Editorials
Best PS4 Horror Games -The Finest Horror on Sony’s Juggernaut Console
What do we think the best PS4 horror games are? Bloody Disgusting lists the best horror on Sony’s juggernaut console.
The PS4 turned 5 at the end of last year. In that time it’s gone on to become the king of the consoles for this generation and Sony has produced a procession of critically-acclaimed exclusives that helped cement its place at the head of the table.
It’s also racked up an impressive roster of horror games, and in honor of this fifth anniversary, we’ve selected eleven of the best PS4 horror games from the last five or so years.
The Evil Within 2 (2017)
The original The Evil Within left survival horror fans with lofty expectations. After all, it was Shinji Mikami, the mastermind behind Resident Evil’s greatest entries, back in the genre with a brand new game. It frustrated in places, but there was no denying the deft touch of Mikami was present.
The Evil Within 2 dialed up the crazy and produced a far more inventive take on survival horror. Set inside a corrupted simulation of a small town, you face vicious monsters and an everchanging environment as you aim to cleanse the corruption and find the soldiers who were sent in before you.
The only real downside of The Evil Within 2 is its first-person sections, which take the tension of the stealth in the rest of the game and replaces it with wonky frustration. Thankfully, it’s a rarity.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017)
Not only is Hellblade a truly effective horror game, it’s also a mature and well-intentioned look at the effects of mental illness. The latter is what makes the former true, as the titular Senua sees and hears her personal demons everywhere, with the Dualshock controller’s speaker even emitting the whispers of multiple voices in her head (some are helpful, some malicious).
Senua’s trip to Helheim (the Norse realm of Hell) is fraught with physical dangers too, and her already fragile psyche is in peril every time she has to confront and attack the denizens of the underworld.
Yes, Hellblade is full of monsters and you literally go to Hell, but the true horror is in that mental health representation and how effectively it conveys the terror many go through on a daily basis.
Prey (2017)
Arkane has proved itself to be adept at building self-contained worlds filled with detail and depth with its Dishonored series. Prey certainly continues that with an intricate space station filled with inky alien beasts out to murder you. Oh, and some of them can mimic inanimate objects so you can’t look at a Coffee mug again without the temptation to lug a wrench at it.
The star of the show is Talos-I, the space station itself. A sprawling maze of corridors and departments filled with a variety of horrifying threats. In the tradition of System Shock and Bioshock, the environment does a great job of telling the story, allowing you to get on with making a stairway out of futuristic glue blobs to escape a monster that was a stapler five seconds ago.
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Capcom followed on from the success of Resident Evil 7 with a sublime reimagining of its 1998 classic, Resident Evil 2.
The game manages to be both a warmly nostalgic trip back to the height of survival horror greatness and a very good modernization of it. The switch to a behind the shoulder camera could have taken the tension and uncertainty created by the original’s fixed camera angles, but there’s an impressive mixture of sound and shadow that replicates the terror and panic anew.
Not only is Resident Evil 2 among the best PS4 horror games, but it’s also a top contender for best Resident Evil game.
Death Road to Canada (2018)
A hybrid of old-school text adventure and a top-down survival game, Death Road to Canada is a celebration of the zombie apocalypse that’s not afraid to take the piss out of it at every turn.
The meat of the game is looting locations whilst keeping the growing zombie horde at bay, but in between, you’re on that ‘Death Road to Canada’ and having random situations flung at you.
You might chance upon a crazed bear, or enlist the help of a lethal dog as a companion. Death Road to Canada is deliciously silly and yet still manages to recreate the panicked gorefest of post-apocalyptic survival. It may take you through a lot of survivors to get to Canada, but the journey is always entertaining.
Layers of Fear (2016)
First-person horror games where you’re relatively defenseless has been a winning trend in recent years, so to stand out from a growing crowd you have to do something pretty different.
Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear did just that with its consistently trippy, creepy horror set in a dilapidated mansion of a mentally-tortured painter. Every time you turn your virtual head, something has changed in the environment. Sometime’s it small, other times it’s big and bonkers.
There was no reliance on cheap scares or bloodletting, just a steady stream of unease. It stands out for doing something a bit classical in the realm of these best PS4 horror games.
Dying Light (2015)
Techland was all hype and shoddy trousers with previous open-world zombie co-op game Dead Island but in 2015 it released Dying Light and righted a lot of wrongs.
Dying Light refined its formula, threw in an attractive day/night system, and laid on a thick layer of parkour for good measure. The day brought swarms of sluggish undead to jump over and hack to pieces as you searched for supplies in the slums of a virus-ridden city. When night fell, a far nastier form of infected came out to play, and you’re the toy.
The adrenaline rush of escaping that first nighttime encounter by the skin of your teeth is among the purest horror moments in gaming this decade. It’s a more intimidating experience alone but played in co-op, Dying Light becomes a goofy, gory hoot. Throw in the vehicular madness of its expansion The Following and you’ve got the best pure zombie game around, and of course, one of the best PS4 horror games too.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
By the end of the previous console generation, Resident Evil was more successful than ever, but steering further and further away from what made it a survival horror force. The series needed a fresh start and in 2017, we got just that with Resident Evil 7.
Resident Evil 7 returns to a puzzle-filled homestead, a shift to first-person, and some of the most memorable villains Resident Evil has seen for some time. It’s clearly inspired by the likes of Texas Chainsaw in its grimy, Southern hostility, especially in its twisted Baker family.
Then there’s the series using virtual reality for the first time with Sony’s PSVR. The already intense opening hours take on a whole new level of terror when you actually feel like you’re in that crumbling backwoods home.
The Last of Us Remastered (2014)
Naughty Dog capped off the PS3’s lifecycle with perhaps the system’s best game. It was no surprise it found its way to Sony’s console successor soon after to be an easy pick for the best PS4 horror games.
Initially telling the story of Joel, a broken man surviving in the post-apocalyptic world where a fungus has mutated much of the population into vile monsters, The Last of Us then brings in Ellie, a teen girl who may hold the key to finding a cure. Joel reluctantly takes Ellie across America in search of the group who can test for the cure, but the pair bond via their shared traumas and the many close encounters with the infected and the less pleasant human survivors around.
Detention (2017)
This side-scrolling horror from Red Candle Games takes inspiration from real-life political issues in 1960’s Taiwan where martial law ruled all, and also takes on religious elements with Taiwanese culture and mythology. By blending these into one game, Detention is perhaps the closest a game has got to the Guillermo Del Toro school of horror storytelling.
The game focuses on the two remaining students trapped in a school due to an incoming typhoon. Things begin to get very strange and ultimately horrifying for the duo.
There’s nothing else on this list quite like Detention. It has a stumble towards the end, but for most of the time, it’s a slow-building cycle of dread and terror with a bit of a worthwhile history lesson thrown into the mix.
Until Dawn (2015)
Stuck in development hell for a long time, Until Dawn arrived to little fanfare, but before long, it gained a following and is repeatedly brought up when discussions concerning modern horror games arise, and for good reason. It’s clearly among the best PS4 horror games.
Until Dawn is a choose your own adventure meets teen slasher movie and in the spirit of the latter half, having an audience really ramps up the enjoyment factor. The cast of young things (including Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek) can all fall to the cruel hand of fate at multiple points in the story, giving the player the job of role-playing as director. If you wish to go traditional Final Girl route, that’s totally an option, but you can just as easily have a bleak no survivors playthrough or a relatively happy finale with the majority of the cast still breathing (but where’s the fun in that?).
The game takes an interesting turn or two with its plot and characters, and in doing so, it goes beyond simply being a homage to slashers and becomes a fantastic hybrid that remains one of the PS4’s best surprises.
Alien Isolation (2014)
Not only is Alien Isolation the best Alien anything in the last couple of decades, but it’s also the purest form of what made the xenomorph a terrifying entity since the original film.
Alien Isolation takes the gorgeous aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic as its inspiration too. Every clunky monitor and beige padded wall panel is represented when Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda boards the Sevastopol space station and discovers things are going south rapidly thanks to a rogue Xeno deciding to call the place home.
After an extended introduction to the space station, you finally meet the beast, and so begins hours of being hounded, watching every vent, dreading every ping of your motion tracker, and hiding under desks in a futile hope the slathering insectile bastard will leave you alone.
As if dealing with the xenomorph wasn’t bad enough, the remaining crew isn’t exactly friendly either, and the local android population has gone a tad haywire. You can shoot them of course, but that brings the unpleasant risk of the alien showing up.
The final hours take a slightly unpleasant turn, but it is at least in line with the balance of power found in the rest of it. The important thing to remember here is that Alien Isolation is still an utterly fantastic Alien experience in spite of any issues, and worthy of being called one of the best PS4 horror games.
Doom (2016)
Few games revel in their ultraviolence quite as much as Id’s 2016 reboot of Doom. This is a game that rewards the act of ‘Rip and Tear’, after all. As one angry soldier obliterates the minions of Hell whilst on Mars (naturally).
The fast-paced action sees Doom Guy display his full range of gory executions to each and every one of disgusting residents of the underworld for no other reason than he feels like it. What a guy.
Aside from being one of the best PS4 horror games around, it’s quite possibly the most metal video game in history, with a soundtrack that drives that point home like a fist down a demon’s throat. 25 years on from the original Doom, the series is still as relevant and exciting as it ever was, and 2016’s Doom is a big reason for that.
What do you consider the best PS4 horror games to be? Anything you’d add to this list? We’ll be expanding it in future so let us know!
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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