Halloween Season Gaming

[Bison]

OK.  I need a good game to fit into my Halloween mood.  Something a little scary/haunting.  Smiting evil and all that.

Opinions?

I'm actually thinking about playing Cryostasis.

[Darkspire]

With stars out of five.

***** Plants Vs Zombies
****   Doom 3
***     System Shock 2
***** Amnesia: The Dark Descent
***** Fear

Darkspire

[bbmike]

Warlock: Master of the Arcane. It's got all sorts of monsters and even pumpkin patches!  ;D
If only the AI were scary...

[Bison]

OK.  Well while Plants versus Zombies is a fun game; it's not exactly scary or haunting.  :D

Now Doom 3 is an interesting option.  I haven't played that one in a couple of years.

[Gusington]

Witcher 2...I am getting back into it after more than a year away. Has beasts galore, deep role play and hawt chicks.

[Bison]

I did play about 4 hours of the Witcher 2 and then just never fired it up again.  I'm not sure why honestly.  IIRC it mostly had to do with performance on my laptop at the time.

[BanzaiCat]

Outlast.

[LongBlade]

Have you played FEAR, Bison? That's a pretty good one.

Gus likes these spooky titles. If he doesn't show up soon ping him and ask him.

[eyebiter]

.

[bob48]

Its been a while since I played L4D2. Maybe time to get a Grog crew up again?

[Gusington]

The original FEAR is really scary.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'd go with Outlast.  It's a pretty decent horror game.  I've not tried the new Amnesia game yet.  I've heard mixed things.  I know the original is kind of the gold standard of FPS horror for a lot of gamers.  I was rather down on it when it was released because of the fact that death was mostly consequence free.  If you were caught and killed by a baddie, you just respawned and continued on your merry way.  That removed much of the fear and tension for me and getting past the baddies suddenly went from being a frightening experience to just being a nuisance.

Anyway, the point is that this now seems to be the norm so I've come to accept it.  Outlast is in a similar vein.  Death is relatively free of consequences but fleeing from baddies can still be harrowing.  The game does a really good job of modelling a Parkour running style through the environment.

The pacing is much quicker than Amnesia.  The story is less about instilling a feeling of dread and creating tension by spacing out encounters and more about sudden jolts of fear and constant harassment to keep you from taking a breather.  I personally prefer the slow-burn tension type horror but Outlast does a good job with what it's trying to accomplish.  Give it a whirl!

[Gusington]

The original Amnesia's atmosphere is fantastically disturbing.

[Gusington]

Also...this just in...a new version of Thief made with the Doom 3 source code is now available, called the Dark Mod...plenty of missions made by fans to come. Good timing for this time of year, and it may be a Thief 4 killer to boot.

[RooksBailey]

Left 4 Dead 2 is a good choice, especially if you play it solo.  The AI is particularly good, and I find playing solo makes the game scarier.

I also play XCOM: Enemy Unknown.  It can be quite creepy at times, and it fits in well with the War of the Worlds theme to Halloween.   :)