My Top 5 Survival Horror Video Games

Today I thought I would talk about some of my favorite survival horror video games. I play video games fairly often and I always enjoy a good scare so naturally I like Horror based video games. Now there are many of them out there, but today I thought I would pick the cream of the crop and share them with you.

#5 ALAN WAKE
Alan Wake is a very well done game, it is only available right now on XBOX 360. The story of the game is told through the eyes of a popular author. He mainly writes thriller or horror novels... however when the story starts he has not been able to write anything for three years. His wife takes him to the small town of Bright Falls for a vacation. They rent out a large house on a small island on the lake near the town. While at the cabin Alan's wife tells him about a Doctor in Bright Falls who specializes in helping artists or writers find inspiration again. Alan becomes outraged and leaves the cabin. As he leaves the electricity to the cabin shuts off and his wife begins screaming... Alan knows that she is deathly afraid of darkness and runs back to the cabin to calm her down but finds that she has fallen off the back porch into the lake below. Alan dives in after her and mysteriously blacks out. When he wakes up, a week has gone by and he has been in a car crash.

The rest of the game you desperately search the town of Bright Falls for your missing wife. As you look for her you find pages of a manuscript you have written but for some reason don't remember writing. As you find the pages of the manuscript the things you read begin to take place and happen in real life.

This game was very well written and developed. The graphics are amazing and the game is full of excellent atmosphere including run down log cabins, mills, hunting lodges, and dark forests. The enemies you face through out the game are people from the town possessed by the darkness. You have to use light as a weapon to defeat all of your enemies. The entire game follows the theme of fighting darkness with light.

I enjoyed this game very much and even after finishing the game it remains mysterious... making replay value very high!!! I highly recommend this game.

#4 CONDEMNED: CRIMINAL ORIGINS
Condemned is another excellent game available on the XBOX 360. The character you play as is Detective Ethan Thomas. You start out the game by going to the next murder scene of a serial killer named The Matchmaker. The killer always stages the corpses of his victims with a mannequin. After collecting evidence the detective and the other police officers at the scene suddenly release that the killer is still inside the building watching the investigation. They split up and search the building. The killer attacks you and manages to get your gun from you and kills your partner and another officer.

The rest of the game you have to work outside the law as you search for The Match Maker also pursued by the police who think you murdered your partner. Eventually you track down The Match Maker, but he has been killed another serial killer known only as Serial Killer X by his own modus operandi. So through the rest of the game you are trying to track down and stop Serial Killer X.

This game doesn't have the greatest graphics, but what it doesn't have in graphics it makes up with creepy atmosphere and environment. Your character has to go through trashy worn down apartment buildings and a school, empty subway tunnels, an abandoned department store, an orchard, and farmhouse. The character also throughout the game sees disturbing images and gritty hallucinations. You also get to investigate crime scene with multiple high tech gadgets that makes game play very fun and interesting.

I remember playing this game late at night and being freaked out of my mind. I remember one part specifically... I was searching through the department store level. I walked into a room to look for health, the only thing inside the room were old dirty mannequins. As I turned and left and got to the doorway I heard a whisper from behind me say, "you're dead." I instantly turned around and all the mannequins in the room were right behind me standing motionless.

Play this game late at night with all the lights off and you will get the chills at certain parts of the game.


#3 SILENT HILL ORIGINS
In Silent Hill Origins (which is the 5th installment in the Silent Hill series) you play as Travis Grady, a seemingly ordinary trucker who is haunted by nightmares. One night as he drives past the town of Silent Hill a mysterious cloaked figure runs out into the road, Travis slams on his breaks and comes to a stop. He gets out to search for the person but sees no one, until he sees someone running away ahead of him.
Travis searches the area and comes across a house that is burning and hears a scream from somewhere inside. He goes into the burning building and finds a badly burned girl surrounded by ceremonial type candles and satanic looking symbols written on the floor. He takes the girl outside and blacks out from the smoke.

Upon waking up the girl is gone and he decided to go to the town's hospital to find out what happened to the girl he attempted to rescue. At the hospital he meets a Dr. Kaufman who claims that there was never any burned girl brought to the hospital. Travis decides to search the hospital anyway believing the girl is still there somewhere.

Throughout the rest of the game you look for the girl and you slowly put together pieces of your dark past. The Silent Hill games are known for their extremely disturbing psychological enviroments. Most of the Silent Hill games features two sides to every area you search. The first side is the normal version of the town, but the other side is typically covered in rust and full of disturbing elements. In Silent Hill Origins Travis reaches this other world by finding mirrors where the reflection is distorted, by placing his hand on the mirror he is taken into the distorted reflection of Silent Hill. Also the game is full of disturbing creatures typically based on the main characters own inner demons.

In this game you search a hospital, sanitarium (or Mental Institution), a movie theater, and a roadside motel. When I played this game I was especially freaked out by the Sanitarium level because it was massive and you encounter many disturbing monsters.

This game gave me the chill and freaked me out. The graphics aren't amazing, but the storyline and psychologically based horror you experience throughout the game put you on edge the entire time. I think this games is one of the scariest out there today and I think you should definitely give it a shot if you have a PlayStation 2!


#2 BIOSHOCK
Bioshock is one of my all time favorite games for many reasons. It is available on both PlayStaion 3 and XBOX 360. In Bioshock you start out on an airplane that crashes in the middle of the ocean. You swim to a nearby lighthouse on a small island which turns out to be the entrance to a massive city named Rapture built under the ocean. When you reach the city you find that it has fallen into chaos, the inhabitants of the city have been disfigured by using genetically altering drugs, that enable them to shoot fire, ice, electricity, and even bees from their fingertips.

You are guided by a man named Atlas through the city while avoiding the attacks of the city's creator Andrew Ryan who believes you have been sent to the city by the government to destroy or steal it. Atlas guides you through different sections of the city to accomplish different tasks in an attempt to restore some sort of order to the city.

As you search this under water city you experience and learn an entire new political system and culture. The game was developed better than almost any game I have ever played, with a completely original storyline and world that had never been seen before. The city is filled with many psychotic and unbalanced characters and the enemies that attack you are terrifying. As you go throughout the game you encounter Little Sisters who possess "adam" which is a crucial part of surviving inside the city. You have to choose to either rescue or harvest these little sisters to obtain the adam, however they are protected by Big Daddies, huge men dressed in ocean diving suits. The Big Daddies are very protective and very deadly.

This game is excellent and even though it was not originally intended to be a survival horror game it fits right in with it's freaky environments and psychotic enemies. Like all of these games I recommend playing this late at night with all of the lights off! Take a trip into the under water city of Rapture, you won't be disappointed!!!

#1 Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is perhaps the most respected survival horror game out there! At least it is in the Silent Hill Franchise. The game is available on PlayStation 2 and though it is somewhat older and dated than most of the games out there today, and in my opinion there is no other game that is able to capture the disturbing psychological horror that Silent Hill 2 has.

The plot follows a character named James Sunderland who has received a mysterious letter from his dead wife Mary telling him that she somewhere in the town of Silent Hill in their "special place". Unsure what this special place is James goes into Silent Hill and begins looking for Mary.

Throughout the game you search a dilapidated apartment building, hospital, penitentiary, a bizarre underground network of tunnels, and lake side hotel. Like most Silent Hill games you slowly unravel the dark past of the main character and the town confronts him with twisted psychological manifestations of his inner demons. One of the reasons this game is so scary is due to one of the monsters you encounter on several occasions throughout the game. The monster is referred to as the Red Pyramid or Pyramid Head, the name is derived from the massive pyramid like helmet he wears. The monster also wields a long menacing blade!

The first time I played this game I didn't think a whole lot of it. I was kind of confused as to what even took place. The Silent Hill games are typically left up to personal interpretation, and after replaying this game you are able to pick up what is actually going on and you slowly piece together how everything you experience in the game is some deeper psychological representation of the character you play as.
The game is haunting and unsettling.

One part of this game which I found particularly disturbing about this games comes when you are inside of the hospital. You find a room where a box have been chained down to a gurney and there are about four or five locks preventing you from opening it. So you have to search the entire hospital and find the various keys to unlock it. I remember I finally found all of the keys to unlock it and once it was open I was shocked. All that you find in the box is a single strand of long dark hair. It was unnerving and totally unexpected.

I won't ruin anymore of the game but the story of Silent Hill 2 is very interesting and original. If you are brave enough play through Silent Hill 2 and find out what brought James to it in the first place!

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this post, these games are some of the best in my opinion and if you are in the mood for a good scary game to play this Halloween Season check out any one of these games!

Have you played any of these games? If so what was the best one in your opinion?