As much as I love modern Resident Evil games, both the remakes and entries like Village, I do feel like the series has lost a bit of its original vision. Specifically, what I mean is that riveting feeling of tension created by the survival part of survival horror, scrounging for every scrap of ammo, every little tidbit of health you can scrape off the ground. While the Resident Evil 2 remake brought the feeling back a bit, I’d argue that the 2023 remake of Dead Space drove it home even further. And Bloober Team’s bold new horror game Cronos: The New Dawn takes liberal inspiration from Dead Space, in some truly smart ways. It’s highlighted, more than ever, how much we’ve lost from EA putting Dead Space on ice.
The survival horror genre is in a bit of an odd state right now — I wouldn’t say it’s flourishing as a whole, but there’s still a lot there to appreciate. Resident Evil is still going phenomenally strong, and we just saw the recent comeback of Silent Hill 2. The indie space has also seen a surge of titles like Crow Country, Signalis, Amnesia: The Bunker, and more.
