It’s October, which means pumpkin sales are up by about 300%, Haribo and white bedsheet supplies are dwindling, and if you like video games, you may well find yourself gravitating towards horror experiences more than usual.
These days, your options are pretty much endless, but I’ve picked out three of the best horror games from recent years that you should be loading up during this spooky season. Wimps back away now.
Dead Space
Thought you had remake fatigue? Fire up 2023’s Dead Space and you might change your mind.
This ground-up reworking of the seminal sci-fi survival horror game is utterly stunning – not to mention even more terrifying when a grotesque Necromorph is charging towards you in pin-sharp 4K clarity.
The sights and sounds of the iconic Ishimura spacecraft that Dead Space takes place on was a big reason why the 2008 original was such a hit, and EA’s Motive Studio ensured none of that atmosphere was lost in the remake. It also made subtle tweaks and gameplay improvements to ensure it was a smoother introduction to the series for new players.
There are almost no load times to speak of either, meaning your respite from the outer space undead ceaselessly hunting you through the ship’s creaking corridors is kept to a minimum. As it should be.
Until Dawn
Supermassive Games’ cinematic survival horror classic is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, giving you the perfect excuse to either play through it for the first time or have another go to see how many characters you manage to keep alive.
If you’re unfamiliar with Until Dawn, the premise is simple: eight teenagers are stranded in a mansion on their annual winter getaway. It quickly becomes clear that there’s a murderer on the loose, and the remaining survivors are desperately try to keep it that way until they’re eventually rescued at dawn.
Whether or not that happens depends entirely on the decisions you make with the controller in your hands, meaning each playthrough can pan out very differently.
Until Dawn lives up to its billing as an authentic interactive slasher movie, with a motion-captured cast that includes Hayden Panettiere and a youngish Rami Malek.
The 2024 remake is the unsurprisingly most graphically impressive version you can play now, but the PS4 original remains as enjoyable as ever.
Silent Hill f
Nothing says spooky season like a brand new Silent Hill game, which is exactly what we got with Silent Hill f at the end of last month.
But Silent Hill f isn’t your average entry. Most significantly of all, its 1960s setting in the fictional Japanese town of Ebisugaoka means the titular foggy rural town that longtime fans of the series are so familiar with is no longer the focus. And we’re playing not as the tormented James Sunderland here, but high school student Shimizu Hinako.
It’s a pretty big departure for the series then, but there’s no mistaking the franchise that Silent Hill f belongs to. We are once again exploring an all but deserted town engulfed in sinister fog, fighting gruesome monsters, solving puzzles and anxiously moving through linear corridors from which it isn’t easy to escape.
There’s a big focus on scrappy melee combat in Silent Hill f, which is decidedly more in-your-face than your average handgun-heavy horror game. It isn’t best in class in this department, but Ebisugaoka is as unsettling and atmospheric as Silent Hill itself, and the perfect place to scare yourself pantless this October.
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