Bloody Scary!
Now is the perfect time to close the curtains, switch off all the lights and lose yourself in some of gaming’s scariest titles. From demonic puppets to zombie cops, to getting lost in a forest, these titles are guaranteed to get your heart racing. So, grab the snacks, dim the lights, and let’s get cracking!
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
Much like the best B-Movie horrors, Five Nights at Freddy’s feels like a low budget experience, plays like a low-budget experience yet scares the pants of you like nothing else. The premise is simple, you’re a newly appointed night watch security guard at a Chuck E. Cheese-styled restaurant. Your job is an easy one, monitor all the security cameras through the night to makes sure nothing untoward happens. Sounds simple enough and for the first few hours is really is, that is, until the animatronic puppets mysteriously come to life and start moving around the building, with an unstoppable urge to kill you. Loaded with surprising jump scares and an incredibly tense atmosphere, Five Nights At Freddy’s is ridiculously scary.
OUTLAST
Insane Asylums are guaranteed nightmare fuel and Outlast takes the asylum experience to a new level. Armed only with a video camcorder, you make your way through an old abandoned asylum, looking for an answer to a terrible event many years before. Unlike other first-person games, Outlast does not give you the luxury of fighting back, your only weapon is to run and hide as quickly as possible. With various enemies lurking in the dark halls, sneaking around is your best option and when they do spot you it’s time to start running like hell. Outlast creates it’s tension through your vulnerability and hiding behind a desk while an insane killer slowly creeps by is as uncomfortable as it is terrifying.
BIOHAZARD: RESIDENT EVIL 7
After years of stale sequels and ridiculous plotlines, the Resident Evil series completely re-invented itself once more with Resi 7. Gone was the over the shoulder third-person camera, instead opting for a first-person view. Gone was the silly over the top action and convoluted story, Resi 7 went back to basics. Playing as Ethan, who is looking for his long lost girlfriend, you find yourself on the Baker Family Estate in a bayou somewhere in the southern United States. Things quickly take a turn for the worst when the Bakers turn out to be worse than the Texas Chainsaw family and are set to tear you apart for their own weird experiments. The Baker house is just one disturbing room after another filled with puzzles and the Baker family is eagerly hunting you down. It’s classic Resident Evil and arguably the scariest game in the series.
THE LAST OF US
Although not classified as an outright horror game, Naughty Dog’s seminal masterpiece is still one of the most nerve-wracking experiences found on any console. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, you control Joel, a mercenary that has to look after a young teenager, Ellie, that might hold the key to the plague that has spread through the world. It’s a beautifully written, emotional rollercoaster of a story that will not only tug at your heartstrings but shred every last of your nerves as you avoid the Infected and try to keep Ellie alive at all costs. The first run-in with a Clicker still haunts our dreams to this day.
DEAD SPACE
For anyone that has experienced the horror that was the Event Horizon movie (if you haven’t, go watch it now), then Dead Space is right up your alley. You play as an engineer trapped on a derelict spaceship, the crew of which has been either transformed into scurrying, bloodthirsty Necromorphs, enlisted in an apocalyptic cult that worships them, or murdered. The jump-scares come early and regularly, but their effect is to set the player on edge as they slowly trawl through the deep-space mining rig Ishimura. The setting is what sets Dead Space apart from other games on this list, every corridor is nightmare fuel, filled with creaky noises, blood splatter messages sprawled across the walls and vicious monsters hiding in the vents. Your only weapons are repurposed mining tools to strategically dismember enemies. This is not a game where you can blindly fire your weapon at anything that moves, it’s about waiting for the right moment, finding the right limb to dismember and getting up close enough to the Necromorphs for that perfect kill shot.
BLOODBORNE
From Software games have always been scary, but that was based mostly on how tough their games were and how constantly dying to big bosses was part and parcel for all their games. The Dark Souls games were set in a fantasy/magical setting with Dragons and of course it was hard as nails. Then in 2015 From Software released Bloodborne and it redefined what horror truly was. Set in the city of Yharnam, a Gothic labyrinth of cobblestone streets and wailing maniacs, you arrive long after its demise, when the city’s clergy and one-time leaders have summoned great insectoid monstrosities to bear. Every scene is oozing with Lovecraftian inspiration and the monsters you’ll fight are truly horrifying and as dangerous as anything from the Souls games.
UNTIL DAWN
Ever watched a typical teenager-led horror movie and found yourself shouting at the screen at the stupid decisions these teenagers make every time? Well, with Until Dawn you get to make the decisions for them. What should have been a fun ski-trip with your best buds turns into a typical horror situation as a masked killer hunts down the stereotypical teenagers. You control each decision they make. Thought you heard a weird noise in the basement? It’s your choice to go and inspect it or run like hell. But be warned, every decision you make has consequences and you could end up getting every single teenager killed in horrific ways. Although it’s not as scary as your typical horror game, the tense moments arrive when you have to make tough decisions that could get your favorite character killed on the spot.
ALIEN: ISOLATION
Alien is arguably one of the greatest horror movies of all time and to this day it’s seen as a horror masterpiece. Yet the franchise never truly had a great game that captured the horror and tense moments of the movie. That is until Alien: Isolation was released. Playing as Amanda Ripley, daughter to the original Ripley, you’re tasked to investigate a mysterious message left by your mother on a derelict ship. Alien: Isolation captures, with resounding precision, one of the most resonant fears in modern pop culture: being chased by the Xenomorph from Alien, with nothing but your wits and a flamethrower running on empty. The mood is oppressive and unrelenting, as hiding only ever brings you temporary peace. For the first time in gaming history, the Xenomorph is represented as the unstoppable force it was in the movies.