Digital Dread: Top 10 Video Games for Halloween

These days, the cinema isn’t the only place you can turn to for a spooky Halloween experience; thanks to games consoles you can feel the fear a little more… first hand. So here, in the third of my Halloween ton ten series, I’m going to count down the ten scariest videogames. Hold on to your controllers!

Clive Barker’s Jericho

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Okay so the game-play verges on the impossible and sometimes it’s just as impossible to find out what exactly you’re supposed to be doing thanks to some highly illogical logic, but the atmosphere is suitably unnerving and the monsters are terrifically terrifying. Mr Barker’s unmistakable style may be better suited to books and films than interactive media, but, damn, I wouldn’t want to meet those staple-faced critters in real life!

The Clock Tower

Here’s one for the vaults, which I admit I haven’t actually played, though I have watched someone else play it, way back in the 90s, and boy did it give me nightmares. The forerunner of the survival horror genre and inspired by an equally disturbing Dario Argento movie, its creepy settings and intricate plot has inspired countless games since. Watch out for those scissors!

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

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It’s good to see that H P Lovecraft’s eldritch creations still have the power to give people the galloping heebie jeebies, especially if those uncomfortable associations of misogyny and racism can be removed. Call of Cthulhu does just that, turning the vague gelatinous monstrosities of Lovecraft’s imagination into vague gelatinous pixel monstrosities. It might not be the greatest game in the world, but the monsters certainly conjure that particular sense of dread forever associated with the Cthulhu Mythos, and the neat madness mechanic, in which you have to keep just the right level of insanity to be able to see the monsters without taking a one-way ticket to the funny farm, ensures a nice novel touch.