Hey everyone,

I hope you're all having a great start to your summer!

I'm incredibly stoked to see we've hit over 800 members in our group, and we're at over 1,400 Curation follows as well. All from word of mouth, all thanks to you!

I'm about to update the Curation page and my question to you is as follows:
- Do you use my lists (or anyone else's) on the Curation page?
- What lists do you find helpful?
- What lists do you want me to add?

I'd also like to take the time to formally state that I am shifting my focus away from AAA titles, and going forward I will primarily be reviewing indie horror releases. There are a couple reasons for this:
1. I need a new GPU, there's no way around it. While my GTX 1080 hasn't died, it's pretty outdated at this point. I need to be able to review games playing max settings, otherwise it's just not valid (to me). With the worldwide chip shortage, RTX 3080s are due in stock where I am in 2023... and I won't settle for anything lower.
2. I've been buying most AAA games on PlayStation; this is the reason you haven't seen me review any of the Dark Pictures games, Days Gone (which was a PS exclusive anyway), Resident Evil Village, etc.

In the future when I'm finally able to upgrade my GPU and the prices on AAA games are down, you'll see me put out a review for them.

However!

If you are interested in my opinion on any game, you can always join the Discord[discordapp.com] and ask me, or open up a discussion on the group. I'm more than happy to help.

Speaking of the Discord, I post a lot of news on upcoming horror games, and it's a really good and chill group in there. Come join us!

That's all for now.

Cheers,
- Embalmer

Hey everyone,

Long time no see!

While I may not have been very present in terms of reviews, I always keep my eye on this group and my curation, and I'm glad to see that we've grown despite my minimal posting over the last 8 months.

I completed my first year of college with flying colours (humble brag), and I have four months off for the summer. I'm going to be focusing on catching up on the horror games that I've missed during my time off, and going through my Curator Connect backlog as well.

I hope everyone is doing well, and it's good to be back for a bit! I've missed you all, and reviewing.

Cheers,
- Embalmer

Hey everyone,

I hope you've all been well, and have been staying safe during this worldwide pandemic.

As many of you know, I've been busy with my first year of college and have had little (to no) time to game and review lately. The games that I have been playing have all been on PS4 and PS5.

For years now, I've been in a declining state of mentality toward PC gaming, Steam being the forefront of my qualms with their lack of quality control over what comes into, and stays on, their store. For years, and with great fun I will say, I've battled terrible games with my reviews, and that's what brought a lot of you here; I sort the good from the bad so that you don't have to. In doing so, I've found a lot of hidden gems that lay buried beneath the rotted onslaught of garbage that hauls its way onto this platform every single week, and that is one of the few things that keeps me doing what I'm doing.

And I still want to be able to do that. However, another gripe has grown evermore present in my mind about PC gaming... the state of optimization and the subsequent lack of developer accountability for it. The type of optimization issues where it doesn't matter if you spend $5,000 CAD building your own incredible top-of-the-line beast machine (which I did 5 years ago at this point), the game(s) will still fail to obtain higher than 30-45 FPS.

Case and point: Moons of Madness, a title that I was ridiculously excited about and then my bubble completely shattered when I got about an hour in and the frames dropped from 60 FPS to 24. No amount of lowering the settings worked, and I still (on PC) only game at 1080p. I bought that title at full price at launch. I just spent another $20 buying it on PS4 so I could play it without horrible frame rate issues, which according to the Steam forums are still present even for people with RTX 3080s; effectively a $2000 CAD current card.

It has come full circle where it doesn't matter if it's an AAA release or an indie title, optimization on PC is abhorrent. Even on 'older' resolution settings such as what I am still using. I am deathly sick of fighting it. Now, with the advent of the next generation of console gaming, my PS5 not only plays in native 4K 60 FPS resolution, but it also has some raytracing at that setting, and will even uptick old PS4 titles to smooth 60 FPS. Hell, some PS5 games (Nioh and Nioh 2 remastered) play at 4K 120 FPS.

So why am I saying all of this? Well. It has come to a tough decision for me. I am not leaving this platform, nor am I giving up reviewing entirely. However, going forward I am going to be reviewing PC only games on Steam now. At least for this time.

I cannot afford to purchase a game on Steam and on PlayStation, just so I can plop down a review on Steam. There are some crossover games that I do have (Moons of Madness, Lone Survivor, Distraint 2, for instance) that I will probably crossplay and review at some point, loading them up long enough onto PC to see how well they run, etc. But for the most part, going forward my reviews here will be of games unavailable on PS3/PS4/PS5; at least at the time of purchase. If something launches on PC first and I want to play it and then a year later or so it goes to console, I will most likely be doing a review here on Steam.

I do hope that in the future, Steam can put forth some type of quality control system. I feel like this store has become nothing but a dumping ground for titles that should've been free on places like itch.io, but are now $13+ CAD. It has been like this for years, but it has gotten exponentially worse within the last 2-3 years. To the point that I rarely even interact on this platform now.

If you want to still chat with me and the community, our Discord is linked in the group. Hit me up if you want my PSN ID and we can game there as well.

Again, this is not farewell, but more of a statement of reducing my activity. I enjoy writing reviews too much to give it up completely, and it pains me to even have to make a decision like this, but I just cannot put up with the frustration of how badly so many titles run on PC now. Especially ones that have no business running shoddily since they had all the development power and funds behind them.

Stay safe,
Embalmer

Hey everyone,

It has been a while! Seven whole weeks, actually. Happy Halloween Sale! I hope everyone is doing good. I'm currently in the mid-term of my first college semester, so I have another seven weeks to go until I have a whole four weeks off in December-January!

I won't lie, I've been enjoying the break from horror games for a bit, but I am ready to get back at it with a refreshed mind and eye for the genre. We went from being in a total two-year drought to being drowned in releases just in this past week alone! Lots of great titles have dropped, or are about to drop, or are about to come out of Early Access as well!

Here are just a few of my picks for every budget. Happy Halloween, and stay safe. See you all in December, with maybe a few reviews sprinkled here and there in the meantime.


https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/999220/Amnesia_Rebirth/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1194630/The_Dark_Pictures_Anthology_Little_Hope/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1437500/Dread_X_Collection_3/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1186640/Pumpkin_Jack/


https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/739630/Phasmophobia/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/500/Left_4_Dead/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/939850/The_Dark_Pictures_Anthology_Man_of_Medan/


https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/57300/Amnesia_The_Dark_Descent/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/238320/Outlast/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/17470/Dead_Space/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/108710/Alan_Wake/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/16450/FEAR_2_Project_Origin/


https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/359400/Why_Am_I_Dead_At_Sea/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/396310/Masochisia/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1296510/Dread_X_Collection/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1380390/Dread_X_Collection_2/

Hey everyone,

I hope that you've all been enjoying your summer as well as you could, given the global situation. As well, I hope you and your friends and family are safe and healthy. As for me, I've been speed running Silent Hill 2! My favorite game of all time.

Welcome to all of our new members! We're growing day by day, all thanks to word of mouth! So thank you to everyone who has suggested this group and curation to your horror-loving buddies, and those that decided to join from reading the reviews.

Fall for me this year holds a brand new path! I will be attending college for Behavioral Science studies. It's a three year program. My first semester is online due to the pandemic, with more perhaps being done from home depending on how the situation plays out.

With that said, expect to see fewer reviews throughout the Fall, Winter, and Spring months, as my studies are going to be the top of my priority list. On top of this, I've also run most of the gamut of what Steam has to offer for horror and it has been hard to find games to review. I spend a long time poring through the pages looking for something worthwhile, and also affordable at the same time. So this contributes to review postings being slow, as there isn't a lot to review now! The last two years have seen very few new horror titles.

I should clarify that it's hard to find good games to review. I could fill this group with games that we already know are bad, but I don't see much point in that these days. If a game is good or bad, I will write as such, but I'm trying to avoid the "mostly negative" reviewed titles now as I don't have the money I used to, to throw around on these things. I'll probably be revisiting old horror games I played in the past and beat, before I started reviewing, such as the Dead Rising franchise, Obscure, etc.

If you haven't yet, please feel free to join us in the Discord! We're a quiet bunch, and there's not an overwhelming amount of channels to get lost in either. We just chat, complain about Dead by Daylight, suggest horror movies, and hang out. There aren't many rules, and even if you just drop in to say hey every once in a while, it means a lot! The link is here: https://discord.gg/3UgQx5J

If you have any suggestions for horror games for review, please let me know. I'm always open and willing to review something that you guys and gals wanna see. See you all in the Winter update!

- Embalmer