Top Steam Horror Games ON SALE NOW – PC Buyer’s Guide
Ted Hentschke
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The holidays are here and money is tight so now is the time to consider your purchases carefully! That being said… on tap right now we look at some of the horror-related games available on Steam that are currently on sale.
Find out whether or not they’re worth your hard-earned cash!
We will be adding titles to this list throughout the week so CHECK BACK OFTEN!
Depth
Developed by Digital Confectioners
Distributed on Steam
Not Classified by ESRB as of writing (expect M)
Can you feel it in the air? The joy, the whimsy, the ever present tingle that dreams just might come true? Maybe you’ll finally take that magical cabin excursion you’ve been longing for, or your boss will finally give you that raise, or that girl you are fighting with might just get over it with a brief snog under the mistletoe and a shag on the copy machine. It might not happen, but if we cross our fingers and wish, maybe it will all become real this season of merriment. And maybe—just maybe—if we all believe hard enough, video games will all become insanely discounted and available for digital purchase at the drop of a hat.
OOOOOOH shit, I guess dreams really do come true! It’s time for the annual Steam Ever-More-Predictable Holiday Sale! Cry “havoc”, and let slip the credit cards of mirth, for the time of insanely discounted digital goods is upon us! If you are a console gamer and therefore ignorant scum, the Steam Holiday Sale is a time where all us PC gamers get to buy all the 60-dollar games for naught but a nickle and a ball of twine, a statement that is seemingly grand exaggeration until you actually look at the deals and realize that you could currently get brand new titles for up to 75% off. Sure, you can’t trade them in at GameStop, but it’s been a good few years since their trade-in package involved light cuddles and sweet whispers while they leaned you over the table to savagely fuck you, so I find that the ol’ brick and mortar corporate cesspit has lost a lot of its appeal.
So what does this mean to you, starry-eyed fan? Well, ‘tis the season of giving, and what gift is greater than my massive knowledge of all things video games? Yes, this season I will be reviewing some of the standout horror titles to grace the intangible shelves of Steam’s discounted online library so that you might better decide which titles best deserve your half-pence and lint. So without further ado, I present some thoughts to chew and ideas which stew; and take this in lieu of Christmas if you’re denomination be Jew, a half brew review of a game that’s not poo.
Depth is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one team plays as divers looking for treasure and the other team plays as sharks.
Oh, wait, you’re still reading? I did just tell you it’s a sharks vs. people shooter, right? To be honest that’s really all I had prepared. Well off to more rhyming then… No? No more rhyming? Well fine, I guess I could talk about the merits of the game. Ugh, things were so much easier when my contemporaries were all six and could be sold on something but the inclusion of sharks or quantity of First Edition Charizards.
The first question I will answer is that yes, Depth is indeed a scary game. Far scarier than either Left 4 Dead game, which previously held the title of “Only Awesome Multiplayer Horror Game Ever,” even if it wasn’t that scary. It certainly feels arcadey, as scattered treasure drops and Call of Duty esque score plusses add to the sense that you are competing for a leaderboard rather than fighting for your life. Still, despite this detraction, there’s something viscerally terrifying about wading into the deep abyssal darkness, clenching your pistol close and wondering which spot of dense blackness the next torpedo of teeth will come lunging out from. Environments accurately depict the overwhelming darkness of the deep sea. Your flashlight can only go so far, and your flares only last so long. The game mitigates this a bit by having most of the objective zones be in more claustrophobic and defensible spaces, but God have mercy on your ever shrinking testicles during the moments of open sea travel between waypoints.
The game splits players up into two teams: sharks and divers. As divers, you scour for treasure and defend a robot named S.T.E.V.E. while he cracks open various treasure boxes. The divers are always on the defensive, holding off the sharks at various hubs while a little progress bar above S.T.E.V.E.’s head tells players how long they have left in that spot. After the little guy finishes, he putters off at a leisurely pace, middle finger raised to your increasingly shrill cries, as he decides casually which new death trap to go do his business in. Over time and as a reward for collecting treasure and scoring kills, players earn money, which is used between lives to buy ever stronger shark slaughtering gear. The teams are split up into 4 divers and 2 sharks, so even with the highest level gear, don’t expect to become a submarine armed with the BFG 9000. Sure, there are weapons that can kill a shark in one hit, but given the massive speed and logistics advantages of the sharks, even this relatively powerful weapon falls short of god-tier.
Sharks are always on the offensive. Ideally, you hit the divers hardest while they are going from spot to spot, but give that the divers win if S.T.E.V.E. takes a smoke break at 4 different spots and goes home, waiting isn’t always an option. Luckily, sharks benefit from sharkey-senses, and can tell where not only the divers are, but destructible walls for them to Kool-Aid man through and scamper off with a tasty human treat. As awesome as busting through a wall and snagging an unsuspecting diver is, it is doubly awesome to just tap the wall a couple of times and watch the sea turn brown with fear. To counter the divers’ ever increasing arsenal, the sharks gain evolution points for kills. Each point can be spent on upgrades that cost between 1 and 6 points, with 1 point skills being for girls and 6 point skills for manly men. There are three varieties of shark to play as: the Tiger sharks are the most balanced, Mako sharks sacrifice 2 units of health for 2 of speed, and the Great White trades 2 units of speed for 2 units of health, 3 inches of length, and half an inch of thickness.
Games go on until either the aforementioned robot phones home or each team spends their 30 lives. For how different the two teams play, it is interesting how often games come down to the wire. Sharks main goal is to snatch up people and whisk them away. You deal damage based on how much you swing your head back and forth when someone is in your mouth, so there’s a give and take between trying to drag someone to a nice sit-down place and just fast fooding them down before you die. The game breaks down into some interesting phases, and generally it is the case that sharks will start and end the game stronger, while divers dominate the middle game.
Since God has yet to see fit to invent the double mawed shark, sharks can only grab one person at a time, and while you are nibbling on your prey they are stabbing you in the face as hard as they can. Different sharks can take a different amount of stabs before dying, but as a general rule the fastest shark can’t kill more than two people before helping itself to a seal health pack, which swim around and glow purple. As the humans build up money and start being able to field more robust weapons and placeable defenses, it becomes more and more important for the sharks to take advantage of tactical weak points and ambush zones. By the time the end of the game rolls around, most sharks will have been able to purchase all the upgrades they want, and become auto-healing fast-swimming razor-finning death tornadoes. By this time, S.T.E.V.E. is usually taking his long oblivious stroll through the open water to get back home, so the game quickly becomes just holding off the toothed giants long enough for the divers to be saved by the clock.
As I mentioned before, games really rarely are one sided. Despite being terrifying and fast, the sharks will die to only a few shots. If an enemy manages to get you a few times before you grab someone, the flailing person in your mouth desperately stabbing at you will generally take you down first. The humans have no method of healing damage, so the attrition game is generally favorable towards the sharks. Still, you have to kill them fast enough, or the humans get away with all of your precious gold.
Humans, likewise, never really feel as fragile as they are. While a snapping jaw in the darkness will get you repeatedly every game, you are given enough deployable items and weapons to feel like you can hold your own in any situation. What is terrifying is the unknown. You know the sharks can see you, but you can’t see them. As the sharks approach, you are warned by an ever increasing heart beat. I’m torn between which is scarier: a constant heartbeat telling me the shark is near and just lurking out of view, or the rapidly escalating heartbeat that comes right before a shark ambushes you from the blackness.
There is another game mode called Megalodon, which is crap and not worth talking about. Its like juggernaut mode in other games, and just as stupid.
The biggest problem with Depth is replay value. While I certainly enjoyed the bits I played, and there are plenty of items to unlock, I don’t really see this game holding any kind of lasting or competitive appeal. It lacks the sheer visceral splatter and mayhem of Left 4 Dead or addictive “just one more round” appeal of MOBAs, and I can’t see this game becoming as competitive as more traditional shooters like Counter-Strike. Still, the game is only $25 normally, and currently 33% off at $16.74. Keep an eye on it to see if it goes on daily deal, at which point it will likely be $12.50. I often don’t buy games over $10 during sales, but I’ll be a Mako’s turd if this wasn’t worth every penny.
4 out of 5
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
