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Your Picks For The Best And Worst Horror Games Of 2013!

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Our fifth annual FEAR Awards are over, but before we embrace each other in a sad, tear-filled group hug, let’s see the results. This is my favorite part. Even I didn’t know which horror games you chose as the best and worst of the year until I tallied up the votes today. There were two games in particular that kicked butt and took names (or awards, rather).

Find out which games won what after the jump!

Best Gore

WINNER: Outlast
2nd Place: Dead Space 3
3rd Place: Dead Rising 3

If you’ve spent even a few minutes with Red Barrels’ survival horror game Outlast, you’re undoubtedly already fully aware of how delightfully gory that game is. Heads in toilets, piles of mutilated bodies, blood-streaked walls — that game had everything an insatiable gorehound could ask for and then some.

Best Arsenal

WINNER: Dead Rising 3
2nd Place: Dead Space 3
3rd Place: Metro: Last Light

It was a tight race between the top two choices, but in the end, Dead Rising 3 took the lead and held it. I totally agree with this, though I’m ashamed to admit I still haven’t beaten the game yet. Even still, I’d go so far as to say it has the best arsenal of the series.

Best Visuals

WINNER:The Last of Us
2nd Place: Metro: Last Light
3rd Place: Tomb Raider

All three of the above games are worthy of this award. They each look ridiculously beautiful, and they’re proof you don’t necessarily need a next-gen console to enjoy next-gen quality graphics.

Best Zombies

WINNER: DayZ
2nd Place: The Last of Us
3rd Place: The Walking Dead – All That Remains

The DayZ standalone took every category it won (three in total) by a landslide. It has zombies, but much like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, they’re not the biggest threat. That award goes to humans.

Best Horror DLC

WINNER: The Walking Dead: 400 Days
2nd Place: BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 1
3rd Place: Dead Space 3: Awakened

We saw a fair amount of horror-themed DLC release last year, and much of it was extremely good. Awakened was scarier than the game it expanded on, Burial At Sea welcomed us back to Rapture, and 400 Days gave us more of Telltale’s Walking Dead. That’s never a bad thing.

Most Original

WINNER: The Last of Us
2nd Place: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
3rd Place: Sir, You Are Being Hunted

I’m glad Sir, You Are Being Hunted got some love, because it’s a very cool “tweedpunk robo-horror” game, but it was no match for the amazing storytelling and unique take on the popular zombie genre that The Last of Us offered.

Best Multiplayer

WINNER: DayZ
2nd Place: Dead Space 3
3rd Place: The Last of Us

Multiplayer hasn’t seen the warmest of welcomes from horror fans, but 2013 gave us a handful of games that had multiplayer components that actually added to the experience. DayZ was built from the ground up as a zombie MMO, Dead Space 3 had optional co-op that was used in a really clever way, and while I don’t have firsthand experience with it, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the competitive mode in The Last of Us.

Best Indie Horror Game

WINNER: Outlast
2nd Place: DayZ
3rd Place: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Outlast took the competition to Mount Massive and chased them around a bit before beating them bloody. I enjoyed every indie game in this category, but developer Red Barrels did a wonderful job of creating a thrilling, visceral, and truly unforgettable experience in Outlast. They earned this

Best Slender Man Game

WINNER: Slender: The Arrival
2nd Place: Haunted Memories
3rd Place: Don’t Starve: The Screecher

Seeing as The Arrival was a bigger and better version of Mark Hadley’s The Eight Pages, which is responsible for every game in this category, I’d say it earned this win.

Scariest Game

WINNER: Outlast
2nd Place: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
3rd Place: Slender: The Arrival

This is always a tough one, because what’s scary is entirely relative to the individual experiencing it. It looks like Outlast scared a large majority of you, because it won trounced the competition without a problem.

Most Disappointing Game

WINNER: Aliens: Colonial Marines
2nd Place: The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
3rd Place: Dead Island: Riptide

Colonial Marines and Survival Instinct are each worthy contenders for worst game of 2013; Riptide was just a lazy, disappointing entry in what initially looked like a promising new horror franchise. All three were hugely disappointing games, but the abysmal Aliens game won(?) this one, and it deserved every angry vote.

Best New IP

WINNER: DayZ
2nd Place: Outlast
3rd Place: The Last of Us

Outside of a handful of great ones — like the three above — there weren’t very many new IPs released in 2013, mostly due to the fact that we saw a new generation of consoles launch at the end of the year, so 2014 will almost definitely make this category more interesting next year.

Most Anticipated Game of 2014

WINNER: The Evil Within
2nd Place: Alien: Isolation
3rd Place: Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season Two

All three of these upcoming games look amazing, but Shinji Mikami’s intensely anticipated survival horror game The Evil Within tends to win every poll its included in, so this win isn’t all that surprising.

Where Is It?

WINNER: Left 4 Dead 3
2nd Place: Silent Hill 9
3rd Place: Doom 4

The biggest surprise here was how few of you voted for Resident Evil 7. Ouch.

Horror Game of the Year

WINNER: Outlast
2nd Place: The Last of Us
3rd Place: Dead Space 3

Would you look at that? My favorite horror game from 2013 was yours, too! Great minds think alike, I guess.


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Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

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AreYouWatching.com: ‘The Watchers’ Interactive Website Is Full of Creepy Easter Eggs

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Are you watching? Ishana Night Shyamalan has clearly been paying attention to her father, M. Night Shyamalan. Not only is she following in his footsteps as a filmmaker, but she’s also embracing a similar mystique surrounding her work.

The new trailer for her feature directorial debut, The Watchers, gives viewers a taste of what’s in store. AreYouWatching.com has launched with even more clues.

Visit the site to join the mysterious creatures that lurk in the Irish forest as you observe a shelter. From the time the sun sets at 7:30 PM until it rises at 5:55 AM, four strangers played by Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Olwen Fouere can be seen trapped inside.

You’ll find several interactive items. Click on the gramophone to set the mood with some spooky music. Tap on the birdcage to hear an ominous message from the parrot inside: “I’m going out, try not to die.” Press on the TV to watch clips from a fake reality show called Lair of Love. And if you tap on the window during the daytime … they’ll tap back.

There are also Easter eggs hidden at specific times. We’ve discovered three: a disorienting shot of Fanning’s character’s car at 5:52 PM, a closer view of the captives at 11:11 PM, and a glimpse of monitors at 12:46 AM. Let us know if you find any more in the comments…

The Watchers opens in theaters on June 14 via New Line Cinema. Ishana Night Shyamalan writes and directs, based on the 2022 novel of the same name by A.M. Shine. M. Night Shyamalan produces.

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