Highlights

  • 2023 has been a great year for survival-horror games, with AAA and indie titles receiving heaps of praise from both casual and hardcore fans.
  • The Dead Space remake set the stage for the high-quality horror games that followed, including the impressive Alan Wake 2.
  • While Alan Wake 2 and Dead Space are incredibly different, the Diver Taken enemy in AW2 would fit right in with Dead Space's iconic and terrifying necromorphs.

2023 has been a stellar year for survival-horror so far, both in the AAA and indie spheres. It has seen a slew of entries that garnered large amounts of praise from both casual and hardcore fans of the genre. The quality of the titles released thus far is hard to argue with. Among the many highlights include the likes of the Resident Evil 4 and System Shock remakes, while Amnesia: The Bunker and Ad Infinitum, while not as high-profile, were also well received.

However, it could be said that it was the excellent Dead Space remake that started the year off strong, and set the stage for many of the titles that followed after. One of the most recent titles to release, Alan Wake 2, has lived up to and in many ways surpassed its expectations. It is likely to end up in the conversation for best in the genre of the year, along with Dead Space.

Although Alan Wake 2 and Dead Space have very different settings, and only seem to share a few surface elements beyond the survival-horror genre itself, there is one particular enemy in AW2 that would feel right at home in Dead Space 's menagerie of monsters.

RELATED: Alan Wake 2: 5 Scariest Enemies

This One Alan Wake 2 Enemy Is A Perfect Fit For Dead Space

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Dead Space's Necromorphs

The original Dead Space is often credited with ushering in a modern wave of survival-horror, whose ripples can still be felt today. In 2008, Visceral Games introduced a new generation of players to its chilling atmosphere and intense situations. One of the biggest factors contributing to its standout elements is Dead Space's necromorphs. These abominations consist of the reanimated corpses of humans and other organisms unfortunate enough to come in contact with an aggressive extraterrestrial hive-mind mass, whose only goal is to absorb and create more of the creatures.

The necromorphs' distinctive and disturbing design became instantly iconic in the Dead Space franchise, and for survival-horror overall. Like Resident Evil's zombies or Silent Hill's nurses, they are likely the first things that come to mind when mentioning it. Since the necromorphs can take on various forms depending on what the mass absorbs and mutates, players are confronted with an array of body-horror-based beasts.

Dead Space delivers a cadre of decomposing cadavers that have been unnaturally twisted and fused together. Further, they often ambush the player from behind vents, blind corners, and ceilings, making them even more frightening and nerve-wracking to combat. This makes them far more complex than enemies in Alan Wake 2, though that does not mean Dead Space cannot take inspiration from interesting concepts.

Alan Wake 2's Diver Taken

Alan Wake 2's enemy types are almost all recognizably human besides wolves. They are regular townsfolk that have been possessed by an eldritch entity, reduced to their base instincts, but not warped into grotesque parodies of human anatomy. These Taken are covered in an eerie shadowy essence, but still look and talk like people. They even usually announce their presence well in advance by uttering guttural threats, and are overall less visually off-putting, and relatively more palatable to tackle, especially compared to the necromorphs.

However, there is one big exception to this—the Diver Taken. Among the enemies in Alan Wake 2, this one most resembles a Dead Space necromorph. The Diver is composed of two bodies joined at the torso, one upside-down, crawling along with its hands. It also behaves much differently than all other adversaries. It is able to turn invisible and stalk the player, popping up to attack in one of Alan Wake 2's better jumpscare moments.

Battling a Diver Taken can cause sheer panic due to its unpredictability versus the rest of the game's enemies. The Diver Taken is one of the more unique and terrifying foes in Alan Wake 2. It so closely mirrors the design of a Dead Space necromorph, both visually and mechanically, that it would fit seamlessly in the series.