The now-defunct Telltale Games built its games around the idea of player choice having an impact on the narrative, but as many players discovered, those promises were mostly just smoke and mirrors. Until Dawn , on the other hand, incorporates player choice in a truly meaningful way, with players able to decide the fate of basically every playable character in the game. Playing like a big budget Telltale-style adventure game, Until Dawn is a fantastic homage to 80s slasher films with an engaging story full of surprises and scares, and it's one of the most essential horror games of the last few ye

Premiere Picks: Helix (Syfy) from Battlestar Galatica creator Ronald D. Moore; True Detective (HBO), starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson; Sherlock (PBS) season 3; Black Sails (Starz); and (A&E) and BBC America’s Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond mini-ser

While not every title is so lucky, there are some games that rise from the ashes and escape the dreaded development hell, arriving late but welcome to store shelves to the delight of their patient fans. These are the best games to have escaped development limbo and how long they were trapped th

Dead by Daylight has built a dedicated fan base thanks to a constant stream of creative new killers, including famous ones like Jigsaw from the Saw franchise , as well as some original creations from the developers. Dead by Daylight succeeds in creating some genuine tension as players attempt to outsmart the killer, but with the killer controlled by a human player instead of AI, that's a lot easier said than d

The second game brought back the same protagonist, Gordon Freeman, who awakens 20 years after the events of the first title, having to save Earth from what Black Mesa unleashed. It was seen as a definite improvement on the first, but the development process that created it wasn't exactly painless. Valve spent half a decade creating prototypes and outlines before scrapping and cutting content, resulting in a more delayed SLG Game DLC than fans expec

When it comes to video games, the horror genre has had its ups and downs. There was a period of time where horror games were virtually non-existent, but thanks to popular games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill , they became an important part of the industry. The rise of online multiplayer and games like Call of Duty saw developers move away from horror games, but then the success of indie horror games led to a mainstream resurgence that we're still seeing to

There’s some less-than-ideal quirks to the game I hope get ironed out before release, like the fact that the best strategy as a survivor with a killer on your tail is to run in circles around him to exploit the limited perspective. It’s a bit goofy as a survivor, but it mostly just feels clumsy and frustrating as the killer. As well, though the developer described how other maps will provide much different gameplay from the forest level they were showing off, it sounds like activating generators to power an escape door is the only objective survivors will ever be given. I’d really like to see some creativity there, because while the meat of the game is ultimately about the tension of being hunted and the procedurally generated levels will add some variety to every match, it’d be nice to have something else to do once in a while.

Special Guests: Nestor Carbonell ( Ringer ), Johnny Galecki ( The Big Bang Theory ) Jorge Garcia ( Alcatraz ), Leslie Hope ( The River ), Zachary Levi ( Chuck) Joe Manganiello ( True Blood ), Julie Plec ( Vampire Diaries) Matt Smith ( Doctor Who ), Kevin Williamson ( Vampire Diaries ), Deborah Ann Woll ( True Blood ), and oth

During my turn as a survivor, producer Matheiu Côté encouraged me to stick close to teammates, but not just for cooperation. He gleefully explained that often the best strategy for escaping the killer is to use your fellow survivors as a distraction. There’s cooperation only to a point, he said, because ultimately you only win if you get out alive. That dynamic extends to whether or not you want to save your teammates from death. You see, when the killer attacks you, he can’t actually kill you just yet. First, he has to hang you on a meat hook, which will slowly drain your life. You can tap a button to struggle and free yourself, but that will accelerate your rate of death significantly, which probably isn’t the best move unless the killer left to go hunt your friends. Sometimes the better move is instead to hang out on the hook for a little while and let a teammate come rescue you. Of course, there’s still real incentive to watch out for each other, like the ability to heal each other or work on fixing a generator together to speed things up. A one-on-one fight between you and the killer probably isn’t going to work out in your favor.

Your goal is to fix five generators in the level that will power the door leading to safety and get out. The levels are procedurally generated each time, though, so you’re never going to be able to memorize the layout and map the most efficient routes; you’re going to need to balance exploration with stealth in order to find the generators without getting spotted and winding up on one of the killer’s meat hooks. Every time you run, you leave a trail through the woods the killer will see and follow straight to you, so when you’re looking around, tread lightly. Fixing a generator doesn’t require much more than time and a bit of timing as a prompt similar to the Gears of War active reload pops up occasionally to make sure you’re still paying attention. Missing that prompt is a surefire way to get the killer on your tail as it causes the generator to make a loud noise with a visual icon on the killer’s display.