By Bony Nakhale
Oct 11, 2022
Resident Evil now switching the action to first-person adds some VR possibilities. It also makes the horror feel uncomfortably close - grueling, compelling stuff in a setting you’ll remember long after exploring it up close.
Most games can make you jump, they can make you scream, but few can make you doubt yourself in real life. Layers of Fear initially appear very familiar as you explore a spooky, creepy, and cavernously empty house. The Gothic story unravels slowly as you play an unnamed artist returning home.
Alien: Isolation may be the series' greatest gaming triumph despite all that. Elements of the Alien franchise have inspired countless games, be it James Cameron's space marines, Ellen Ripley's grit, or the chilling power of silence in a soundtrack.
Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's "playable teaser" for the now-canned Silent Hills places you in a single, infinitely looping hallway and proceeds to find a thousand ways to terrify you. There are moments when you face peril, but they're few and far between.
Over 20 years after its original PS1 release, the classic Resident Evil 2 is back on the best horror games list. We are talking about Resident Evil 2, a from-the-ground-up remake of the original game that honors the past while building a future for the franchise with a nearly two-decades-old game.
The Walking Dead isn't our top horror game full stop because it's VR, which limits many people's access to it. However, this is an actual horror game if you can get a VR headset. It's one of the most excellent playable interpretations of the source material; this nails the zombie horror fantasy.
Silent Hill, as a franchise, is home to some of the most frightening enemies and situations in gaming history, but the series' most abiding horror is Silent Hill 2. This PS2 classic manifests our deepest fears as flesh to reveal there is no greater evil than our imagination.
Outlast offers the first-person trek through a setting no one in real life would willingly check out - an old asylum that seems abandoned but also strangely very active. Who does that?! At night. In the mountains. Miles from help.
SOMA has problems, mainly from the clumsy stealth section, but it also has, hands down, one of the most unpleasantly disturbing stories of anything on this list. To explain why would ruin it, but this plays with ideas of consciousness and what makes you 'you' in a terrifying way.
Dead Space aimed to be the pretender to the throne, bringing together Capcom's early dread and latter-day over-the-shoulder shooting into one gory package. Borrowing from Alien and other sci-fi classics, the 2008 release put players in the role of Isaac Clarke.
You can check out our best interactive story games to play on Halloween to pass the time. There is much more to the best horror games than jump scares and gore. So while we have included a few apparent picks like Outlast and Amnesia, you can also expect to find games that use different tactics to raise your heartbeat and get your palms sweating.