Get the spooks in this Halloween
All Hallows Eve descends upon the UK this week and if you haven’t been invited to a party or event, it’s worth breaking out the games and scaring the living excrement out of yourself. Here we present the most frightening titles available across the different platforms.
New Gen: Xbox One, PS4, Wii U
It’s been a pretty slow year for the horror crowd on the new gen. Developers seem more intent on shoving out shooters, persistent world games and sandbox adventures out at a clip. It makes sense – publishers are eager to make some money out of the Xbox One and PS4 owners and games like Watch Dogs, Titanfall, Destiny and Sunset Overdrive tick boxes in the most popular genres in gaming.
Wii U owners have been suffering through something of a horror drought up until now. The only frightening title available right now on that platform is ZombieU. While it didn’t set the world alight in terms of sales, Ubisoft’s UK zombie apocalypse first-person adventure is one of the Wii U’s more underrated titles.
Xbox One and PS4 owners are spoiled for choice by comparison as the last few months have seen some genuinely frightening titles come down the line. In the last month, Alien Isolation and The Evil Within lurched into view. The former is one of the most terrifying titles we’ve played in a long time and probably the first Alien title in ages to do justice to the horror legacy of HR Giger’s most famous creation. The latter sees Resident Evil maestro Shinji Mikami treading familiar Survival Horror ground, but it has enough white-knuckled scares to send Wes Craven into orbit.
There are also a couple of last gen horror games re-released in new gen HD worth investigating; Metro and Metro: Last Light the moody post-apocalyptic shooters set in the monster-infested underground of Russia have been repackaged as Metro: Redux and Naughty Dog’s mind-blowing Survival Horror, The Last of Us: Remastered is now available – but only on the PS4.
See also: Alien Isolation tips and tricks 
To be honest, though, in this battle, the PS4 has the edge over the competition here, because not only does it have the aforementioned superb survival horror games, but it also offers a couple more besides. It’s the only console platform players can experience the likes of OutLast – Red Barrel’s scream-out-loud scarefest that riffs on cult horror flick like Session 9 and Rec. Players take on the role of a bold (read: stupid) journalist who breaks into an asylum after receiving a tip off that skullduggery was afoot on the premises. Once inside, they realise something has gone horribly wrong and that coming into contact with the asylum’s residents is a surefire way to get killed. Your only options here are to run and hide – use them wisely.
The PS4 also has arguably the most frightening twenty minutes released all year in PT – the demo for Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill installment. We won’t ruin it for you save to say our erstwhile Games Editor Sam Loveridge has attempted to play it twice and hasn’t been able to finish it yet (I have, that’s a lie – ed.).
Last Gen: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii
If you’ve yet to upgrade to a new gen machine, you’re in luck this Halloween as you have a library of horror to scare the hell out of you. Given how many great titles were released in the last generation, we’re spoiled for choice here and bound to miss one or two gems. For our money, though, you can’t go wrong with Dead Space; EA’s 2008 horror shooter tells the story of Isaac Clarke, an engineer on an ill-fated mission to a planet cracker cruiser called the Ishimura, which he finds is overrun with hideous creatures called necromorphs. By turns frightening, disgusting and flat out disturbing, Dead Space burrows its way into the player’s cerebellum, leaving them drained and shaking by the end.
See also: The Evil Within tips and tricks
Condemned: Criminal Origins also makes the cut; mixing visceral hand-to-hand combat with a layered and unsettling police investigation, Condemned draws tension out like a blade, saving some of its most hair-raising moments for just when the player feels they’ve reached their limit on what will terrify them. For those who like their horror a bit more left-of-the-dial, Swery 65’s homage to Silent Hill and David Lynch, Deadly Premonition, is certainly worth a look. Funny, scary and batshit insane, Deadly Premonition sees FBI Agent Morgan on the trail of a killer in a small town whose inhabitants rival Twin Peaks for sheer weirdness.
The Nintendo Wii, while primarily aimed at family gaming, also has a couple of worthwhile terrors in its catalogue – even though most of them bombed on release. Top among them is Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a Western take on the original entry in this series that builds a hideous amount of tension out of the fact that most creatures in it can kill the player on sight. Dead Space: Extraction serves as a prequel to Dead Space, and it’s arguably one of the best and most frightening rail-shooters ever crafted.
House Of The Dead: Overkill runs a close second to Extraction in quality of shooter, but its grindhouse veneer infuses it with a level of sleaze that makes it glow in the dark – it also contains more f-bombs than most Martin Scorsese films. If you never got the chance to play Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube, it’s available on the Wii in the form of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. It’s worth seeking out, if only to see why Resident Evil was once revered as Survival Horror’s marquee franchise – a far cry from the bloated shooter series it’s become now.
In-the-attic gen: PS2, Xbox
For those prepared to blow the dust off gaming consoles that are over ten years old, there are a couple of horror titles worth digging out – even though some of them are available on the PS3 and Xbox 360 – Fatal Frame, Resident Evil 4 and Siren among them. But it’s worth reconnecting the PS2 just to play Silent Hill 2, which to a lot of gamers is the best entry in Konami’s horror series and one of the best horror games of all time. It was recently ported to the last gen consoles, but this glitch and bug-ridden version really doesn’t do it any justice.
See also: How to make a great survival horror
Two classics that have been lost to the mists of time are The Suffering, in which the forces of hell invade the world through the bowels of a maximum security state prison, and The Call Of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth, an mystery based on the works of HP Lovecraft in which players are cued to danger and clues through the sound of the protagonist’s rising and falling heartbeat.
For those who prefer a sick twist to their horror, Rockstar’s disturbing snuff film adventure, Manhunt, should fit the bill. Here, the player is as compliant in the horror as the enemies in their environment as it’s up to them how gory and violent the animations of each kill are. Slated as sick and irresponsible on release, Manhunt is actually a rather sly indictment on the attraction players have to committing violent acts in video games.
PC
PC owners have long held the opinion that theirs is the best and, in some instances, only gaming platform to plump for.
In this instance, we have to agree with them, because not only can they play pretty much every single title already mentioned in this article (the PT demo and a couple of Nintendo titles notwithstanding), they have access to more besides. Take your pick of horrifying titles: Anmesia: The Dark Descent, Thief: The Dark Project, the Penumbra series, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Shadow Of Chernobyl, Slender, OutLast – the list is nearly endless. We however, will be playing System Shock 2 – the spiritual forebear to BioShock – the way nature intended. In the dark. On Halloween. By ourselves. With headphones.
See also: Xbox One vs PS4