A Fistful of Frights

In the spirit of Halloween, Kikizo takes a look at some of the scariest games from the last few years.

For one of the best examples of how games have grown up over the last decade, you need look no further than the scary games being hacked together by talented designers the world over. As sound and graphics have improved, game creators have been able to better stir fear and play emotions. But developers have also become better at telling stories that dig into our primal fear.

In honour of Halloween, we went looking for a fistful of current games that represent the creepiest, spookiest and downright pants-wettingest games out there. All the games on our list are worth seeking out. But please make sure you're well prepared for the repercussions.

Condemned: Criminal Origins (Xbox 360, PC)

Thanks to the power of Microsoft's new console, Monolith was able to deliver an unsettling vision of survival horror for the 21st century. In Condemned: Criminal Origins, you play the role of a detective who begins to question his sanity as a routine murder investigation goes brutally awry.

The story may not follow through on its impressive beginnings, and the gameplay does start to grate after a while, but the raw gameplay brings home the ferocity of smashing someone's head in with a pipe.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (PS2, Xbox)

Sending twin girls into a haunted burg with nothing to protect them but an enchanted camera seems a cruel thing to do, and it is. With Tecmo using the first game as a tester for the camera system, the developers went all out in Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly to scare the hell out of players in this sequel. Playing as Mio and Mayu, you stumble upon a cursed village in Japan that was thought to have disappeared.

As you progress through the game, using a camera that captures ghostly visions, you learn the true horror behind the events that brought the town down. If you can, track down the Xbox version, which has better visuals and sound and a few other additions too. Either way, you'll never look at Japanese girls the same way again.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (GameCube)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was never as renowned a writer as some of the horror heavyweights who followed him, but his stories of the otherworldly influenced generations. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is an homage to the man and his weird tales.

The plots of the dozen lead characters criss-cross over the course of thousands of years, but at the centre is the game's unique play on insanity. What begins as a pretty standard game soon evolves into a test of your mental fortitude, as you struggle to grasp what is real in the topsy-turvy world around you.

Resident Evil (GameCube)

The original Resident Evil for the PlayStation set the benchmark for the new genre of survival genre, but it's this remake, made nearly a decade later, that is the true embodiment of the spirit of director Shinji Mikami's horrific vision.

This opening chapter in the Resident Evil story follows special agents trained to counter the paranormal as they're called to a mansion where a mysterious organization has been getting up to no good. Lurking within are zombies, sharks and everything in between. This new version uses the power of the GameCube to truly drive home the sickening atmosphere that hangs over this infamous mansion.

Silent Hill (PSone)

We'll admit it - Silent Hill hasn't aged well as far as graphics are concerned, but when it came out on PlayStation at the end of the '90s Silent Hill threw a massive, blood-soaked curveball at video games, and it's still our bet for the scariest game out there.

The game excelled on many levels, but it was the crackling sound of your radio, warning you of danger approaching from the fog settled on the town that sent pulses racing. And that's before you entered the other world to witness its decay and the madness therein. The game wasn't heavy on combat, but it did make the most of it by creating tense situations and an unrelentingly bleak world.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo