I’ll admit I’m not the biggest fan of Dead Rising. It’s timer stresses me out and the lead character, photojournalist Frank West, is someone I find incredibly annoying. With that said, it deserves a spot on this list. It’s vast arsenal of combinable weapons and zany, over-the-top action and gore were both hugely appealing reasons to get lost in it.
It also probably helped that it came from Capcom, the undisputed king of the zombie genre.
While not entirely a horror game, BioShock is influenced enough by our favorite genre to claim a spot here. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling, an example of why video games are indeed art, and its numerous elements of survival horror — an emphasis on resource conservation and its setting, the underwater city of Rapture, with its creepy (and awe-inspiring) glass halls that were brimming with “monsters” to dispatch — all make this not just one of the greatest horror games of this generation, but one of the most influential video games of all time.
Released on the cusp of this generation was F.E.A.R., an action/horror hybrid that made little girls scary again.
Alma is a disturbed child with incredibly powerful psychic abilities that give her the power to cause quite a bit of chaos and bloodshed — both of which you get to witness in spades as you try and survive this horrifying game. An evil corporation uses her to its gain and things don’t end well. Also, that Max Payne inspired slow-mo mechanic? Brilliant.