The best horror video games you need to play

The original is still unquestionably one of the best games ever made, but if you’re looking to play Resident Evil 4 today, we’d point you towards 2023's remake. While not *quite* as charmingly cheesy as the original game, it’s still the same incredibly entertaining and perfectly-paced survival horror experience.

The new parry system is great fun, while Leon’s ability to crouch opens up new stealth opportunities. Thanks to the power of modern hardware, the game looks pretty incredible too. The best Resident Evil made better? That’s a matter of taste, but this is everything we wanted from a remake of a classic, and you’ll struggle to find a more enjoyable spooky season game.

Remakes of horror classics are all the rage right now. While it’s easy to roll your eyes, these modernised takes often end up being the definitive versions of their source material. That’s definitely the case with 2023’s Dead Space, which rebuilds the 15-year-old sci-fi horror romp for modern hardware.

It hugely improves the visuals, removes load times and adds new areas to the stunningly atmospheric Ishimura ship on which the game takes place, as well as making a host of other gameplay refinements. The original is still the best example of Resident Evil in space you can play and, thanks to the remake, it has never felt better. Dead Space 2 remake next, please.

Given the success Capcom has had with its various Resident Evil remakes in recent years, it’s no surprise Konami has brought back Silent Hill 2, remade from the ground up for modern consoles. It loses none of the bleakness and wholly unsettling vibes that made the original an instant survival horror classic back in 2001.

You play as James Sunderland, a widower who travels to the eerily foggy rural town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his late wife, where all manner of nightmarish monsters await him. Gone are the fixed camera angles of old, in their place a new over-the-shoulder viewpoint that arguably makes the game even more oppressive. Essential for horror fans, whether this is your first run-in with Pyramid Head or your fifteenth.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, Alien: Isolation is not only comfortably the best Alien game ever made, but also one of the most tense and frankly terrifying survival horror games of all time. Set 15 years after Ridley Scott’s original Alien film, Alien: Isolation is a first-person game in which you play as Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, who, like her mother in 1979, is being hunted by a Xenomorph.

Alien: Isolation perfectly captures the look and vibe of the original movies, but its most impressive achievement is the alien itself, whose advanced artificial intelligence (still impressive now) turns the game into one of cat and mouse in space. The player is forced to use stealth to evade it. That does mean you spend perhaps a bit too much time hiding in lockers, but if you’re an Alien fan who still hasn’t played this one, fix that during the spooky season.

As much an interactive movie as a game, Until Dawn is a bonafide horror classic and an experience that benefits from having someone on the sofa next to you as you play. That’s partly because it’s pretty terrifying at times and, you know, it’s nice to share the load, but also because the choices you make along the way determine who lives and who dies.

Eight teenagers are stuck inside a huge mansion on a remote mountain. They must do everything they can to ensure they’re among those rescued at dawn. Classic slasher fare, then. Real-life Hollywood stars including Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere were motion captured for their roles, so the game always felt cinematic. But thanks to the power of Unreal Engine 5, in which Until Dawn has been rebuilt for a new PS5 remake, all that blood and gore has never looked more real. For what it’s worth, we think the (much cheaper) original still has a certain campy charm, but you can’t go wrong with either version.

There are a lot of zombie games out there, but not enough that allow you to mow through hundreds of the undead with a shopping trolley while dressed as Mega Man. 2006 cult classic Dead Rising plonks you in the blood-stained shoes of photojournalist Frank West, who finds himself trapped in a zombie-infested shopping mall where he has to survive for three days.

Luckily, he’s free to use just about anything he can find in the mall as a weapon. The original game is still widely available, but this year’s slick remaster overhauls the graphics, improves the famously unreliable survivor AI, and adds an autosave system after major events that makes the game a bit more forgiving. Dead Rising had a number of sequels, but the original remains the concept in its purest form.

Most Rockstar games are all-timers, but it also gave us what is arguably the greatest DLC add-on ever made in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. This standalone expansion to the beloved open-world western tasks protagonist John Martson with surviving a zombie plague that has infected his wife and child, mere days after finally reuniting with them in the main game.

Undead Nightmare ingeniously plays almost exactly like regular Red Dead Redemption and uses the same map. But now you’re liberating towns from the undead and headshotting onrushing zombies rather than cowboys, with ammo notably scarcer than in the main game. These days it's available on Nintendo Switch. And as it plays at 60fps on PlayStation and Xbox, there’s never been a better time to play Rockstar’s mini horror classic.

As much as we love modern AAA horror games that squeeze every last drop of power and performance from our consoles and PCs while scaring us stiff, some indie developers are more interested in scratching that retro horror itch. It might have come out in 2024, but fire up Crow Country none the wiser and you’d probably think you were playing a PS1 game. With its low-poly visuals, charmingly blocky character models and pre-rendered backgrounds, Crow Country recalls the original Resident Evil more than any of the more recent entries, and its abandoned theme park setting makes for fantastically creepy survival horror fare.

Its blend of tense combat encounters and cryptic puzzles is decidedly Resi, but the option of modern camera and character controls ensure Crow Country sands down some of the old-school edges for those who want that.

Most of the games in this list are pant-wettingly frightening affairs, but if you’re looking for a more family-friendly game to get you in the Halloween spirit, you won’t find better than Luigi’s Mansion 3. Still one of the very best games on the Nintendo Switch, the third instalment in this underrated series sees Mario’s famously wimpy brother forced to explore yet another haunted house. This one is a creepy old hotel run by ghosts that need busting.

Armed with his Poltergust vacuum cleaner and assisted by a goo-like doppelganger named Gooigi (obviously), Luigi must face his many fears head on if he’s to rescue his friends. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is great fun, incredibly charming, and turns horror into slapstick comedy at every opportunity so everyone can enjoy it.

If the original Alan Wake was more of a psychological thriller, its sequel leans fully into survival horror with thrilling, and very scary, results. Remedy Entertainment’s ambitious sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake is still inspired by David Lynch and the writing of Stephen King.

It's set in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls. The colourful weirdos who inhabit it do a good enough job of creeping you out before you even get to the wailing shadow monsters and genuinely harrowing jump scares. If you missed Alan Wake 2 last year, now is the perfect time to jump in, with the Lake House expansion, which directly links to another of Remedy’s games, Control, due out at the end of October.