Red Dead Redemption
Let’s talk about the best open world game (In my opinion). Now, I know that this may be the hardest one to see as a horror game. Red Dead Redemption is a western open world game with a dramatic story, but it’s far from a horror game. Well, it seems that way, but then you really get deeper into the game. Sure, there isn’t much horror elements in the main story (Aside from that one ranch where people were violently slaughtered), but aside from that, it’s pretty tame. When you get to the side missions, however, things start to get a little creepy. In the side quest, California, John watches as a man slowly goes insane in the wild west before finally succumbing and becoming nothing more than a corpse. In Let No Man Be Put Asunder, Marston is helping a delusional woman find her husband who has been dead for years. Even in the more duller missions, like Flowers for a Lady, where you go around picking flowers, it turns out that the man is picking flowers for the rotting corpse of his dead wife. Hell, American Appetite is all about trying to find out who is cannibalising all of the people in the mountains near Armadillo. One of the most popular missions, I Know You, is pretty much about the devil talking with John and how he knows of his life and his outcome. But aside from the side missions, you can run into many different events, like men attempting to violently stab women outside saloons to a man attempting to cannibalise you, to just the wildlife appearing out of nowhere and trying to kill you. Seriously, go out into the woods at night where there are hundreds of bears, and don’t tell me it isn’t intense. The world of Red Dead Redemption is filled with disturbed individuals that wouldn’t be out of place in a Condemned game. That probably explains why it freaks me out.
S.W.A.T. 4
This game didn’t come to me immediately because I don’t have a PC (I’m sorry. Can’t I just enjoy my dirty console hovel in peace). But, after seeing gameplay of S.W.A.T. 4, it’s one of the most tense games I think one can make for the PC. As the title suggests, you play as a S.W.A.T team operative who must lead other S.W.A.T. members to stop criminals and saves any hostages. And this isn’t like a simple bank robbery that you have to stop. No, these involve terrorists and serial murders that you have to stop. In each level, you get to go through the very scene of the attackers. In a serial killer's house, you can see articles of his killings, his hostages, and some disturbing imagery within parts of the house. During terrorist attacks, you can see just how scared the hostages are, and how hard it is to calm them. Sometimes, when trying to save hostages, you will have no other choice but to tazz them or take them down in order to calm them, despite what they are already going through. The game can also be very stressful, as you try your hardest to keep all of your teammates alive, as this isn’t a game where you can take up a few bullets and shrug it off. If you or your S.W.A.T. members are shot, you will either be too injured to continue or even die in a single shot, which really hurts your planning on doing so. This game really shows the more dangerous and stressful parts of working as a police officer, and it can also be one of the most disturbing depending on the situation.
School Days
(Spoilers Ahead)
“Wind, what the fuck is this shit” is what you are saying, I’m sure. Some of you may not know what this is, while the anime viewers may recognize this as the light novel game that spawned one of the worst anime of all time… Yes, really. So what exactly is it that makes a visual novel of all things scary. Well, first, let’s talk about the game. School Days follows school student Makoto, who is interested in a girl named Kotonoha, and with the help of her friend Sekai, he tries to be in a relationship with Kotonoha, but becomes jealous and wants to be with Makoto after developing feelings for him. The game has you make many different decisions in order to see the outcome of the game, and in the end, depending on your decisions, the ending will be different. You could get the usual good ending, where Makoto manages to stay with one girl, while the other one manages to respect his choice and everyone being fine, or Makoto could end up with both of them in the end. But we’re not here to talk about good endings. If you have ever heard of the game (And not the anime), I’m sure that you would most likely know this game for it’s bad endings, because it’s bad endings… well… they live up to the title of bad endings. Some of the… great examples include Sekai pushing Kotonoha in front of a train with Makoto holding her severed arm, Makoto ending up with Sekai and Kotonoha throwing herself off a building due to her love for Makoto, Makoto getting stabbed by Sekai and bleeding to death, and Kotonoha slashing Sekai’s throat with a clever. Yeah, the endings didn’t hold back much, and really showed how disturbed the two characters Makoto got involved with truly were. And you all thought it was a simple and cliched romance story. Well, it was, but if you want the real disturbing shit, then you need to go for the bad endings.
Dark Souls
I already talked about Bloodborne and how freaky it was, so now let’s talk about Dark Souls and how freaky it is. Sure, Dark Souls isn’t as nightmarishly terrifying with its monsters and overworlds and a lot more depressing than scary, but it still manages to have it’s moments. And yes, I am talking about all of Dark Souls, not just the first one. The world is full of Undead, beings who have died before, but are brought back and wish to find a purpose to exist, or they become Hollow, a type of undead that has gone insane and only lives to kill. The world of Dark Souls is filled with some of the most terrifying creatures in it. Dragons that have become nothing but a giant mouth due to their hunger. Large monsters that are in extreme agony that were once well respected people. A large mass of humans morphed into being a massive abomination that dwells in the darkest parts of world. Once great and powerful rulers now turned into Hollows with no control of their minds. Those who aren’t trying to kill you are trying to do what they can to achieve their goals, but in doing so, they will become Hollow, as now that they have fulfilled their goal, they have no purpose to stay. And you are just there to help them get to that point faster. Each of the areas you go to were once wonderful places before they were destroyed and turned into a wasteland. The city of New Londo has been flooded and filled with ghosts. The Undead Asylum is a place that houses the large amount of Hollow. Drangleic Castle is filled with corruption and is controlled by a ruler who isn’t what she says she is. Dark Souls is a lot like Silent Hill 2 in how depressing it is, and you all know how much I love Silent Hill 2. I love Dark Souls as well. So now you know just how good, but scary, this all is
Metroid Fusion
Of all of the games that I didn’t put onto my original list, this is the one I regret not putting on there the most. Metroid Fusion is basically the E-rated equivalent of The Thing. Being stuck in a space station with an alien lifeform that can take the form of anything or anyone. In this game, Samus is up against a parasitic alien life form known as the X Parasites, a gelatinous alien that latches onto the host’s body, begins to suck the life force out of them and putting them in a sort of coma before they end up eventually dying. Once they die, the X Parasite takes the form of their host and begins to act and behave like them, having the same abilities as their host in order to kill their targets and move their race onto the next set of hosts. The same parasite was dangerously close to killing Samus, but she survived, as it only latched onto her power suit. This, however, allowed Parasite X to take the form of Samus’s power suit and became the terrifying creature, SA-X, a deadly abomination of the Parasite X who is as strong as Samus, and cannot be killed, leaving Samus to have to hide from SA-X when it appears, as it knows all of her powers. The entire space station is abandoned, with all of the boss aliens originally being the unfortunate hosts of Parasite X. These boss aliens include a giant spider, a water serpent, a statue made of sentient vines, and probably one of the scarier ones, Nightmare, a creature that can be seen moving very briefly moving in the flooded labs, and when you do find him, it’s a massive… thing with a mask that contains its disfigured face. The entirety of Metroid Fusion is a game about trying to survive in a place filled with alien creatures who you know nothing about, like… Many sci-fi horror movies, and I think that would be a perfect game for Metroid… If it was a horror game, anyway.
