Until Dawn (2015)

As a teen slasher film fan and an avid gamer, I am delighted that the combination has finally come together and a game like this has finally been made. With countless survival horror games coming out over various platforms over the years, PS4 exclusive 'Until Dawn' breaks new ground and breathes fresh life into the survival-horror genre by letting players carve their own story and essentially determine who survives the night.

Written by two horror fans and filmmakers, Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, with a cast including the likes of Hayden Panettiere (Scream 4), Rami Malek (TV's Mr Robot) and Brett Dalton (TV's Agents of Shield), you play as eight teenagers who are hunted down by a masked killer, or something more sinister, on a mountain resort, one year to the day a cruel prank occurred and two sisters disappeared forever.

If you have played 'Heavy Rain' (2010) and 'Beyond Two Souls' (2013), then you will know exactly the kind of game this is. It doesn't involve any big infuriating boss battles, solving puzzles, collecting health kits and weaponry or even dying a thousand and one times before you reach the end of the game. It's an interwoven gaming and movie experience rolled into one -- it's a horror film that you control and determine the outcome of by making choices that will either doom you or gloom you later on.

Do you chose to kill friend A or friend B? Do you decide to crack a joke or not? Do you run through the safe route or the quickest route? Choices like this determine your game and whether your favourite character lives or dies is up to you. Everybody's story outcomes will be different and every choice matters. Of course the game has a story to follow and you can't kill everyone off two hours into the game (gamers would be having heart attacks and demanding refunds), but it has so more replay ability and so many different outcomes. It expands upon the gaming engine seen in HR and BTS, but it utilizes it so much more. Gaming in 2015 is truly something special, and games like Until Dawn only show how far consoles have come.

Everything about the game is crazy good and even tributes popular horror films throughout (in one scene, there are horror film posters all over the walls of a cinema in the lodge). The visuals are stunning and the treks through the snowy mountains look haunting and beautiful. The voice acting and facial animations are top notch and some of the best I've seen on the Playstation to date. The acting genuinely feels like actors giving 'movie performances' rather than some wooden video game acting some games have. The story itself is executed greatly as well and provides plenty of twists, cheesy lines, typical jump scares and gratuitous gore. I cracked a huge smile when I made a typical 'horror movie mistake' and went off to investigate something only to get killed. Looks like that character won't be making it to the end credits! But maybe they will in yours?

I really loved the hell out of Until Dawn. If you are a horror or slasher fan and own a PS4, you have no excuses not to pick this one up. I'm only hoping that Supermassive Games takes note the crazy amount of positivity the game is getting from horror fans and critics alike and acts upon making a sequel, DLC, or at least branching out on the genre some more.

More. Games. Like. This. Please.