Tag: Horror

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

Resident Evil has never been bigger with the overwhelming success of Resident Evil Requiem as well as the remakes and the hype buzzing around Zach Cregger’s new film reboot. So what happens when you try to be faithful to the games that started it all on a shoestring budget and a even more half-ass understanding of the source material then the Paul W.S. Anderson movies that came before?

Claire Redfield has returned to Raccoon City in search for her estranged brother Chris. Raccoon City is a near dead town overseen by the Umbrella Corporation. Chris, a member of the police’s S.T.A.R.S team is sent to investigate trouble in the Spencer Mansion in the Arklay Mountains while trouble begins in town. A sickness is spreading and Claire’s only companion is bumbling rookie cop, Leon Kennedy. Zombies, monsters, secrets-what is really going on in Raccoon City?

This movie frustratingly tries biting off more than it can chew by combining the stories of the first two RE games into one and fails pretty miserably at it. There are names and easter eggs galore from the games but none of it is implemented well. Chris is a smarmy pro Umbrella crybaby, Leon is a dumbass who only was only a cop because his daddy pulled strings, Wesker is a chilled out bro, and Lisa Trevors is a friendly ghoul secretly living in the orphanage. The shoestring budget is pretty apparent. The zombies, what very little their are, don’t even look like zombies, the monsters except for the licker look like they were ripped off of the sci-fi channel, and the city itself looks like a small town instead of a bustling city. There are a few great sets like the mansion and the police station that made me happy but feel really out of place. What makes this movie entertaining unfortunately is how unintentionally hilarious the movie comes across. There’s one scene Savior and I watched on repeat for almost twenty minutes because we couldn’t stop laughing- just watch the flaming zombie scene and thank us later. In the end, if you’re a die hard RE fan avoid this movie like the plague. If you want something to rip on with your friends and few beers, this is for you. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Empty Desk is launching on consoles this April!

JanduSoft ispleased to announce that The Empty Desk, a psychological thriller developed by Cheesecake Games, will be released on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. In this narrative-driven adventure, players step into the shoes of Detective Thomas H. Bennett as he faces his final case before retirement, an investigation that quickly spirals into a disturbing journey where reality begins to fracture.

Set within the mysterious headquarters of Blackthorn & Co, The Empty Desk blends investigation, exploration, and psychological tension to deliver a gripping experience. As players uncover the secrets behind a high-profile death and a puzzling disappearance, they will navigate a haunting environment where every clue brings them closer to the truth… or further into the unknown.

The Empty Desk will launch on April 17 for €10.49 / $10.49, with a 20% launch discount for a limited time.

Immerse yourself in a psychological thriller with narrative adventure elements and unsettling details. Join Detective Bennett on his final case and uncover dark secrets in a world where reality bends and sanity wavers. The Empty Desk is the first chapter of the Detective Bennett: Solved Cases saga—a psychological thriller with narrative adventure elements and hints of horror. It immerses the player in a true crime story while exploring the effects of a mind trapped in a cycle of repetition and emotional burnout.

In this first installment, veteran homicide detective Thomas H. Bennett, just one week away from retirement, faces one final and unsettling case that could change him forever. As you delve deeper into the game, reality crumbles before your eyes.

Features:

  • A complete story you can finish: Between 2.5 and 3.5 hours of gameplay, designed to deliver the full experience from beginning to end.
  • Deep narrative: Follow Detective Bennett’s final mission as he confronts a homicide case that devolves into something far more unsettling and emotionally devastating.
  • Psychological exploration: The game tackles themes of mental health, emotional burnout, and workplace alienation through Bennett’s experiences and the dark mysteries of Blackthorn.
  • Tense atmosphere: Blackthorn offices are a changing, disorienting environment where reality distorts, and every step reveals new threats and secrets.

Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy’ Revealed at Future Games Show (PC, PS5, XSX, Switch 2)

“Remothered was the first game we developed at the very beginning of our journey, and after our experiences with A Quiet Place and Mafia: The Old Country, we returned to the series because we couldn’t accept seeing Remothered fade away,” said Stormind CEO Antonio Cannata. “We decided to make this game out of a strong sense of respect and responsibility toward Remothered and its community, who thought this project had been abandoned.”

“Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy will dig deep into the story and present new special skills that expand the gameplay pillars of Remothered,” said Game Director Antonio Cutrona. “While the game is a standalone experience that fans of old-school horror can dive right into and enjoy without playing the first two games in the series, it will offer the conclusion that long-time fans have been waiting years to play.”

The team at Stormind has also released the first in a series of three developer diaries celebrating the return of Remothered. In today’s new video, CEO Antonio Cannata and Game Director Antonio Cutrona talk about the feelings that motivated the studio to take up the project. They also discuss how the team is focusing on the franchise’s roots to bring a sense of closure to long-time fans, expanding on its established gameplay, story and challenges while throwing in some surprises for players new and old to discover. The dev diary is available to watch now on YouTube.

In Red Nun’s Legacy, players will enter a world where nothing is quite as it seems. Exploring a convent, you’ll need to use your wits to overcome disturbing revelations, secrets, and a twisted reality to learn the truth behind the Red Nun—all while surviving the relentless Stalkers preying upon you.

Named one of the scariest games of all time, the original Remothered: Tormented Fathers hooked fans with its twisting narrative and tense survival horror atmosphere when it debuted in 2018. Stormind Games has a strong pedigree for creating stand-out horror titles, including developing the first two installments in the Remothered franchise, developing 2024’s A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead from publisher Saber Interactive, and working with Behaviour Interactive. In 2025, the team co-developed Mafia: The Old Country with Hangar 13, bringing an immersive authenticity and cinematic atmosphere to its story.

Key Features

  • Survive Horrific Stalkers: Challenge your survival instincts by hiding and evading from the murderous Stalkers hunting you down, and even fight back in critical moments.
  • An Homage to Old-School Horror: Feel the atmosphere of this heartfelt love letter to third-person survival horror adventures of the past.
  • Harness Hypnosis Powers: Read objects to reveal forgotten memories, expose concealed passages, and reshape your understanding of the environment.
  • Explore a Richly Detailed World: Find clues and key items in a sprawling game world, and solve puzzles to access new areas and progress to the final revelation.
  • Uncover the Secrets of the Cristo Morente: Learn the forgotten story of the convent, the cradle where the terrifying myth of the Red Nun began.

Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy is available to wishlist on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store and GOG.com. For the latest news and updates from the game, visit remothered.com, and follow along on Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

About Stormind Games

Stormind is an independent AA studio creating original and licensed horror games for PC and consoles. The team is best known for the survival horror saga Remothered and A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, the first-person horror adventure based on the Paramount Pictures franchise. They also co-developed Mafia: The Old Country alongside Hangar 13 and 2K.

Nosferatu (2024)

So for the start of 2026, we got ANOTHER remake of Dracula. Why am I mentioning this in my review of the highly acclaimed Nosferatu remake? Well, in lot of ways, Nosferatu was the first mainstream adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel-so much of it follows the plot beat for beat. My money though, I always found Count Orlok more frightening and more terrifying than Dracula. I was incredibly pumped to see what Robert Eggers brought to the gothic vampire tale.

Thomas and Ellen Hutter are young newlyweds that are madly in love and excited to start their lives. Thomas is presented with a business deal that can set them up for a bright future, but must journey to he far off land of Transylvania to meet the wealthy Count Orlok at his castle to seal the deal. Leaving Ellen in the care of good friends, he sets off on the perilous, horrifying journey that fills him with unspeakable dread. Ellen is plagued with terrible nightmares of the Count, who unbeknownst to her, is coming for her as death and hysteria grips their lives. Can the fiendish Count be stopped?

Nosferatu is absolutely stunning to behold. Eggers made damn sure you feel like you’re watching a gothic fairytale play out. Bill Skarsgard’s transformation is nothing short of incredible; I wish we got to see more of his design because Orlok’s look is both beautiful and haunting. The cast is fantastic and bring Eggers’s passion to the movie. While I enjoyed it, I will say the movie is very slow burn. It’s over 2 hours and you do feel it. This also isn’t a movie full of action and gory kills, but instead drama and intense atmosphere. Also, the movie is very dark- literally. Thankfully my place is a basement with very little outside light, because I can see this being a hard watch unless you’re watching this movie in total darkness. My last complaint is the ending feels very disappointing, very anticlimactic given the stakes and scale of Orlok’s reign of terror. In the end, I did enjoy Nosferatu and if you can see in 4k or in theater, I highly recommend jumping on it. While it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, it’s undeniably a beautiful horror film made by talented, passionate people I do recommend checking out on a dark, cold, winter’s night. May the gaming god’s keep Orlok away.

Loan Shark Coming to Playstation 5 January 20th

Loan Shark is a game I have long wanted to play since I read about it on PC, and I am currently reviewing Xbox ( you will see it soon), and will now be out on PlayStation. In fact, depending on where you live, it is probably live now. Enjoy the details and the Xbox launch trailer below. ( I can’t find one for PS5)

In Loan Shark, players step into the worn boots of an indebted angler trapped in a cycle of obligation he cannot escape. A single night at sea, meant to be routine, becomes something else entirely. The water feels heavier. The silence stretches. And when the nets finally come up, they carry more than fish.

That is when you meet Cagliuso, a one-eyed, talking fish whose strange gift promises salvation. His offer is simple, almost reasonable. Too reasonable.

What follows is not a power fantasy, but a slow, unsettling negotiation where every gain seems to leave something behind. Time, certainty, morality — all become part of the exchange.

Drawing on classic “deal with the devil” storytelling, Loan Shark unfolds as a compact psychological horror experience focused on pressure, choice, and consequence. The sea becomes both workplace and threat, and the ticking approach of unseen creditors ensures that nothing ever feels truly safe. The horror lies less in what is shown, and more in what is implied — the sense that something is watching, waiting, and counting the cost alongside you.

Key Features

  • Compact yet memorable experience — A focused narrative horror adventure, approximately 30 minutes in length
  • Underwater eye-cam mechanic — Track bites from below the surface while eerie watchers lurk in the depths
  • Fish & gut gameplay — Catch fish and carefully gut them under pressure, missteps have consequences
  • Surreal dialogue & choices — Bargains from Cagliuso force players to weigh risk versus reward
  • Time pressure & looming threats — With creditors closing in, every second counts
  • Atmospheric psychological horror — A restrained, unsettling tone driven by sound design and implication

The Flies Inside

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and Yippie ki ay motherfuckers one and all! I bet this ain’t what you pictured a Savior gaming Christmas special, but here it is. On a day of love, family, and glad tidings, I wanted to talk about our own Torsten’s book, which debuted back in 2021, and in many ways, is the opposite of everything I just mentioned. So let’s look at The Flies Inside.

Charles Porter’s world has been shattered when his love, Remy Wade, commits suicide. Charles had never seen so many flies in his life. Riddled with guilt and longing, Charles descends into madness, unable to leave his shabby apartment for fear of the Vultures outside, leaving his only company to be the unending hordes of flies that promise him the impossible. But is Charles a victim or simply an evil getting his just desserts?

So Flies is Torsten’s debut as an author, and to his credit, he does do some things incredibly well. The book starts with a hard-hitting opening. The body horror is really damn gross and unnerving at times, and I genuinely wanted to know what the hell was really going on. He said he was inspired by Resident Evil 7 and The Shining movie; I can believe it. As for flaws, well, most of it is in the design of the actual book. There are no page numbers. The formatting is cramped, and the printing is small, so it’s physically hard to read. You can also see where the interior needed more work, as when it was printed, more care needed to be taken. The book is short, at roughly 160 pages. I’m torn on the length; I can see it being better if it were a little bit longer and drew out the relationship a bit more, and developed the pretty vanilla detective investigating Remy’s suicide. In the end, it’s a pretty solid first go at writing a book that I recommend checking out. You won’t find many books for $10 with this much heart despite its flaws. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Conjuring: Last Rites

The Conjuring: Last Rights is basically the perfect example of how to not make a AAA horror movie. As I do every year around my birthday, I crashed at @torstenvblog house, ordered pizza, and we watched movies. Nine this year to be exact, and I am sure you will be reading about the rest soon enough from him. This one, however, I insisted on writing about myself.

The movie itself mostly revolves around the Warren family and how Ed and Lorrain had a daughter, Judy. They had stopped their investigations for years by the time the Smurl family haunting had taken place, and they were focusing on Judy’s upcoming wedding.

This obviously has nothing to do with the Smurl house, but they did shoehorn Judy having visions and whatnot into this about the Smurl house and the demon that is haunting the family; they came from a mirror shown earlier in the movie connecting the Warrens and Smurls. This never happened in real life, by the way.

In fact, the entire movie never even bothers to make you care about the Smurl family. You spend very little time with them. The little kids are mostly shown running around, playing. The older kids scream a bit about how they can’t keep living like this, but outside of a few scenes, they never really show what this even is. We do get a couple of great scenes towards the end where one daughter finds a video from her birthday and is chased by a crazy ghost with an axe, and this is the same night we see the father molested by one. This, however, is after she screams about living like this; what was going on before then is very little that is even mentioned.

Even ignoring that I come from the same area as this Smurl house (I’ve literally driven past it more than once in my travels) and shared emails with people who lived there while working on a book and helping a friend with a podcast (decades of people who lived there have denied anything happening there, going all the way back to the 1980s) and even ignoring the fact I personally think the Warrens are probably frauds, the potental for this to be a good movie exist. The first two Conjuring movies are good. This movie, however, does everything wrong, and nobody should ever watch this pile of garbage. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Demonschool Playstation 5 Review

DemonSchool from Developer Necrosoft Games and publisher Ysbryd Games is a tactical RPG, and proudly wears its Persona and Italian horror roots on its sleeve. Thankfully, they sent me a copy to check out.

The combat is interesting; unlike most of these games, you won’t simply be moving a few squares, choosing an attack, gaining levels, and learning new skills. Every character simply knows the attacks they will know. You, of course, can learn new skills throughout the game, but these work like buffs. Your healer learns to weaken enemies, or your attackers can learn to also stun enemies, things like that.

Killing enemies will see them explode into blood

The other interesting thing about the combat is that you move in directions, not to spaces. This may sound odd at first, but it works out very well and creates an interesting dynamic. This becomes even more true when you realize characters like Namako will move through a group of enemies, stunning them just to end up on the other side of them. Faye can then attack that same group and create a combination attack with Namako.

Bosses are an entirely new situation

Bosses create an entirely new situation, however. They are all very large and have their own gimmicks to overcome. Many, if you stay in a certain zone for too long, will kill you in a single shot. This works in both directions, however, and trapping an enemy there will also kill them. Each boss has their own reason for existing and is part of the story attached to them.

Now you will notice I haven’t touched on the story yet, and that is intentional, as I don’t like to risk spoilers. You play as Faye, probably one of the only people left in the world who knows about a prophecy that demons will return to start the apocalypse. She journeys to this college on an island in an attempt to stop it. She teams up with Namako right away, another person with demon hunter blood in her family, despite her initial refusal. There are several tone shifts throughout the game, and they are all amazing.

The writing can be a bit cliché and silly at times, and it won’t be for everyone. The game, however, is a solid 8/10. The battles can be a bit redundant, but I enjoyed them. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) Review

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), the sequel to Beetlejuice (1988), is a movie I avoided for about a year. See, I have fond memories of the original, having seen it with my parents a long time ago. In fact, it is one of the first movies I remember watching with my dad that wasn’t named Godzilla. Hearing Michael Keaton say “Nice Fucking Model” while kicking over a tree will forever be etched into my head as probably the first time I heard the word in a movie. ( I laughed so hard he rewound the movie for me.)

Now I adore Jenna Ortega. I have always enjoyed her work. But I was skeptical about her playing this role because I wasn’t sure it was a role anyone could play. Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz is such a great character. I didn’t see her having an estranged daughter driving her nuts as something that could feasibly be pulled off. Boy, was I wrong.

There were some problems with making this movie that were pulled off well. For example, how do you have a haunted house while not bringing back the characters that played those ghosts? Well, you give them a happy ending. No, not that kind, you sickos. Lydia found a loophole between movies that let them move on. Have a main cast member who shall remain nameless, convicted of horrible sex crimes? You horribly kill him and make him a running joke of the movie.

I don’t want to go into in-depth with the story; this would bring us deep into spoiler territory. But I enjoy that Lydia and her daughter, Astrid, don’t get along because Astrid quite honestly doesn’t believe in ghosts. She thinks her mother’s life’s work is a scam. Of course, her grandfather and grandmother could confirm it’s true, but Gramps is busy bird watching, and Grandma is a crazy but job artist and nobody would believe her anyway.

This brings me to Delia Deetz, the ever-amazing Cathrine O’Hara. Look, I don’t really know what this woman is on, or not on, but this woman is just fantastic. She plays crazy as well as anyone in the business. Even better, she plays not crazy just as well. I am not even sure Delia is crazy; it might just be an act to sell art. That is the beauty of Cathrine.

Bottom line is this movie is as good as the original, and I hope we get a third, and it better be called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) Review

Christmas Bloody Christmas by writer/director Joe Begos, is a very odd slasher flick for me. It has all the staples of a slasher movie you would want: gory kills, campy acting that isn’t over the top, and a story that makes just enough sense to suspend disbelief but isn’t so far out there to make me just want to turn it off.

The story goes like this: a music store owner named Tori, played by the talented Riley Dandy, is convinced by her long-time employee, Robbie (the equally gifted Sam Delich), to blow off a Tinder date to drink and hang out with him instead. After a quick stop at the local toy store to visit some friends who have decided to stay late for a drunken sex filled night after hours at the store, they are off to the bar. The thing is, the toy store is where they are shown a somewhat creepy electronic Santa that is very popular because it does all the stuff a normal store Santa does, except it isn’t a real person. Personally, I took this as a shot at unfettered capitalism and how companies would rather get rid of an employee and use (quite literally in this case) repurposed military equipment to save money than hire an old man to play Santa.

At the bar, you can hear on the TV that there has been a recall on these Santas because some of them have been reverting back to their original programming. This obviously can’t mean anything bad for our drunk sex fiend friends back at the store, right? Yeah, they are about to get killed mid-coiatis. Tori and Robbie are leaving the bar around this time on their way back to Tori’s house, and assume they are just having a great time.

This, of course, leads to the eventual sex between our main characters, and this is where I need to give a shout-out to Joe. Movies like this tend to take sex scenes and turn them into an excuse to just show a ton of nudity for the sake of having nudity, and this is done quite well. Very little actual nudity ( and this is assuming you consider a thong nudity)

My only real issue comes down to the massive amount of false finishes with the villain. They start at around halfway through the movie, and I completely understand the concept of building suspense and building to a climax and building hope, etc. There does come a point when you are no longer building anything, and you are simply killing momentum for an audience.

I can only watch Mecha Santa get hit by so many cars or take so many shotgun blasts that “kill him” so many times before I don’t care if he gets up or not, and by the time Tori actually kills him, I didn’t care who died as long as the movie ended. I went from rooting for Tori to rooting for the movie to just end. I started out enjoying the movie, but by the end, I simply didn’t care. It isn’t the acting or even the story; it is simply a matter of how they chose to play it out. More deaths and fewer false deaths for Santa would have gone a long way. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.