6) The Evil Within
Like Shadows of the Damned, this is another Japanese-centric horror production and this time it sees Shinji Mikami taking the director’s chair. It was released in 2014 for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC, and garnered fairly favourable reviews. To be honest, I think it deserved a little more fanfare than received upon launch, as it’s a marvellous horror action hybrid, in a similar vein to Mikami’s previous horror classic, Resident Evil 4. However, its timing coincided with the release of another iconic, frightening monster’s game that features a little bit higher up this list.
Though this third-person shooter leaned heavily into its action, it was proportionately well-stocked with traditional survival-horror elements, too. Ammo conservation, careful inventory management, upgrades, environmental puzzles and some huge, lumbering bosses are the order of the day here and helped fill the gap between Resident Evil games (the good ones anyway).
The Evil Within‘s story may have been a bit of a confusing mess, but that doesn’t take the shine off the superbly well executed, old-school survival horror that fans of the genre missed so ardently.