Creepy Games in 2022

Horror games on the PlayStation 1 were what turned me from a gaming hobbiest to an obsessive. They were the reasons I spent long hours on dial up, reading forums about the behind the scenes and rumors about games. They were the reason I spent weeks building an Angelfire site and joining a web ring. 

To this day, I still love them. They are some of the few games that don't tell your standard super soldier story. In fact, the weaker and more flawed your character is, the scarier the game tends to be. 

After completing Elden Ring and it owning March through August, I wanted to play a few shorter games. Horror games lend themselves to this need because the sweet spot for a good horror game is about 5-15 hours. Anything beyond that and the fear has diminishing returns

Evil Within 2 (PS4)

Shinji Mikami is most known for making the first decade of Resident Evil a very memorable one. He had his hands deep into Resident Evil 1-4, Code Veronica, Dino Crisis 1-2, and Devil May Cry. 

He left Capcom in 2004, working with a few other studios on games like God Hand and Vanquish, ultimately returning to horror with the franchise "The Evil Within."

The first Evil Within was a blast. It very much felt like Resident Evil 4 with an incredible difficulty. I never beat it, but when the sequel came out, I knew I had to play it. 

Evil Within 2 takes the sort of Metal Gear Solid approach to level design. Lot of linear paths to push you toward the next set piece. But the big set pieces, generally give you dozens of ways to tackle them and which order to do it in. 

The variety of enemies creates a really fun rock, paper, scissor dynamic where you have to think about you six or so weapons and figure out the best way to take out the enemies. This has a lot of Bioshock in it. 

You can open a fire hydrant and electrify the water. You can explode smoke to make a getaway. You can free enemies and get a free shot while they are an ice cube. 

The story makes much more sense than the first one as well. While not groundbreaking, it has a surreal-ness of a David Lynch joint. 

My main gripe is that I would love to do a New Game+ run on the hardest difficulty, but a few of the boss fights toward the end require you to aim while doing a quick time event and it took 15 tries on normal. It's just not worth my time.

Doom 64 (PC)

I've played Doom and Doom 2 more times than I can count. At this point, I've probably owned them on 15 platforms. 

I didn't know about Doom 64. When I thought I knew everything about the pre-Doom 3 world, I was blindsided with Doom 64 was ported to PC.  I thought surely this had to be a Doom 2 port like everything else. I bought it on Steam. 

This is a weird relic. Since they were working with the Nintendo 64 cartridge's limitations, they had to cut some things like the soundtrack and they couldn't fit all of the normal Doom 2 levels cleanly on the N64. 

Instead, they made an entirely new Doom game, they reworked all of the monsters (and strangely look better) and weapons. 

I wouldn't call this a great game. A lot of the levels are missing that sort of Doom 2 feel to them. But it has some really cool and challenging moments and is a time capsule for a specific time in the game industry when 3D was just starting to be experimented with.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PS3)

Of the Resident Evil games, only Resident Evil 6 has been played less by me. Code Veronica came out for the Dreamcast, a console I didn't have and by the time it was on GameCube and PlayStation 2, we had Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil Zero, and Resident Evil 4, all better games. 

Code Veronica suffers from a lot of the traps of the old Sierra Adventure games. You can get yourself in a position where you can't beat the game. 

There's also some puzzles they won't let you complete unless you inspect a certain item. Like there is a tool used to cut shapes and a valve handle that needs a shape cut. Problem is, they don't let you cut it until you find the pipe that needs the valve handle. 

There's a lot of backtracking, a lot of terribly written characters, and probably some of the worst voice acting in the series. (That's saying something)

It's a shame because Code Veronica has a very interesting setting, it's just that none of the story makes much sense. It's almost punching a volcano levels of nonsense. 

Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch)

Not exactly a horror game, but it is a haunted house. Luigi's Mansion 3 captures exactly what I wanted the NES/Master System Ghostbusters games to be. 

It's one of those games that I have an immense amount of fun when playing it, but I don't typically think about it when I'm not. It's the only reason it's taken me the better part of 6 months to get as far as I have. 

Each boss has unique ways to beat them. Each floor has a dozen secret collectables. I can see why this game really hooks young kids. The puzzles are just difficult enough to not be obvious, but not too difficult to where an 8 year old couldn't solve them. 

My main gripe is that in classic Nintendo fashion, the buttons that each weapon is mapped to doesn't make sense. So I find myself in the midst of fighting a ghost and forgetting which button does my stun light. 

Itch.IO Games (PC)

There's a huge push on Itch.IO for horror games in the style of 1990s-2000s games. I purchased a big package of games and played several of them. 

Opossum County

This was my favorite of the games I purchased. Done in a Game Boy Advance style, this game is creepy. The characters are so well done. 

It's only 15 minutes long, which left me wanting more. Will definitely follow this dev and see what comes in the future. 

Scary Tales Vol 1

Doing horror games in the style of VHS tapes is very popular right now. I supposed having the fake tracking on the screen allows you to hide imperfections in your game. 

I liked the idea of Scary Tales Vol 1, but ultimately I found the games to be sort of broken and obtuse. 

The Glass Staircase

The Glass Staircase is supposed to be a throwback to Silent Hill. It's definitely got some of that vibe. Anytime I was about to enter a new room, I would get anxiety. 

The thing the Glass Staircase suffers from most is lack of direction. I never knew from night to night what my goal was. I just sort of wandered aimlessly around until something got me. 

Resident Evil 2 Remake (PS5)

I played through Claire's A scenario in new game plus. There was a ton of new stuff to see in New Game +. 

I tried to play on hard, but as it turns out, Claire's scenario is already insanely hard just from not having access to the shotgun. 

I don't know that there's better voice acting out there. The conversations between characters feel so natural. Gone are the days of awkward line reads. 

I will play Leon's New Game+ eventually, but after struggling to get through Claire's, I needed a break. 

Wolfenstein Spear of Destiny (PC)

Spear of Destiny came out as an expansion for the original Wolfenstein 3D. I played Wolf 3D constantly. That is until I got a copy of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. Spear of Destiny flew under my radar because by the time it came out, so many other games with giant technological leaps had already come out. 

Spear of Destiny probably blew some minds when it came out, but the control scheme doesn't work anymore. (This was before WASD. We thought arrows and the CTRL/ALT/Space were the way to go.)

It has horror elements. While fighting Nazis, you may come across some of their experiments, but it's sort of hard to take it seriously using the sounds they had access to.