Games for Halloween

By Dan Birlew | Posted October 19, 2009 in Game Reviews | Comments Off

Spooky

Watching horror films on DVD or visiting a cheesy haunted house aren’t the only ways to celebrate our yearly honoring of the dead. You can also experience some interactive horror on your game consoles. While I would have loved to recommend ten good horror games, the market just isn’t what it used to be. Still, there are a few recent releases worth a rental this October 31st.

Dead Space Extraction

A prequel to the critically acclaimed Dead Space, Extraction follows the events that led up to a space colony going insane and transforming into nightmarish creatures. This Wii version is an “on-rails shooter,” meaning that the game moves you along automatically while you use the Wii Remote to point and shoot at stuff on-screen. By aiming at limbs or freezing enemies, you can practice “strategic dismemberment,” which is just as gnarly as it sounds. Ten missions take place within dark and atmospheric sci-fi environments. The graphics aren’t quite as stellar as the 360, PS3 or PC counterparts, but hold up quite well on Wii. If you want all the jump-out scares and tension of a horror movie or haunted house attraction, it’s certainly here.

Saw

Saw is a game version of the movie franchise Lionsgate has been beating us to death with every October for the last decade. While I stopped following the sequels some time ago, the game attempts to offer up familiar traps, environments, and situations from the series. You get to bear witness to (and sometimes, be the cause of,) several gruesome and gory deaths as you try to decipher a series of twisted traps and puzzles devised by series boogeyman Jigsaw. In an all new story, you’re a police detective who’s been trailing the serial killer only to have the tables turned. Now you’re trapped in an abandoned asylum and must get out. Game play mostly involves solving puzzles under duress with a timer. Also, decisions you make or puzzles you don’t solve in time may cause other characters to die. You’re also beset by random attackers occasionally, the presence of which is rarely explained. You can use melee weapons to beat them to death, but you still feel at a constant disadvantage due to the timing on some controls. There’s also some situations where if you just aren’t ready to push the right button at the right time, you’re dead. But the game does capture the themes, environments, and mood of the films quite well. So if you’re a fan of the movies you’ll certainly get a kick out of the game.

Ju-On: The Grudge

As if one movie tie-in game wasn’t bad enough, XSEED doubles the horror this season with a game based on the Ju-On movies of Japan, released in the US as The Grudge. A self-proclaimed “haunted house simulator,” the objective seems to be to use your Wii Remote as a flashlight to shine on unseen horrors in the dark. The game play doesn’t get much deeper than that. By all accounts the story is pretty non-existent and so is the replay factor. The scariest thing that happens is that the second player controller can be used to scare the other player, because according to the marketing rhetoric the player can “make the other player hate you more than anything.” As if that’s what we all want. This part of the article isn’t so much a recommendation as much as a warning about this game that the developer prevented from being critically reviewed before release.

Zombie Apocalypse

Much like the name says, the objective of this download only game (available on PSN and Xbox Live for about $10) is to survive a worldwide siege by flesh-eating ghouls. The controls are pretty simple; use one stick to run and use another to shoot. You pick one of four zombie-movie stereotypes as your character, then start blasting away mindlessly. Thereafter the hordes never stop coming and you never stop shooting. It’s intense, old-school, arcade-style action that never gets old but will certainly wear you out. The game can be played solo or with up to four players, which really is the way to go. Like old-school arcade, the game gets really tough after a while and you’ll need to invite some friends in to help you finish. While not terribly scary, the game is explosive and bloody and disgusting and fun, especially with a group. So if friends are coming over on Halloween, be sure this game is downloaded and ready.

…And that’s pretty much all this season has to offer. With upcoming titles like Silent Hill Shattered Memories and Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles arriving late to the party in November and beyond, there isn’t much to recommend in time for October 31st. But there are of course a large back catalog of worthwhile horror games out there to check out, such as the Condemned games and Bioshock and of course, Left 4 Dead. I would have recommended Wolfenstein if the publisher hadn’t turned douche and immediately fired the entire creative team following the game’s release. For that, they get no Halloween love from me.