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| Resident Evil has far more horrors then just boring old zombies. |
1. Resident Evil Remake
The original Resident Evil for the Playstation 1 is widely considered the birthplace of survival horror in mainstream games. For those that don't know Resident Evil is a game that places you in the role of either Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield, special agents that get trapped in a mansion full of zombies and other biological horrors and have to find a way to escape alive. While the general design of the game is still good other aspects of the game have not aged well. The graphics are awful and the voice acting is hilariously bad. The original is still fun, but as a campy humor experience rather than the horror experience it was intended as. Thankfully, the game was remade from the ground up with a huge number of welcome improvements and additions. Even to this day the Resident Evil remake still looks fantastic and has some of the best atmosphere I've ever experienced in a game. It also has several of the scariest gameplay sections I have ever had the honor of playing even if I personally don't like the tank controls. The Resident Evil Remake recently got an HD remaster for all current gen systems so I highly recommend checking it out if you can.
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| Silent Hill 2 is one of the most personal descents into the pits of hell ever made. |
2. Silent Hill 2
The decline of the Silent Hill franchice , the cancellation of promising Silent Hills and its publisher Konami using the Silent Hill name of sell fucking pachinko machines has really left a lot of horror fans feeling down in the dumps. But in spite of all of that Silent Hill 2 is still one of the best games ever made along with being a fantastic horror game. It is a master class in interactive storytelling that puts you in the role of James Sunderland, a man who is drawn to the fog covered town of Silent Hill by a letter written by his dead wife, and join him on a descent into the darkest most twisted parts of his broken mind. You will be faced with some of the most disturbing monsters in video games, incredibly morbid character revelations, and even your most subtle of choices radically effecting the outcome of James's story. Sadly, the game is hard to get your hands on these days. The only really worthwhile version of the game is the PS2 release with the Restless Dream Expansion. It was released on PS3 and Xbox 360 along with Silent Hill 3 in the Silent Hill HD Collections, but because Konami is Konami and Konami is the worse, it is filled with lots of game breaking bugs, terrible voice acting, and it bizarrely removes the series trademark fog which reveals unfinished textures and buildings that the fog was hiding in the original release. But it is worth jumping through hoops to play Silent Hill 2. It truly is a masterpiece that I highly recommend that you experience at least once.
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| The scary thing about Amnesia The Dark Descent is that the scariest monsters are the ones you can't see. |
3. Amnesia The Dark Descent
In the late 2000s traditional survival horror was basically dead. Classic horror franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill embraced a new action oriented approach and new horror series like Dead Space had a heavy focus on combat and empowerment and far less of a focus on creating a feeling of helplessness. These weren't bad games, but they were narrowed focused on making the player feel powerful and limited what horror games could be. Then in 2010 Amneisa The Dark Descent happened. In Amnesia, you play as a man named Daniel who awakens in a mysterious castle with no memory of how he got there or why he was there in the first place. You are then tasked by your former self to go into the depths of the castle and kill a supposedly evil man. Unlike most horror games at the time you could not fight against the various monsters you encountered. You had to avoid them and you couldn't even look at the them without going insane an becoming unable to run away. The story was also a really disturbing descent into merciless torture and occult rituals. While the hide of seek style of horror game that Amnesia pioneered is overplayed today with hundreds, if not thousands, of imitators the original Amnesia is still worth playing. You can get it pretty easy on PC and it works on pretty much any kind of computer.
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| After being cannon fodder for space marines for so long, Alien Isolation makes the classic Xenomorph scary again. |
4. Alien Isolation
Following the abysmal Aliens: Colonial Marines, it would take a lot to make up for the disappointment fans felt towards the Alien franchise. Thankfully, last year's Alien Isolation not only revived faith in the franchise it also brought back survival horror to big budget games. The game puts you in the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of the original film's Ellen Ripley, goes to the remote Sevastopol space station looking for clues about her mothers disappearance only to trapped on the station and caught between paranoid survivors, homicidal robots, and of course an unkillable alien that you cannot kill and stalks you the entire game. Alien Isolation manages to find a good balance between the feeling of helplessness that Amnesia pioneered, while at the same time giving you a feeling that you have a chance against the threats you are up against so long as you played it smart. Its not perfect though. There is a lot of padding in the game particularly in the middle and the Alien can sometimes go from scary to simply annoying after a while. But if your in the mood for a classic sci-fi horror game you can't really go wrong here and it is available for both previous gen game system along with current gen systems. So check it out.
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| Bloodborne's setting of Yharnam borrows heavily from the works of Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft. |
5. Bloodborne
The final game I want to recommend is technically not classified as a horror game. Technically, Bloodborne is an action role playing game that borrows heavily from Dark Souls. Which isn't surprising given that they are made by the same developer From Software. But the combat of Bloodborne is far more reminiscent of a horror game than an action game and how it much is punishes for failure puts you on edge even more than the average horror game. The aesthetic and narrative of the game is also classic gothic horror and cosmic horror in equal parts. It has everything you could want from a horror game. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, witches, and even aliens. Bloodborne is simply the perfect Halloween game wither you consider it a horror game or not. It is sadly only exclusive to the PS4, but if you have one and you want to have a spooktacular Halloween I highly recommend it.
So that is five horror games I recommend you try and play or at least watch a Let's Play of this Halloween. Speaking of watching Let's Plays I'm going to be streaming horror games off of my Twitch stream most of Halloween tomorrow. I'll leave a link to my Twitch stream tomorrow. Hope to see you there.
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