If you’ve got kids you’re doubtless preparing for a slew of costumed kiddos to come traipsing past your house at some point this weekend. No, South Africa hasn’t gone all American — we don’t observe the Halloween holiday directly — but any excuse for kids to dress up and have sweets makes marketing sense. So do seasonal video game specials, like the one the Xbox store is currently running.
Odds are that if you don’t have kids, you probably still act a bit like one. An Xbox gaming marathon on the spookiest weekend of the year, perhaps with a little stash of sweeties of your own, might sound like a scary bit of fun. But which game, or games, should you play? That one is easy. So easy that we’re about to answer it for you. Play one of these.
Resident Evil 2 Remake Deluxe Edition
The Resident Evil 2 Remake was a big deal when it was announced and launched and it’s still a big deal now. The second game in the Raccoon City zombie series has always been an excellent one but the Remake reworked the whole game to function on modern consoles. The setting and most of the puzzles and interactions remain the same as the OG but Capcom reworked everything to within an inch of its life. Modern controls, visuals, and camera angles mean you’ll every bit of gristle when a trapped policeman is pulled apart before your eyes in the opening minutes of the game. That, incidentally, is why there’s a still image accompanying this entry instead of a trailer. You can find all the gory (and age-restricted) Xbox goodness here.
The Evil Within Digital Bundle
This original title from Shinji Mikami, the mind behind the first Resident Evil/Biohazard games, is a modernised take on survival horror. Players take on the role of Detective Sebastian Castellanos who is trapped at the scene of a mass murder at a nearby hospital. From there events take a left turn, seemingly to Silent Hill by way of a Las Plagas-infected Spanish village. The previous sentence makes sense if you’ve played other survival horror games.
The Evil Within is expertly crafted to make players… soil themselves at just the right moment. We’d expect nothing less from the bastard who arranged the birds from Resident Evil 1 and the damned dogs in Resident Evil 3. Interestingly, Tango Gameworks, the studio behind these creepy titles, went on to release the excellent Hi-Fi Rush. Shortly afterwards, Microsoft shut down the (then) Xbox studio.
State of Decay Year-One Survival Edition
If you haven’t played the Xbox-exclusive State of Decay, a title that first appeared on the venerable Xbox 360, you are missing a seriously good zombie survival experience. This one, and its sequels, have a rather unique premise. Players take on the role of each survivor, either by choice or out of necessity, and have to handle the friction that arises from varied personalities rubbing together in a stressful situation. But then there’s the other thing…
State of Day‘s world persists even when you’re not playing it. Forget that you’ve got a game on and you might boot it up weeks later to find all nearby resources depleted, all your survivors sick or injured, and hope, more or less, gone. All the more reason to play this one on Xbox this Halloween.
Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare
Red Dead Redemption is finally coming to PC players’ Steam accounts (or wherever) but you can rub it in their faces one last time by firing up the title on any Xbox you happen to own (from the 360 onward). This week is the perfect time to play the best unexpected DLC of all time — Undead Nightmare. A pulpy experience involving desecrated graves, native curses, and Bigfoot (that one still hurts), players take the role of John Marsden amid a genuinely spooky zombie uprising.
New enemies, bigger weapons, and flaming horses await players, as does the end of the world if you’re not up to the task of saving your loved ones. The zombie hordes, particularly near ravines and crevasses, are also a force to be reckoned with but they’re not quite as unpleasant as the people you’ll encounter.
Buy it here (requires Red Dead Redemption)
Metal: Hellsinger
Who says that you can’t be the terrifying one in the spooky game you’re playing this Halloween? Metal Hellsinger and its various DLCs puts players in the position to terrorise the denizens of Hell for a change. It does so with a unique (and stunning) soundtrack that alters depending on how well you’re playing lets fans of both shooters and rhythm games have a very good time. The demonic entity you’ve just blasted in the face with a mythical shotgun? He’s having less of an impressive day.
Project Zero Maiden of Black Water
The Fatal Frame (known in the West as Project Zero) is one of the scariest game series of all time. This one, now playable on the Xbox One and its successors, was almost dead in the (black) water. Why? Because it first came out on the (doomed) Wii U consoles. Players take on the scariest ghosts the Japanese are capable of conjuring (and those are very scary indeed) while armed with… a camera?
Sounds about right. If you thought event photography was stressful, wait until missing your shot results in a large, howling banshee tearing your head off. So… more like wedding photography then.
Cult of the Lamb
Again, why do you always have to be the good guy? As this Devolver Digital-published title shows, sometimes it’s better to be evil. You might wonder what’s so spooky about The Cult of the Lamb (which is playable on more than just the Xbox platform) but then you probably haven’t watched the trailer.
It harks back to South Park‘s Woodland Critters Christmas episode but without the sexually transmitted diseases (we think) in that you’ll attempt to recruit cutesy characters into your creepy Satanic cult for… well, reasons. There are deck-building and roguelike elements to look forward to. Oh, lest we forget all the sacrifices and slaying.
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series
If you’ve never felt like you’ve been punched in the gut upon learning that someone else will remember something, you haven’t played Telltale’s The Walking Dead series of games. They’re narrative-heavy experiences that rely on a trademark cel-shaded style (seriously, check out the two Batman titles when it’s not Halloween) that will suck you in, chew you up, and spit you out on the other side.
About as close as you can get to the heart-wrecking choices from the TV series without being an undercover Brit like Rick Grimes, this edition includes four seasons of the game and the two spinoffs, 400 Days and Michonne, that accompanied them. The Xbox version of the game has a massive 90% discount on it for Halloween.
Bendy: Studio Collection
There’s always been something off about old animation, as the Bendy games Bendy and the Ink Machine and Bendy and the Dark Revival have capably illustrated. It’s a bit like Five Nights at Freddie’s in terms of appearance, but since they all take place at old and abandoned places where fun used to be made that’s not surprising. The Studio Collection on Microsoft’s Xbox store collects both games but you can get your toes wet by purchasing just the first one for about seventy-five bucks this week.
Prey
Prey is unlike anything else on this list. For starters, it takes place on a space station. That’s a good start to any number of creepy tales but this station is infested with shape-shifters that can look like anything. Really anything. If there’s suddenly an extra chair or a coffee mug in the room you just entered, you better a) have noticed it and b) be ready to kill it because it’s about to leap into your face and attempt to tear it off. Actor Benedict Wong portrays the player’s brother, the second time he’s been in a production called Prey. The first was a TV series from 2014. What are the Xbox and Bethesda folks trying to tell us?