Top 10 Worst Survival Horror Games

Yeah…Resident Evil 6 is in here somewhere. As always this list is made up of games I have played only so its missing some of the more famous bad ones (Friday the 13th?). What really surprised me was just how many good survival horror games actually exist!

The most important thing to remember with this list is that it’s not a list of bad games…some of these games are bloody great but they either betrayed their survival horror roots or promised something & just didn’t deliver. Enjoy…

10 – Dead Space 3

I love Dead Space 3…as a culmination of a trilogy I thoroughly enjoyed its gameplay & felt pretty satisfied at the end except for one thing, the removal of all aspects of survival horror. The original Dead Space is a beacon of survival horror light in the murky darkness of Resident Evil failures. The sequel dropped some of the elements but hung onto enough to make it a better game, sadly the 3rd in the series decided action was the way to go. It was hugely disappointing & the backlash seems to have killed the franchise for now.

9 – Dead Island

Another game that is not actually bad…just disappointing, Dead Island’s open-world zombie apocalypse set on a tropical island should have been way better then it was. We can go on forever about the trailer that suggested we would get a deep & meaningful story but the biggest shame will always be just how generic it ended up. Survival horror? It never felt like it mattered or that there was really anything to actually fear. Its sequel (Dead Island: Riptide) was juts more of the same but at least this time we knew what we were getting.

8 – Resident Evil 5

The beginning of the end for the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 5 took the formula perfected by the 4th in the series & removed any element of survival horror. A pure action game stumbling from one set-piece to another it is hard to defend Resident Evil 5 as the years roll on. Capcom lost sight of what gamers wanted with survival horror games & looked to try & re-create the success of Resident Evil 4, they failed. Co-op can never be scary…

7 – Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Oh man, what happened here? The original Condemned was a smart horror game that involved puzzle solving, melee combat & the hunt for a serial killer. The sequel dropped most of the puzzle solving, ramped up the combat (including more reliance on guns) & added shouting so loud heads exploded. Throw in the nonsense story (really), unnecessary multiplayer & Condemned 2 just leaves you with a really bad taste.

6 – Resident Evil: Survivor

A first-person Resident Evil? Sounds great….it wasn’t. Using either the controller or light-gun you control the player as he moves around the grey narrow alleys & buildings of Racoon City. The game uses enemy types mainly from Resident Evil 2 & a few from the original game. It looks horrible but the main reason it’s on this list is because of the infinite ammo handgun. Seriously, you can complete the entire game using a handgun that is your starting weapon! Come on….

5 – Alone In The Dark (5 – Xbox 360)

First mistake: if you get stuck you can skip the chapter you’re stuck in. Yep, why bother persevering; you can just skip the hard bits! The second mistake: Rubbish monsters that are easy to dodge or deal with thanks to their weakness to fire. The final mistake: The driving sections…still, at least its better then the movie.

4 – Saw/Saw 2

Yep, both games are in 4th place as they are both as bad as each other. Attempting to cash in on the successful Saw franchise the game tries to take the brutal trap settings of the movie & make it something the player has to survive through. It sounds like a good idea but in practice it was terrible. Puzzles ranged from tapping buttons quickly or with QTE’s to extremely hard & frustrating time-limited challenges. To make it worse there are only a handful of puzzles & they are constantly repeated with the difficulty increased. Rubbish combat, few scares (attempts jump scares & still gets it wrong) & a horrible story the sequel is just more of the same.

3 – Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City

Yeah, this is what we wanted from a Resident Evil game, a 3rd person shooter in an alternative story timeline of Resident Evil 2. The zombies run now, its 4-player online co-op & your weapons makes about as much impact as a paintball gun. Add horrible AI in both your teammates & the enemy types & RE: ORC might just be the worst Resident Evil game ever. Survival horror? It doesn’t even come close to stepping into that realm. The worst thing about this game? The ‘good’ guy’s side of the missions were all paid for DLC!

2 – The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

Cash-in…simple as that. A cash-in with even less survival horror then a Disney movie. Horrible looking, terrible AI & a barely recognisable connection to the TV series. A Walking Dead game had to be all about the zombies, it had to be all about survival yet somehow neither of things mattered in the end. The zombies are stupid & barely a threat, easy to kill (even more if you get into the head stab animation) & even easier to dodge. The survival aspect is limited to mostly picking up health & gas cans to move your vehicle along, it is horribly repetitive & even less fun.

1 – Resident Evil 6

I’ve given RE: 6 the no.1 spot because of just how far from the original survival horror idea it has gone. Nothing more then an action blockbuster what makes Resident 6 so much worse then 5 is that Capcom claimed it was listening to fans. So what we got were 3 separate stories that inter-linked each with its own style of gameplay. Leon’s campaign was supposed to be Capcom listening to its fans, a return to survival horror & zombies. What we got was more akin to Operation Racoon City, the other 2 campaigns were a mix of over the top action & stealth. It was not a game anyone wanted…