Condemned: Criminal Origins

Condemned: Criminal Origins or, as I like to call it, "Bum Fighting Simulator 2006" was one of the most unique horror games of its time. Instead of shootouts with ghosts or bare bones melee combat with hellish demons, Condemned opted for something different. Centered around a robust melee combat system, you play as Ethan Thomas, a federal agent trapped in a building with a notorious serial killer and a seemingly infinite amount of insane homeless people. Every hit looks and feels like you're actually hitting somebody in the face with a steel pipe. I wouldn't recommend taking a stroll in downtown L.A. after playing Condemned. You wouldn't want to find yourself in the same situation as Ethan.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Yeah, yeah I know. At this point, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is probably the most overrated horror game, but there's a reason for that. Popularizing flight over fight gameplay, Amnesia: The Dark Descent pitted the player against horribly disfigured monsters in a castle of horrors with no way to defend yourself. On top of that, the player must also monitor their sanity levels and refrain from staying in the dark for too long, entering water, and even looking at the monsters. Certain YouTubers may have ruined the appeal of Amnesia to some people by turning it into a career of grown men screaming like little girls for an audience of 12-year-olds, but the horror and fear factors are genuine. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for its sequel.

Betrayer

Now here's an interesting one. Betrayer is a dark fantasy horror game developed by the lovely folks responsible for No One Lives Forever (1 & 2) and the original F.E.A.R. Shipwrecked on the coast of Virginia in the year 1604, players must adapt or die in a land inhabited by the undead and other ghostly specters. That may not sound all that scary. It's kinda hard to explain, but imagine being Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant except supplement rapist bears and hostile natives with undead warriors and deadly apparitions.

Alchemilla

No list of horror games is complete without at least one mention of a Silent Hill game. Unfortunately, unless you happen to own a physical copy of any of the 4 original games or have your old PS2 lying around, the only way to play an authentic Silent Hill game is to illegally download them from a torrent site (which we do not recommend or condone). Enter the Half-Life 2 mod: Alchemilla, the next best thing. Alchemilla is, more or less, a puzzle mod set within Silent Hill's disturbing world. Can you believe that it took a team of modders to recreate Silent Hill's aesthetics perfectly; something no other professional developer could do after the disbanding of Team Silent? So unless you don't have a copy of the original 4 games and want to feel the magic of Silent Hill one last time, check out Alchemilla.

Slayer Shock

Horror games are one thing, but what game best encompasses the spirit of Halloween the best? That's a subjective question, so my opinion would be Slayer Shock. I've already had the pleasure to have written a review for this underrated gem, so I'll just get right to the point. Imagine someone made a kickass Buffy the Vampire Slayer video game with a surprising amount of depth put into every detail and mechanic included. Then imagine Jack Skellington came to life and produced it. Now that's a Halloween game.

Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion

With a name like that, this is just another YouTube facecam bait game, right? Wrong. Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion is probably the best example of misdirection in a horror game that I've ever seen. Starting off with an introduction from a cute ghost girl, your first spooky encounters will be with child-like ghost cut outs accompanied by loud noises. The player's goal is to survive 1000 rooms of Spooky's mansion. Seems easy enough, especially with an introduction like that, but you'll quickly find the real monsters that lurk in the mansion aren't as cute and friendly. Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion is free on Steam, so you don't really have an excuse to avoid it.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Did you think you could avoid the early 2000's vampire craze? Well, luckily for you, the boys and girls over at Troika Games were able to put together a "best of" compilation of those dark days. Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines is so good that, even in its broken release state, it's considered to be not only one of the best RPGs ever created, but also one of the best games ever made. So is it a horror game? Is it scary? A horror game, yes. Scary, not so much. There are definitely moments that can make anyone's skin crawl, but they are few and far between to classify it as "scary." Still, the horror vibe is in full effect throughout the entire experience (it is a game about vampires and ghouls after all) and worthy of anyone's time, especially on Halloween.

Outlast

Having the same misfortune as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Outlast found its mainstream fame from untalented YouTube personalities. Employing a unique "found footage" aesthetic, Outlast also chooses flight over fight gameplay as you try to escape an insane asylum overrun by escaped patients and other anomalies that are best left unspoiled. I've never felt a greater tension than when my only means of seeing in the dark are my handheld camera's night vision mode and the batteries are about to die as I'm being chased by an insane, naked fat man. It also may be a good time to finally play Outlast, if you haven't already, because a sequel is set to release sometime next year.

IMSCARED

I like to think that I'm pretty jaded when it comes to horror in general. It takes a lot of effort for horror in any form of media to actually scare me. IMSCARED was the first game since Silent Hill 3 to genuinely terrify me. Of course, there are unnecessary jump scares, but they are spread out and that isn't even the actual horror of this game. Labeling itself as a "metahorror" experience, IMSCARED will constantly break the fourth wall and make you believe that something is genuinely wrong with your computer. The pixelated art style may turn off some people, but that's the least of your problems when experiencing IMSCARED. Oh, and for the safety of your heart, try not to open strange files on your hard drive after playing IMSCARED.

Of course these ten games aren't the only games you should play on Halloween. There may even be better Halloween-esque games that I've never heard of or just forgot about. The point is: enjoy Halloween however you like. Whether it be staying in and playing videos or going out into the night and experiencing some real life scares. Just remember to play it safe: check your candy before eating it, don't go anywhere with people you aren't familiar or comfortable with, and don't attack the clowns.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

(Please keep in mind that my opinions may or may not reflect your own, this list is entirely biased.)

Yoshi Topsy Turvy (Game Boy Advance)

While I like a fair majority of the games in the Yoshi series, I'm not entirely sure what was going through their collective minds when they developed this abysmal game. There are times in the game where it hardly ever feels like an entry in the Yoshi's Island series and those spirits that give you missions to do in order to up the difficulty don't even feel like they were meant for a Yoshi game in the first place. In addition, the gyroscopic controls are stiff and unresponsive; the motion sensors in Warioware Twisted were of much better quality and that game came out before this one. Luckily they haven't made a sequel to this drek so they must have taken notice of its poor design choices.

Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival (Wii U)

An unusual board-game spin off of the Animal Crossing series, but I honestly think it should've been left on the drawing board. It is a retail game that downright REQUIRES the use of amiibo to play effectively, you only get one randomly chosen board to play on and you can't get a new one without erasing your progress, the minigames (which require the amiibo cards) are non-existent through normal play and can only be accessed from the plaza, and online play doesn't exist which would've helped a game like this even if it wasn't by much. If you still want to get it I can't stop you, but just to warn you I actually got so bored playing this game that I almost fell asleep.

The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (3DS)

As you all know, I love The Legend of Zelda series and will often go out of my way to get anything Zelda related, but when I got this entry in the series, I feel like maybe this game might have been nothing more than one expensive experiment. This game seems to focus mostly on co-operative battles and player interaction over puzzle solving which completely misses the point of the series. Plus this game is damn near impossible when playing solo and since its online multiplayer is region locked, finding anyone who will play with me is a challenge in and of itself since I usually only have time to play late at night. That, and the unnecessary inclusion of the "doge" meme, made this a rather unpleasurable experience overall.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

Compared to its successor, Paper Mario: Color Splash, this game was an absolute snore. The dialog was uninteresting and bland and Bowser didn't have a single speaking role throughout the entire ordeal, the worlds were uninspired and just rehashed ideas that had been used in past entries in the main series Mario games, and everything done when in battle were only through the use of consumable items and fights yielded no experience of any kind. I actually got so tired of this game's shenanigans that I basically just did a speed run of everything after the halfway point. Overall, this game was such a disappointment to experience.

Metroid: Other M (Wii)

Metroid has been one of those series that I enjoyed just about as much as The Legend of Zelda and I was quite excited for Other M when it was originally announced, but after playing it again recently, it left such a sour taste in my mouth. First of all Samus's official height in every other entry in the series is 6'3" where as she's around 5'9" in Other M. While not too much of an issue on its own, when I found out that the devs shrank her so she specifically was shorter than Adam, her old commanding officer, I saw that as a stupid and petty design choice that demeans her as a strong female character. And while the gameplay isn't too bad, I think I can pretty much sum up all the problems this game has in one quote directly from the game...

"Samus, activate the Varia feature on your suit to protect yourself from heat damage."
- Adam Malkovich, roughly 20 minutes after entering the sector that requires the Varia Suit

Pokemon Dash (DS)

This game baffled me. It was a foot racing game where the only playable character was Pikachu, and you played by repeatedly swiping the screen in the direction that you want to go. If this game was released for iOS or Android devices for free, people would thing nothing of it, but since this was a retail game on the DS that got very stale and repetitive VERY quickly due to there being only one playable character, there was no reason to keep playing after you beat the first grand prix. Once you've played one map, you've pretty much played them all. Not even the ability to make new maps from the GBA slot could save this one.

Kirby Squeak Squad (DS)

As far as the Kirby series has gone, I've had pretty much no complaints with any game that has been released in this series so far, barring this particular one. Despite the baffling story to the game where it revolves around Kirby trying to recover a stolen slice of cake, it plays pretty much like what you would expect from a Kirby game, but compared to the other games in the series, this game is far too easy, even by Kirby standards. Plus some of the sound effects sound a bit off with the sword being the biggest offender having this horrendously high-pitched ding happen whenever you perform a combo attack. While this is a decent first game for newcomers to the series, this is in my opinion the weakest in the series due to its unchallenging gameplay (by Kirby standards) which ultimately renders this game forgettable to me.

Alleyway (Game Boy)

An attempt at making a Breakout clone with heavy emphasis on "attempt." Unlike Arkanoid, a much better Breakout clone which had been out on NES earlier, this game had no power-ups or enemies to destroy and extremely limited options for gameplay alterations. The stage progression was also very predictable and the difficulty was unfair for what type of game it was. I suggest if you want a good Breakout clone on the Game Boy, just play Kirby's Blockball. It is so much more unique and a helluva lot more fun.

Wii Fit series (Wii, Wii U)

I feel that a good number of us gamers can probably agree that fun and exercise can mix well when its done right, but one thing I can guarantee is complete and utter bullcrap is Nintendo's attempt at making a fun fitness game. Personal fitness is not a game, nor should it be treated like one. While I agree that if you want to get back into shape that you need to find your own personal workout regimen that works for you with some fitness games sometimes falling under this category, this "game" series is pretty much just torture and insulting to anyone that wants to lose weight or improve their health. The way this game uses your ideal BMI as an "endgame goal" is an absolute joke and it doesn't even take into consideration skeletal build or total muscle mass. You need to have an accurate measurement of all three, otherwise its just a demeaning experience. The fitness games on XBox Kinect look more fun and effective than this.

The Virtual Boy

And the pièce de résistance, the one thing that almost made me completely lose faith in Nintendo's ability to make a fun gaming console: The Virtual Boy. This red and black monstrosity had an astoundingly short lived run and had a library of games that barely exceeded 20 titles in all regions combined. But how could that be? I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that it was the godawful screen colors when you looked into the apertures of the device. On a monochrome screen, you should never EVER use a display color scheme that can induce headaches even after short periods of play. It's just a shame that none of the good games that were released on this thing ever got ported to a later system in Nintendo's repertoire of systems.

Being a hardcore Nintendo fan, these stains and marks on Nintendo's image physically hurt me as I know that they are capable of doing so much better. But I also know that they are only human and they likely learned a lot from making mistakes like these. They took features from Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival and just added them to New Leaf as an update, they built upon Paper Mario: Sticker Star and made a somewhat better entry as Color Splash, and after the failure of the Virtual Boy, they didn't experiment with 3D imagery again until the 3DS. Hopefully Nintendo won't continue make any mistakes this bad in the near future, but until then, I'll be seeing you.