You could argue that horror video games are scarier than horror movies. At least with movies, you can close your eyes to stop watching if things get too intense. But when you play a horror game, you must participate. Throw in extra immersion (like Resident Evil 7 in VR) and you’ll understand why this genre has many YouTubers shrieking in delight for their audiences. Horror games come in all gruesome shapes and sizes. Some are shooters that let you blast away spooky monsters. Others are survival games where escape is the only option. Some even go psychological, hoping your imagination comes up with something more terrifying than the pixels. Unpredictability is a cornerstone of fear, and our favorite horror games below prove it.
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Alan Wake II: Night Springs
Alan Wake II is a survival horror masterpiece. But if you’ve already exited the Dark Place, the Night Springs DLC gives Alan Wake II owners a new set of paranormal rabbit holes to explore. This expansion includes three episodic adventures with their own twists on spooky third-person shooting, presented as a Twilight Zone-esque anthology show. More than just goofy fun, Night Springs teases a mind-blowing future for Remedy’s Connected Universe.
Alan Wake II: Night Springs Review
Alien: Isolation may be the best Alien-based game ever made. Instead of using James Cameron’s action-focused Aliens as its foundation, as so many video game developers have done in the past, Creative Assembly looked at Sir Ridley Scott’s original 1979 film for inspiration. And it pays off. Rather than focusing on running and gunning, Alien: Isolation is all about evasion and subterfuge. Though you gain some assistance via radio, you, as the daughter of Ellen Ripley, must navigate a world of survival horror on your own, dodging the alien stalker using your wits, the environment, and the tools you craft. Alien: Isolation is smart, dark, and oppressive in all the right ways.
Alien: Isolation (for PC) Review
When Techland’s Dead Island trailer debuted, it featured one of the most moving video game sequences ever produced: a small child and her family being slaughtered by zombies against the backdrop of a soft, haunting Giles Lamb musical score. Dead Island’s gameplay doesn’t quite match the trailer’s promise, but the open-world action-RPG offers a very solid zombie-slaying good time as you craft weapons and try to stay alive in an island paradise gone wrong.
Dead Island (PC) Review
Dead Rising 2: Off The Record
Frank West returns to zombie-slaying action in Dead Rising 2: Off The Record. Capcom’s reimagining of Dead Rising 2 sees the gruff photojournalist facing off against a wider array of monsters, building new weapons, snapping photos, and best of all, mixing it up in a new open-world sandbox mode. Stomping the undead is fun, though bugs and repetitive gameplay keep Dead Rising 2 from achieving true greatness.
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record (PC) Review
Inspired by the Resident Evil games and the film Event Horizon, the original Dead Space was a potent mix of dreary locations and tense, sci-fi frights. Now, more than a decade after its original release, publisher Electronic Arts has resurrected the game for contemporary PCs. This Dead Space features impressive lighting effects, excellent graphics enhancements, and surprising gameplay improvements that make it the definitive survival-horror game set in space.
Dead Space (Remake) Review
Some of the scariest video game moments are derived from developers preying on your simplest fears. Sometimes it’s what loneliness does to the human psyche as you struggle to retain your sanity. And sometimes it’s helplessly running from danger while watching your last drops of breathable air trickle away. This is the terror that Narcosis for Oculus Rift forces you to deal with in a dread-filled undersea environment. It’s a frightening game, if a bit too linear.
Narcosis (for Oculus Rift) Review
Resident Evil HD Remaster
Nearly 20 years after its debut, Resident Evil returns in remastered form. The game has the same frights and camp as the original, even if the backgrounds suffer from uneven graphics quality. Don’t let that deter you, though. Resident Evil HD Remaster is still a great zombie-blasting game, especially if you enjoyed its previous releases.
Resident Evil HD Remaster (for PC) Review
Resident Evil 2 is back! Sure, the classic PlayStation game has received numerous ports and rereleases over the years, but this new version, simply titled Resident Evil 2, rebuilds the survivor-horror game from the ground up. You once again play as Leon Kennedy, a rookie cop, and Claire Redfield, a woman searching for her brother after the events of the first Resident Evil. Though this remake treads familiar zombie-shooting ground, it tosses in new enemies and puzzles to freshen things up.
Resident Evil 2 (for PC) Review
Like 2019’s impressive Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 is a phenomenal remake of a classic game. Despite its modernized graphics and gameplay, Resident Evil 3 contains the elements that made the original a classic: nightmarish environments, horrifying enemies, tense boss battles, and an overall emphasis on action. Even divorced from its first incarnation, Resident Evil 3 stands as a stellar title that has mass appeal to action and horror gaming fans alike.
Resident Evil 3 (for PC) Review
How does a company remake what many people consider a perfect game? Capcom found a way by updating the graphics, modernizing the control scheme (Leon’s can parry attacks with his knife!), and streamlining the overall experience. Although this new Resident Evil doesn’t redefine shooters as the original did way back in 2005, it’s just as fun to play, if not more.
Resident Evil 4 (Remake) Review
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
If you thought the Resident Evil series lost its way when it shifted to gunplay, you must pick up Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. By slowing down the action and changing the perspective, developer Capcom has created a Resident Evil game that captures the dread that filled the original game. The excellent pacing, thoughtful action, and amazing atmosphere—you explore a depraved family’s home in the Louisiana bayou—result in the best horror game to come along in some time.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (for PC) Review
Resident Evil Village is a direct Resident Evil 7 follow-up that continues Ethan Winters’s story by dropping him in a new locale, the eponymous village in a fictional Eastern European country. Although Resident Evil 7’s first-person camera remains, Capcom mixes older flavors into the pot. Village walks like a remix of Resident Evil 4, with gameplay that hews closer to RE2 or Code Veronica. It’s bigger and weirder than its grounded predecessor, but it doesn’t go into full action hero mode like Resident Evil 5 or 6. Village is an excellent survival-horror game that shouldn’t be missed.
Resident Evil Village Review
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