Stacie Ponder

Learn Your ABCs With Our Video Game Horror Alphabet Book

Editor’s note: Happy Halloween! We’ve prepared a special treat (or is it a trick?)—our horror games reporter Stacie Ponder and editor Chris Kohler teamed up to bring you this special ABC book starring your favorite horror game pals (with sincere apologies to Edward Gorey). Stacie did the wonderful illustrations (tons of work), Chris wrote the…

Ubisoft’s New Thriller Transference Isn’t Very Thrilling

It is spooky to traverse through the simulated reality of the psychological thriller Transference, but it feels like countless spooky experiences I’ve had before. Scientist Raymond Hayes has created the means by which a human consciousness can be uploaded to a digital simulation. To test his experiment, Hayes uploaded the brain data of himself, his…

State of Decay 2‘s Daybreak DLC Is Fun But Fleeting

In State of Decay 2, players manage a ragtag group of survivors as they gather resources, use resources, and waste resources, as well as complain and fight off zombies. In the game’s DLC Daybreak, out this week, base-building and citizen micromanagement are put aside in favor of pure zed-killing action. Daybreak is an independent co-op…

The Best Horror Game Weapon Is A Flashlight

What’s your favorite horror-game weapon? Pistol? Crossbow? Flamethrower? While I enjoy the feeling of security that comes from wandering a dark hallway with a spiked baseball bat in hand, I enjoy walking down a not-dark hallway even more. And so I would like to pay tribute to the oft-unsung MVP of the horror game protagonist’s…

Just when you thought he was dead, Jason Voorhees has one more surprise: the long-awaited dedicated servers rolled out this week for Friday the 13th on PlayStation 4. According to publisher Gun Media, Xbox One players will receive the update once it passes certification.

Haunting Ground‘s Daniella Is One Of Gaming’s Most Chilling Horrors

By the mid-2000s, Capcom was rightly considered a formidable creator of horror games thanks to venerable series like Dead Rising, Dino Crisis, Devil May Cry, and Resident Evil. But one of its best horror games never spawned a series and wasn’t a critical or commercial megahit. The 2005 PlayStation 2 game Haunting Ground is a…

The Top 10 Zombies In Video Games

Zombies have been integral to horror games for decades now. Whether we’re doing a solo crawls through a haunted mansion, a fast-paced multiplayer kill-fest, or just side content in a first-person shooter series, the undead seem to be the one bad guy we can’t get enough of. Many of these zombies are variations of a…

Rest In Pieces, Friday The 13th: The Game

Last month, the ongoing legal battles over the rights of the Friday the 13th franchise caught up with the game, bringing its development to a halt. New content was “unfeasible now or in the future” due to the lawsuit, the game’s publisher said. Unlike Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th ain’t coming back. It’s a terribly…

I Hated Until Dawn‘s Emily, Until We Were Fighting For Our Lives

Until Dawn is one of gaming’s greatest love letters to horror movies. It conforms to and subverts the slasher paradigm so well that it often feels like playing through a long-lost classic film from the sub-genre’s early-80s heyday. It’s creepy, atmospheric, gory, and occasionally goofy. The game is at its most shocking, however, when it…

The Exorcist Makes For A Creepy-As-Hell VR Game

For all the pea soup-laden razzle-dazzle of its most memorable moments, the 1973 film The Exorcist does not lend itself easily to a video game adaptation. On the surface, it’s about a 12-year-old girl possessed by the demon Pazuzu. At its core, however, it’s an exploration of science and religion, puberty, and man’s struggle for…

State Of Decay 2: The Kotaku Review

It’s easy to get in over your head in the open-world zombie survival game State of Decay 2 A call for help came in over the radio, and my follower and I set out for a nearby farmhouse. We had plenty of ammo, full health, and brand new melee weapons. The sun was shining brightly.…

Silent Hill 2‘s Pyramid Head Was Pure Sexual Terror

By the time I got to the elementary school in Silent Hill, I was so scared that I had to turn off my PlayStation. If those little grey children with their little baby butcher knives were too much for me to handle, well, frankly I’m surprised I didn’t suffer a full-on nervous breakdown the first…

Dead Secret Is A Short, Spooky Murder Mystery

I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve seen more episodes of Murder, She Wrote than is healthy for someone under age 70. I’d like to think that the hours I’ve spent watching Jessica Fletcher do her thing have made me an expert in being a busybody and in solving crimes. How fortuitous, then, that the…

The Golden Age Of Bad Movies Based On Horror Games

I’ve played horror video games so scary they aged me beyond my years. I’ve watched horror movies so scary they had me hiding under a blanket like a child. But I’ve never seen a horror movie based on a video game that’s made me do either, and that’s a shame. Gamers who love horror have…

Resident Evil‘s Window Dogs Set The Standard For Video Game Scares

Horror movies and video games have been my passions since I was a wee bonnie lass, but I didn’t know they could coexist until the day in 1996 that I found Resident Evil on a shelf at Blockbuster Video. I was looking for something to rent for the weekend, and it seemed right up my…

Sure, It’s Made Of The Corpses Of Your Victims. But Is It Art?

One of the most enduring character archetypes, one that adds a zesty burst of horror to any game, is the psychotic artist. You know the type: the dapper, urbane, well-spoken aesthete who values art above life and moans about critics who simply don’t understand their brilliant work. No one truly appreciates their genius, therefore they…

Stardew Valley Is Definitely A Horror Game

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a seasoned consumer of all things horror, it’s that situations are rarely as innocent as they seem. Dolls will spring to life and kill you. That big, beautiful house you got for a steal is haunted. You know how it goes. I let my guard down with Stardew…

Tuesday’s update to Friday the 13th: The Game brings a new map, a new killer, and changes to item spawns Pinehurst Youth Development Center and Jason impostor Roy Burns both hail from the controversial Part V: A New Beginning. Beware Roy’s garden shears…and those damn enchiladas

Slayaway Camp‘s Cute Pixels Hide Brutal Horror

I’ve slaughtered countless camp counselors in Friday the 13th. I ate truly disgusting stew in Resident Evil 7. But the most brutal game I’ve played so far this year is Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut, an isometric puzzle game released for PC and mobile in 2016 and recently released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Players…

A patch for Friday the 13th rolled out earlier this week that fixes bugs and adds new content, including playable survivor Fox, the feisty biker from Part III. Changes have been made to Tommy Jarvis “to emphasize [his] hero attributes and goals” and encourage players returning as Tommy to help counselors in need.