Grave Gamer News & Views — horror

Look Inside The Evil Within… Within These New Screens

So, people have been asking me, “Hey, The Red Herb, what do you think about Resident Evil’s creator doing up another horror game?”

And I reply, “You know, we’ll see how it goes.  It’s got a lot of promise but you’ve got to factor in that an untested development team is working on it.  We’ll play it by ear for now, but it looks pretty interesting.”

It’s important to play the neutral ground as a journalist.  I personally know about three internet writers living on the streets this very moment because the words “Duke Nukem Forever” and “Game of the Year” wound up in the same sentence before its release.  It also helps that I become a pathological liar whenever someone directly asks me a question.

But, of course, my internal dialogue is more along the lines of, “SHINJI MOTHERFUCKIN’ MIKAMI IS DIRECTING IT.  Asking me if I’m excited for The Evil Within is like asking me if I’d be somewhat pleased with a set of winning lottery numbers, marrying an amalgamation of Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Emma Stone, and a lifetime supply of Oreo Cakesters.”

“Oh, hey, the creator of your favorite video game series ever is returning to survival horror with a next-gen game that looks just like your favorite video game series ever.  Any thoughts?”

John Carpenter Interested in a Dead Space Film?

With a sixty-five year resume spanning the likes of The Thing, Escape From New York, Christine, and the original Halloween, I don’t have to explain to you why director John Carpenter is a silver screen legend. 

Carpenter has some crazy range when reviewing his career – films like They Live and Big Trouble in Little China prove just how far out there the filmmaker’s mind goes – but his cinema doctorate is undoubtedly in horror.  So as a former twelve-year-old entranced, excited, and terrified by this man’s many instant classics (Prince of Darkness will alter your moral fiber), an internal geek-bomb goes off when I hear John Carpenter is interested in making a Dead Space movie.

A longtime supporter of video games and their unbound potential for storytelling, Carpenter likens the appeal of Visceral Games’ survival horror title to 1979’s Alien (a hit-you-in-the-eye-it’s-so-apparent influence on the games).  “The first game was more - I guess it was like Alien - but not quite.  It was a little different than that,” says Carpenter.

“I maintain that Dead Space would just make a great movie because you have these people coming onto an abandoned, shut-down space ship and they have to start it up and something’s on board.  It’s just great stuff.”

Way back when the first Dead Space game was making waves, a feature film was being optioned with director D.J. Caruso attached.  Formerly, Caruso worked on the Shia LaBeouf vehicles, Disturbia and Eagle Eye.  That deal eventually lapsed and fans’ dreams of seeing Shia step into Isaac Clarke’s rig – I can’t even finish that sentence; nobody fucking wanted that.

Dead Space has found its gore laden way into just about every avenue of media – comics, novels, animated films, toys – but hasn’t carved a path through Hollywood yet, and Dead Space 3’s less than stellar sales do little to endorse an adaptation.  That hasn’t deterred Carpenter, though.  “I would love to make Dead Space, I’ll tell you that right now,” he says.  “That one is ready-made.”

Shinji Mikami’s Return to Survival Horror: The Evil Within

Shinji Mikami’s game designing career can easily be called eclectic, but most hold him responsible for inflicting the interactive nightmare that is Resident Evil upon us.  Now, he’s back with his own studio, Tango Gameworks, to scare the living shit out of us again.

Billed as a “supernova of horror,” The Evil Within centers on a Detective Sebastian’s struggle against grotesque monsters (like the multi-armed freaky-deaky above) as the world twists, morphs, and falls apart around him.  Those long missed totems of survival horror – limited supplies, deadly traps, heavy puzzle solving, oppressive darkness – are all at play and in full force here.

You’ll be able to do better than just cry at your pursuers, though, as it’s promised the game will be an equal infusion of action and terror.  Besides blasting enemies into the ether (when you can find bullets), you can use their lethal traps right back at them.  How can you not love that?

The Evil Within is locked in for a 2014 release on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 as well as “next generation consoles."  Looks like survival horror ain’t dead after all…But how could it ever die?

Check out its first trailer hereabouts.

averagejoeart:

Huge fan of the “Dead Space” video game series. Wanted to do something to coincide with the release of the 3rd game a few weeks ago. The whole illustration took somewhere around 8-9hrs to complete.

For those interested in a print, please visit.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/123343093/dead-space-isaac-clarke-original-print 

Damned gorgeous.

Pin-Up: Resident Evil by Ed Benes