog to clear up a number of unsettling mysteries. The New England fishing village of the game’s first half lays down such an eerie, fully realized setting that the WTF shootouts of the latter half seem almost plausible.

+Dementium: The Ward (DS, 2007)—In an interview with Jason Dobson on Joystiq,  Dementium developer Jools Watsham said, “The fact that you hold the DS screen(s) less than 12” away from your face makes it pretty much on par with a 42” screen viewed from 8 feet away.” But it might even be better than that. With a good pair of headphones, the ward really comes alive even if the repetitive gameplay leaves the experience a little flat.

Read: Trailers at QJ.net