Last year we spent the week of Halloween naming off our favorite scary, creepy, and eerie games. We figured why not do it again? Each day a different editor will list off three of their favorite games to play around this time of year.
Horror is hard. That is to say, creating true horror is hard. Providing jump scares or shock value is easy, and while it has its place it does not have the staying power of games that get in your head. For my spooky pics this year I didn’t choose the most polished games, or even games that are traditionally considered horror. Instead, I chose games that stayed with me, games that once I turned off the system left me strangely unsettled. That, dear reader, is what I want for you as you read Enemy Slime, to be filled with vaguely defined, low intensity emotional distress during your daily life.
Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly (PS2, Xbox)
As horror games seem to have evolved, the conversation has focused on the feeling of vulnerability. If a character is too helpless the game can become boring, if they are too capable it becomes hard to be afraid. Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly balances this perfectly, providing the feeling of vulnerability, while still giving you tools to face your fears. The game follows the story of Mio and Mayu Amakura, twin sisters who wander into an ancient village following the titular crimson butterfly. There they find a village shrouded in perpetual darkness, and haunted by the ghosts of former inhabitants. In order to combat them, you are given a magic camera, and nothing else. Throughout the game you will never feel like you are properly equipped, and it will seem as though you’re always in trouble. Having to look at your enemies through the camera lens makes the horror more personal. It got lost in a sea of survival horror titles that seemed to be released in the last few years of the PS2 life cycle, but it is a game that made me consider the merits of enduring the long walk to the bathroom when I played it late at night.
I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream (PC)
I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream is not a horror game in the strict sense of the world. It is really a point a click puzzle game that seems to have the sole goal of unsettling you. In the game, AM, a super computer who hates humanity, exterminates everyone on earth except for five people. He keeps these people alive artificially so that he might torture them eternally. After a century of torment, AM gets bored and digitizes the character the player chooses so that he might subject them to further torments. The game is psychological, and it attacks the characters in what AM perceives to be their flaws and their weakness. While it is possible to win the game, the path is a hard and torturous one. Failure has horrific consequences leading to cut scenes so disturbing that they have become video game classics. The game is from 1995, so whether you should check it out depends on your ability to downgrade.
The Suffering (PS2, Xbox, PC)
The Suffering was one of the earliest attempts of making a survival horror game where the game does feel like the action controls are solid while still being scary. In the game you play as Torque, a man sent to Abbot State Penitentiary convicted of killing his wife and child. Torque claims he blacked out through the episode that resulted in his family’s death, which sounds like a made up excuse. A devastating earthquake hits the prison the night Torque arrives and in the confusion, you realize he is crazy as hell. The main question behind The Suffering is whether Torque really did kill his family, and the answer depends on the actions you take during the game. Unlike most modern morality systems, there is a good, bad, and neutral ending. The game leaves you wondering whether any of this is going on, or if its all in Torque’s head, as he meets ghosts of the island’s more infamous inmates, and he occasionally turns into a horrific hulking monster. Added to this is the fact that the enemies are genuinely dangerous and disturbing, and you have a game that will stay with you, even if it is just to try to figure out just how crazy Torque really is.
Keep checking back all week to read the rest of editor’s picks.
