One of the reasons Leon Kennedy is such a great horror protagonist is that he carries himself with an unshakeable sense of humor despite always being faced with the most unimaginable atrocities. Even after barely escaping the clutches of a giant, mutant alligator with his life, Leon still manages enough levity to quip, "Chew on that, you overgrown son of a" you-know-what.

For me, Leon being an absolute himbo genuinely breaks up the tension I feel while playing a Resident Evil game, and this contrast was put to especially good use in this year's Resident Evil Requiem, which features some of the scariest sequences I've ever experienced in my 30-plus years playing horror games. But as it turns out, some of Leon's funniest lines were actually left on the chopping block, as proven by newly leaked cut voice lines from Requiem and Resident Evil 4 Remake.

Two separate videos, one that lets you hear close to 400 cut voice lines from Resident Evil Requiem, and another with more than 600 cut lines from Resident Evil 4 Remake, were recently posted to YouTube by prominent modder Keff0 (via PC Gamer). As a longtime Resident Evil diehard, it was fascinating hearing all of Leon's bad puns, Grace Ashcroft's panicked breathing, and even lines from less central characters like RE4's Merchant and Requiem's Chef Zombie, that Capcom for whatever reason decided didn't cut the mustard. As for the Leon one-liners, I'm disappointed they were left out, because some of them sound like they could've been genuinely great in the right context.

"Shucks, no time for an encore."

"Someone needs to work on their parallel parking."

"Eight legs, no brains."

"That again? You're a bit of a one-trick spider."

Naturally, longtime Leon actor Nick Apostolides delivers his lines beautifully, but I would love to see the exact scenarios onscreen that would've triggered them. Unfortunately we'll probably never know, and Leon's not the only one with some gems in the vault. I mentioned RE4's Merchant, and he's another that had some lines cut that I would've loved to see in the actual game.

"This'll perk you up," he says in one cut line. "Relax mate – it's not that kind of herb." I think all Resident Evil fans can imagine the exact situation that would've prompted that line, and I can understand why Capcom ultimately decided against including it, but man, what a loss.

"It's important to stay young at 'eart. Especially at times like these," is another line from the Merchant I would've smiled at in the game.

At this point, I feel like I'm spoiling these gems for fans, so I'll leave the rest for you to uncover on your own. There's even a cut line from RE4 Remake that seems to reference Resident Evil Village, which is completely unnecessary but fun nonetheless.

Lies of P director says Resident Evil Requiem is one of the games he enjoyed most this year because Leon is "still as cool and tough as ever."

"The 8 years I spent developing Silent Hill 1, 2 & 3 at Konami, I gave up on getting a girlfriend," reads a new tweet from Masahiro Ito, the legendary Team Silent artist best known for designing Silent Hill 2 antagonist Pyramid Head. The tweet largely echoes something Ito said back in 2024 about not having the time for a girlfriend when he was working at Konami, but now he straight-up suggests he regrets sacrificing his love life for the his work.

"Never even went on a single date w/ a lady," he says. "I sacrificed my days off & slept on cardboards spread out on the floor, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined I'd end up like this on X."

That is... incredibly sad. Ito is a horror icon and should be eternally proud of the work he's done for its unparalleled influence on the genre. That said, as a married man who wouldn't trade my family for the world, it's fair for him to long for love.

"To be honest, lately, I've been thinking that if I hadn't sacrificed my personal life, found a girlfriend, and gotten married early on, I probably would have been happier."

Ito's comments section is filled with encouraging words from his adoring fans, so he doesn't need my advice, but I agree with one commenter that "hindsight is a bitch." Not much is known about Ito's personal life, but professionally he's had an undeniably successful career. If he had never worked on Silent Hill and instead chose to pursue a wife and family, who knows how that would've turned out? One thing's for sure, horror would've lost one of its all-time great bad guys, and I'm selfishly glad he stuck to games.

Silent Hill Townfall's atmosphere is spot-on, but slow-burn terrors leave a tepid first impression

Creepy Until Dawn 2 will get to be the nightmare after Christmas this year, launching January 28, 2027. Developer Firesprite revealed the date at PlayStation State of Play alongside a new game trailer that makes the anthology sequel look like an episode of Ghost Adventures gone wrong – which, if you're a voyeuristic horror freak like me, is ideal.

The interactive drama game is out 12 years after the Supermassive original about beautiful teens getting their necks snapped on Blackwood Mountain, and it'll carry on some of that game's haunted history with a trip to the nearby Blackwood Sanatorium. The team of unscrupulous YouTubers and fake paranormal investigators Dead True eventually make their way to the abandoned Akishima Island on the other side of the world, where they're confronted with the same tough questions: slit your palm, or a chicken's soft throat?

Fargo actor Peter Stormare will reprise his role as the sinister psychoanalyst Dr. Hill, while Baldur's Gate 3 star Neil Newbon joins the cast as Sebastian, who Until Dawn 2's new pre-order trailer depicts as a cruel network executive. He urges the Dead True team – led by obnoxiously blond host Owen (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery) – to turn the fragile supernatural into an on-screen spectacle. This is a path that ends in nosebleeds, cracked jaws, and, shown by the pre-order trailer in fleshy detail, leeches that latch onto Owen's chest like milk-fed babies.

Dispatch developer AdHoc Studio is assisting with production, Firesprite creative director Stu Tilley says in a PlayStation blog, so I'm hoping Until Dawn 2 will have more of the mean sense of humor the disappointing Until Dawn movie left in Supermassive's game.

Supermassive is in a painful spot right now, having recently laid off up to 75 employees in its third round of layoffs in three years, and it's been squeezing out middling dramas since the flabby Dead by Daylight spinoff The Casting of Frank Stone in 2024. Now it's Sony who owns the Until Dawn IP, not Supermassive, but I'm still hoping Until Dawn 2 might help repair the horror studio's reputation by association. I love what it used to be: an expert at crafting tense survival situations that make you yell at your screen and imagine yourself in the survivor's place – imagine yourself as a survivor.

Helpfully, Tilley writes in his blog that AdHoc's contributions make Until Dawn 2 a game "packed with rich characters, razor-sharp dialogue, fraught relationships, tough decisions, and yes… more than a few gruesome deaths. Every choice, every interaction can ripple with dramatic consequences."

Until Dawn 2 could be a real homage to found footage movies like 2018's Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum and 2011's Grave Encounters, which lampoon ghost hunters' half-hearted search for proof with the wry suggestion that people can only handle tragedy if it's entertainment. It's horror that makes me judge and understand myself, and after so many years since the first Until Dawn game from Supermassive, that's still what I want.

Pre-orders begin September 10 and include cosmetics and in-game Dr. Hill bobblehead collectibles to see when you close your eyes.

Until Dawn 2 has sold me with its campy teen slasher vibes, and it proves there's nothing like old-school scares.

Hideki Kamiya, legendary Capcom veteran behind gems including Resident Evil 2, thinks newer games from the studio like Resident Evil Requiem are… too scary?

Yes, indeed, Kamiya finds games like Capcom's more recent Resident Evil entries a tad too spooky for his tastes, as per a recent interview with VGC.

First declaring that "this is not a joke," the Devil May Cry mastermind says he's "being one hundred percent serious when I say that I wish they would make it so that their games can also be enjoyed by people like me, who can't handle scary games at all." And… honestly, I get it.

Look, even Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi admitted his game was "possibly too scary" and "some people couldn't handle it" last year (and as somebody who loves the seventh entry, I'd most certainly agree).

Requiem, according to Kamiya, isn't any better. "Just recently this year we had Resident Evil Requiem and the big return of Leon Kennedy, and he went back to Raccoon City… reliving all of those memories and all of those experiences."

He then states that, "As somebody who directed that original game, Resident Evil 2, I was curious to know how that panned out for him." Unfortunately though, the horror-adjacent side of Requiem made that impossible for Kamiya.

"I wanted to experience that myself as a player," as he says, "but the game was way too scary, and I couldn't." So, what's the solution, then, so that all flavors of player can enjoy Capcom's stories? Apparently, a less scary game mode.

"It's not a joke," Kamiya explains. "I legitimately wished it would include some kind of non-horror mode for people like me." He outlines how he's spoken to "folks who are on the Resident Evil teams at Capcom" and admitted as much to the devs.

"I tell them that their games are way too scary, and they're like, 'What, come on, they're not that scary,'" the Resident Evil 2 legend recalls.

Kamiya concludes that the devs "seriously seem to have no awareness of how scary the things they make actually are, so I really hope they address that at some point" – even if that means just making it "so that the zombies' faces aren't so scary."

You know, "Why not have a mode that just puts, like, brown paper bags on all of their heads, or instead of having these dark, dingy rooms everywhere, they could have really pleasant mood lighting" – which I'm not too sure I agree with...

These are horror games, after all, and this isn't the first time he's brought the topic up. Earlier this year, Kamiya said Capcom "should make a 'non-scary' mode" because "look, I just want to enjoy the puzzles."

So, there you have it – Resident Evil has become too frightening for the very folks who helped mark its name amid other survival horror giants.

If you're yet to play it, be sure to check out our Resident Evil Requiem review to find out if it's worth your time, or our Resident Evil Requiem safe codes guide to help you through it.

St Amelia is where dreams go to die. Not unlike many other British towns, I think. I can tell as much as soon as I wash up on the shores of Silent Hill Townfall's Scottish-coded (though never stated outright) island, where fog sinks into the spaces between each cobblestone. I've lived in the UK full-time for about four years now, so there are many jokes to be made about feeling right at home in its dreary gloom (I'll save those for another time). But even if the setting's subtle iconographic accuracy is lost on those less familiar with Great British environs, it's the perfect canvas for a Silent Hill game.

The first thing that strikes me about Silent Hill Townfall is how deserted it is. That, and how choppy the animations get when you climb or descend stairs. You've got smudgy grey fog. You've got empty streets with lights still flickering in vacant apartments, as if the town's inhabitants vanished on the spot mere moments ago. You've got an amnesiac protagonist wearing a hospital bracelet. Let's go, am I right?

Pacing through the town center from a first-person perspective – a series-first for a mainline game, as seen in PS5 freebie Silent Hill: The Short Message – I expect some sort of glimpse of an enemy. An early warning that I'm not as alone as I feel, just like in Silent Hill 2.

But even after getting curiously turned around while picking through St Amelia's detritus, I don't come across a single bad guy. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of my hands-on demo session had more to show for itself than 70 minutes of walking and cutscenes, always keeping me at arm's length as I experimentally press against its edges, getting little in return

These dark times

Don't get me wrong. Silent Hill Townfall is a gorgeously rendered nightmare. Developer Screen Burn has clearly put a lot of love for its Scottish roots into this place, which is as immersive and spooky as you'd expect from one of the best horror game franchises that built its name specifically off creating oppressive vibes from the get-go. But I feel more like a ghost haunting the streets than a character inhabiting the world, because there's very little to actually interact with.

I spend most of my session inspecting things. Leaflets on the ground, hand-scrawled notes left in the local doctor's window. Information boards at viewpoints dotted along the boardwalk, looking out upon the murky waters encircling St Amelia.

By the time I reach the telephone box – ringing, of course, with no one on the other end when I go to pick it up – I feel like a local historian. One who fails to clock that I have to type in a specific number, listed on the short telephone directory as "save yourself", in order to save my game and trigger a cutscene. So I instead go back out into St Amelia to see if I missed anything. Spoiler alert: I have not missed a single thing, and lose another 10 minutes retracing my steps.

The above is entirely my fault, but it does mean that after being rescued from my predicament by a fellow demo player, the frustration gets compounded by having to sit through a lengthy cinematic that teleports me to a brand new location: a hotel room.

Here is where the radio mechanics and minigames come into play. For all the distance I feel is being put between myself and the game world, Screen Burn incorporates analog technologies in a beautifully on-theme way, tying back to Townfall's setting in the mid-'90s. I have to tune my device to individual frequencies, picking up either echoes of the past (or present? Who knows) that give me hints to solve puzzles or the staticky outlines of nearby enemies projected on the palm-sized screen.

Except I don't actually see any before my eyes. Delaying the moment we first lay eyes on a monster is a clever way to build up tension in any horror game or film – fear of the unknown, the unseen – and suggest the ephemeral manifestation of the character's guilt and trauma. But by this point in my hands-on demo, I am desperate for something a bit faster paced. I've just spent ages wandering barren streets only to be met with the winding basement of an abandoned hotel. Enemies seem so far away that I couldn't stumble into one if I tried.

Silent Hill Townfall has the makings of a brooding horror game. It just fails to communicate that in a vertical slice demo by virtue of its slow-build horrors being so excruciatingly slow. Here's hoping that I'm able to get a bit more absorbed in it from the comfort of my own home than I was on the bustling show floor of Gamescom 2026.

Konami wants Silent Hill to have "an annual release of new games," and it's already working on "many" unannounced projects

There's a moment within many survival horror games where the player goes from terrorized to terrorizer. From 2019's Resident Evil 2 to last year's Silent Hill f, the process of prey becoming predator is a satisfying transition that refreshes the gameplay experience and improves replayability. Cronos: Lazarus is a DLC seemingly built upon this premise, and the result is an action-focused experience that I'm desperate to dive back into.

Cronos: The New Dawn – Bloober Team's time-bending sci-fi scarefest – puts you in the role of the Traveler, as you explore a desolate Poland, investigating an apocalyptic event, intermittently traveling back to the 1980s to rescue select individuals. As you carve your path, you encounter Orphans, body-horror entities that were once people but now resemble something out of Dead Space.

Stand your ground

Cronos: The New Dawn's base game asks you to think about when to pull the trigger, as ammo is precious and foes are capable of swallowing bullets like a blue whale with a magnet in its ass, meaning the Traveler is a protagonist that's meant to survive the survival horror. Cronos: Lazarus focuses on the second word in the genre name, putting you in the role of the Warden and their delicious arsenal of firearms.

Playing as the Warden at Gamescom 2026, I spend much of my time in a behind-closed-doors build of the Lazarus exploring worn-out halls in the style of the original. Dark corners intimidate while twisted cadavers remind me of the vicious abominations that could catch me off guard at a moment's notice, if I wasn't aware what I'm up against. After all, I'm no stranger to the world of Cronos, so I fancy myself to handle what lies ahead.

So imagine my surprise when Cronos: Lazarus throws gangs of enemies at me all at once. As vile as they are voluminous, I unleash shotgun rounds and handgun pistols with speed and precision, determined to pulverize any and everything that dare charge towards me. It's at this point I forget to incinerate the fallen, with corpses on the ground merging with those that remain in motion to form wretched chimeras. However that doesn't save them from my firepower as I hold my nerve, stand and shoot, albeit the stress of them requiring more ammunition to disintegrate being a lot.

A developer then switches my build over to the demo available to the public at this year's Gamescom, and the momentum only increases from here. Once again playing as the Warden, I pull out my handgun and set about exploring a different but equally depressing area of cataclysm-stricken Poland. Once again I'm outnumbered by grotesque entities, but I'm moving through the crowds and dropping them like they're the opposite of frozen.

It's at this point I'm formally introduced to two of the Warden's abilities: Decoy and Teleport. The former allows me to throw out a holographic replica of the protagonist, distracting enemies while I run by or surprise them with gunshots (I prefer the latter). For larger enemies, this strategy is borderline vital, as they can make up the distance between us quickly no matter how much I keep moving away.

Teleport is less relevant to the combat encounters in this demo, presented as a means to cross gaps when the path is missing or obstructed. It's easy to use at the drop of a hat, so I can imagine there'll be encounters that benefit from its use, but the demo is short and there's only one serious challenge which comes at the very end.

An enormous Orphan, roughly twice the Warden's height, spews acid and runs at me while I spend every bit of ammo in their dome. I begin to wonder if I've misread the situation, as there are no signs of my lead's lethal intent registering. I take a firm strike and go on the run, zig-zagging my way around a relatively tight area.

Nothing presents itself as a better course of action than simply shooting this behemoth more, so that's what I do, sending every shotgun shell I have to get acquainted with its body. Torso, head, anything within range is pelted as the thing finally starts to stagger and wail. With only two shells left, the boss keels over, and the demo ends with a teaser trailer for the DLC, which is yet to have an official release date, but should arrive in 2026.

Cronos: The New Dawn won me over with its ability to induce fear, but Lazaus appeals to the primal, violent-loving side of my horror-soaked brain. Teeming with enemies all begging to be blown away by satisfying weaponry, the Warden is exactly the character I want to play as next in this terrifying world.

Make like Lazarus and rise again for your next scary adventure with our best survival horror games recommendations!

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie has been (unfairly) divisive for its creative deviations from Resident Evil canon, and for telling a Resident Evil story without fan-favorite characters like Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. Nevertheless, it's set to open huge later this month, and could potentially double the opening weekend box office takings of the biggest Resident Evil movie to date.

Early tracking (h/t IGN) has put Resident Evil's opening weekend figure at some $40-50 million in the US. Even at the lower end of predictions, that's far higher than any movie in the Milla Jovovich-starring series, the biggest of which, Resident Evil: Afterlife, opened to $26.6 million in 2010. The most recent Resident Evil movie, Welcome to Raccoon City, opened to just over $5 million in November 2021. Even factoring in that more faithful adaptation's pandemic-era handicap, this is a big improvement.

Cregger's Resident Evil movie seems to be resonating for a few reasons. The fact that it's telling an original story that anyone can jump into is certainly one. Cregger himself is becoming something of an event filmmaker after his original horror-thriller Weapons opened to a massive $43 million last summer. And the self-proclaimed Resident Evil superfan seems to have learnt all the right lessons about video game adaptations, in that he's staying true to the "spirit and tone" of the games (and even the power progression) rather than simply re-telling one of the games' stories on screen.

Even a bumper box office is unlikely to result in more Resident Evil movies from Cregger, however, as the writer-director is set to helm original sci-fi The Flood next. He's also penning Weapons prequel, Gladys, centred on that movie's twiggy witch, and he's reportedly scripting a Siren Head movie for director Brian Duffield. So Cregger is booked for years to come. But given how lucrative adaptations of the Resident Evil series have proven to be over the years (some seven live-action movies and an ill-fated Netflix TV show have been made to date), it's unlikely to be the last.

Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams as a medical courier tasked with transporting biological materials across a zombie-infected Raccoon City. Late last year, we visited the Resident Evil set in Prague, where Cregger, Abrams and the team took us through their full-throttle vision for the movie.

Resident Evil opens on September 18. For more scares, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies and our list of all the new video game adaptations on the way in 2026 and beyond.

Alien: Isolation 2 art director Ana Sopikova has one very simple piece of advice for anyone who might struggle to overcome their fear while playing what's sure to be a terrifying sequel: just crank down the music.

GamesRadar+ sat down with Sopikova during Gamescom 2026, and we asked about Creative Assembly's approach to balancing tension so that players feel appropriately oppressed but not consistently panicked to the point of risking a cardiovascular event. Basically, how scary is too scary? As a horror geek with the unfortunate affliction of being a total wuss, this is important information.

"My advice for all the people who are too scared is just honestly to turn the music down," Sopikova says. "Many people don't realize how much music plays in building that tension. And actually the alien might not even be there, but it's just a dark corridor, and this very low-key scary music is playing, and instantly you're paralyzed, and you just can't move anywhere."

Sopikova says things like music, lighting, and of course gameplay all go into crafting a tense atmosphere that can be dialed up and down as needed to strike a balance somewhere between boring and "on the verge of having a heart attack."

"We don't want players to constantly be on the peak of horror, on the verge of having a heart attack, because then they just get used to it, and it's not scary anymore," says Sopikova. "Obviously, it's a narrative game. There is a story to follow. So you see, we take in all the elements, both visual and audio, how everything comes together, animation, and gameplay, and we're just trying to build that experience with all the different moving parts to really support the peaks and valleys."

Alien: Isolation, along with Resident Evil 7, is one of very few games that I can admit were a little too scary for me at times. As much as I applaud Creative Assembly and Capcom for having the chops to make a seasoned horror veteran as stressed out as I was playing those games, I remember having genuinely unpleasant reactions to certain scenes, to the point where I had to take breaks to catch my breath.

I think Capcom's decision to break up the tension with Grace and Leon chapters in Resident Evil Requiem was brilliant, and I hope Creative Assembly has something in mind for the perpetually anxious in Alien: Isolation 2.

15 years after the first game made horror history, Alien Isolation 2 unleashes a smarter, meaner Xenomorph

"There's a couple of different reasons for" Silent Hill: Townfall's 1996 setting, writer Jon McKellan tells GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2026. But they're all meant to make you feel uncomfortable.

"Some are narrative," McKellan continues, referencing the state of small, working class towns in Scotland during the post-Margaret Thatcher '90s. By 1996, consequences of Thatcher-driven class tension were still covering the UK like a cloud, and Townfall siphons that animosity for its story about the unhappy Scottish town St. Amelia, which McKellan reminds us is riddled with protest signs lamenting the missing "heart" of the community. Developer Screen Burn also wants players to feel awkward in a more physical sense – by taking away their iPhones.

"It's almost like the perfect time for horror," McKellan says about the '90s, "where you don't quite have enough technology to help you. You don't have a smartphone. You don't have maps on your device to help you get around, but it's also not so far back that you don't have anything at all."

"Especially, like, Screen Burn's history" – gameplay in developer's 2017 game Stories Untold utilizes '80s hardware – "our games are quite, you know, dealing with archaic technology and old computers, and we were able to bring some of that into Townfall by setting it in a period where that kind of tech is new for Silent Hill, but not too modern." The earliest Silent Hill games, which were shipped only a few years after real-life 1996, hardly get more tech-heavy than a twitchy flashlight and a rusted steel pipe.

"It feels like the right time period for that," McKellan concludes. "A couple of different factors all made the '90s feel like the right time for horror."

Silent Hill: Townfall is out on September 24.

After Silent Hill f combat discourse, Silent Hill Townfall goes all-in on stealth as "evasion is your only option" sometimes.

Ashley Graham is unfairly seen as one of the more controversial characters in Resident Evil lore due to some clumsily tuned AI during her escort missions in the original Resident Evil 4. That was all fixed in Resident Evil 4 Remake when she became a much more fleshed out, supportive character.

Admittedly, the 2023 remake also makes Ashley a lot less prone to being captured and restarting your mission, which is nice, but stronger writing and a convincing performance from voice actor Genevieve Buechner help endear her even further. Point is, Ashley Graham doesn't deserve the hate, and she definitely didn't deserve to have her prologue scene from Resident Evil 4 Remake cut during development, but that's reportedly what happened. And now, you can play that prologue mission thanks to a newly released mod.

As spotted by RENews on Twitter, the Chapter 0 Restoration mod (via NexusMods) does precisely what it says on the box: "Restores the cut Chapter 0, a playable prologue as Ashley, seamlessly integrated into the New Game flow as a real chapter that runs before Chapter 1."

According to modder Keff0, Ashley was originally going to be the first playable character in Resident Evil 4 Remake before transitioning to Leon in the infamous village scene, which as an aside is also a lot less punishing than it was in the original game.

"A Chapter 0 existed at some point during development, but it was cut before the game's release: a short prologue played as Ashley, at night, ending in her capture," reads the mod's description.

The modder says the scene takes place on a path that's not in the final release but was dug out of the game files with "most of its details and collision removed." In it, Ashley stumbles upon some murderous cultists whose victim is the woman from the very first cutscene in the official game. Apparently, that cutscene goes back even further, showing a shocked Ashley turning and running, leading into the playable chapter, which ends with her capture.

Going full circle, the only downside to more Resident Evil 4 Remake is having to see Ashley tortured even more than what she's already endured both in the game and in Resident Evil communities everywhere. I'm not even an Ashley stan and never thought I'd say this, but at this point I think we need an Ashley Graham spinoff, or at least her own DLC at some point in the future, but I think it's safe to say that's unlikely to happen in the current timeline. Justice for Ashley.

The 1998 horror game that haunted my dreams even more than Resident Evil 2 is back, "modernized," and available on consoles for the first time.

The Sinking City 2 locker room safe code in the Fish Market has possibly some of the most obscure clues in the game. The main hint is a situational nod that might mean nothing if you read it anywhere else other than where you found it, and you can't even get the clue you need unless you first find and solve the Salt Storage code, which it's linked to. It makes it one of the least satisfying puzzles to solve here, despite the useful reward it hides. I have at least done it for you so you don't have to worry about it. So get the code below, open it, and forget it ever happened.

The Fish Market locker room safe code

The locker room safe code in Sinking City 2 is 1496.

You can use that on its own, without ever having to worry about the obtuse and unclear way it's worked out. However, if you want to know where that number came from then here's what's going on...

There are two notes you can find - the Sacrifice (and Safe!) note found next to the safe itself, and the Surprise in the Safe note you can only get once you've opened up Salt Storage. The two clues they give you are:

• 'The last number can't be 16! It's 6' from Sacrifice (and Safe!)
• 'Possibly the same as the door' from Surprise in the Safe?

While it's not entirely clear, the 'same as the door' bit, which you can only get inside the Salt Storage room once you've cracked that, means it's the same code you used to open that door. That code was I-IV-IX-XVI or 1-4-9-16 and the 'it's not 16 it's 6' changes the last number to fit into the 1-9 range of the safe. So it's not inaccurate information, just a very odd clue that, to me, lacks enough clarity to really lock it down.

Anyway, despite my opinions of it, it's very worth opening the safe as you'll get Pyre's Ocularum, an upgrade for the grenade launcher that deals more damage if multiple enemies are caught in the explosion. That's a very useful thing to have as the monster count starts to ramp up.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Sinking City 2 salt storage code opens a strange lock in the Fish Market once you work out what the roman numerals mean, as well as how they tie into a 16 Punishments of the Sailor note you can find. The solution is not that hard once you have all the pieces in front of you, but it is one of the slightly tricker puzzles thanks to the numbering system and a long list you need to work though to decode it all. Here's what I did and how I solved it so you can get in. It's worth doing too as there's a very useful grenade launcher upgrade inside.

How to open the salt storage door in Sinking City 2

The Sinking City 2 salt storage code is I-IV-IX-XVI in roman numerals, or 1-4-9-16 in normal speak. So press those squares as shown above to unlock it.

To get the Salt Storage code properly you'll need three notes: the 16 Punishments of a Sailor note from the large brass wall plaque in the Bar, the Instructions to Sybil note, which you can find just before the Old Shop with the Ward, the Warning for Sybil note in the Jeweller's area.

The Instructions to Sybil note lists four punishments which you can cross-reference with the 16 Punishments of a Sailor to get the numbers you need:

• Confined to ship I (1)
• Deprived o' beer IV (4)
• Tarred an' feathered IX (9)
• Keelhauled (XVI) 16

So, to open the door you just need to press the squares with those roman numerals on.

Inside you'll find a woman turned to Dream Essence you can smash for some upgrade points, a Surprise in the Safe? note (which is a clue for the locker room safe code) and the Pyre's Squid Barrel, an upgrade for the grenade launcher which will stagger enemies if multiple opponents are caught in the blast.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Silent Hill franchise is fully awake after years spent frozen in at the back of the fridge, and Konami tells GamesRadar+ its psychological horror series is only going to get healthier. Healthier, like, in its output – but probably not in its content, since there's an officially licensed James Sunderland body pillow now.

"Our aim is to, hopefully, have an annual release of new games," Silent Hill franchise producer Motoi Okamoto tells GamesRadar+ through an interpreter at Gamescom 2026. This plan also motivates Konami to keep moving Silent Hill far away from its original home in fall-apart Maine, as Okamoto says, "If we stay laser-focused on the same American setting, that would exhaust [narrative] possibilities, and also potentially cause fatigue for the playerbase."

Okamoto wants anyone working on a Silent Hill game to tailor the IP, so keeping it flying around the world lets developers "work within the types of environments and the types of storytelling that works best for them." Every main Silent Hill game released or announced this decade was made by a developer that wasn't Konami, so it sounds like the publisher will continue to experiment with who gets to define Silent Hill.

The days of Konami's adored, defunct in-house Team Silent are past sunset and well into the misty night – but Konami's loyal to Bloober when it comes to remakes, ensuring there's at least one developer out there who cares about Silent Hill for longer than one development cycle.

OK, yes, I'm a bit worried about Okamoto's dream of having yearly Silent Hill releases. I worry having so many games will dilute the series I love so much. But Okamoto seems confident fans will be pleased with the apparently "many" secret projects Konami is working on right now.

He says, "There are still many projects that are still under the works and very unannounced titles. So obviously, we can't go into specifics. But there are still many projects that we are currently exploring and working on as we speak."

"We would like to let players know," Okamoto continues, "that we have more experiences coming up, and many types of games that, we believe, will be able to provide positive kinds of surprises for players waiting for this for the series." As more new, spiritually pristine details come out about Silent Hill: Townfall – I mean that in a negative way, I want spiritual orange slime in my horror games and no soap – due September 24, I grow more skeptical of Okamoto's pledge to positive surprises.

But my bad feelings about Silent Hill: Townfall might just be the fog in me talking. I better keep an open mind if I don't want to end up with a James Sunderland body pillow.

Silent Hill: Townfall goes Until Dawn mode with celebrity cameos from The Odyssey and Lost actors.

You'll find the Sinking city 2 storage lock in the hospital long before you should able to open it, because you'll need to find four notes as you explore. However, the code should work whether you have the notes or not, so I can give you that now, as well as outline what you should be doing to find the code as you play the game. There's a good SMG upgrade to be had here, so it's worth opening however you do it.

The Sinking City 2 storage code

The Sinking City 2 storage code is 1308.

Once you've used the acid on the rusty handle to reach it, you can just enter that and get inside. However, if you want know why, then it involves finding four notes in various locations that eventually give you all the numbers you need, as well as the order they should appear in:

• Note with digit 3 - '3 is the second digit' (Found in the 2f Outpatient Room)
• Letter with digit 1 - 'one comes first' (Found on a table outside the Observation Ward door near the band stand)
• Note with digit 0 - This ends up third as the only one with out a place (Found in the room you access immediately after reassembling the two face halves)
• Memo with digit 8 - 'eight comes last' (Found in the Nurses Station accessed via the Head Surgeon's Office on 2f)

Finding all the notes will let you complete an investigation by joining them all up, and give you the order of the code needed to open the combination lock. As I said above, you can just enter the code if you know it but, if you want the upgrade point you'll earn from completing the investigation, it's worth finding all the bits - as is completing investigations generally.

However you open the lock, inside you'll find a bunch of items and the Doyle's Cold Blood attachment for the Submachine gun that lets continuous fire slow enemies. That's a useful attachment for crowd control, and makes the SMG especially powerful when teamed up with the Doyle's Hot Streak magazine that increases damage with sustained fire. You'll get that later in the game when you open up the Sinking City 2 locked buoy.

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Konami gave a particularly chilling Silent Hill: Townfall update at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 with a murky new trailer that reveals a few celebrities in developer Screen Burn's new psychological horror game. Townfall's voice cast will include Lost star Terry O'Quinn, as well as The Odyssey actor and It: Welcome to Derry hero Jovan Adepo.

Until now, main Silent Hill games have only ever gotten close to Hollywood by stealing Christina Aguilera's 1999 Teen Choice Awards outfit for hot pink fantasy girl Maria. The cast of Silent Hill: Townfall, then, is another example of how Screen Burn is preparing to overturn Silent Hill convention.

Townfall is the first full Silent Hill title to be in first-person perspective, and the game set in 1996 features a handheld CRTV for navigating the miasmic Scottish island town St. Amelia, instead of the Silent Hill franchise's usual hissing radio that reacts to skinless monsters nearby.

I was a little annoyed by some of these franchise firsts' arbitrariness when I previewed a live demonstration of Silent Hill: Townfall earlier this summer – and, really, the game's new Gamescom trailer doesn't do much to talk me down. But there's an almost visible cloud of anxiety surrounding protagonist Simon that I want to understand better.

Simon, who wakes up in St. Amelia confused, with a cannula embedded in his hand, doesn't seem aware that he's in danger.

The Gamescom trailer shows us Terry O'Quinn's character calling Simon on the phone, instructing him breathlessly "to come back to the town and put some things to rest." A press release explains that O'Quinn plays "Richard, the enigmatic man who summons Simon back to St. Amelia and sets in motion the events of SILENT HILL: Townfall. As Simon's journey unfolds, Richard's connection to both the town and its troubled past becomes increasingly difficult to ignore."

Mewgenics and Final Fantasy Tactics actor Kezia Burrows then stars as "Zoe, a compassionate nurse whose voice reaches out to Simon through layers of static on the CRTV, urging him to 'come back to her,'" the press release continues. In the Townfall Gamescom trailer, Zoe warns that "we're all so angry," which probably isn't what Simon wants to hear as spider-legged kaiju creature emerges from the mist and thuds toward him.

Even more unlucky for Simon, voiced by Jovan Adepo, he is haunted by "fragments of a past he can barely remember," and he feels drawn to St. Amelia without knowing why.

But I'm in the opposite position: I'm feeling repelled by Screen Burn's take on a franchise I fell in love with for its outlandish, freakish sexual energy and occult mayhem. Silent Hill: Townfall – especially now that it has some fancy cast members – seems a lot more proper than that, like a rabbit rather than the roadkill I like.

But O'Quinn's performance in the underrated thriller The Stepfather (1987) and Adepo in Welcome to Derry make me hopeful that Screen Burn is hiding something more uncontrollable under Townfall's (relatively) stable-looking surface, and I want to know what it is. I will know once the game is out September 24.

The 1998 horror game that haunted my dreams even more than Resident Evil 2 is back, "modernized," and available on consoles for the first time.

The Sinking City 2 locked buoy is a confusing puzzle involving fish and a code that makes little sense and, if I'm honest, I kind of solved it accidentally. However I did solve it and if you're here, you haven't. So let me tell you what you need to do now I've worked out what's going on. It's a weird little challenge that seems designed to be confusing, and not one you can tackle until a while after you first find it, so it's easy to get a bit lost.

The Sinking City 2 locked buoy solution

The solution to the locked buoy comes from two notes you can find: From Ezekiel's Wife, which you'll find on the shop counter not long after leaving the first Safe Room at the Fish Market, and About Ezekiel, which you can find in the Guard Post once you have a Leyden Jar to unlock it.

The important bit from these two notes are the mention of fish:

• The eel and the lantern come first
• The Coelacanth
• The angler has the last word

Scattered around the shop and the office behind the counter are various fish with symbols attached to them. Those fish mentioned above give you these symbols:

So that's lantern fish/lighthouse, gulper eel/ropes, coelacanth/starfish and Anglerfish/octopus.

These match the code symbols on the buoy lock. While it's not entirely clear, the note explains the eel and lantern fish are first, although not in what order, while the angler is last. That leaves the coelacanth third, as the only position left unclaimed.

With a little trial and error you can discover that the eel and lantern fish actually go in the reverse of the order mentioned, giving you this combination as a solution for the locked buoy - Lighthouse, Ropes, Starfish, Octopus:

Open it up and you'll get Doyle's Hot Streak, a magazine for the submachine gun that increases damage with continuous fire. That's actually a really useful upgrade against tougher enemies that can take a pounding, especially if you have enough ammo to just keep peppering them increasingly damaging bullets.

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The Sinking City 2 Graveyard key can be a confusing thing to find, as you're nowhere near a graveyard when you get it and, if you haven't been exploring thoroughly, you could easily have passed by where it's for.

You will need to find out where to use it though, as it will get you a vital item to progress the main story, as well as tie into the Sinking City 2 Printing Press side quest. But if you didn't clock the Graveyard gate when you passed it you could be a fair way beyond it in time and distance, making it tricky to work out where you should be heading.

Good job I've played the game extensively for my Sinking City 2 walkthrough and can tell you where to take the key, and what to do with it. It won't take long...

What to do with the Graveyard key

You'll find the Graveyard key at the Saloon just after you trigger a new objective to Move the Whale. At this point if you've been skimming through the game you might have missed the locked Graveyard gate back at the Church while you were there, along with things like the Sinking City 2 Trident.

There is a Soggy Note near the key that mentions you'll need to go to the Printing House 'via the Church Graveyard' but, again, if you're rushing through it's easy to miss that detail.

So, to use the Graveyard key you need to head here at the Church:

There'll probably be some enemies in the way when you arrive there, so try and be prepared for a fight, although you can probably run and dodge your way past and get through the gate quickly.

Once you're past the gate you'll be at the Printing House, which contains a gear you'll need to help move the whale, and the Printing Press that can get you a good upgrade when you find all the plates needed.

You'll find more details to all of that in the guides I mentioned up top. Once you're done here you'll be one step closer to completing this area, and won't be far off needing the Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough next.

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Zach Cregger has opened up about his approach to adapting Resident Evil in his new movie. Instead of a direct adaptation, the Weapons director is telling a new story set in the world of the franchise.

"I happen to worship these Resident Evil games and pull a lot of inspiration from the experience of playing them," he said in a new featurette, before listing some of the references he included. "I tried to keep the environment changing every seven or eight minutes, like the games. You're always moving into another level as it were."

Cregger went on to explain that he includes weapon progression in the movie, from pistol to machine gun, as well as including healing spray cans, typewriters, and herbs. He's even included a particularly niche frustration, which fans of the franchise will know all too well. "There's a lot of items from the games, he's constantly coming up against these padlocks that are stopping him from progressing," he added.

As Cregger puts it, while the new movie won't include Leon or adapt any particular story, "This is an opportunity for me to be loyal to the games in spirit and in tone and build a story that puts you in that scenario again and again, with increasing stakes."

Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams as a hospital delivery driver tasked with taking an important package to Raccoon City hospital. However, what follows is no ordinary night as a viral outbreak of infected monsters swarm him as he makes the perilous journey.

The horror movie opens on September 18, 2026. For more scares, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies as well as a breakdown of all the new video game adaptations on the way in 2026 and beyond.

The Sinking City 2 brain puzzle involves trying to work out some radio frequencies using clues from three brains in jars.

It seems confusing at first, with some wooly clues about numbers and who's lying or telling the truth, but once you find the little bit of truth that cuts through it all, the answer can be found fairly quickly.

Here's how to find the frequencies you need and solve the wireless room puzzle. If you need more help around this then check out my Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough for a guide on the whole area this takes place in.

The brain puzzle solution

When you arrive at the Wireless Room you'll discover three brains in jars you can talk to, gaining you a note for each one you can then join to the Note about Wireless Rooms you got earlier in Investigations to get an upgrade point.

The clues in full are as follows:

• Testimony of Cornelius Wright - The secondary frequency is higher than the primary. The Primary? Well above 20 Hz. And whatever you do don't believe a word Pence says.
• Testimony of Ambrose Pence - The Primary Frequency is between 10 and 20 Hz and some say it brings bad luck, especially on Fridays. the Tertiary? It's exactly double the sum of the first two. Oh, and Dunwich... he is half-correct.
• Testimony of Silas Dunwich - Round the primary frequency to the nearest ten, cut it in half and you have got the secondary. The tertiary must be under 30 hZ. As for Wright - he's always wrong!

It's all a lot of very confusing info that gets in the way trying to work out what's going on. All you actually need to are these key bits of info:

1. Pence says the primary frequency is bad luck on Fridays, so 13.
2. Dunwich says to 'round the primary to the nearest ten and half it', giving you 5.
3. Ambrose says the tertiary is double the sum of the first two ((13+5)x2), giving us 36

That gives you the solution code: 13, 5, 36 for the brain puzzle.

To actually solve this you then need to set the dials to each number in turn, pressing the the big central button to enter them. Each time you enter one correctly a light will turn green and you can enter the next. When all three numbers have been entered the brains will start to chant and eventually explode.

When all that's done, a panel will pop open under the dials and you'll get some Dream Essence upgrade points.

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The Sinking City 2 statue puzzle sees you shooting arms on a statue according to a Cryptic Riddle listing vague description of what it's holding. You'll actually find a frozen statue first that's actually for the second part of this, which is already one of the more obscure puzzles in the game as the item descriptions and items don't entirely match 100%, and every time you make a mistake it resets. So there can be a lot of trial and error as you test things out. If you want to just get it done I don't blame you - I've completed and it wasn't a satisfying win, so take what I've learned and get it cleared.

The Sinking City 2 statue puzzle solution

The solution to the statue puzzle is to shoot the arms in the right order, as shown in the image above. These limbs appear after placing the red Heart of Stone in the chest cavity, holding carvings that match the clues in the Cryptic Riddle you find in the safe, along with the Heart of Stone:

1. Woman on knees ('mother's prayer')
2. Octopus ('the sea')
3. Monster on Pedestal ('god to bend the knee')
4. Hourglass ('time')
5. Leyden Jar ('hold the spark')

So once you've placed the Heart of Stone in the Statue you'll need to shoot the arms/carvings they're holding in this order, one at a time - if you get it wrong at any point you'll take damage and the Statue will reset, regrowing all it's arms back. However, once you've shot all the carvings correctly, the remaining arms and the entire statue will crumble away, leaving behind a now blue Heart of Ice.

Once you have this new blue heart you'll need to take it all the way down down to the Cold Storage area on -1f that you should have explored earlier and already seen another version of the statue. You'll have to fight a Deep One that ambushes you when you reach the statue, so make sure you're ready for a fight when you go there. It won't follow you out of the Cold Storage door so you can kite it towards the exit and shoot it from just outside in relative safety.

When it's dead and the way ahead is clear, place the blue Heart of Ice in the statue's chest and you'll be able to take the final Leyden Jar you need to enter the ship.

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With Gamescom 2026 looming over us, it comes as no surprise that Alien: Isolation 2 fans are hopeful they'll see a release date at the big event – but they shouldn't hold their breath.

Developer Creative Assembly and publisher Sega are apparently not planning to unveil the long-awaited sequel's release date next week during the annual gaming event, as per their response to a fan's excitement over on Twitter.

The original post shows somebody exclaim that they "hope we get a release date next week," to which the official Alien: Isolation 2 account replies, "Hello, you won't get a release date next week."

It's short (not sweet, sadly), but it does provide all folks need to know, I suppose: there'll be no launch date reveal during Gamescom. Thankfully, the fan who initially posted in the first place is taking the news well, though.

They simply write, "Thank you for letting us know!" The Alien: Isolation 2 team says "you're welcome" in turn – so, all in all, it's not a bad interaction or anything… it's just disappointing.

As one fan jokes in the comments, it was "worth a try" regardless. That checks out, seeing as Alien: Isolation 2 has been in the works for at least a little while now, with its first footage having aired as part of the Summer Game Fest 2026 schedule earlier this summer.

It wouldn't be too surprising, then, to see people expecting a release date (or, at the least, a release window) to drop soon… but, alas, it won't be in August, anyway.

Here's hoping Creative Assembly and Sega give us another teaser of sorts, however – it's still possible, seeing as they only confirm they won't be showcasing a release date during this year's Gamescom.

Anything more than a quick sneak-peek at a xenomorph's mouth would be great at this point, as the original Alien: Isolation landed way back in 2014. I know I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed over the next few days.

Alien Isolation 2 uses Unreal Engine 5 instead of Creative Assembly's custom engine, and fans are starting to worry: "This completely ruins any enthusiasm I have for the game."

• The Sinking City 2 is perfect if you want a freshly themed modern survival horror like Resident Evil 2 or Silent Hill 2 remake

Here's the 60-second pitch for why you should play The Sinking City 2 this weekend: With the love of his life trapped in a Lovecraftian dream space, Calvin Rafferty must brave the flooded streets of Arkham as he tries to track down the occult tools to wake her, all as creatures from the deep surface and the city is plunged into chaos. Shambling enemies puppeted by the Slither are unpredictable, with shifting weak points, and maze-like, nightmarish maps are packed with arcane puzzles and tempting upgrades that'll have you constantly considering your dwindling resources.

Why play it today?

• The Sinking City 2 is a fresh twist on modern survival horror that feels just as good to play as recent Silent Hill and Resident Evil games, rather than a retro revival

A lot of recent survival horror games outside of the big names position themselves as throwbacks to retro sensibilities. While I still love that angle, it's interesting to see The Sinking City 2 take most of its cues from the likes of Resident Evil 2 remake rather than just the original Resident Evil 2.

Even so, The Sinking City 2 has a lot of its own ideas. Developer Frogwares is well-known for its detective games, including the first The Sinking City, and a whole catalog of Sherlock Holmes adventures. This means the bevy of survival horror puzzles required to progress or unlock upgrades are all smartly designed, and a detective mindmap allows you to sort and organize uncovered clues to arrive on solutions. It'll only tell you if evidence is related, never reveal a final solution. It's a light touch compared to their detective games, but adds a neat flavor to Calvin's adventure.

Lovecraftian eldritch horror is well utilized to make The Sinking City 2's stand out. Flooded streets and buildings allow for effective jump scares as monsters emerge. Twitchy movements, and shifting Slither on bodies mean you're never quite sure where to best aim. Down a foe, and escaping Slither can animate other corpses. It creates an uneasy atmosphere where you're never quite sure what the rules are, and are always weighing up when to stand and fight, and when to make a break for it.

Time commitment:

The Sinking City is about the same length as Resident Evil 2 remake, taking me about 10 hours to beat on my first playthrough. Post-game unlocks, as is often the case in the genre, makes for rewarding replays. With each area taking just a few hours, this is an adventure you can chip away at.

Play The Sinking City 2 if you love:

Skip The Sinking City 2 if you want:

One thing to know:

The Sinking City 2 has some great, forgiving difficulty options, but this is still a survival horror game. There are a lot of situations that can be quite stressful to get through with relentless swarm of enemies that'll turn you into fish food if you don't know when to cut and run. Even when backtracking, Frogwares takes the opportunity to add more pressure and challenge to catch you out. That's part of the fun. But, for those used to their more sedate detective games, this can be intense if you're not ready for it.

A moment you'll remember:

First feeling overwhelmed as you struggle to understand how the Slither work. Survival horror games are often at their best when they're unpredictable and you're learning a game for the first time, and The Sinking City 2 has enough strange foes that you'll find yourself unsure of the threat before you, and how to best deal with them. It doesn't get more horrifying or Lovecraftian than that. Even now, I don't fully understand how some systems work.

The final verdict:

In my The Sinking City 2 review, I said it's a "Lovecraftian fusion of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that boasts its own delightfully gruesome pleasures", and I meant it. Given the shift into the survival horror genre was such a departure for Frogwares, I was skeptical when this was announced, but the end result has blown me away. I like a lot of games in the genre, so it's great to see this in conversation with the modern big-hitters, and with plenty of fresh angles of its own.

So, where can you play it?

The Sinking City 2 is currently available on most major platforms: PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It is not currently available on Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus. Launching at $49.99 for the base edition, the price is appealing, too.

How to get started with The Sinking City 2:

The Sinking City 2's horror works best when you don't know too much going in. But, if you get stuck, or just need some pointers, we've got plenty of guides already for where to start with The Sinking City 2 this weekend.

Have your say:

Check out our best survival horror games list for more!

The Sinking City 2 trident is part of a puzzle in the Church area that involves the nearby obelisk. It's not very clear though, and even if you find and read the various notes relating to it, it can be unclear what you're meant to do with any of it.

I've solved it all already and have explained the process fully in my in-depth Sinking City 2 walkthrough covering the flooded city section. However, if you just want the short version, here it is.

Unlike the Sinking City 2 printing press puzzle, which involves several locations, this can actually be solved the first time you find it, as long as you know how.

What to do with the Trident?

You'll find the Trident in the Church behind the Star locked door, once you have the Star key. But it's not clear what you need to do with it.

You'll actually want to take the Trident and place it on the Obelisk to start things off. Once you've done that, you'll want to rotate the Obelisk symbols using the information found on the "Call Upon Believers" note which lists four gods (found on the altar when you first enter the Church), and the First Vision note which lists their symbols (found in the Star locked crypt in the graveyard).

Matching up the gods and symbols gives you the the order you need to arrange Obelisk sections, while the mention of 'from the depth to the heights' in one note means this order is from top to bottom and looks like this:

1. Yig: Serpent Form
2. Tsog-Nar: Crooked Cross
3. Gyrh: Spearhead
4. Cthylla: Splayed Womb

Once you have the symbols in the right place, lightning will start hitting the Trident at regular intervals so get clear. Some enemies will also appear, so have fun kiting them into the electricity. A tip will light up each time the Trident is hit, and when all three are lit, nip in and grab it.

Now take the Trident and place it back where you found it. When you leave this small room, you'll be in another dimension and the Church will be full of statues. Go to the altar and take the dagger from the statue right in front of it. Place the dagger into the slot in the altar and you'll be lowered into a basement area for a small boss fight. When that's done, you'll find some Dream Essence upgrade points on the altar as you leave.

You'll be at best about halfway through the flooded city area if you're dealing with this as you find it. However, you might be closer to the end if you're backtracking. Either way, my Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough is likely to be useful real soon.

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The Sinking City 2 printing press is an optional objective that will get you one of two upgrades, if you can find the three printing plates it needs scattered around the flooded opening area. Because it requires a lot of exploring and backtracking to find all the parts, and the lore is buried in notes you night not have read, it might just appear as a strange object you don't know what to do with.

The entire process is covered in depth in my first Sinking City 2 walkthrough, that covers the flooded city section of the game. That outlines everything though, so if you just need need help finding it, the bits you need, or solving the final puzzle, here's the fast track version.

Where to find the Printing Press

The Printing Press is found in the Printing House near the Church. You can only access this once you reach the Saloon during the Move the Whale objective, where you'll find the Graveyard Key. This opens the locked gate in the Church area, and lets you reach the Printing House.

You'll have to work your way through most of the Printing House, as you'll only find the Printing Press itself once you find the secret room in the Director's Office by taking the APH Key. Unlike the Sinking City 2 Trident puzzle that can be solved there and then when you find it, this needs three other items - Printing Plate A, B and C - found in different places around the flooded city.

Where to find all Printing Plates

There are three printing plates to find in the flooded city area, which can be found in the following places, in the order you're most likely to find them:

1. Printing Plate C - found at the Church in the Star Locked tomb.
2. Printing Plate A - found in the Printing House as you pass through an apartment.
3. Printing Plate B - found in the Academic's Apartment next to the Fire Dept. Accessible only once you've taken the claw to move the Whale.

Getting all three plates will involve clearing most of the flooded city area and, by the time you have plate B from moving the whale, you'll only have one area left.

How to solve the printing press puzzle

To solve the Printing Press puzzle you need to place all three plates in it and then rotate the faces to make them all one color, depending on what reward you want:

• All Silver - Two Dream essence upgrade points
• All Gold - Cutter's Study Stock for the shotgun, which increases damage to enemies shot in the back

It's up to you what you pick, but personally I think the extra shotgun damage is the most valuable. You can only have one as the press will break after use.

Whichever one you want, the solution to solving the printing press puzzle is the same. Whenever you rotate a piece the pieces around it on the top, bottom, left and right also turn. The easiest way I've found to solve it is to get the corners the color you want first:

Dealing with just the corners reduces the bits that interfere with each other so should make it easier to get them where you want. When you've done that you just have to flip the middle pieces to get it all the same color.

Once you have the color you want, use the printing press to get your reward. And, as you're likely nearing the end of the flooded city by the time you complete this, you might be wanting the Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough next.

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This Sinking City 2 hospital walkthrough deals with the second area - Akeley Memorial Hospital - and the objective to Find Faye's body. This contains all the puzzles and solutions, as well as the best route to get through it all. This follows on from the Sinking City 2 walkthrough Part 1 that takes you through the opening city area of the game.

When you first arrive in this new area, head up the path, checking the left fork for a view and some dialogue before carrying on to Akeley Memorial Hospital. Before you go in, look for an item box in a tent by a green bus. Now head into the Hospital and use the Safe Room where you'll also find an item box. Directly opposite when you come out of the Safe Room there will be an ERC crate to note for later.

Ignore the door with a floating head on it for now and take the other door, picking up the Eye Technology note from the notice board as you pass it. Inside you'll find a door with a medical symbol on the handle that you can't open yet, so take the stairs up instead.

Once a cutscene has played to reveal Faye's body, investigate the room to find an item box on a table and another floating head door, so take the corridor out and climb through the window outside instead.

When you go through the door outside to get back in you'll be attacked, so deal with that and then grab the item box around the corner, immediately as you came in, and one more near another floating head door.

There are some stairs down, but check the balcony through the door for an item box (and an ambush) before you go down. At the bottom you'll find an item box and map next to a door you can unlock for a shortcut back to the Safe Room area.

There's also a small locker room with an item in a locker and a Letter From Intern Dexter note. When you have everything, head through the double doors marked Anatomical Theater/Treatment room.

Go down the corridor until the door slams and then take the door you can use. Pick up the Station Manual + Occult Symbol note on the desk to get your first blue Symbol. You can't use the device here yet, so check the map on the wall nearby to get the Prism System Schematic note that mentions the Treatment Room, Chapel, and Basement.

Now duck under the partially opened shutter to find Faye's body and get a new objective.

Charge the Prism at Three Stations

You can't reach the Prism through the shield yet, so head through the open door by the body in the chair and read the Prism Station Reset Protocol note then connect it to the Prism System Schematic note in Investigations to complete the group and earn an upgrade point, then pull the lever in the room to disengage the shield around the Prism.

Grab the Prism and then run out of the open door to escape the ambush. A cutscene will play and you'll fall into the Lower Yard. Grab the item box by the truck and then go in through the white door.

Pick up the On Mirror Doors note and then turn away from the Mirror Door and head down the corridor to get a tease for a new monster, then head through the gate. You'll find a Rusted Lock here to come back to later and see a Prism station through a window.

Squeeze through the gap and follow the corridor around. You'll be attacked, including another version of the Lorelei boss with pustules and back eggs, so shoot them in the legs and stomp the eggs when they're down to save your ammo. Get past them and you'll reach the Morgue.

In the Morgue, pull out all the body trays for some items and then check the Morgue Worker's Memo note on the desk. There's also an ERC crate just around the corner, an item in the blue lockers, and some more body trays to pull out for more items and a face for the Mirror Doors. Pick it up and then rotate it around, finding various interaction points that will eventually open its case. Once it's open a cutscene will play.

After the cutscene you'll be attacked, so grab the face. You can run out of the door smashed open by one of the enemies, but it's probably better to deal with them now as you'll come back later. Whatever you choose, leave via the smashed open door to find a basement map, a Safe Room, and an item in the locker next to the Mirror Door you can't open.

Next to the Safe Room is a locked door, which you can open for a shortcut back to the Lower Yard you fell in before. Head through the white door there to find a Mirror Door matching the face you have, so open it and head upstairs.

In the first door you reach at the top of the stairs, you'll find a yellow item crate and an ERC crate pen in the toilet. Grab that and head back through the Lower Yard to open the crate in the Morgue quickly while it's so close, for an Inventory Upgrade and an item.

Go back up the stairs and towards the poster to interact with the shimmering light, to reveal a blue Symbol.

Now go up the stairs again, where you'll find an item in a chest of drawers near the windows. Go through the door surrounded by mannequins, then grab the items in the two yellow boxes and the Anti-Rust Acid.

Now go back down the stairs and head out of the door to the left of the poster where you saw the symbol. On the left outside you'll find items in a blue drawer and a yellow box on a wheelchair, grab them and then go right into a large yard called the Therapeutic Garden. You'll have to deal with enemies here before you do anything - lure them into the bear traps if you can.

At the far end of the yard you'll find a yellow item box and a glowing bear trap you can examine to find another blue Symbol. There's also an item in the blue drawers near the door. You can now connect all the blue Symbols in your Investigation tab for an upgrade point.

Find the white door up the stairs with the sign for the 'Central Staircase' and the rusted handle, and use the acid on it to open it. Save the acid for the other rusted handle you found earlier, but you'll need a combination for what's inside so don't go there yet.

Head straight ahead towards the Anatomical Theater with Faye's body inside. You can't get in through these doors, but to the left is the purple/blue Prism Charging Station.

How to use the Blue Prism Charging station

To charge the prism you need to rotate the three rings to display one of the three blue symbols you've found, so that they align between the blue arrow at the top of the machine and the one on the Prism, as shown in the images above. There doesn't seem to be any clear information as to which symbol goes where, but you'll only find one of each correct symbol per layer.

Once you have all the symbols lined up, you'll also need to hit 'validate' it to then charge it and receive a partially charged Prism.

When you head out of the room you'll see the Doctor walk past and be attacked. Deal with the enemies and then follow the Doctor into Reception, where a cutscene will reveal a new enemy you can't fight so run to the nearby Mirror Door and use the face to escape. At this point the black creature will patrol, appear, and pursue you at random points, so be prepared run away and lose it from time to time.

Through the smashed open double doors to the right you'll find another Mirror Door you can't open, an item box near a wheelchair, and an open door you can go through to find a Memo: Repairing the Key note and half a new Face. You'll have to rotate its case around again to find interaction points to open it and take it. Once you have it you'll be attacked again, so fight or dodge through them and head upstairs where you'll find a new map.

Visit the Outpatient Room, where you'll find an item box and a Digit '3' note. Back out in the hall you'll find a Hasty Note note in the corner on the trolley that the 'Caduceus Key is in the West Wing'. This is the medical symbol you found on a door earlier and is also on the Isolation Wards door right by the note. Head out the open door that's hanging off its hinges to reach a small outside balcony.

Go though the open window to find a pink Symbol and an item box, before unbolting the door to get back to the hallway you were just in. You can either go through that door and back around to the little balcony area, or back through the window, and unbolt the door there for a shortcut back onto the Upper Hall.

At this point I was attacked by the black creature and had to run away, although I'm not sure if it was scripted or a random encounter. Whatever happens to you, head to the Prosthetics Workshop where you found the Anti-Rust Acid (the door with mannequins outside) and place the half face in the machine there.

Now go to the Staff Room on the 2F and get the Staff Memo Incursions note on a noticeboard, an item box on a chair, and a Folded Note note on a table. Pick them all up and head through the door onto the balcony to find the Caduceus Key, the medical symbol you've seen on a few doors. Predictably, you will be attacked, so run or fight as you see fit to get away.

Head to the Pharmacy on 1F and use the Caduceus Key to get in. Listen to the Radio and pick up an item, then look at the glowing book to get a new pink Symbol for the Prism.

Head out, take the stairs immediately on your left and make your way through the Founder's Hall, into the Upper Hall, and go through the Caduceus Key door you found earlier.

In the first room on the left you'll find a Lost Letters - the Coming Reign note on the wall and a yellow item box. In the door on the right you'll find a yellow item box and an item on a table. Further down the corridor is an open door to the left where you'll find a yellow item box and a glowing body you can interact with for a yellow Symbol.

At the end of the corridor you have a choice - you can either drop down a hole or go through the door and take a ladder down. Both more or less take you to the same place, just via slightly different routes. Take the hole for completion, take the ladder for a shortcut that misses a few important things. You can come back to either at any time, however.

If you drop through the hole you'll end up in the Observation Ward and have a pretty horrible fight against multiple enemies, but it's worth doing it while you're here just to get it done, and will save some time for a few things. When it's over you'll find an ERC crate, an item in a cupboard, a Torn Page From a Diary note, and an item in a yellow box. When you have everything, leave and turn right to find a Letter with Digit 1 note on a table, then go left to find two item boxes before a bandstand.

Check the bandstand to find a Radio, an item box, and an Inventory Expansion. You can also unlock a gate by the bandstand to open a shortcut back to the Therapeutic Gardens. For now, however, go back the way you came in to the bandstand and turn right, where you can unlock another gate past the benches to reach the Asylum Gate. Here you'll find a couple of item boxes, see a monster in the distance, and the ladder you could have taken instead of jumping into the hole.

Go through the open gate and grab the Lost Letters - Goodbye Maria note immediately on the left by a body in the wall, then carry on to trigger a boss fight.

To defeat this boss you'll need to avoid the yellow liquid it throws around, while shooting what look like red exposed lungs. The best time to land a hit is just as it's about to throw a ball of liquid, as even though you can't see the weak spot you'll still hit it. There are three regenerating item boxes that constantly refill around the area, so keep looping around to collect what's in them as you fight.

When it's dead, you'll get one last go on any unopened item boxes that will now no longer respawn. Then go through the Prosthetics Craft and Repair door to find an item box and the other side of the Face you already have. Interact with the case to get the face out, then unbolt the door and you'll be right at the bottom of the stairs you need to get back to where you left the other half of the face. Take the stairs up to the Prosthetic Workshop and fix the Face, and then use it on the Mirror Door nearby to leave, as the door you used to get in will lock.

Carry on into the next room and you'll find the Note with Digit 0 note and the Black Reef Longshot marksman rifle, as well as a yellow item box. Unbolt the door and leave, where you'll be attacked. Head down the stairs and out of the door straight ahead of you, dealing with or dodging enemies as you go. Turn right outside and then head through the Therapeutic Gardens so you can get back to Reception. You'll hear an announcement that will add the Wireless Room as an objective which, handily, is behind an Old Man Face lock.

Head to the Upper Hall and use the old man face on the Mirror Door to get into Medical Records. Grab the For Akeley's Widows, Questions Linger note and head through the hole. There will be an enemy in there to fight, and it's a tight space so be ready. When they're done, interact with the glowing spot for a new yellow Symbol.

Head out of the door, where you'll be right by a shortcut you can unlock back out into the balcony near the Upper Hall.

At this point you can skip the Wireless Room and go straight to the Chapel as it's an optional side objective. But you'll miss an ERC pen, and some Dream Essence upgrade points if you skip it.

Assuming you're heading to the Wireless Room, ignore the bolted shortcut door for now and instead go down around the corridor to it.

Inside there's an item in the drawers and an ERC pen on the desk and, obviously, three talking brains in a jar. Speak to all three brains in turn to get a clue and a note, then join up the notes you got from the brains to the Note about Wireless Room in Investigations to get an upgrade point.

Now it's for the wireless room brain puzzle.

How to solve the wireless room brain puzzle

Each of the brains have a confusing clue, and some info on if the others are telling the truth. However, to solve the Wireless brain puzzle you just need these three pieces of information:

1. Start with Pence who says the primary frequency is bad luck on Fridays, so 13.
2. Now use Dunwich's clue to 'round the primary to the nearest ten and half it', giving you 5.
3. Finally Ambrose says the tertiary is double the sum of the first two, giving us 36

That gives you the code: 13, 5, 36. Set the dials to each number in turn and press the central button to enter it and move on to the next. You'll see a green light each time you get it right, and when all three numbers are entered the brains will explode.

As a reward you'll get some Dream Essence.

Now unlock the shortcut or go back through Medical Records depending on which is safer, and go to Reception to open the ERC crate now you have the pen. Inside you'll find Cutter's Tomahawk, a melee upgrade for the shotgun.

Head towards the Waiting Area with the old man face Mirror door, and access the Chapel Courtyard. There are two item boxes on a bench to grab before you enter the Chapel.

Inside the Chapel you'll find a Lost Letters - Deja Vu note on the right next to some bodies and two item crates around to the left. There's another item box on the pulpit, as well as a glowing spot you can interact with to get another yellow Symbol. You can now join all the yellow Symbols in Investigations for an upgrade point.

Left of the pulpit is an item box on a bench to the right by the door. Go through the door and you'll find an Unsent Letter note, and another Prism charging station that you now have three yellow symbols for.

How to use the yellow Prism Charging station

For the yellow Prism Charging station solution, insert the Prism and rotate the dials so the symbols you've found appear between the two yellow triangles, as show in the image above. Then validate the answer to complete it.

This is the same process as for the previous station so, while there's no obvious clues, there's only one correct symbol per layer.

When you leave the room you'll see the Doctor go past and open up a new door. Head in to find a lot of brains and a Local Residents note on a shelf. Keep going, through the gap in the shelves, and you'll find the final Face and trigger a cutscene.

Once the cutscene has played out there's an Exceptional Specimens note, and two items to grab before you head out. When you get back to the Chapel you'll be ambushed by several enemies, including the black phantom creature. Don't try and fight anything, just smash any obstacles blocking the exit and run.

For now go to the Head Surgeon's Office on 2F, which you can now access with the final Face. Inside you'll find an item box just as you go in, a Diary of Thedus Lowe note, and the Vertebrae Key on the desk. Grab them and then look for a cupboard you can push away to access the next room.

Inside you'll find the Memo with Digit 8 note, which you can now connect to all the other number notes in Investigations to get an upgrade point and work out the combination for the lock in Storage. There's also the final ERC pen and an item in a cupboard.

Head to the ERC crate in the General Ward now you have the pen (the area where you dropped down the hole just before the boss fight) and you'll get some items and Dream Essence.

Now for the lock in Storage.

The storage lock code

The locked Hospital Storage code is 1308. The Letter With Digits notes you've been finding list numbers and most of them have positions, with the exception of 0, which just goes in the slot not listed explicitly:

• 'One comes first'
• '3 is the second digit'
• 0
• 'Eight comes last'

Inside you'll find a bunch of items and the Doyle's Cold Blood attachment for the Submachine gun that lets you continuous fire slow enemies.

Now it's time to get the final Symbols, so head back to the Locker Room near Reception and go down the stairs. Pick up the Access Restricted note near the door with the Vertebrae Lock that you now have the key for and go in. Just inside you'll see a glowing point on a pile of bodies that will now give you the final pink Symbol. Link them all up in Investigations for an upgrade point.

Head through the hole in the wall, where you'll have another mini-boss fight with the lung monster. Once he's dead make sure you check the room thoroughly for items, and then push the trolley out of the way to get into the next room. Grab what's in the item box and listen to the Radio, then use the pink Prism charger to charge your prism one last time:

How to use the pink Prism Charging station solution

As with the previous two charging stations, the solution to the pink Prism charging station is to line up the three symbols you've found inbetween the two pink triangles by rotating each ring. As before, there's only one symbol per layer so it's just a case of finding them. When they're lined up, press validate to complete the puzzle and fully charge the Prism.

Now it's time to use the fully charged Prism, so head to the final surgeon's Mirror Door on 1F that opens the way back to the Anatomical Theater where Faye's body is. When you place the prism a monster will take Faye's body, so chase it.

There will be some item boxes in the area you reach with cars and trucks, and some blue drawers to search - but don't take too long as there will also be lots of monsters. Otherwise head down the path, keeping an eye out for some more item boxes as the path turns, then head through the hole in the fence and drop down.

Eventually the slither will rise up and block the way ahead, and you'll have to survive attack waves while Faye tries to open a door. At this point keep moving, fighting, and dipping into the refilling item boxes. There are three waves, ending in the lung monster boss you've fought twice already. The final stage is the worst, as it keeps spawning the little jumpy Stygians monsters while you're trying to deal with the boss. Just keep looping the area and taking what you can from the respawning item boxes. They'll usually spit out health when you're in real trouble, so just try to stay alive.

When the fight is over, push on to trigger a cutscene and when that's done you can make your way back to the boat and complete the hospital area.

This guide is a work in progress and will continue.

This Sinking City 2 walkthrough is a complete guide to the opening act of the game, starting with the objective to Reach the Miskatonic Library Annex and ending once you've saved the woman at the Devil's Reef Hotel. It covers every code, puzzle and solution you need, as well as the best route to take.

This is a large open area that has you navigating between city locations via water to complete everything Once you've worked your way through this you'll need the Sinking City 2 hospital walkthrough, so let's get started.

Once the opening intro is over, you'll be able to walk through the apartment and collect some notes - Excerpt From The Dream Realm on one desk and About The Mask on the other. There's also a Final Warning! note in the kitchen and a Restricted Section Inventory note in the room with the painting.

There's a few other things to find here that fill out the story, but nothing essential, so take your time or carry on. It's up to you.

When you leave the flat you'll see the Miskatonic Library from the balcony. Now head down the fire escapes to a boat and travel until you reach a closed gate. Turn right to find a jetty you can dock at and a window with a white sheet you can climb in. Head through the building to find a bridge to the gate side.

If you try to open the gate now, it won't work and you'll see a Fuse Box to the left and the message that you don't have any items, so move on to your first Safe Room where you can save, store items and unlock abilities. Leave the safe room when you're done via the other door and go down the stairs into a shop with a Gate Switchboard note on the counter saying you need to head across the street to find Fuses in another shop. Place this in your Investigation space when the prompt tells you.

Head outside and you'll see the Allen Radio Store. Make a note of the 'Est 1908' bit, for later. You can't get in but trying will show you the Fuses you need. Leave them for now and instead head around the large hole in the road to reach an open white door.

Immediately inside you'll see an office on the right with a Map on the wall so grab that. There will be an item in the draw behind you.

Then head up the stairs and into Apartment 5 where you'll find a Safe with a To Martin note saying the combination is 'my proudest, most miraculous moment'. Technically the clue for this comes later but you can also just solve it now.

How to open the Safe in Apartment 5

The safe combination for Apartment 5 is 1908, the year the radio shop was established. You'll find in a note in the Radio Shop later but you can also just use it now to get some items. At this point some enemies appear but you can run away.

Now head into Apartment 6 where you'll find a hole into the room below. There's an item in the cupboard and a Gate Fuses and Wire note on a desk - connect that to the Gate Switchboard note in your Investigation space earn your first upgrade point and then pull the bolt on the white door to open a shortcut to the entrance you used to get in. Now head through the hole in the wall to reach the shop.

Once inside, grab the item in the yellow box, then head to the till and grab the "From a Sister" note and connect it to Martin in the Investigation space to complete it and get an upgrade point. When you grab the Fuses an enemy will appear near you and you'll have your first fight. Shoot the glowing parts for extra damage.

Once the enemy is dead, push the shelves blocking the door away to get out and deal with more enemies or, better, run away. Generally you get nothing for defeating monsters, so only do it you need to. If you haven't opened the Safe at this point go back to Apartment 5 where the safe is and use the 'proudest moment' as the combination - the date the store was established - 1908.

How to solve the Gate Fuse Box puzzle

Head back to the Gate Fuse Box and use the Fuses to connect the wires. Because there are different configurations you'll need to rotate some of the Fuses. This is the the Gate Fuse Box puzzle solution:

• Straight fuse: Join the two blue wires
• T-shaped Fuse: Join the three yellow and green wires
• Right-angle fuse: Join the two red and orange wires

Remember to 'validate' it once you're done or it won't work. Now pull the lever to open the gate.

Head back to the boat, dodging past the enemy that appears, and carry on until there's an explosion behind another gate. Dock on the jetty to the left and grab an item and the "Lost Letters - Death Awaits" note just to the right of the stairs , before heading into the building with a hole in it.

As you head up the stairs inside you'll trigger a chase, so run through the building until you jump and you'll be able to open the gate and carry on through it.

Travel a short distance until you reach another jetty, dock the boat and head towards the building, where you'll trigger a cutscene that ends this section.

Once docked, head towards the building and wait for the cutscene to play out. Then move on, getting an item from some drawers on the right by the 'Silence' noticeboard before heading through the door, and then through another door by the windows where you'll see the map in front of you. Behind you'll find an Emergency Relief Crate, or ERC, that you won't have a key for yet.

Leave the room via the partially-opened door into a corridor with a body hanging ahead of you. Head towards the body and, when you can, turn left to find a Lost Letters - Dominion note on a bench next to another body.

Turn right from the bench, look for another large Silence notice and go through the door next to it. You'll see a creature run away, which is a problem for another time . Read the blackboard for the "Manifesto" Note and open the cupboard for an item.

Go back out and follow the room left to reach the Restroom, go in and then through the red lit hole in the wall. You'll be attacked by an enemy, so kill them and then grab an item from the drawer at the back of the room, before you head out the other door into the main library annex.

There's an item in a drawer by the Gas Can. In the far right corner near the ramp up you'll find a door you can unbolt for shortcut back to the way in, while on a desk to the right just before the ramp you'll find the "Internal Memorandum" note and an item in a nearby cupboard.

Head up the ramp and follow the path to the back of the room where you'll find a handle you can turn. You'll be jumped by the creature you saw earlier and dropped back down to the floor below and attacked by more enemies. Now's a good time to use that Gas Can to take out multiple enemies at one.

Once the area is cleared go up the ramp again where you might be attacked by any leftovers. When everything is dead head to the back to find an item in some drawers. Now turn the second handle in the new area you've uncovered, and then turn the first wheel again to access the path you've just cleared to the Restricted Section.

Go inside the Restricted Section and take the impossible to miss glowing red evil book to trigger a cutscene. Once that's done you'll hear some screaming and get a new objective.

Find the Source of the Noise

Push the drawers aside to open a new door and keep going past some red painted doors until you reach a lit, partially open door. Go through to trigger a cutscene and meet Corentin.

Save the Woman at the Devil's Reef Hotel

Head past Corentin to find a Safe Room and an "ERC User Manual" note nearby with an ERC Activator Pen, which acts as a key. Unlock the other door and head back to the ERC Crates with the pen (now you have it) to get the Voss Compensator, which will make fully-focused shots slow enemies. It's probably best to deal with some of enemies you'll encounter now or they can easily bunch up on you.

Once you have the part, head back to the safe room and out the other exit to Corentin's boat, grabbing the item in a yellow box by the stairs.

The path on the boat looks like it diverges, but it's just a square, so either direction will eventually take you to a Church and the sub-objective to Open the Floodgate just beyond it.

Open the Floodgate

Dock at the church and grab the item in the yellow box immediately on your left and the Night Ore near the body right in front of you. When the time comes this is how you recharge the Nightshade Mask you took at the start, which can revive you when you die. There's also "A Balm for Flash and Relic" note that explains the ore.

Head to the Church, avoiding the traps so that A) they don't hurt you and B) you can use them on enemies later.

Go past the white door when you reach it, as it's locked. If you take the left turn you'll find an Obelisk to note for later. Head right instead where you'll find a flooded area.

Take the left turn in the water and you'll find a "Stained Note" that mentions a Trident and a Dagger, plus an item in a yellow box.

Take the turn to the right and you'll go past a locked Graveyard Gate and find your way to a statue covered in red vines, where you'll find the Church Key near a body. There are a lot of enemies here, so use the traps and the Gas Can to help take them out. There are also two yellow item boxes near the Statue with items in, and a Star Locked Door you can't do anything with yet.

Take the Church Key to the white door. Inside you'll find the a "Call Upon Believers" note on the altar, and "Origins of the Redemption Church" note at the back near a ladder. There's also an item in the cupboard in the corner and, up the ladder, you'll find a Radio you can listen to and another Star Door.

Now head into the Safe Room, where you'll find the "Look for Dream Essence!" note and some Dream Essence you can now use to upgrade Talents at the Talent Table. You can only equip one for now, so I'd recommend either Carapace of the Damned to reduce damage, or Profane Reload to reload quicker.

Head out the other door into a new area. Get the item in a yellow box on the coffins, then head past the big statue to the Gate Lever. However, the Gate Lever has a combination lock on it and there's a "Floodgate Lock" note by a body explaining the combination is the year of the bell.

The Floodgate Lock combination

The Floodgate lock can be opened with the code 1672.

The "Floodgate" Lock note explains the combination is the year of the bell, and while the "Origins of the Redemption Church" note you found earlier says the church was founded in 1667, the "Report on the Bell" note you'll find later says 'it took another half decade to craft and install the bell'. This gives you the combination 1672.

You can open the gate now, but there's a lot more to do at the Church before you go, DON'T LEAVE YET.

Grab the Star Key on the body and the item in the yellow box. Leave and you'll be attacked by a couple of enemies.

Use the Star Key to open the Star Door above the ladder in the church, where you'll find and take the Trident and a "Report on the Bell" note that says 'it took another half decade to craft and install the bell. This finally gives you the Floodgate Lock combination: 1672, as I mentioned earlier.

Link the "Origins of the Redemption Church" note to the "Floodgate Lock" note and the "Report on the Bell" note in Investigations to complete it and get an upgrade point.

Go into the Safe Room, out the other side and around the corner where you'll find a "Lost Letters - The Conduit" note and an item near a red vine-covered wall. Follow the building around past an open window, where you'll be jumped by two enemies. Deal with them and you'll have opened up a shortcut back to the Obelisk. There's also an item in a yellow box. Now go back to the window you can climb in where you'll find a "Notes on the Path" note, an ERC pen and you can also unlock the door for a shortcut back to the Church.

Now go back to the Star lock in the Graveyard and open it to get the ERC crate for an inventory upgrade, grab the Printing Plate C for later, and a First Vision Note and a "Letter to Boss" note.

Go to Investigations to link the "The First Vision" note with the "A Call Upon Believers" note and the "Notes on the Path" note for an upgrade point. An enemy will appear when you leave but you can run past and get back to the church and the Obelisk.

How to solve the Obelisk puzzle at the church

This is the Obelisk puzzle solution, showing all the correct symbols. This comes from using the "Call Upon Believers" note which lists gods 'from the depth to the heights', while the First Vision note lists their symbols, giving you this:

• Cthylla: Splayed Womb
• Gyrh: Spearhead
• Tsog-Nar: Crooked Cross
• Yig: Serpent Form

With that info you need to rotate the Obelisk symbols to display these symbols in order starting from the bottom (the depths) and moving to the top (the heights).

When you get it right the Obelisk will start crackling and lightening will keep striking every few seconds, so get out the way. Each time the lightning hits, one of the Trident tips will light up, so wait for that while dodging or dealing with the enemies as you do. When all three tips are lit, grab the Trident between blasts to end the process.

Take this charged Trident back to the room you found it in and place it back on the stand. This will transport you to another dimension where you'll find the church full of statues worshipping a star-shaped god. Head to the altar, picking up the Dagger on the way, and place it in the altar slot. This will take you down to a basement where you'll have a small boss fight. When that's over there will be two pieces of Dream Essence on the alter when you go back up.

Now you can use the Floodgate combination 1672 to open the gate if you haven't already. You'll be attacked but you can just dodge past everyone and get back to the boat. Follow the water until you reach a whale and the new objective 'Move the Whale'.

Dock by the whale and move on to find a ladder up to some crane controls that aren't working yet. Follow the platform around where you'll see an engine that's missing gasoline and a gear. Interact with it to get the sub-objectives to fix the crane, and to find gasoline and a gear.

A creature will appear and smash a hole in the Saloon door you just passed, but before you go in keep going around the corner to get an item from a yellow box.

Head into the Saloon and pick up the "Soggy Note" and the Graveyard Key. There's also a Shotgun you can't reach yet and an item box on the far right as you go in. Go into Investigations and join the "Soggy Note" and the "Broken Crane" note for an upgrade point.

Head inside the Safe Room where's there's an item in a yellow box then head out the other door to get the Shotgun, listen to the Radio and then go back the way you came.

At this point you have choice: the Gear is at a Printing House, reached via the Church using the Graveyard Key, while the gasoline is ahead in the Fire Station. You can do them in any order. However, you'll get a Printing Plate from each location, which you can use back at the Printing House, when you have all three, for an upgrade.

I'm going to do the Printing House first and then the Fire Station, because at that point you can continue the story with no more backtracking. However, it's worth doubling back to the Printing House then to collect a useful upgrade.

How to get the gear in Sinking City 2

Head back to the Church and use the key at the locked gate in the Graveyard. Follow the path through a bus where you'll be attacked as you pass through. Take a left out of the bus to find two yellow item boxes on the back of a truck, then go back the other way and up the ramp.

Ignore the first turn up to find a yellow item box head, and then go back and up. Keep going until you duck under a hole and follow a fire escape to get inside a building. You'll fall through the floor as soon as you do.

Inside that room you fall into, you'll find a yellow item box and an ECR crate. Follow the room round, grabbing some items from a blue drawer near a white door, where you can see a Gear if you look through.

Keep going until you enter a large flooded room and see something move in the distance. There's a item in some blue drawers in the far right corner and a door on the right to the room where you saw the Gear with a knob marked APH that you can't open yet. To the left are some stairs that lead up to a locked door and a hole in the wall.

Head through the hole where you'll see something moving again. You'll be attacked by two enemies as soon as you start heading forward so take them out. There's another enemy around the corner before some stairs but before you take the stairs check the other side for an item in a yellow box.

As you head up the stairs you'll find a room on your right. Inside is the "Adventure Awaits for Arkham's Academics" note and a yellow box with an item inside. There's also a locked gate marked APH again.

Leave that for now and head up until you reach a window you can climb in. Inside there's a "Lost Letters - Staying With You" note and an item in a drawer in the next room, with an enemy. You'll also find a Printing Plate A on a desk and an "Incident During Study" note that explains the last plate is in a head librarian's apartment near the Fire Dept.

Once you have everything, head out the other window and down a blue pipe. At the end of the blue pipe you can head up to find an item and then back down and across to reach the next room.

The new room is actually where you first came in, before you fell through the floor, only with the hole now covered up. Inside you'll find the "Floodwaters Rise!" note on the desk and an item directly behind you after that. In front of the desk you'll find some items in some more drawers and a door you can unlock for a shortcut back to the large flooded room from before.

Through the white door you'll find an item in a cupboard, something in some drawers, a save room and the APH key on the wall. Taking that will cause a secret room to open. Inside you'll find a printing table where you can place the two printing tablets you currently have.

The window will take you back out to the bus and the way you came out but ignore that for now and go through the door you unlocked to get back to the large flooded room from before. When you go back down there are new enemies that shoot at you from glowing holes in their face. Shoot the glowing holes at the brightest for the most damage.

Deal with them, then head back to the Gear room and open it with the APH key to take it. When you leave a lot of enemies will appear, so run back up the stairs to the room you were just in.

If you take the window out the way you originally reached this room you can drop a ladder back down to the gate that was also marked APH and use the key to open it. Inside you'll find an item in a yellow box and an ERC pen key.

At this point you can head back to the big flooded room to try and get the ERC crate for an Inventory Increase. I'd dodge and run as best you can to avoid a fight or you'll likely use up all your ammo and health. Whether you do that or not you can leave via the window in this room to get to a fire escape that will lead you back to the Church.

How to get gasoline in Sinking City 2

Head out of the saloon towards the Fire Department and follow the path left. You'll be attacked by a Stygian once past the bus, and once that's dealt with then head up the stairs in the corner to find a 'Rescue Zone' and an item in a yellow box. You'll be attacked again by a Stygian on the way out.

Follow the path to the Fire Station entrance. There's an item in a yellow box by the red car (you'll be attacked by a Stygian) and a ladder you can't reach in the corner. Grab everything you can and and head through the white doors.

Inside there's an item in some blue drawers and another item in a yellow box hidden hidden around the side of the fire truck on the left and an item in the locker by the electrified floor. The gasoline is inside the room the electricity is blocking. Head up the stairs and grab two items from the lockers at the top. In the corner to the right of the lockers you'll find a switch you can pull to stop the alarm bell and electricity but don't do it yet, as it triggers a large attack.

There is also an ERC crate in this area and an item in a drawer on the other side of the room between some beds. When you're ready, pull the lever and then run into the middle of the room to use the fire pole to get down before the enemies overwhelm you. Run into the now non-Electrified room and grab the Fuel. An enemy will burst through the closed white door in the corner (there's an item in a drawer in the small space this opens up).

Get out of the fire station, as not only will more enemies attack you outside, but the ones inside will smash their way out as well. Run around the fire and back to the Safe Room in the Saloon. Save and get organised then run out and out the hole in the door.

Refuel the crane, fit the gear and use it - turn left first to find the big red claw (and open up a new path you'll use in a moment) then take the crane with the claw attached to the Whale to move it.

If you want the final Printing Plate, you're now going to want to head back into the Fire Station area to access the ladder you can now reach after moving the claw. If you don't the upgrade that gives you you can just carry on to the hotel.

If you want the Printing Plate, run and dodge your way to the ladder by the Fire Dept and grab the item in a yellow box before you head up. Deal with the enemy inside and on a desk you'll find Printing Plate B and the "About the Custom Red Franklin" note that explains the red printing press you placed the other plates in. We'll get to that later.

Go into your Investigations to link the "Red Franklin" note with the "Incident During Study" and the "Letter to Boss" note to complete it and get a upgrade point. Another zombie will attack you. In the other room you'll find an item and an ERC pen for the crate in the Fire Dept. If you go back into the fire station at this point you'll an item and some Dream Essence upgrade points from it.

Now you have to final Printing Plate it's time to head back to the Printing House and the red press. This is entirely optional, but the upgrade is useful.

The Sinking City 2 Printing Press puzzle solution

When you get to the red Printing Press in the Print House, place the final Printing Plate and you're ready to solve the puzzle.

You need to flip the plates until they're all silver or all gold, with each side unlocking a different reward when you use the press:

• Silver side - Two Dream essence
• Gold side - Cutter's Study Stock, which lets you shoot enemies in the back for more damage

You can only pick one, as the press breaks after you use it.

Rotating any tile flips all the tiles above, below, left and right of it. You'll want to get them in a position where flipping the last one makes everything the color you want.

The best way to solve the printing press puzzle is to get the corners to the color you want. That's fairly easy to do and, once you've done that, all you have to do is flip the middle one to get them all the same.

What's the best printing press reward?

It doesn't feel like too much of a choice here - two Dream Essence upgrade points won't really change that much, but a shotgun with a backstab/sneak damage boost, while situational, will be useful through out the rest of the game. Whatever you choose, you'll be ambushed on the way out but you don't gain anything from fighting so dodge past and escape best you can.

Once you've done the Printing Press you're done here so head to the Devil's Reef Hotel to carry on.

Now head towards the Devil's Reef Hotel. You'll hit another floodgate so dock and head in through the open window, grabbing the item in the yellow box you pass. Head through the white door inside and then through another door into the ruined interior of the building.

There's a "Lost Letters - Meet Me At Dawn" note on the bed to the right, and an item in the pram just as you enter the large open area with the piano. The piano will fall in the water as you approach it and you'll be attacked by two Slither zombies. Once they're gone then grab the item from the drawer near the white door and head through it and up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs you'll be attacked by a Slither Zombie and Glowing Head that you'll need to deal with. Grab the item in the cupboard on the other side of the big hole, the "Gerda Lost Her Head" note through the door on the dresser with the big mirror and the item from the drawer next to it.

Now head back the way you came and out of the open window, where you can open the floodgate and kick down the ladder to reach your boat and finally go to the Devil's Reef.

Head through the hotel and up the stairs to find Lorelei. Go around the balcony to trigger a cutscene. Once she's explained everything, head through the nearby doorway and down the stairs to find a Safe Room, a Radio you can listen to, an item in a yellow box by a luggage trolley in the middle of the room, and a map. There's also a "Hotel Ledger" note by the map explaining where to find a Staff Key to access some Tokens. You can also unbolt the double doors to make a shortcut back to the boat.

Go into the Safe Room and do whatever you need to do, then head out the other door. Grab the items from the cupboard and the desk. If you take the door on the left you'll find some stairs down to the Lorelei Lock that needs three keys to open. The door on the right is locked for now.

Once you're done, head back through the Safe Room and out, then up the red carpeted stairs to a blue corridor - ignore this first floor for now and keep going up the stairs again, where the door ahead will close as you approach.

Open it and head inside. Here you'll find a Staff Room that needs a key, and a chest of drawers you can push away to access room 301 where you'll find a safe, a "Run For Your Life" note, as well as some items in a cupboard and a drawer.

The Room 301 Safe code

The Room 301 safe combination is 2137, which you will find later from some notes but that should open it now and get you a Voss's Target Grip that will make perfectly timed shots deal more damage, as well as some ammo. Once the grip is equipped you'll see an extra marking on the crosshairs that will show the timing to deal more damage.

The combination comes from a "Safe Code Letter" note and a "Baby One More Tide" note you'll find later. They give you the clues that explain the safe combination from some song lyrics:

• Spread my wings like a bat: 2 (wings)
• Curl my tail in hate and spite: 1 (tail)
• Their octopus hearts beat in fear: 3 (hearts)
• As the tide makes all sins clear: 7 (deadly sins)

Leave Room 301 and carry on to the end of the corridor, where you'll find a yellow box at the end of the room with a item. Head through the door next to this to find a hanging body with a key on it.

Trying to take it will trigger a cutscene where the body falls to a lower level and you'll then be attacked. If you try to run you'll be attacked in the corridor and, given that you'll need to spend time around this area, it's best to face up and kill all the enemies.

In the room where you're initially attacked, the door that was originally blocked by a chair is also opened and you'll find some items in two yellow boxes when it's safe. Once you're done head down to the floor below you ignored previously.

On the lower floor you'll find another locked Staff Room door. Left of that is Room 202 which is locked and Room 201 you can enter. Inside 201 you'll find the "Your Last Game" note on a body. Go through the other door into a room full of bodies. Directly on your right is the "Lost Letter - An Artefact" note. Directly behind you is a drawer with an item in it and a door to a toilet with a yellow box containing an item.

The big Silver Box you can't do anything with yet so leave by the other door you haven't used yet and follow the path around to find another room, with a "Lorelei's Request" note on a desk as you enter. There's also an item in a drawer to the left of the desk.

Opening the door in here will get you ambushed by a enemy so be prepared. Once they're dead, use the crack in the wall past the door you just opened to reach the next room where there's a giant hole in the floor.

Unlock the door in here to make a shortcut to the blue corridor before you jump down.

When you jump down you'll be in the area next to the Safe Room you couldn't access before where the body landed, letting you pick up the Staff Key. There's another Silver Box you can't use yet and an item in the far corner in a drawer.

Go around past the reception desk towards the open door with the light spilling from it. Inside you'll find the "Baby One More Tide" note with a code clue, and an item in a drawer. Now head through the closed door into the kitchen and unlock the other door to get back to the Safe Room.

Now make your way up to the Staff Room on the top floor to find an item in a yellow box and a "Safe Code Letter" note. Join that to the "Baby One More Tide" note in Investigations to earn an upgrade point. You'll also now have all the clues that explain the safe combination you opened earlier.

Now head dawn a floor to the other Staff Room where you'll find an enemy waiting. Deal with them and you'll find an item in a cupboard, three Lorelei Tokens and a "Lorelei Chests" note that explain you need to use the tokens to open the silver chests you've been finding to get the keys for the Lorelei Lock in the basement.

You can now connect this "Lorelei Chests" note to the Hotel Ledger and "Lorelei Lock" note to complete that investigation and get an upgrade point.

Now it's time to use the Lorelei Tokens on the Silver Boxes to get the Lorelei Keys. Because the Lorelei Lock is in the basement I'm going to work from the top down. There's going to be a lot of enemies reanimating while you do this so I'd recommend avoiding them as best you can, as you'll likely be short on supplies at this point and you'll probably need some bullets for a trap on one of the boxes.

The top floor Silver Box you can just open and grab the Lorelei Tokens. However the middle floor Silver Box will trigger a several traps where gramophone-like devices play sound that damages you, and you'll need to break them all to stop it. Some you can stomp on but a couple need to be shot.

There are three traps in the room with you and one behind the closed door to the toilet. Once this box is done go to the hole in the floor, where you dropped down to reach the body before, to get to the final Silver Box. Grab the Lorelei Tokens here and run around to the Safe Room before you're attacked.

Now head to the basement and use the keys to open the Lorelei Lock. Through the door you'll find some growths on the wall that explode if you get too close, so don't, and be able to examine a door to see a Ventilation Machine.

Avoid the growths and move to the end of the corridor where you'll find a "Ventilation System Schematic" note and a white door you can head though. Follow the corridor, avoid the growths and you'll be attacked when you see some machines, so deal with them and you'll finds Carruthers The Crook note. Past that is a locker with an item in and door leading to the Ventilation Pump Room.

Inside the pump room you'll find a "Mustard Gas" note, a yellow item box, a locker with an item in and the Minuteman Submachine Gun. Grab all that first before you touch the pump.

Ventilation Pump puzzle solution

The Ventilation Pump Puzzle solution needs you to position four arrows to certain marks by pressing buttons, with the lever switching the buttons between moving things up or down.

The third button just moves the fourth arrow on its own, so just press that button while the lever is set to blue blue to get it in position. However, button one moves arrow one and two up and down, while button two moves arrows three and four up and down.

To get them all in position you'll need to use the lever to switch between up and down while using button two to move arrow two and three up, and using button one to pull arrow one and two down again. You're aiming to get arrow three in position while two is one notch below so that pressing button one in the up configuration will then move the final arrows into the correct position.

From the starting configuration Ventilation Pump Puzzle solution is this:

1. With the lever set to blue press the third button to move the forth arrow up, onto its mark.
2. With the lever still set to blue press the middle button so that second and third arrows move up to the top - placing the third arrow on its mark and the second above it.
3. Set the lever to red and press the first button to move the second down arrow so it's one notch below its mark (the first arrow won't move as it's as far down as it goes).
4. Set the lever to blue and press the first button to move the first and second arrows up position.

When the pump activates the gas will clear and you can now move ahead to reach an elevator but before you use it head back out the Lorelei Lock door to find a previously gas filled doorway now clear.

You'll find a door you can't open to Linen Storage, so keep going until you reach a wine cellar with a crack in the wall (you'll be attacked along the way). The crack will get you inside the Linen Storage where there are several yellow item boxes and other resources, making this a valuable detour. You will be attacked again on the way out but you can just dodge past and run back to the lift.

Now take the lift up and release Lorelei. She will now move incredibly slowly to the boat while a variety of enemies attack you. You'll need to find and pull sparking levers around the room to keep her moving. Fortunately, the yellow item boxes here keep refilling so you can top up as you run about.

You don't need to kill everyone yet, just kite them around until you see a sparking lever with a red light to pull. Keep grabbing item boxes as you pass them.

When Lorelei reaches the water a boss will appear who you will have to kill. Hit their pulsating weak points to knock them to the ground and then shoot/stomp the eggs on their back to kill them. When they're dead the boxes will stop respawning but you will get one last go on them, so sweep the room to grab what you can before you leave via the door that appears.

Once you have Lorelei in the boat (use the handle with a bow over it nearby to lower her in) you'll get a new sub-objective to Bring Lorelei to Corentin. Do that and some cutscenes will play to end this section.

Now it's time for the Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough.

I've unwisely let my inventory fill up, even as The Sinking City 2 bleeds my ammunition. I'm back-tracking, but the road back to the safe room is long, and more writhing, water-logged, bloated undead lunge at me through half-flooded spaces than were there previously. Before I can make it to safety and combine resources from my item box to concoct more ammunition or healing items, a new enemy type unceremoniously appears and throws me across the room. Screaming, I unload any remaining bullets into whichever part of its fishy skin looks to be a weak spot. The Sinking City 2 truly has the survival horror juice to be in conversation with modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill entries.

The Sinking City 2 is clearly influenced by both those horror series. At times, it feels like a love letter to iconic survival horror moments, and it wisely lifts some of their best features – from Resident Evil 2 remake's color-coded maps for the item-hungry, to an early section set in the flooded streets of Arkham that reminds me of wandering through Silent Hill 2 remake's urban early hours. Inventory management, safe rooms, and item boxes are present – including crafting recipes that share resources between ammo and health, meaning you have to make agonizing decisions about what you most need to press further into the unknown. Yet, The Sinking City 2 uses its Lovecraftian, cosmic horror theming to push beyond its contemporaries.

Sinking feeling

So much of what makes the best survival horror games great, after all – is the not knowing. It's what made considering when to use the titular gun in Resident Evil Requiem such a thrill in its early hours, after all. Yet, I'm now so familiar with Resident Evil and Silent Hill games that even in new entries I largely know what to expect.

The beauty of The Sinking City 2 on a first playthrough is that I don't, despite the familiar genre touchstones. This may be a sequel, but its predecessor was an open world detective game that mechanically shares very little with this one. In fact, for all of that game's neat ideas it was rather clunky – especially whenever it forced you into combat. While The Sinking City 2 has a respect for classic survival horror, it feels wonderfully modern to play, with reactive movement and solid gunplay that makes it easy to jump from other genre contemporaries to this – more of a Resident Evil 2 remake-like than a Resident Evil 2-like.

The set-up is simple. When something goes wrong during a dream ritual conducted by occultist partners and lovers Calvin Rafferty and Faye Bennett, only Cal wakes up. Searching for a cure for his slumbering love thrusts him into probing the dark corners of Arkham as it's gripped by a supernatural flood that brings horrors from the depths. The only non-evacuees sticking around, Cal included, have some serious issues.

Faye still has a strong presence on the story, and the pair's largely positive devotion to one another almost feels subversive for survival horror – closer to Rick and Evelyn from the '90s Mummy than any relationship in Silent Hill. It also means that despite the cosmic weirdness haunting Arkham, Calvin is gung-ho and ready to accept whatever new threats appear with a sort of morbid curiosity. These bodies alive now? They alive now.

The Slither – a gross cross between big slugs and eels – power the many base zombie-ish foes Calvin will have to navigate through on his quest for forbidden knowledge. Worming their way into dead bodies, they re-animate them and then stumble, sprint, and tumble towards you, with even basic enemies able to cause devastating damage if you fall into their clutches.

Headshots are not the way forward here. Instead, once active, The Slither will form up as pus-filled mounds on flesh, meaning weak spots can appear on any part of an enemy. On normal difficulty, they twitch around enough where it can be quite hard to take out even a couple of Slither, let alone a group. This is a great mechanic for the most part, though at times waiting for a new pus boil to emerge can feel a bit artificially annoying. Plenty of moments throughout The Sinking City 2, ammo and health feels scarce enough to the point I have to seriously consider which enemies are worth blasting out of my way or simply trying to dodge my way around.

Because, even when felled, The Slither can keep coming. Even now, I don't fully understand how this works, but the wormy abominations that burst forth from a defeated enemy can dart across to a new corpse to animate, making some areas feel like slaughterhouses with how many Slither keep coming. A stomping melee attack can be used on enemies who fall to the ground (shooting their legs is always an option), but can also crush Slither, potentially stopping them from continuing to find new hosts.

But, there's also so many Slither writhing on the floor of some areas that the active ones can be hard to spot. Does crushing inactive Slither before enemies appear help at all, or is only the ones already in bodies that are a problem? Joyously, I don't know for sure, and while exploring some of The Sinking City 2's denser areas which have plenty of item-juggling back-tracking I was always delightfully on edge. I probably screamed more at this than playing Resident Evil 4 remake or Silent Hill f. I wouldn't consider this better than either in totality – but good old fashioned survival horror squealing certainly means something.

Maze runner

The bulk of The Sinking City 2 revolves around exploring a sequence of big areas that pleasingly spiral into complicated spaces filled with themed keys, puzzles, and a large amount of optional upgrades to find. Some of these tip the fedora to its predecessor, a detective mind-map allowing you to pin clues obtained from written notes in order to suss out, say, how to activate a mysterious obelisk behind a church, or how a collection of stuffed fish relates to a safe code.

It's always worth going out of your way to fully explore each side-area and obtain upgrades, from precious inventory expansions to whole new weapons. But, they often involve well-designed moments of back-tracking.

Almost every moment spent retreading steps throws something new at you, from spooking you with exploding bulbs or lightly forcing you to re-navigate around new rubble, to new waves of enemies emerging that you'll likely want to duck past as you make one final sprint to nab your goodies from an area you know you can leave behind you once the deed is done. If there's nothing in the way, you can be sure there will be something on the way back. Rather than rote, the well-timed dialing up of pressure is wonderful, and often audacious enough to have solid horror impact rather than feel annoying.

By the time you near the end of The Sinking City 2's largest areas in the middle of the game, each one teems with ridiculous threats snapping at your heels. I'd definitely recommend finding a difficulty where this works for you rather than gunning your way through (after all, that's what the many Resident Evil-like post-game unlocks can be used for – allowing unlimited ammo for certain weapons and the like).

The Sinking City 2's zones feel quite delineated, each spotlighting its own ideas more distinctly than I'd imagined during my early hours playing. Cal's boat, used to navigate flooded streets throughout which he has to investigate small areas to raise floodgates, a mechanical nod to the first game, is only used in the very first area of the game. A later hospital, meanwhile, adds biopunk-style face locks to explore a different theme beyond just horrors from the deep. For the most part this works well, though areas can at times feel a bit divorced from what came before, and I'd like to have seen a bit more wrung out of some of these ideas – especially the boat. But, perhaps that's better than overstaying its welcome.

The Sinking City 2 works less well whenever it throws you into a mandatory gauntlet of enemies or a boss battle. These moments can feel deadly at first, but you quickly get used to cruising for constantly appearing item boxes for more resources and filling enemies with lead – and they almost take the sting out of the tail of some of these otherwise intimidating foes. I understand Frogwares wouldn't want to risk players softlocking like in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, but I wish there was a way for these narratively dangerous moments to feel as dangerous as the, well, regular bits where I'm huffing and puffing through hallways as monsters moan and gurgle down my neck.

They're not problems suffered by The Sinking City 2 alone, though. Most survival horror games struggle with power curves and sticking the landing. But, it's the terrific moments of unease that'll stick with me, nervously pushing through Arkham's ruins as I struggle to understand what Cal is even trying to survive. Considering I really did not like its predecessor's combat sections, I was nervous when Frogwares announced it was pivoting to full survival horror here. But, my dark dreams have been answered – despite the odd misstep The Sinking City 2 works phenomenally well, bursting with forbidden ideas that its survival horror contemporaries could do with learning from. I have a new favorite survival horror series to follow.

The Sinking City 2 was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Want more horror? Check out the best Resident Evil games and the best Silent Hill games for more to keep you up at night!

Should you play The Sinking City 2?

Play it if...

You love modern-style survival horror

Definitely in conversation with recent Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, The Sinking City 2's dense maps filled with locks and puzzles feel great to work through in much the same way as the genre's latest and greatest.

You're a cosmic horror fan

While blasting back at the unknowable isn't 100% in-keeping with Lovecraft literature, the unsettling vibes of cosmic horror remain intact here. If you know your stuff, there's plenty of neat references to the lore throughout, as well as fresh twists.

Don't play it if…

You like detective games, not survival horror

Considering its predecessor is all about open world detective work, you'd be forgiven for expecting that here. Instead, The Sinking City 2 centers on playing through a sequence of survival horror areas, with very light detective theming compared to the original.

You don't like Lovecraftian-style, eldritch horror

The Sinking City 2 has its own spin on Lovecraftian lore, but it still centers on unknowable, watery abominations from the deep. If slippery, watery slug things re-animating dead bodies doesn't vibe with you, this is unlikely to change your mind.

How does The Sinking City 2 compare to the first game, and other Frogwares games?

The Sinking City 2 gameplay is very different to The Sinking City and Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games, but there are some similarities. Both this sequel and its predecessor, for instance, are set in cities dealing with a supernatural flood. But, while The Sinking City 2 has a detective theme for puzzle solving, it's only a side activity, and the bulk of the game revolves around traditional Resident Evil-style survival horror set within a sequence of levels.

With that said, this feels like the developer's most polished and confident work to date. The Sinking City 2 feeling different isn't a bad thing at all, but it's worth keeping in mind if you are looking for something more in-line with their previous titles.

How does The Sinking City 2 compare to other survival horror games?

The Sinking City 2 has a lot of its own twists on survival horror that come through its Lovecraftian theme, but largely the game feels like a fusion of modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, close in action to Resident Evil 2 remake and Silent Hill 2 remake respectively. At times this feels a bit lower budget, but for the most part it stands strong against those other great games, as The Sinking City 2 is a slick game to play through.

With blue and red color coded rooms on the map with in-character annotations, limited inventory space, safe rooms, and item boxes, previous survival horror game knowledge will serve you well here. But, enough feels fresh that The Sinking City 2 doesn't feel like a genre retread, either.

Now that Resident Evil Requiem has been out in the wild for nearly half a year, we can look at how Capcom's latest survival horror has performed in the market – and whether folks have opted to go physical or digital with it.

The topic of physical game copies and companies' choice to lean more into digital versions has been in the limelight recently following Sony's decision to end disc production for new titles on PlayStation consoles in 2028.

It's safe to say it's quite the hot topic, with game preservation experts predicting it'll just lead to more piracy and folks in the industry speaking out against the move toward digital-only gaming.

How are physical copies performing in the market, though? Well, when it comes to new games like Resident Evil Requiem, it seems they're doing good enough… except for in the United States, apparently.

According to The Game Business co-founder Christopher Dring (as per statistics from Ampere Analysis), the split between physical and digital copies is far more significant in the US than it is elsewhere – and, I mean by a lot.

As per Dring's roundup post on the stats, the US market saw 22% of Resident Evil Requiem sales being physical, while a whopping 78% have been digital.

Overseas, it's quite a bit more even. In the United Kingdom, 60% of sales were digital and 40% physical. Over in Australia, 43% of copies sold have been physical, whereas 57% were digital. It's certainly balanced when compared to the US, anyway – but there's more.

France's Resident Evil Requiem sales have been 55% physical and 45% digital. The most balanced figures, however, come from Japan, where 51% were physical and 49% digital – that's nearly even, almost a 50/50 split.

It's an intriguing set of stats for sure, especially as it comes amid the huge physical versus digital debate. Will numbers like this affect companies' decisions moving forward? Maybe not, but it's all still informative.

I'm personally choosing to remain hopeful that we'll still see discs and other physical media prevail – even if it's on the way out. All we need to do is convince American consumers to opt for more physical copies, right? Right…?

Capcom hopes Resident Evil Veronica follows Requiem's lead in sparking interest in the wider horror series

Capcom credits the release of Resident Evil Requiem for a surge in sales of previous games in the series.

In its latest financial results, Capcom confirms that Resident Evil Requiem has now sold 8.06 million copies since it was released back in February. However, the top 10 has revealed that the entire series has had a great year so far, with Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes coming out ahead of Requiem in sales over the last quarter, while Biohazard and Village also make an appearance in the top 10. Resident Evil is now the best-selling Japanese game series not published by Nintendo, and Resident Evil 2 remake is the best-selling game in the series.

In an investor Q&A alongside the results, Capcom is asked what the reason was behind the strong Resident Evil series sales, and whether it believes the next game will replicate this. Capcom responds, "sales of Resident Evil series titles grew amid rising interest in Resident Evil Requiem."

It explains, "We have also seen new users who encountered the series by purchasing past titles, creating a virtuous cycle in which sales of both new and past titles grow together." Capcom adds, "With Resident Evil Veronica, we will likewise work to further expand sales of the series."

Notably, Capcom has had major sales on the series' titles this year, with the biggest being a $3 sale of Resident Evil 3 remake back in April. So that undoubtedly helped the series sales along. And, given that people are clearly very excited for Resident Evil Veronica as it hits two million Steam wishlists, it could definitely inspire a similar sales boost for the series at large.

Yet to play it? You can check out our Resident Evil Requiem review to see if it's worth your time, and our guide to Resident Evil Requiem's safe codes to help you through it.

PlayStation is preparing for a future without physical games on its platform and Nintendo is arguably devaluing physical media with the controversial Switch 2 Game-Key cards. But, Capcom isn't too worried about physical game sales shrinking (or being forced to shrink, depending on who you ask) since it sells most of its games online anyway.

Game sales have slowly been skewing digital for years now, but recent months have painted a dire outlook for physical media. Sony's planning to stop manufacturing new PlayStation discs starting in 2028, high-profile blockbusters including GTA 6 aren't bothering with discs at all, and Nintendo's Game-Key cards now operate similarly to download codes (ones you can sell and share, sure, but not ones that let you properly own the game as you would with an in-hand cartridge).

Asked about what impact the shrinkage of physical game sales might have on the company, Capcom sort of just shrugged its shoulders in its most recent investor Q&A. "Approximately 90% of our unit sales are digital. We do not anticipate a significant impact at this time." It's worth noting the Resident Evil and Monster Hunter maker counts Game-Key card sales as digital.

While Capcom's not fearful of the widespread changes in how we buy or manufacture games, PlayStation's decision to end support for discs isn't sitting well with everyone. The move has been called an "attack on our diminishing rights" by a leading digital rights org, another publisher said physical games helped the company reach audiences it otherwise wouldn't be able to, and there were negative reactions to the news across the industry.

As Capcom makes clear, a lack of proper discs and cartridges might not negatively affect companies that make most of their business on digital storefronts. For Sony, it's likely beneficial, financially. But anyone who cares about true ownership or relies on second-hand prices that make the hobby accessible might have more complicated feelings about a disc-less future.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not

The Future Games Show is set to return later this month, and this time around the two hosts should be familiar to die-hard denizens of Raccoon City.

The Future Games Show at gamescom 2026 is hurtling towards us, lining up with the massive gaming celebration taking place in Koln, Germany. But if you can't make it all the way the show floor itself, three different shows will be there to guide you through the biggest and best reveals. On hosting duties this time are Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant'Albano, who last joined forces as the performers behind Resident Evil Requiem's Leon S. Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft.

Nick and Angela will be guiding viewers through dozens of world premieres, exclusive announcements, and developer interviews, with games including Tides of Annihilation, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and No Law. The Future Games Show at Gamescom will kick off on Wednesday, August 26, at 10:00 PDT, 13:00 EDT, 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST (that's 01:00 on Thursday morning for those on CST). You'll be able to watch on Twitch, YouTube, Steam, X, Facebook, and right here on GamesRadar+, as well as via local streaming services around the world, including Bilibili and KuaiShou.

Immediately after the main show concludes, you'll also be able to join the FGS crew for FGS Live From gamescom, walking you through even more reveals direct from the show floor. And if that's not enough, FGS Best Of gamescom will be back on Sunday, August 30, wrapping up the week's most exciting reveals.

Capcom has announced that Resident Evil Veronica has hit 2 million wishlists on Steam, less than two months after its reveal at Summer Game Fest.

The news was announced on Twitter on the official Resident Evil account, with a post reading "2 million biscuits for the 2 million of you who've wishlisted Resident Evil Veronica. Thank you!" This was accompanied by the elderly French lady with a very young-sounding voice featured in the debut trailer for the horror remake looking very happy. I sure hope following her doesn't lead to anything terrible happening.

While wishlist numbers aren't publicly available, SteamDB does keep track of the most wishlisted games on the platform. At the moment, Resident Evil Veronica sits in eighth place on the board behind the likes of Deadlock, Light No Fire, Fable, and Total War: Warhammer 40,000. However, Resident Evil Veronica is releasing on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2 as well, so those numbers will likely have added a fair amount to the total.

Granted, it's no wonder Resident Evil Veronica is as anticipated as it is. The original game is the second-highest-rated game in the series on Metacritic (behind the original Resident Evil 4), and even if its stock has fallen somewhat within the fanbase since then, it's still a pretty beloved entry. More crucially, the new game is reportedly being worked on by the team behind the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, which – alongside their original incarnations – are the most beloved games in the series.

Resident Evil remakes allow Capcom to release yearly games in the series and invest money back into new games like Pragmata, producer says

Resident Evil 2 is now the series' best-selling game, while a new sales milestone sees the Capcom horror series pass Final Fantasy.

In Capcom's latest earnings report, the company announced that Resident Evil 2 – that being the 2019 remake, not the 1998 original with the same name – has sold an extra 1.42 million copies since the last report, sending the game to lifetime sales of 19.75 million copies. And despite Capcom's decision to split every different version of a game into different parts of its platinum titles page making it seem like this happened long ago, Resident Evil 5 has finally been dethroned (via DuskGolem).

Between the original Xbox 360 and PS3 game, its Gold Edition, the PS4 and Xbox One re-release, and Switch editions of Capcom's divisive horror title, Resident Evil 5 had sold 19.01 million copies the last time Capcom detailed its sales in an earnings report earlier this year.

However, Resident Evil 2's spot at the top is definitely under threat as Resident Evil 4 remake is already at 16.04 Million copies sold despite 2's four-year headstart. Not to mention Resident Evil 4 sold 2.43 million copies in the last three months, which is over 1 million more than 2 sold. Resident Evil Requiem is also killing it as it sold a further 1.14 million in the last three months, and with momentum like that and big sales down the line, it also has a chance to make it to the top.

Capcom also confirmed that the Resident Evil series as a whole has sold 213 million copies since it debuted 30 years ago. That means it has surpassed Final Fantasy, which Square Enix claimed had sold 212 million as of last month. This means that Resident Evil is the ninth best-selling game franchise of all-time, and the biggest-selling Japanese game series not published by Nintendo, and with sales like Mario and Pokemon have, I'm afraid that's probably the closest it will get.

"Resident not-Evil" is Resident Evil 2 director's joke cozy life sim pitch starring a retired Leon Kennedy fishing, baking, and "inviting his old friends over for barbecues"

Capcom has been churning through remakes of its best Resident Evil games over the last few years, with Resident Evil: Code Veronica up next, but dusting off the horror tomes serves more than one purpose for the publisher. Capcom producer Masachika Kawata says remakes help the company release back-to-back games in the series and help invest more money back into all-new games.

Speaking to Game Informer magazine in its latest issue, Kawata explains that one of the reasons why the publisher creates so many remakes is that "producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task" otherwise. Resident Evil isn't properly an annual franchise yet, but the only big gaps in its recent history have been in 2024 and 2025.

"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft," Kawata adds. "That's not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they're just as important as the mainline titles." (Good spot, NintendoEverything!)

The proof is arguably in the pudding with Resident Evil Requeim, a game that managed to marry the tight and sweat-inducing first-person horror of RE7 and RE8 with the bloody, third-person horror-action of Capcom's recently remade games.

"Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata," he continues. "So there is that relationship there."

Of course, the well of old Resident Evil games will eventually run dry. Capcom could re-remake the first game and then try to redeem Resident Evils 5 and 6, sure, but at some point, it'll need to start making multiple original Resident Evil games simultaneously should the company want to keep up the cadence it's on now.

Resident Evil 4 made Capcom another $560 million and became the best-selling remake of the generation, analyst says, more than tripling sales of Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have been found dead in a puddle of T-virus – the Resident Evil 4 remake from 2023 has sold 16.8 million copies across all platforms, and games industry researcher Alinea Analytics infers that makes it the best-selling remake of this console generation.

"It’s also among the most successful single-player horror games in history," says market analysis lead Rhys Elliott in a Substack breakdown of the best-selling game remakes and remasters since 2020, "generating $560M in gross revenue for Capcom so far across the three platforms, split 53.1% PlayStation, 34.1% Steam, and 12.8% Xbox." Resident Evil 4 remake's competition comes nowhere close.

In terms of total copies sold, Resident Evil 4 is followed by 2023 remaster Ark: Survival Ascended, which moved a total of 7 million copies. The Last of Us Part 1 remake sits behind it with 6.3 million sold, while Oblivion Remastered, the Dead Space remake, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth lag in the race with a total of 4.5, 4.3, and 4.2 million copies sold, respectively.

Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake from 2024 is the worst best-seller according to Alinea, with a total of 3.2 million copies sold – though, as a huge fan, I'm at least placated by the suggestion that millions of people have now been exposed to buff Pyramid Head.

Elliot suggests, out of all these still very popular titles, Resident Evil 4 might have been especially suited to the new, industry-wide hobby of swanky remakes because "it's revered enough to guarantee demand and old enough that the remake feels new."

But the obvious flaw with this conclusion is that it applies to multiple titles in Alinea's collection of best-selling remakes. Silent Hill 2, for example, is even older than Resident Evil 4 and similarly revered, while Oblivion released around the same time as Resident Evil 4 and seemed to sell at a similar pace; contemporaneous reports estimate Resident Evil 4 sold 3 million copies within a year from launch, while Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said in 2025 that Oblivion Remastered outsold the original game's first 15 months on the market, which likely also existed in the realm of 3 million (2006 reports say Oblivion had already sold 1.7 copies by the end of its first week).

So what's really so special about the Resident Evil 4 remake? Well, Capcom's sales – you can currently purchase the game on Steam for $9.99 instead of $39.99, whereas Silent Hill 2 is currently $27.99 on sale, and Oblivion is an unrepentant $49.99. Elliott says, "Steam's share of total Resident Evil 4 revenue has grown from 28.0% in launch week to 34.1% today. There’s that Capcom catalogue flywheel again – a game earning a bigger slice of its lifetime revenue years after release, at the low end of the price curve (in markets consoles barely reach)."

Then, there's the irresistible charms of a formative game like Resident Evil 4. It has something for every player – revolutionary third-person shooting, a girl named Ashley, and parasites that look like someone sneezed on the floor. I, personally, couldn't imagine wanting anything more.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

The GOG store had its biggest bump in visibility thanks to Capcom's PS1 survival horror classics, the CD Projekt Red-owned store's staff say.

Marcin Paczyński, senior business development and partnerships manager at GOG, revealed last year that Capcom was initially hesitant to re-release the classic Resident Evil trilogy as Resident Evil (2002), Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020) already existed and were – in its eyes – superior games. However, speaking to RPG Site, Paczyński says that the success of that trilogy's return – which led to it being released on Steam – has probably made it easier to convince Capcom to play ball with returning classics.

"The launch answered a lot of questions by itself," Paczyński says. "The classic Resident Evil games and Dino Crisis sit at over 90% positive user ratings on GOG, and it's worth remembering how seriously Capcom approached them: they were treated as full new releases, with complete QA and certification, per language."

Paczyński responds to the question of whether things have gotten easier since Resident Evil, saying: "We understand what it means for a company to hand over brands this iconic, brands that are truly its own. That takes real trust, and we're grateful Capcom gave us that chance." He adds, "We delivered. Perhaps that makes conversations with other partners a little simpler now, because there is a track record to point to.

"As for whether more of Capcom's legacy is coming: the top of the GOG Dreamlist is the most honest answer I can give." At the moment, Resident Evil Code: Veronica X is Capcom's highest ranking game on the Dreamlist, with 83,884 votes making it one of the top requests on the site.

Paczyński also credits Capcom's releases with giving the store a boost in visibility, saying: "Bringing back Resident Evil and Dino Crisis did more for GOG's visibility than almost anything else in recent years." He adds, "It showed players that the biggest classics can come back done right, and it showed rights holders, especially in Japan, what a classic release can look like on PC."

As for Capcom itself, he says the company has been a "fantastic" partner "through all of it, demanding in the best sense, and we would love to do more together. That is no secret." So hopefully we'll see God Hand and the Mega Man Legends games get a PC release soon… please.

"Resident not-Evil" is Resident Evil 2 director's joke cozy life sim pitch starring a retired Leon Kennedy fishing, baking, and "inviting his old friends over for barbecues."

Glen Schofield, creator of the Dead Space series and director of several Call of Duty games, has announced his retirement.

Schofield broke the news of his retirement on LinkedIn, with a video reflecting on his 35 years in the games industry and thanking his peers, friends, and family.

"Some of you know me as a video game maker, director, and it's something I'm so proud of and I know I'm lucky to be able to do this, but after 35 years of making games and directing them, running teams, it's time for me to officially retire from the day-to-day work," Schofield said. "It's been such an amazing career and I have so many people to thank for it, but I can't possibly do it all here."

Schofield has had a varied career in games, having served as vice president at Crystal Dynamics in the late '90s and directed Gex 3D: Enter the Gecko and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, as well as Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain. He created and executive produced the 2008 sci-fi horror masterpiece Dead Space under EA, and he co-directed and produced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Call of Duty: WWII during his time with Sledgehammer Games and Activision. His career took a slight dip with his latest release, The Callisto Protocol, a 2022 survival horror game developed by Schofield's Striking Distance Studios that wasn't generally well-received.

"To my close friends and family, and people who have stood by me, patted me on the back, listened to my crazy ideas, thank you so much," added Schofield. "To the fans: you've supported me, you let mine and my teams' games into your homes. You told me when I was good and you told me when I wasn't so good. But you made me better. Thank you so much."

In his emotional retirement video, Schofield struck a grateful tone throughout, saying he "had a front row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history," and thanking EA for letting him make Dead Space and Activision for giving him "the keys to three Call of Duty games."

Schofield also took the time to reflect on what's undeniably a historically turbulent time in the games industry, an era marked by mass layoffs and AI controversies, but one he hopes will soon pass.

"This is in amazing industry, with so many talented people, and I know times are tough right now, but the future ahead is really, really bright," he said. "I wish you all, the next generation of game makers, the best of luck. Explore, experiment, enjoy, and don't forget that the most important thing is the idea."

Here are the best horror games we think you should play in 2026.

After nearly a year since it first released on current gen consoles, Techland has announced the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Dying Light: The Beast are cancelled.

Over on Twitter, the official Dying Light account posted a message announcing the cancellation. "After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision that Dying Light: The Beast will no longer be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One." Techland explains "Dying Light: The Beast was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware. Its open world, advanced visuals, and fluid combat and traversal all depend on processing power and memory that previous-generation consoles simply cannot provide."

The post continues, "As development progressed, it became clear that bringing the game to those platforms would require compromises that would prevent us from delivering the experience we set out to create." Adding, "This was not a matter of choosing to leave those platforms behind. Rather, it reflected the technical realities of development and our commitment to delivering the best possible experience."

While the fact that we're talking about almost 13 year old consoles makes this not much of a surprise, Dying Light 2 – which The Beast started out as DLC for before being spun off into a full game – ran pretty well on those consoles when it was released back in 2022. However, we are talking about 13 year old consoles, and while the PS4 has had an especially long tail considering we're almost at the end of the PS5's life, it's probably safe to expect that most new games won't be coming to the platform anymore. Techland adds, "We know many of you were looking forward to playing on PS4 or Xbox One, and we are truly sorry for the disappointment this causes."

Dying Light The Beast is "very strong proof" that slowing down and focusing on the core details works, former series lead says: "We learned that quality beats quantity"

Resident Evil Requiem has all sorts of brilliant lines, especially from iconic protagonist Leon Kennedy – but there could've been even more, had Capcom not cut them.

Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides reveals a few in a new discussion from Play, Watch, Listen+ on YouTube (below), including one that would've come up during the Titan Spinner fight – an arguably hair-raising battle against a huge arachnid.

"The one that they didn't use would have been my favorite," Apostolides explains, admitting that the cut line would've been his most beloved… had Capcom not removed it from the game.

"When you fight the spider, I wanted to say – and we recorded it, 'You know, you've been a real itsy-bitsy pain in my ass,'" the actor recalls, using his legendary Leon Kennedy voice while recalling the line. "It would have been a banger." Indeed, it would've been.

I'm not alone in agreeing with the star, either, as folks over on Twitter lament the cut dialogue. "OMG," exclaims one fan. "This would have been freaking incredible."

Quoted responses (if you click to view post activity) are just as amusing, with somebody shouting, "WE WAS ROBBED!" Another jokes, "Requiem Leon is definitely a father."

The actual video on YouTube has garnered some pretty great attention, too – considering that Apostolides used his Leon Kennedy voice while describing the cut line, folks comment on how it could be modded into the game itself now.

"Well, he just gave us the line right there to mod it into the game," as one person says – and, I mean, they're not wrong.

There are all sorts of Resident Evil Requiem mods out there, from those affecting gameplay to others targeting visuals. What's to say a boss fight line couldn't be the next to go live? I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it, and it seems like the community is already considering the possibility.

Here's hoping we get to hear the "itsy-bitsy" line in-game someday, then – Leon Kennedy can never have enough one-liners, if you ask me.

Yet to play Capcom's latest horror game? Be sure to read our Resident Evil Requiem review. You can also check out our guide to Resident Evil Requiem's safe codes to help you through the game.

If anyone deserves a nice, safe retirement away from the horrors inflicted by a variety of viruses, it's Leon Kennedy. To say the poor guy has really been through it in the Resident Evil series over the years is an understatement. When he's not being attacked by infected dogs, stalked by a hulking, hat-wearing tyrant, or dealing with men wielding chainsaws, he's rescuing the president's daughter, uncovering a conspiracy, and returning to a place of great trauma.

Isn't it high time that after all that, he gets to kick back and take it easy? This isn't me saying I want the iconic action man to step away from the limelight after Resident Evil Requiem. On the contrary, I want to experience the retirement Kennedy deserves, and to do that, I need Resident Evil 2 director Hideki Kamiya's joke conceptual pitch to be anything but a joke. The pitch in question? A cozy life sim starring a retired Leon fishing, baking, and having barbecues with old pals. Now that idea is in my head, I can't let it go. And as a scaredy cat who loves Resident Evil from a safe distance, I'd give just about anything for Capcom to actually make it into a reality.

Home over horror

Just like Kamiya, I'm definitely not a horror fan. Even so, I've always had a great fondness for Resident Evil. I love the over-the-top silliness, corny one-liners, and lore of the infected world, but I'll be the first to admit I still find it too scary to play myself. So how do I enjoy it if I'm not playing? Well, the way in which my relationship began with the series kickstarted how I would go on to experience it from then on: by watching others play.

Witnessing my dad play through Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube way back when is one of my favorite gaming memories. I loved Resident Evil 4 (and its bingo line) so much I even attempted to try it for myself, but I quickly came to the conclusion I just couldn't handle the creepy zombie villagers and scary atmosphere upfront. By watching someone else play, I could enjoy the story and action and put some distance between myself and the horror.

But what Kamiya jokingly pitched would deservedly put some distance between the horror for Leon, too, and better yet, it would bring to life a game set in the Resident Evil universe I could actually play. In the words of Kamiya, "it'd be a game where a retired Leon spends his days in the countryside fishing, gathering wild vegetables, baking bread, walking his dog, tending to his garden, driving 50 kilometers to the nearest general store, inviting his old friends over for barbecues, fixing his elderly neighbour's oven, and selling homemade lemonade at the local festival."

The sweet concept sounds like a laidback life sim with ingredients plucked right out of games like Stardew Valley, and as an avid player in the cozy game scene, that's really speaking my language. Not only could it bring a whole new audience into the world of Resident Evil, but Capcom could tap into the genre in such a novel way for longtime fans by bringing to life a cozy life sim experience led by an established character with such a rich history.

Handy man

Just think of all of the references they could pack in, with framed pictures and belongings dotted around Leon's retired abode in the countryside that nod to past encounters and meaningful moments. Not to mention cameos from other familiar faces who pop over for barbecues. I also love how the pitch so perfectly captures Leon Kennedy. He'd never be content to rest on his laurels completely, and I could see him getting very involved with the little neighboring communities. It's easy to picture quests, for example, that make him go out of his way to help others in more day-to-day ways.

After all, you don't have to fight zombies and put a stop to the schemes of a dastardly corporation to be a hero. I'm sure Leon is just as much of a hero to the elderly neighbor whose oven gets fixed as he is to Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4.

Kennedy is easily my favorite character in the Resident Evil universe, and imagining him stepping into one of my favorite game genres sets my heart on fire. I mean, who wouldn't want to kick back in the countryside with the retired action man and sink into a relaxed routine of dog walking and bread baking?

I know I'm letting my imagination run away from me, and this is just a joke from Kamiya. Even so… what I wouldn't give for it to be made into a reality. Sure, Resident Evil has brought us many of the best survival horror games over the years (and will no doubt continue to do so with the likes of Resident Evil Veronica on the way), but I would love to see a spin-off that goes in a wildly different direction. And when it comes to a cozy life sim, there's undoubtedly a market for it. So, this is my open letter to Capcom: please bring to life an idyllic retirement for Leon Kennedy so we can both get a break from the scares.

Look back over the series' highlights with our ranking of the best Resident Evil games.

Resident Evil 2 director and Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya has jokingly detailed a concept for a cozy life sim game starring a retired Leon Kennedy.

Outside of series creator Shinji Mikami, you could make an argument for Kamiya being the most impactful person to be involved with the Resident Evil series. After the original game was the first game he was credited on, Kamiya then directed Resident Evil 2 which is still considered by many to be one of, if not the best game in the series. That second game is also the one that introduced us to Leon Kennedy, who has gone on to be the series' most beloved character.

But despite his massive impact on the series and the survival horror genre in general, Kamiya has openly said he hates horror, and earlier this year he pitched Capcom creating a "'non-scary' mode" for Resident Evil Requiem so he could enjoy the game's puzzles in peace. Now, over on Twitter (translated by Automaton) Kamiya has responded to fan requests for him to return to the Resident Evil series – which he hasn't been involved with since his Resident Evil 4 turned into Devil May Cry – by detailing what he would do with a new game.

Kamiya says if he made a new Resident Evil title, "it'd be a game where a retired Leon spends his days in the countryside fishing, gathering wild vegetables, baking bread, walking his dog, tending to his garden, driving 50 kilometers to the nearest general store, inviting his old friends over for barbecues, fixing his elderly neighbour's oven, and selling homemade lemonade at the local festival. Would you still be OK with that?"

Given how huge the cozy game market is, people naturally are still OK with that, with one comment saying they'd be interested in "Resident Evil Pokopia." Kamiya acknowledges the fan response, saying: "Capcom, there seem to be a lot of people asking for a Resident not-Evil game like this. If you ever have the time, please consider making it… I'd like to play it too."

Are you playing the latest game in the series? If so, be sure to browse through our roundup of Resident Evil Requiem safe codes for an easier time progressing.

Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami believes that if a fan is satisfied with just watching a playthrough of a game, then it can't have been that good of a game in the first place.

With the advent of YouTube gaming content creators, popularization of let's plays in the late 2000s, and subsequent popularity of Twitch, people simply watching someone else playing a game has become a commonplace thing. While these streams and playthroughs have proven to work as great advertising in places – especially for the likes of Among Us, Five Nights At Freddy's, and Phasmophobia – for single–player games, some found that simply watching someone else play the game was enough for them.

As reported by Nikkan (translated by Automaton), comedian and YouTube creator Eiko Kano recently spoke on TV about an exchange he had with Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami after the popularity of his own streams of the series. When Kano asked Mikami about his stance on players streaming titles of his and potentially letting users get their fill of the game through someone else, he reportedly responded, "If viewers watch a playthrough of a game all the way to the end and are satisfied with just that, then it was only that good of a game."

Obviously, games are an inherently interactive medium, and as such you would miss out on a key facet of what it is by just watching it – the same way you would lose out on elements by reading a film's screenplay. Kano says Mikami explained: "Our job is to make games that leave people wanting to clear them with their own hands, even if they've watched someone else do it, so keep streaming."

Kano also recalls that Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii gave a very similar response to him when asked, while Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi said recently that RPGs "need to be careful" about a lack of player agency otherwise they "might simply watch a stream and feel satisfied without ever playing the game themselves."

Resident Evil Veronica's first-person trailer was a deliberate misdirect, Capcom producer confirms the horror game is fully third-person.

2026 has been good to me. My Resident Evil Requiem review points to the staggering impact of Capcom's latest, charting the path forward for a survival horror legacy by bringing us back to where it all began.

The moment I rolled credits, I already had my suspicions about what might come next. Requiem's ending builds two futures at once, seeding what might transpire in the mainline series as well as hinting at which remake could come next. Now that the Code Veronica remake has finally been revealed, I'm even more excited to see how Resident Evil's past might influence its future – but in order for that to work, I'm all too happy for Capcom to rewrite itself.

New nightmares

Resident Evil Veronica is my most-anticipated upcoming horror game of the next year. A huge part of that is down to two words in the official game description: "reimagined story."

It's no secret that much of Capcom's older material hasn't aged well. Subtle changes in Resident Evil 4 Remake suggest that the developer itself is keenly aware of it. I fully expected that any remake of Code Veronica/X would have a few nip-tucks to update the humor for a modern audience, so I would be very surprised if Claire still calls Alfred Ashford a full-on slur in 2027. The bigger mystery is how the eccentric villain will be presented at all, since the original game's big twist plays on outdated shock tactics that are in dire need of an update.

I won't spoil the above for you, but it does leave me wondering if Resident Evil Veronica's "reimagined story" will update more than just a dicey script. This is Capcom's chance to alter who these characters actually are and keep the game in line with the modern day.

That idea alone might have you clenching your jaw, but hear me out. Following on from three stunning remakes created alongside the series' mainline entries, Resident Evil is running out of viable options to choose from. Resident Evil 5 is still one of the most controversial games of the bunch, while even the best Resident Evil game spin-offs are such an acquired taste (including my beloved Morpheus from Resident Evil Dead Aim) that many of those might be discounted on principle.

If Capcom wants to maintain pace with its rapidfire releases – and I really hope it does – it's time for all of us to call a spade a spade and admit when something just would not hit the same in the 2020s as it did in the early 2000s. We need small, meaningful changes that maintain the series' integrity, preserving pivotal plot points while reframing the supporting narrative.

It's something we already see hints of in Resident Evil Requiem. Wesker is miraculously "back" again, perhaps another clone, since he was supposed to be dead as of Resident Evil 5. More than that, the game's finale suggests that Oswell Spencer was potentially not quite the palm-rubbing psychopath many of us had him pegged as for 30 years. None of this makes sense given the current canon laid out by Code Veronica and Resident Evil 5, but maybe it will once Resident Evil Veronica sheds a little more light.

At this early stage, there's no telling how big or small Capcom's changes might be. Maybe the lengthier exposition with Claire seeking Chris out in Paris, as seen in the announcement trailer, will be all there is to it. Or maybe Capcom will take the opportunity for reinvention that so few developers ever get, soldering the future of Resident Evil in the process.

Check out our best Resident Evil games list for more to play while you wait!

I've always felt a little sorry for the Xenomorph, though the creature's ingenious design leaves hardly any space for pity. Its shining muscles are coiled into roses, its reinforced cranium could withstand nuclear winter – and yet the space thing is hunted throughout Ridley Scott's anxious Alien franchise for acting on its instincts, which unfortunately happen to revolve around impregnating innocent civilians.

"You can't kill it in our game, so in that sense it's thriving and doing really well," Alien: Isolation 2 art director Ana Sopikova consoles me during Summer Game Fest 2026, where I experienced an Alien: Isolation 2 preview that made me confront my affection for the Xenomorph like an awesome, blinding light. Developer Creative Assembly's sequel to its 2014 stealth horror masterpiece Alien: Isolation already looks and feels as meticulously crafted as its title villain, the gasoline black alien, which was constructed with the hope that you'll remember it forever.

"It's the perfect organism," creative director Al Hope reminds me about the Xenomorph. And Creative Assembly has worked hard to make its game technology worthy of a well-oiled animal. Like the oppressive original game – and 1979 movie – Alien: Isolation 2 pits a capable, soot-covered woman against an even more practical Xenomorph who knows all the best ways to crush a rib cage. Except, this time, Creative Assembly takes it outside, and players will need to confidently navigate a moonlight blue colony planet in addition to the franchise's more typical, cramped space vessels.

Outer space

"I really love the idea that the player will be in those interiors, and they'll be feeling trapped and wanting to get out," says a sadistic Hope. "Then they manage to escape and get outside, and after that initial rush of success, they start to feel vulnerable and exposed, and, actually, they'd quite like to go back inside again. We get to play with that seesaw of emotion and motivation."

Hope and Sopikova both emphasize the power of the technology Alien: Isolation 2 is built with – Unreal Engine 5, but also custom visual and audio systems. With sound in particular, Hope says "we're doing some really fantastic things [...], where we're effectively remixing the audio on the fly, in real time, in response to into what's happening on the screen: where we are in the story, [with the] understanding of what's just happened, what might happen in the future."

He continues, "That's really, really complex stuff. Obviously, we don't surface that to the player, but it creates the whole experience." I saw proof of this in even my tight 20 minutes with Isolation 2; the big scares happened in the suffocating hug of the Sevastopol space station from the first game, but my mood is most impacted by everything outside of it.

"Something like wind removes information, audio information, so you can't tell, maybe, how close the creature is," says Hope, and I'm already feeling more nervous. "Something like fog and rain also reduces visual information, and so you can't see it, but that might actually be good, because it can't see you."

Far, far away

Ultimately, Protagonist Blake has landed in an environment defined by fog so dense, it could be a birthday cake, and whooshing wind seems to even blow the galaxy's distant stars nearer. It's totally disorienting.

I loved it in the demo. The look, the sound, the physics of wind whipping around my first-person perspective character was exhilarating in a way that most hyper realistic games aiming for "immersion" aren't. Alien: Isolation 2 has style, and Creative Assembly seems to want it that way.

Now I have to ask about the saliva. When I eventually meet Alien: Isolation 2's Xenomorph toward the end of my demo, it unhinges its impressive jaw to reveal rows of onyx teeth, cobwebbed with silver spit. The creature looks hungry to see me, and Sopikova says, "It's all about the attention to detail."

"It's something that the team takes just incredibly seriously from every angle – has to be perfect," Sopikova continues. "At no point we want player to realize, 'Oh, yes, this is a video game."

Instead, Hope and Sopikova want Alien: Isolation 2 to become a memory. A real one, not just a hazy recollection of you at your PC with a big diet Mountain Dew. Alien: Isolation 2 is proof of endurance.

"It's a game about choices," Hope says when I ask how Weyland-Yutani employee protagonist Blake relates to us earthbound fans. "We're not a scripted choreographed survival horror experience, it's all systemic. The alien is listening, and it's using its ears and eyes, it's listening and looking for you," he adds. "Every playthrough is different, so everyone has their own story to tell, their own individual journey."

Awake and afraid

For this reason, "I don't think [...] fear kind of dialed up to 10 across the whole game is what we're aiming for," Sopikova says.

"I think what we're trying to create is once again a really unforgettable journey – not in a trite way, like genuinely unforgettable," Hope explains. "Whatever's going on in the world right now. I guess the goal for us is people will still be talking about Alien: Isolation 2 in 10 years, just as they are about the first game," he continues.

The world. Earth. Sometimes thinking about the billion miles of space makes me sad, because I have to confront how pitifully we spend our time on our one, cozy earth. War, work, anxiety, repeat – the Xenomorph's undoubtedly sour breath smells like lavender in comparison.

I wonder, can fear from a horror game like Alien: Isolation 2 save us all? This is the kind of outcome I'm searching for, I think, when I take refuge in exhilarating horror media, which is what Alien: Isolation 2 is turning out to be.

"I think any strong emotion sometimes can be very cathartic," Sopikova says. "Maybe the fear, as you say, it's a strong emotion, so it's just another way of getting that."

With Alien: Isolation 2 specifically, "it kind of is asking you questions about how you're going to do this, how you're going to survive, and maybe that is a could be seen as a kind of a mirror, you can be really proud of managing to confront something that seems really terrifying and scary, and you managed to do it," Hope says. "You can be super proud of that journey."

I suppose if I admire the Xenomorph's bulletproof elegance, I should also recognize its, in a way, unkillable adversary: you and me – the real protagonists of a game driven by real-time

decisions.

"We're giving you [...] more meaningful choices," Hope says. "So maybe you can reflect back on that. And that says something."

Alien Isolation 2 claustrophobic new trailer promises pure terror 12 years after the Xbox 360 survival horror classic.

The Hellraiser horror franchise has simple rules. You should never ask for the truth unless you've prepared your mind and body to know it. Then, you must recognize the perversity of that truth: pain and pleasure are sisters. And I'm OK with that, but I was surprised to see it reiterated at Summer Game Fest 2026, while I played a demo for the upcoming torture-shooter Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival.

I don't know what else I expected. I guess I thought developer Saber Interactive would stick to typical video game conventions like most studios adapting major horror franchises do; Friday the 13th: The Game never dared to show a bit of nipple, for example, even though toplessness famously makes Jason feel extra murderous. But, no, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is faithful to Hellraiser writer and 1987 movie director Clive Barker, whose oeuvre of fantasy film, horror writing, and 2000s PC shooters obsesses over unctuous, black, and unspeakable things – especially if you can find them between human thighs. It's freaky incarnate, and it makes Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival better.

My Summer Game Fest demo starts somewhere in the middle, after new character and wayward sadomasochist Aidan is forced to retrieve his girlfriend Sunny from Hell. Having had enough with injectables, bad sex, and other earthly delights, Sunny did what you should really never do in the Hellraiser franchise and opened a strange puzzle box, banishing herself to the blood-drenched Labyrinth to be tied up and stripped of her flesh for all eternity. Bummer.

Good suffering

Developers Vid Rajin and Danira Karović Lačević tell me they needed vomit bags for players during a different demo session, which included a sex scene at the beginning of Hellraiser: Revival. During my time with the first-person perspective game, I never feel sick. I take stock of all the interesting ways Saber Interactive has chosen to apply leather.

True to the Hellraiser films, in which the extradimensional Cenobites summoned by the puzzle box inform clueless solvers that their suffering will be legendary, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival clearly wants me in agony – but it expresses this with the mutilated wink of an eyeball pinned open. My demo takes place within a pleathery clubhouse, in which Aidan is in the midst of incinerating Cenobite cultists with the Genesis Configuration, an alternative puzzle to the Lament Configuration of the movies. Instead of playing an odd lullaby and opening up a portal to the sex dungeons of Hell, I discover the Genesis Configuration can swallow light and fire from nearby power sources to completely cremate my enemies. I never fully figure out how to best aim the box during my more advanced demo, though, and I'm miserable when I learn the Genesis Configuration's blast radius doesn't discriminate. When I hold it too close, it sizzles pink, orange holes into my skin and I swear I can smell burnt pork through the screen as I try to slap the fire out with my palms.

The pistol I have equipped feels practically pacifist in comparison, and I reach for it often while sneaking around the clubhouse searching for a way out, occasionally ogling posters advertising things like the Voyeur Fetish I should "CUM and SEE," or a cultist's relaxed stance in his skintight pants as he describes slicing Aidan's "cock off and [shoving] it down his throat." I get the sense that, in some circles down here in Hell, that would be considered a compliment.

But things in my Revival demo don't really get fucked until the Voyeur Fetish show. The serrated sword I carry in my Resident Evil-style inventory helps in calming my nerves, as I know that I can simply slice the forearms off anyone who approaches me with unfriendly-looking clamps. But once I'm through that red door to the show, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival shifts into the jagged fantasy the Hellraiser movies present as being a constant presence in buttoned-up, daily life, only tucked away in the attic.

In the Fetish room, Aidan is blasted with visions of both his past and, seemingly, his future as Cenobite leader Pinhead (whose role here is reprised by the indomitable Doug Bradley) would like it. A woman – Sunny? – is suspended by chains pulled into the shape of a grotesque star; hooks pull at her lips, breasts, and stomach, encouraging various white organs to spill down her legs like exposed worms.

I'm transported into a hallway lined with more of these chains, which chime sadly and gently as they knock into Aidan's thick skull. Reality is flexible here, as it was in 1988's Hellraiser 2, which also sees its protagonist braving Hell to save the one she loves. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, though, is more cynical about it in this demo.

After managing not to be disemboweled by a few environmental puzzles, including a room-size Configuration box, I get trapped in Aidan's initially unremarkable house. Old post-it notes left to Sunny reveal our supposed hero's desire to poke her sensitive flesh with needles and lick up the blood, plus empty syringes, and other evidence of the numerous ways the lovers destroy themselves just to feel anything. Finally, Aidan finds Sunny, or maybe his idea of her, hogtied in their bed. Her eyes have been completely scooped out of her skull, so when he reaches his hands out to caress her mottled cheeks, a part of me expects him to press his thumb into the muddy holes left over.

I think that's because I, like all those who dared to open the box, often turn to the taboo for comfort. When you're a self-conscious person, it can be easier to place yourself among things that are already dirty and unwanted – broken porcelain and soiled dresses – instead of daring to imagine yourself as lovely, or loveable. I look to horror games to indulge in this dark sense of belonging, as my favorite characters like Alice from Alice: Madness Returns or Jennifer in Rule of Rose also inspire me to come up from the mud, at least sometimes.

So far, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival seems poised to do the same thing, while daring to be even more explicit in its imagery – including genitals, yellow fat, crushed skulls, and other things I've never seen a rated-M game utilize for their artfulness, rather than just shock value. Through them, I think I'm starting to pick up on a message. You can try eviscerating yourself through bloodbaths and sex magic, but your soul remains intact. It'll cry and ask you why you've ignored it, but it'll still be there.

Upon realizing this, suddenly, I want to shut the demo off and make a bowl of my favorite apple cinnamon oatmeal. But, like Aidan, I instead dare to coexist with the muck I've chosen to live with. But I can tell Hellraiser: Revival has many more lessons for me once it releases in full, and I'm ready to receive.

Can't wait to be punished? These are the best horror games you can play today.

Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is launching October 8 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, developer Saber Interactive just announced alongside a new trailer. Considering the quickly closing wall of death for video game releases in September – Marvel's Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall, and Control Resonant are only some of the major titles out that month – it feels like Saber is giving us a surprising, but much needed, break with its October plans. At the same time, I expect that Hellraiser: Revival will spank us into the Underworld.

You can watch the latest redband trailer for the upcoming Hellraiser survival horror shooter on the game's website, and I recommend you do so on an empty stomach. Saber developers told me during Summer Game Fest 2026 that they had to keep vomit bags around for a recent demo session featuring a typical Hellraiser franchise sex scene (the series' lovers may end up in Hell, or with their intestines missing. Usually both). I already got a sense from my Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival preview that Saber takes series creator Clive Barker seriously, and Revival's latest trailer makes this only more painfully/pleasurably obvious.

"These are experiences like no other," declares lead Cenobite and most fashionable pin cushion Pinhead in voice over, with original actor Douglas Bradley's characteristic snarl. Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen some of the things Hellraiser: Revival seems to have in store in a mainstream video game before; we've got our hero Aidan gushing blood from his mouth to his exposed penis, and the interdimensional, demon Cenobites' hooks are so deeply sunken into his flesh, his bare butt quivers like maggot-infested piglet until the metal rips it from his spine. Chunks of blood and muscle collapse on the ground in heavy ice cream scoops as the Cenobites – who we get a long, luxurious look at – watch impassively.

All our best friends from the original Hellraiser movie are here. There's Pinhead, of course, who would chain up each molecule of our bodies in his basement if he could, plus the lipless Chatterer, the sluglike Butterball, and the woman Deep Throat, whose neck is held open with needles to expose the diamond of her trachea.

"Take on Hell's wretches, deviants, cultists, and its most infernal priests in an unholy war for your immortal soul, all while trying to thwart the sinister plans of the Cenobites," recommends Saber in a press release. Hey, those are our friends you're talking about.

Pre-orders for the $39.99 Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival Standard Edition will soon begin, and Saber will later reveal contents and pre-order information for its $49.99 Deluxe version of the game. Hellraiser: Revival also still has a $199.99 Collector's Edition available, which includes the game, an art book, and more, if your dorm room in Hell has enough space for all of that.

Need something more tame? Can't help you there, unfortunately, but I can point you to some of the best horror games according to our ranking.

Capcom is on a bit of a roll at the moment. Resident Evil Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, and Pragmata have all landed with solid success, and we're not even done with the year yet. Part of the secret, according to Capcom itself, has been shifting away from auteur-driven development and trusting in the wisdom of a wider team.

"In the game industry, when a title becomes a series, it often ends up depending heavily on a particular developer, becoming what you'd call an individual-driven title," president and COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto tells Famitsu (thanks, Automaton). "If that person doesn't make one, there's no next installment. The direction of the series becomes tied to the ideas of a single creator."

He's not wrong, as the industry's history throws up plenty of examples. We've yet to get a new Metal Gear Solid game at Konami without Hideo Kojima in the picture, for example. You can also see examples within Capcom itself. The likes of Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter are still going strong despite being created years ago – in many cases, with the original creatives having departed some time ago. For Capcom, shifting away from an individual approach meant they were caught out when that individual was no longer with the company.

“We discussed the issue with the central figures behind each franchise and ultimately agreed that we should abandon that approach," Tsujimoto says. "What we came up with instead was the idea that every title should essentially be rebuilt from the ground up. We didn't mind even if sales temporarily declined as a result, and by switching to a team-based approach to game development, Capcom changed dramatically."

Capcom's stance paints a hopeful picture for some of the games we haven't seen much of lately. The developer has said it wants to "nurture" games like Devil May Cry – with DMC 5 recently hitting a record number of yearly sales despite launching seven years ago. Creative lead Hideaki Itsuno's departure might be a hurdle to that, though it sounds like Capcom is more than prepared to trust a team to do the game right.

Resident Evil Veronica's first-person trailer was a deliberate misdirect, Capcom producer confirms the horror game is fully third-person.

Fog clings to the island of St Amelia like taut plastic on skin, but I'm still not convinced Silent Hill: Townfall makes sense in the Konami psychological horror franchise. The 30-minute hands-off demonstration developer Screen Burn shows me during Summer Game Fest 2026 is laden with Silent Hill's trappings, milky fog and scabby monsters, but it's missing the cigarette-burned soul.

It's all too clean. Leading man Simon Ordell has ripped himself out of a hospital bed with all the tape and needles attached. A cannula pokes through a vein between his fingers, allowing healing liquid to revive him when he's injured, and a tight medical bracelet sticks to his wrist. But Simon is otherwise spotless while investigating St. Amelia in 1996, with vague instructions to find a brunette who I need to double check isn't Mary, the missing brunette from the soul-tearing Silent Hill 2. In only 30 minutes, I notice many callbacks to fan-favorite, early Silent Hill games – and I worry the unique parts of Silent Hill: Townfall can't compare.

Take me upstate

Townfall follows 2025's Silent Hill f, which was set in Japan, in taking Silent Hill international. I still yearn for the original lakeside town in Nowhere, USA, and the slow, somewhat inviting decay it represented, but I appreciated Silent Hill f's invention of a highly stylized, red spider lily landscape, too. Townfall's Scottish island St. Amelia is ruled by realism. Its cobblestone streets and neat white houses are hyper-realistic, looking better-suited to Call of Duty than an introspective horror game. Nonetheless, they are impressive. When the camera lingers on a bit of patterned wallpaper in an abandoned home, I can imagine what it would feel like just by looking at it.

Less tantalizing to me, someone whose favorite aspect of the best Silent Hill games is the poetry of their strangeness, is that Silent Hill: Townfall also employs realism in its puzzles. Rather than adding names to the Grim Reaper's list, as you do in the original Silent Hill, or burning pork liver to reveal a path in Silent Hill 3, the Townfall demo I saw has Simon searching for a prepaid electric card common in '90s Scotland to get the house's lights working.

Again, Screen Burn is demonstrating an impressive attention to detail here. But I don't play Silent Hill games for their faithfulness to history, and especially not to reality. I love them for the way they use magic to reveal our skeletons. Whenever the occult Otherworld falls over a Silent Hill protagonist, you're confronted with the rust under the hospital room paint, blood beneath a young woman's skirt, denial before freedom. I've always thought the supernatural was more real than real, so I've found comfort in past Silent Hill games, which lie on the cliff between observable life and hidden feelings. They push into each other, yin and yang, to make a whole world.

But Silent Hill: Townfall seems more oriented toward its surface. I'm first introduced to Simon as he's seated near a town monument littered with protest signs – "We Need The Truth," "Whatever Heart This Town Had Has Stopped" – and their unsubtle nature reminds me of Dead Space graffiti that routinely took me out of that game's horror. A Screen Burn developer also suggests during my Summer Game Fest session that Townfall uses first-person perspective because the series' usual third-person does more to coddle you from horror. In a sense, that's probably true. It's more viscerally horrifying to play Resident Evil in a VR headset than with ungainly tank controls, after all.

But third-person also encourages players to connect with a game's protagonist, as you can observe them as you control them, linking your movements with their mind. And since the average Silent Hill story is a storm whipped up to torment its main character, specifically (there are very few all-purpose spooks aimed at you, the player), third-person helps its effectiveness.

Though, Townfall isn't completely devoid of fantasy. It pays homage to the series' early convention of letting you identify monsters with a stammering radio by replacing the tech with a handheld CRT TV, which also swaps the need for on-screen UI by flashing cryptic images of your next location. It's an intriguing change, as the CRT TV is an elegant way to focus the player's attention on their next game objective while still being immersive in its story. However, I don't think a Silent Hill game's user interface has ever dulled the impact of its corpse nurses and brown toilets for me.

Ultimately, I feel like Screen Burn is worried about iterating on the wrong genre conventions.

I'm confused by all the changes I see in my Silent Hill: Townfall demo that are neutral at best. When the monster finally arrives, it's a melted flesh humanoid with its head sharpened into an axe. It looks like a struggling Lying Figure from Silent Hill 2... except with an axe for its head.

I thought this was supposed to be the fun part, but it's still too tame.

Refresh your memory of the Silent Hill we left behind with our list of the best Silent Hill games.

Some people become experts in wine – instead, I tip my top hat and consider myself a connoisseur of asymmetrical multiplayer horror games. As an expert, I must warn you the fields that allow genre superstar Dead by Daylight and more recent breakthrough The Outlast Trials to flourish are brittle and unloving – competitors The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th: The Game, and Evil Dead: The Game were all discontinued or removed from sale in just 2025. But publisher Bloober Team knows this, and it seems to have prepared its upcoming Saw: Genesis multiplayer for a difficult winter.

"[Most of the games] you mentioned are dead, so, I think there's space," jokes representatives from co-developer Anshar Studios when I ask them at Summer Game Fest 2026 if they're nervous to enter a genre where ambitious new titles seem destined to be gobbled by Dead by Daylight the way Saturn gargles his son. They continue honestly: "We know this is the genre that kind of wasted big studios as well. But it's also a different approach we have. [...] We have this experimental attitude."

Saw inspiring

To this point, Saw: Genesis currently has a waitlist for its closed alpha playtest, which already has a "huge amount of subscribers" a Bloober representative won't elaborate on when I poke him about it. But he says it's an overwhelming number, and Anshar plus Broken Mirror – Bloober's new splinter studio dedicated to psychological and survival horror games – seem to be proud of it. When they demonstrate hands-off gameplay, I decide they have plenty of reasons to be.

Since the Saw: Genesis footage I'm shown is so early, my main conclusion is that this is a smart game. It borrows aspects of Dead by Daylight and The Outlast Trials to its own advantage.

Of course, there are also plenty of clear parallels to the 10 Saw movies I know better than my own heart. I realize this while gleefully kicking my Mary Janes – some traps' death scenes seem to induce the disorienting, distinctly 2000s music video fast cuts the Saw franchise is infamous for.

Unlike the movies, Saw: Genesis forgoes the straightforward explanation that Jigsaw, who's really the sadistic brain cancer patient John Kramer, does things like kidnapping suicidal people and greasing them up with lighter fluid while making them hold a lit match in a room dusted in broken glass because there's something wrong with him.

Instead, Saw: Genesis makes a historical analysis of misguided evil and brings us to World War 1. There, Jigsaw's forefather the Judge is habitually forcing three Accused into seemingly unconquerable situations involving clamps, barbed wire, and even the infamous reverse bear trap from the movies, which separates your jaw from the rest of your body like you're an easy-to-peel orange.

Bloober compares Saw: Genesis' premise and gameplay to something like Saw 2, the 2005 movie where a group of idiots are meant to work together to survive the nerve gas Jigsaw is pumping into their blood. But I also see clever call backs to The Outlast Trials. That game, one of the only asymmetrical horror games to withstand Dead by Daylight, is based on the premise that an evil corporation is conducting debauched Cold War experiments on unwitting, unwilling volunteers.

The similarly, delightfully ahistorical Saw: Genesis borrows The Outlast Trials' vintage touches, and its roster of Accused characters are carefully designed with gothic horror in mind – the "songbird" character wears a glittering dropwaist dress with a 1920s flapper's fluffy feather in her hair, while an apparent young veteran's face is uneven with long, white scars – horrible cat whiskers. They pucker and stretch as he screams.

Meanwhile, the Judge reminds me of Dead by Daylight's inaugural killer, the Trapper. Both are like deranged animal control employees, armed with rusty bear traps; in the case of the Judge, players will also have to strategize how to manipulate the level they've dropped their Accused into and plan routes and tricks to efficiently encourage them to scoop their eyeballs out with a spoon.

Though, in a unique twist from its competitors, Saw: Genesis makes its Judge – whose jaw seems to have been blasted off during the war, poor thing – physically vulnerable, and players can stab him to Hell if they plan correctly. I also notice and appreciate in my preview evidence of the game's originality while contributing to the ridiculous Saw canon; it seems to feature a girl version of the beloved Billy the Puppet, the ghost-white mascot on a tricycle who flaps its wooden lips on behalf of its master Jigsaw. Girl Billy is similarly black-eyed and menacing, and I think the image of her and her greasy, long hair is a perfect addition to a franchise that eschews subtlety for blood smears, leg stumps, and squeaky, creepy tricycles.

In noting this during my Saw: Genesis preview, I'm also made to consider the essence of Saw – why do I love it so much, and why do I think this game does it justice? Once I go digging for it, the answer surprises me in its simplicity: excess. The Saw movies – and if this early look at Summer Game Fest is a good indicator, then the game, too – makes pain seem ubiquitous, inevitable, and powerful. It helps me process my smaller, more quiet pains; like, at least I don't need to slice bacon bits of my stomach fat to appease a crazed old man's vision of salvation.

And, though the Saw movies' vision of redemption is completely clueless, at least Jigsaw thinks it's possible. I appreciate the idea that any tragedy is surmountable. And if Saw: Genesis lets me achieve that ideal from the comfort of my TV room, where I can eat a nice chocolate chip cookie instead of being submerged in nerve gas, then, even better.

Check out our best horror games list... if you dare!

Capcom remains surprisingly secretive about Resident Evil Veronica. Despite offering a behind-closed-doors presentation at Summer Game Fest, the company didn't show anything beyond what everyone got to see in the public reveal, but producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi did reveal a few details in a Q&A with members of the media. Perhaps most notably, this is a fully third-person game, despite the extended first-person segment we saw in the trailer.

Hirabayashi confirmed in the Q&A session I attended that the long-awaited remake will be a third-person game. Recent Resident Evil titles have typically included an option to switch between perspectives, and Resident Evil Requiem encouraged players to stick with first-person for Grace's horror-focused sections and third-person, but despite the fact that the original Code: Veronica also featured dual protagonists, there'll be no similar split here.

What, then, are we meant to make of the extended first-person sequence we saw in the announcement trailer? Hirabayashi hints that this scene wouldn't necessarily be the same in the final game, and Capcom wanted to build a bit of mystery to create some surprise for the trailer. He also suggests that this scene won't necessarily be at the very beginning of the game.

Hirabayashi notes that Capcom "loves surprises," and that includes the release date – sorry, there were no secret teasers about when in that vague 2027 launch window that Veronica will actually be released.

He also shoots down some speculation about the "REV" acronym that briefly appeared in the trailer, confirming that the V is not meant to be a Roman numeral. It does, indeed, stand for Resident Evil Veronica rather than Resident Evil 5. While this is technically the fifth entry in the remake series, Hirabayashi says that Capcom has no intention of trying to erase previous entries, including the original Resident Evil 5.

That said, Hirabayashi also emphasized that Capcom is treating Veronica as a full-fledged, main series entry in the Resident Evil story. Given just how gosh-danged weird the original Code: Veronica is, I'm desperate to find out what the devs will do with the remake.

Stick with us for more news on all the new games for 2026 and beyond.