The 9 best survival horror games you can play right now
There’s nothing quite like a good ol’ horror game to get the blood pumping. While the majority of games out there pivot around the idea of empowering the player with a growing assortment of weapons and abilities with which to overcome enemies and obstacles, a good horror game is all about tipping the scales of any scenario to put you at a disadvantage against the many terrors that go bump in the night.
A great horror game does all that and more, crafting an experience that plunges deep into the player’s psyche, probing at themes and concepts that drive at the heart of our most primordial collective fears. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a list of some of our favorite survival horror games that’ve made our blood run cold and kept us on our toes.
Honorable mentions go to such venerable classics as Silent Hill 2 and3, which, while crucial to the artistic and commercial history of the genre, remain frustratingly inaccessible on modern hardware.
Where to play: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X
Alan Wake 2 hit like a bolt of lightning when it came out last year. The sequel to Remedy Entertainment’s 2010 action-adventure game about a beleaguered writer haunted by his own horror story brought to life took the fundamentals of the original and turned them on their head. Introducing a new protagonist in the form of FBI agent Saga Anderson, Alan Wake 2 offers a bifurcated story that follows the parallel journeys of Saga’s investigation into the mysteries of Bright Falls and Alan’s desperate attempt to escape the Dark Place.
The result is a survival horror masterpiece that keeps players on their toes, all the while pushing the boundaries of the medium itself. There’s literally 13 years’ worth of innovative and iconic surprises bursting at the seams between Alan Wake 2’s dual storylines, culminating in a final act that puts a bow on the entire experience while leaving the door open to a universe of yet more horrifying and exhilarating possibilities. It’s not
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