I’ve played horror games for nearly 25 years now and you can trust me when I say that I’ve had my fair share of heart-pounding scares and chilling thrills that had me looking over my shoulder for days to come.
The following games are some of the greatest examples of what I find to be quality classic horror, and in an effort to provide variety, I will limit the list to the one entry from each franchise that I believe best represents what classic horror means to me.
10. Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve is a 1998 Horror RPG developed and published by Square. The player controls an NYPD police officer named Aya, who over the course of six days will fight through increasingly frightening monsters and travel to a host of varied locations across New York City to try and defeat the main villain Eve, who plans to destroy the entire human race.
The game features role-playing elements like upgrade-able weapons and skills, an experience based leveling system, and real-time combat that can be paused for precise decisions, while maintaining a horror tone with the intense music, creepy atmosphere, and varied enemy encounters.
9. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
Developed by Darkworks and released in 2001, Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare was the first reboot the franchise saw. It once again featured Edward Carnby, the returning protagonist from the previous 3 titles, but was reworked into a much different and far scarier gaming experience.
Players are given the choice between two characters, Edward whose play-through is centered more around combat, and Aline whose play-through is far more puzzle heavy, with both characters occasionally crossing paths. There are plenty of tight spooky corridors and mysterious densely packed rooms to explore, and a variety of light-sensitive darkness creatures to contend with, that will surely send chills down the player’s spine.
8. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is a 2003 Japanese survival horror game developed by Tecmo. The story centers around two young sisters, Mio and Mayu, who are trapped in a cursed village filled with not-so-friendly ghosts.
The player explores many haunted sections of the village from a fixed third-person perspective, and can only defend themselves with the magical Camera Obscura, allowing the player to exorcise the spirits pursuing them by taking well-timed photographs. This sequel improves upon the graphics and controls from the previous entry in the series, while maintaining the sense of dread and isolation the series is known for.
7. Condemned: Criminal Origins
Released in 2012, Condemned: Criminal Origins is first-person psychological survival horror shooter developed by Monolith Productions and published by Sega. The player controls Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent with the Serial Crime Unit who is tasked with catching a serial killer that has upended his life.
During the events of the game, the city has a crime wave underway, with vagrants and thugs perpetrating killings and assaults everywhere the player goes. Using a combination of high-tech crime scene investigation equipment, a handful of firearms, and any melee weapon that isn’t nailed down (and some that are), the player will face many pulse-pounding encounters and uncover a web of dark secrets.
6. Alan Wake
Alan Wake is a third-person over-the-shoulder psychological horror action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and released in 2010, that has since been remastered in 2021. The player takes control of best-selling crime novelist Alan Wake whose wife goes missing under mysterious circumstances while they are on vacation in the remote lake town of Bright Falls.
While uncovering the truth of what’s going on through a plot structured like a television thriller series, the player must tear off the darkness from possessed townspeople and dispatch them using light sources such as their trusty flashlight, a multitude of guns, and various discardable melee weapons. With jump-scares, a dark and grim atmosphere filled with violent threats, and an often seemingly untrustworthy narrator, Alan Wake manages to keep the player fearful, yet eager to see where the story goes next.
5. Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2 is a third person sci-fi survival horror shooter interlaced with many psychological thriller elements centered around the protagonist’s trauma. Developed by visceral games and published by Electronic Arts in 2011, this sequel finds the player once again in the alien stomping boots of Isaac Clarke, this time suffering from crippling grief and guilt, while also struggling to not be killed by an onslaught of necromorphs.
Much like the first Dead Space game, DS2 features upgrade-able armor, tech, and weaponry, that allow the player the freedom to slay as they choose. The player will be constantly on edge, never knowing when the next mutated zombie alien will blast out of an air vent or floor panel, or when the power to the whole place might go down and leave them stranded in the dark with the things that want them dead. I find that the dark void of space and classic horror can go hand in hand.
4.The Evil Within
The Evil Within is another deeply unsettling third-person psychological survival horror shooter. Developed by Tango Gameworks, published by Bethesda Softworks, and directed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series, this title really has roots that extend from older classics that came before.
With clear Resident Evil inspirations, most notably the gameplay style and enemy design of Resident Evil 4, The Evil Within takes players on a wicked roller-coaster ride through the twisted mind of a traumatized and hostile individual. To survive, players will be required to utilize both open combat as well as stealth to defeat or bypass enemies in their path and hold their own against an impressive variety of terrifying and unique boss encounters. I often found myself having to pause the game and regroup before tackling what awaited me next.
3. Dino Crisis
Another Shinji Mikami horror classic is Capcom’s 1999 survival horror Dino Crisis, originally marketed as “panic horror” as opposed to the survival horror branding of their other hit title Resident Evil. The game was designed to keep players in a more consistent state of fright and anxiety, as the dinosaur enemies they encountered were much quicker and more intelligent than the zombies that players had become familiar with from RE.
These dinosaurs can even chase the player from room to room and sometimes burst through windows without warning, leading to some of the biggest chest punching jump-scares of the late 90’s, and for new players still to this day. With an imaginative sci-fi story and a heavy focus on fixed camera combat and puzzle solving, Dino Crisis remains one of the more startling and enjoyable classic horror games to date.
2. Silent Hill 2
Developed by Team Silent and published by Konami in 2001 comes Silent Hill 2, which is perhaps the greatest psychological survival horror thriller in gaming history. SH2 puts the player in the shoes of James Sunderland; A depressed guy who gets a letter from his dead wife to come to their “special place” in the town of Silent Hill. With hope in his heart, James arrives at the town and is greeted with dense fogs, horrible monsters, traumatized individuals, and what can only be interpreted as a physical manifestation of his sin and mental anguish… but that’s always been a point of contention.
Silent Hill 2 is a standalone story that focuses more on the psychological torment of both the characters in the game as well as the player, rather than simply relying on the monsters to do the scaring. There are melee weapons and guns that can be found sure, but resources are limited and the enemies don’t seem to be. Whether you play the original release, the 2012 HD remaster, or the 2024 remake by Bloober team, this is one game that no fan of classic horror should miss.
1. Resident Evil: Code Veronica X
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X is the 2001 expanded PS2 version of Capcom’s 2000 Dreamcast release Resident Evil: Code Veronica. This expanded version features new cinematic sequences revealing more about the plot and characters. The gameplay follows returning fan-favorite playable characters Chris and Claire Redfield from RE1 and RE2 respectively. The player splits the story between the brother and sister, each character with their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as their own areas to explore, puzzles to solve, monsters to face, and weapons to use.
RE: CVX is quite a bit of a departure from the original Resident Evil trilogy as it features higher quality graphics thanks to the capabilities of the newer generation of consoles it released on, 3D environments rather than using pre-rendered images for the backgrounds, and an only somewhat fixed camera that will actually follow the player in many shots.
With a bizarre and Gothic tone set by the haunting orchestral music, the opulent yet antiquated architecture, and the eccentric characters and terrifying monsters the player encounters, RE: CVX is one of the best made, and one of my all-time favorite classic horror games. Thanks to the 2011 HD Remastered edition being backwards compatible, I play it on my Xbox Series X still to this day.
