The Medium
Crafting an engrossing sense of intrigue and atmosphere, The Medium is a story-driven game that incorporates puzzles heavily into its structure. The horror elements arrive in bursts, producing fierce albeit fleeting moments of pure terror. An interesting aspect of this game is that players can walk two worlds simultaneously.
Alien: Isolation
For the longest time, a great Alien horror game seemed like a pipe dream. Then, Alien: Isolation happened. This 2014 game accomplished something that the Alien franchise has struggled to achieve since the 1979 sci-fi movie: it made a Xenomorph intimidating again.
Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley’s daughter and the game’s protagonist, spends the majority of the campaign hiding from the large, powerful, and vicious creature. Sure, Amanda does eventually get some tools to fight back, but there is never any doubt about who is the predator and prey. While the genre tends to produce relatively short experiences, Alien: Isolation is an exception since the campaign can easily last more than 20 hours. Impressively, the game succeeds in maintaining its momentum despite this hefty runtime, which serves as a testament to its extremely sound foundations.
Martha Is Dead
Narratively, LKA opts to leave things relatively ambiguous and open to interpretation, encouraging players to contemplate and question the fate of the characters. Gameplay-wise, Martha is Dead gets the job done for the most part, although this is definitely a game that should be played for its story and tense atmosphere.
Castlevania Anniversary Collection
Konami’s Castlevania games are not traditional horror games, at least not in the sense that they are scary. The 8-bit and 16-bit titles included in this collection are not going to give someone nightmares, but their difficulty might keep that player up for a few extra hours as they try to overcome the terrors held within these campaigns. Aesthetically, Castlevania is laced with horror imagery, be it gothic castles, creepy monsters, or complex narratives soaked in death and suffering.
The Castlevania Anniversary Collection presents the franchise’s earlier years in a single package, and the quality is pretty consistent for the most part. Except for Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, The Adventure, and Belmont’s Revenge, all the games in the collection are good, with some entries like Super Castlevania 4 being downright masterpieces.
Carrion
Most games task players with surviving against a horrifying entity pulled from the deepest, darkest confines of a macabre creator’s mind, but what if that casting was reversed? What if the playable character is the monster? Carrion brings this dream to life, positioning players as a bloody blob of tentacles cut loose in an underground headquarters filled with scientists who are just waiting to meet their maker.
Carrion nails the feeling of being an otherworldly creature capable of feats beyond human comprehension. Phobia Game Studio clearly understood the type of project it was making as the game absolutely revels in its kills. Not everything in this title is a slam dunk, but Carrion’s high points place it among the most enjoyable Luna horror games.
Blair Witch
Another game by Bloober Team, Blair Witch serves as a sequel to the 1999 found footage film about a group of students who go hunting for folk tales in the Black Hills Forest. As officer Ellis, players are largely left to explore the reasonably large forest in search of a missing boy. Accompanied by a dog, Ellis is a largely defenseless protagonist, with most of his tools revolving around exploration and prevention.
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Blair Witch successfully crafts a tense atmosphere that draws the audience into a world rife with potential frights. The game excels in its sound design and psychological storytelling, although it also has a fair amount of jump scares for anyone who prefers that type of horror. While a bit too repetitive at times and simultaneously too short and too long, Blair Witch is nevertheless a solid horror game.
Zombi
Ubisoft is not exactly known for horror games, but the company has published a couple of nightmarish titles over the years. Cold Fear is a passable Resident Evil-esque action-horror game, albeit one that does not match even the more middling entries in Capcom’s franchise. Zombi fares better, permitting someone is fine with Ubisoft’s open-world formula. Starting life as a Wii U exclusive, the game eventually made its way to other systems, including PC; as the original version made clever use of the Wii U GamePad, the port had to revamp mechanics that used the peripheral.
Zombi is an enjoyable zombie-themed horror game that is a decent alternative to something like Dead Island or Dying Light. Set in London, Ubisoft’s title focuses on survival and limits players’ defensive and offensive options during the campaign’s opening hours. While the walking dead are overexposed as an enemy type, the zombies in this game are quite terrifying due to their aggressive natures.
Metro Exodus
After two impeccable linear shooters, 4A Games diverted course slightly with Metro Exodus. Ultimately, this entry still delivers the tight levels, intense gunplay, and stealth elements synonymous with its predecessors, however, the campaign occasionally opens things up to allow for some exploration. In the grand scheme of things, this change succeeds in enhancing Metro Exodus’s replayability and variety, even if it does hurt the story’s pacing at points.
None of the Metro games are particularly terrifying, but they all incorporate survival horror elements. The mutants that populate the underground passages are aggressive, fight in packs, and can quickly overwhelm inadequately prepared players. In isolation, they might not be scary; in the heat of the moment, they are more than capable of inspiring a yelp or two.
Dusk
Describing Dusk as horror might be a bit of a stretch since the retro-style shooter is never scary, nor does it try to be. That said, the game is drenched in horror iconography, be it the labyrinthian rural setting, the demonic imagery smeared across the walls, or the myriad of monstrosities that exist within this world. Even though it will not inspire many nightmares, Dusk is very much an experience fit for Halloween night.
More importantly, Dusk is an awesome first-person shooter that harkens back to the days of Blood and Doom. This is not just a rehash of familiar run and gun tropes either as Dusk uses these legends of the genre as fuel to craft something that is fully its own.
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
In June 2022, Luna+’s horror line-up received a big boost when the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 joined the channel. The latter is a visually stunning shooter with some incredible highs, and it is certainly deserving of a playthrough for Resi lovers or newcomers; however, RE3 lives in the shadow of its far superior predecessor. By 2019, Capcom had revitalized interest in its property through the release of Resident Evil 7, an entry that brought the franchise back to its horror roots. As good as Ethan’s debut scare-fest is, the game’s utilization of a first-person perspective means that it might struggle to scratch the itch of a long-time fan who just wants a traditional Resident Evil experience.
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In 2019, Capcom released Resident Evil 2, a remake that caters specifically to those people who yearned for something closer to the classic PS1 titles. Now, this version plays almost nothing like 1998’s RE2, understandably so since that title is antiquated in plenty of areas, but the remake does a stellar job of capturing the spirit of the original project. Featuring brilliant visuals, tight gameplay, and an overabundance of intense and startling moments, 2019’s RE 2 is a modern masterpiece and one of the best horror games of the last few years.
Shadow Man Remastered
Concluding on a somewhat different note, Shadow Man Remastered is an utterly unique beast that originally came out in 1999. While the remaster improves the controls and makes a few quality-of-life adjustments, Shadow Man is still a product of its time; even back then, this game was considered obtuse.
