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Horror Games On a Budget

Halloween is getting closer every day. Spooky decorations are beginning to pop up on your neighbors' yards. Children are squirming with anticipation for the promise of candy to come. Stores are filled with cheap plastic costumes that don't really look anything like what they're supposed to. If you want to get into the Halloween spirit with a healthy respect to your gaming hobby, but don't want to mortgage your home just to afford the newest horror games, you're in luck! It just so happens that there are many decent horror games you can purchase for under $20!

Don't let sequels keep you away from the original. If you haven't played the original Bioshock, Dead Rising, Dead Space, or Resident Evil, you'll find that all these games have become fabulously cheap since the release of their respective sequels. Now I know what you're thinking, and you're right Bioshock isn't exactly a traditional horror game. But it has many disturbing and downright creepy moments as the hero Jack is thrust into the rusted remains of the underwater Rapture City. This game also does a much better job of building up suspense than does its sequel.

Dead Space is one of the most genuinely scary video games ever made. You play as Issac Clark an engineer onboard a mining spaceship called the USG Ishimura which becomes infested with horrifying necromorph monsters. There's just something about being alone in a tube floating through empty space with no other living souls around, except for the nightmarish abominations who want to eat you that makes for a deliciously frightening gameplay setting.

If you don't want to get involved with something so intense, and prefer the humorous side of Halloween just look for any of the less serious zombie titles. Dead Rising sort of tries for a serious concept at the start, as a photographer is left in a zombie infested city, trying to survive while uncovering the horrible truth about the terrorist biological attack. But it's hard to remember that serious image once the hero is down to his boxer shorts and a Lego man helmet, beating zombies off with a toy lightsaber. Zombies are attacking, people are in danger, your own life is at constant risk, but it still makes sense that you would want to stop and make a smoothie. Other games like Left4Dead and House of the Dead: Overkill aren't quite as silly, but there's still not so much horror as there is just the fun of killing swarms of zombies.

There are plenty more horror games that will get you into a Halloween mood, but sadly there just isn't enough time to talk about them all. So I will give honorable mentions to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the Silent Hill games, Siren: Blood Curse, and several others I probably don't even know about! So don't be afraid to go looking in the cheap bins for a way to increase the spooky holiday spirit on a budget!