Halloween is next week, so you should get in the mood for it by playing some spooky games. Thankfully, several horror titles came to the PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra game catalog this month. From horror classics for the PS1 and PS2 to newer games with more modern storytelling and choose-your-own-adventure sensibilities, PS Plus subscribers will have a lot to choose from when they’re looking for something to play this weekend. These are three newer highlights that fit that bill.
While Resident Evil is Capcom’s flagship survival horror game series, it’s not the only one they’ve ever had. There was also Dino Crisis, a horror game that swaps out the zombies for dinosaurs. While this series ended after three games and faded into obscurity, Capcom is finally acknowledging it again with a PS Plus re-release of the first game. I’m happy it did this, as the game is worth revisiting in 2024. If you can get used to its dated tank controls and menu design, you have a really solid and surprisingly cinematic retro horror game that deserves more love than it gets. If you’ve never tried Dino Crisis before, this Halloween gives you the perfect opportunity to do so. Dino Crisis is available on PS4 and PS5 as part of the PS Plus Premium Classics Catalog.
Siren is a creepy horror game that takes a lot of bold swings. Narratively, it tells its story nonlinearly across 10 characters and three days. Much of the gameplay is centered around a mechanic called sightjacking, which lets players essentially possess enemies to hear and see what they do. It’s a good primer for Slitterhead, a new game from Siren’s director that’s out next month. Siren was already technically part of the PS Plus Premium catalog, but Sony has updated its PS2 emulator to add new features like gameplay rewinding and quick saves. It is now updating previously released PS2 games to support it, with Siren being the first. Hopefully, more will follow suit. Siren is available on PS4 and PS5 with a PS Plus Premium subscription.
Did you check out Sony’s Until Dawn remake that dropped earlier this month? While that didn’t come to PS Plus this month, another choice-driven horror game from developer Supermassive Games did. The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me follows a documentary crew who visits a remote island to check out a replica of H.H. Holmes’ “Murder Castle.” Of course, things go wrong, and the crew members start being hunted down. Depending on the player’s choices, these characters can live or die. It doesn’t radically reinvent the narrative horror adventure formula Supermassive spearheaded, but it’s still an enjoy take on the genre with a plot grounded in the actions of a real-world serial killer. The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me is now part of the PS Plus Extra game catalog. It’s also available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.