10 Best Games to Play on Halloween

Parasite Eve is a horrific game when you think about it. Just watch that scene where a little girl turns into a rampaging monster and you’ll get the idea. The whole premise is that the tiny little parasites that allow our cells to function suddenly betray us! How scary is it that the very threat to your life is inside you and you can’t live without it! This is just the first of the 10 Best Games to Play on Halloween.

The Fatal Frame series addressed horror in an interesting way. All of the biggest threats of the game were scary because you couldn’t see them. To be able to see ghosts you had to take their picture, and at that point they were likely right in your face! This was one of those games that utilized atmospheric horror just as much as it utilized the occasional jump scare.

Eternal Darkness isn’t quite as scary as some of the more loved horror games out there, but it certainly has the Halloween feel. Maybe it’s the skeletons that you have to fight, or the Lovecraftian deities you are serving. Or maybe it’s just the fact that the game loves to pull pranks on you, making you think your save file is deleted, or that you hit the blue screen of death. Either way, Eternal Darkness has that combination of horror and mischief that Halloween is all about.

Team Fortress 2 isn’t even a horror game, but they sure know how to throw a Halloween bash. Whether you just want to get Halloween hats, or you love being chased by a headless ghost, this first person shooter gets into the spirit every year. We can hardly wait to see what their Halloween event will be like this year

This indie game doesn’t produce horror by jump scares or chasing you with monsters and the walking dead. In fact, nothing in this game is real. It all takes place in the mind of a troubled little girl, and that may be the scariest thing about it. The game is all metaphorical, showing off warped dreamscapes open to your own interpretation and taking advantage of our fear of the unknown. It’s pretty terrifying and it’s a perfect Game to Play on Halloween.

Halloween isn’t just about terror. It’s also about goofy monsters and creepy crawlies. That’s where Monster Party, a bizarre and poorly translated game for the NES comes into play. This game is just, so out there. Sure there are zombies and demons and stuff, but there are also dolls and plants and weird tongues coming out of walls. It’s not particularly scary and it’s very Japanese but it sure does remind you of the cartoon ghosts that we see in Halloween decorations.

What better Game to Play on Halloween than a game that actually takes place on Halloween! Costume Quest puts you in the shoes of a band of intrepid trick or treaters that get wrapped up in an adventure that is far bigger than they can handle. Luckily, their costumes give them the ability to triumph over evil… or at the very least, triumph over not getting candy.

Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without some bone chilling horror, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent is one of the scariest games out there. It has everything: environmental horror, jump scares, a terrifying story, and the thought that you yourself might be far worse than any of the monsters you are running from. If you haven’t played Amnesia yet, then you haven’t been keyed in to the idea of real video game horror.

Halloween isn’t just about horror. It’s also about gore and gross out violent B movie schlock. Splatterhouse is essentially the video game version of a grindhouse flick, complete with a protagonist who wears prison scrubs and a hockey mask. What other game will literally let you splatter your foes onto the background into a pool of organs and blood?

Finally, there is one absolute Best Game to Play on Halloween, and that is perhaps the best horror game of all time: Silent Hill 2. Horror fans almost unanimously agree that Silent Hill 2 is the pinnacle of horror excellence. It was not only terrifying, but outright scarring to some people. It dealt with issues like murder and suicide and the guilt one feels for not being there for a loved one. It was also one of the first horror games that didn’t really put you in the shoes of a good person. So this Halloween, relive the best of gaming horror and play Silent Hill 2 again… UNTIL YOU DIE!!!