With Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn just around the corner (ready to leap out and scare the crap out of you), we thought we’d take a look back at some of our favourite horror games ever made. From the revolutionary to the just plain creepy, these are the titles that made us go to sleep with the lights on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M627-obxNzg
10. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010, PC, Mac, Linux)
Amnesiac Daniel awakens in a castle. He can only remember three things about himself – his name, where he’s from and that he is being hunted. On his person he finds a letter, apparently from himself, informing Daniel that he wiped his own memories and that he must murder the Baron Alexander. Without any kind of combat system to speak of, Daniel’s only hope for survival is to flee and hide when danger approaches. The trade-off? The longer he cowers in the dark, the further into insanity he plummets. Soon he begins hallucinating sounds and visions, making playthroughs even more spooky.
9. F.E.A.R. (2005, PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
Trading on the J-Horror film fad that was popular at the time, with movies like The Ring and Dark Water getting remade all over, F.E.A.R. took the first person shooter back into the horror realm of DOOM and Quake with a twist – a messed up, drowned-looking little girl named Alma who subjects the player to all manner of creepy visions, dreams and jump scares. No amount of bullet time mechanics (it was 2005, we were still obsessed with The Matrix too) could put you beyond her horrific mental barrage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAiHfqnbGYo
8. Dead Space (2008, PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
In the future, mankind has a new hobby. Planet cracking – the act of quite literally cracking a planet opena and hoovering up any useful resources. It isn’t long before a bizarre religious artefact is discovered on the remote world of Aegis VII and claimed by a fairly mental cult. It’s then that things start to get screwy. A mining shop called the Ishimura suddenly goes offline and a team of engineers are sent to investigate. Among them, Isaac Clarke, an engineer whose girlfriend was stationed aboard the Ishimura when it vanished. It doesn’t take long after boarding the Ishimura to realise that something has gone very, very wrong indeed. Right up the alley of body horror fans and anyone who loved Event Horizon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAMrjoVdFxo
7. Resident Evil 4 (2005, GCN, PS2, PC)
This may be contentious but Resident Evil 4 remains in our opinion the best RE title Capcom have ever made. Resident Evil 2’s Leon Kennedy returns to the series on a mission to rescue – what else? – the president’s daughter from the clutches of a sinister cult in an obscure eastern European country. Upon arrival, Leon finds himself hip deep in crazy once again when the villagers mindlessly mob him and horrific creatures begin to manifest throughout the cult’s compound and surrounding areas. Notable for completely redesigning the series’ control scheme and originally being a Gamecube exclusive, Resident Evil 4 brought the scary in a big way and got the series back on track after the patchy Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
6. Slender (2012, PC, Mac)
Slender is a survival horror title, available online for free, that is based around the Slenderman urban legend. Slenderman is a lanky, faceless, besuited monster who has a predilection for child abduction. You are dropped into the middle of a dimly-lit wooded area and must find eight notes hidden throughout the area in order to survive. These notes explain Slenderman and why he’s so damn scary. Despite its humble presentation, Slender is surprisingly atmospheric and scary. Well worth a play – it’ll run on just about any system.
5. Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014, PC, iOS, Android)
No list of horror games would be complete without the near-literal overnight jump scare sensation that is the Five Nights at Freddy’s series. The original game saw you working as a night security guard at a theme restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The restaurant is full of animatronic versions of its various mascots and, when night falls and the doors are locked, these robots come to life and begin to roam the halls, murdering anyone who gets in their way. And they know you’re here. The whole aim of the game is to track the movements of the evil animatronics as they inch closer and closer to your security control room. Every night you survive, the robots become craftier and more brazen in their attempts to reach you.
4. System Shock 2 (1999, PC, Mac, Linux)
A cyberpunk nightmare set on a pair of space ships stricken by a fast-spreading viral infection. Created by Ken Levine and the team who would go on to create the Bioshock series, System Shock 2 is still considered a modern horror classic. Still as scary as it was in 1999 and featuring the kind of atmosphere horror developers are still trying to emulate nearly fifteen years later, there’s a reason people are going back to System Shock 2.
3. Silent Hill 2 (2001, PS2)
Considered an especially high watermark in horror game design, Silent Hill 2 is still pretty scary after all these years. Remember that opening? You walk down a foggy forest trail, alone. There is no sound except for your footsteps crunching on the ground. Then, a second pair of footsteps, keeping time with your own but not quite. You stop. So do the footsteps. You start moving again – and hear nothing. Were you imagining it? That sense of creeping dread never leaves you. Many a controller was snapped in terror while playing this game. RIP our PS2 Dual Shocks.
2. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002, GCN)
One of the most inventive and unsettling horror games ever made, Eternal Darkness was a Gamecube exclusive by developer Silicon Knights. Playing as a woman named Alexandra Roivas who is investigating the death of her grandfather at his mansion in Rhode Island, she discovers a book bound in human skin and bone – the Tome of Eternal Darkness. The book transports her (and us) into several player controlled flashbacks set at different points throughout history – Rome, Cambodia, France and Persia – to solve various mysteries, relive important moments and stop the ancient, evil forces at work within the tome. Fans have been waiting for a sequel ever since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFCjCxaDAVI
1. P.T. (2014, PS4)
P.T., we hardly knew ye. Despite only being a tech demo and not a finished game, P.T. (Playable Teaser) gave a tantalising glimpse of what a Silent Hill game with Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) and Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) in charge would look like. The answer? Mindblowingly creepy. Despite essentially repeating the same L-shaped stretch of hallway over and over, subtle changes kept every walkthrough tense and the atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife. Sadly Silent Hills, the game P.T. was to become, was cancelled, a casualty of Konami’s apparent parting-of-ways with Hideo Kojima. Sony have since pulled the demo from the PlayStation Network so if you still have it on your PS4, don’t delete it. You now own a true gaming artifact.
What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Are we out of our minds? Let us know on Facebook and Twitter, and check back tomorrow for our full review of Until Dawn!
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