Halloween Horror Games 2019: Six Best Action Horror Games
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Halloween Horror Games 2019: Six Best Action Horror Games

Nothing makes genuine horror more tolerable than having an arsenal in your back pocket for when things get hairy. In this article of 6 Best Action Horror Games I’ll explore some of adrenaline pumping titles that will make your Halloween 2019.

Halloween Horror Games 2019: Six Best Action Horror Games

When it comes to horror games it always helpful when happen to possess an array of combat and survival skills regardless of your profession. Any character that posesses a degree in firearms and martial arts training would have been a solid fall back option in case their ventures into fine arts and computer science didn’t pan out. And let’s not forget the fact that fate has ordained you as the Earth’s chosen savior as it seems that you are nigh immortal, surviving the many, many deadly situations you find yourself in, and shirking off fatal blows with some pain killers and a can do attitude.

Though the creeps and creatures may still give you a fright, you won’t have to worry when you got the skills and tools to fight back in six games that focus of taking a locked and loaded shotgun to the things that go bump in the night. They may be deadly, but you’re deadlier.

Alan Wake

Genre: Action/Adventure

Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360

If one of Stephen King’s books was turned into a video game instead of a popular movie, Alan Wake would be it. However, I can’t say I was really ever truly scared playing the game except in the very beginning while I was getting used to it, usually just slightly anxious at the most, but I still found it to be one of my favorite action horror games. It’s one of the few games I’ve ever played that could be described as cinematic in a positive way, with a grandiose and cliché movie style script, characters, set pieces, and plot events that I found absolutely entertaining. Yes the game can be silly, it can be ridiculous at times, but it’s one of those cases where I couldn’t help but love it for what it is. It’s a guilty pleasure where I enjoy it flaws and all. In fact, the flaws make it all the better.

The stereotypical characters, the pretentious and sometimes comical dialogue, the convolutedly simple nature of the main conflict, is just all…so delightful. It’s one of those horror games where I actually feel comfortable playing to an extent, contradictory to the intended experience of such games. It’s an experience not unlike what I find a lot of people feel when watching a big budget, Hollywood horror movie. Shudders and chills and the occasional eerie “ooooOOoooo” in the ominous moments. There’s also the jovial, light hearted eeps and ahs in the shock and jump scare moments, and a casual contentment for the rest of the time.

In all honesty, it’s more like a slightly comedic drama thriller where the creepy horror sections were stretched across most of the game. There’s even a level that involves slaying a horde of shadow men to a heavy metal balled, while your friend works some music stage pyrotechnics like a rock star. I admit I was laughing more at the ridiculousness of a lot of it than at the equally admittedly scary aspects of the game. In the end, the action and humor won out over the horror, so while I do recommend this game, I don’t recommend coming into it expecting a really scary experience. With fun third-person shooter gameplay, plenty of spooky romps through classical horror settings like dark forests and abandoned logging mills and mining camps. Alan Wake, while not a scary as a horror video game should be, is nonetheless a blast as a true Hollywood horror movie video game, shrieks, laughs, and all.

Alien Breed Trilogy

Genre: Twin-stick shooter/Action

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

A triple pack of alien blasting action, Alien Breed pays deep homage (as in blatantly copies in nigh every way) the Alien series. A top-down twin stick shooter about creeping through a vast space ship, caked from room to room in the blood and guts of your ship mates. It’s crawling with xenomor-I mean totally original alien species that come in a menagerie of shapes and sizes. “KILL THEM, KILL THEM  WITH BULLETS AND FIRE AND BOMBS!” is the most accurate way to describe the majority of the gameplay as you single handedly gun down hoards of the creatures by the dozens with an arsenal of guns, bombs, tools, and machines to lay waste to the extra terrestrial swarm. Stay on your toes, lock and load, and blast anything that moves in this Aliens-like shoot ’em up trilogy.

Splatter

Genre: Twin-stick shooter/Action

Platforms: PC

It’s a great twin stick shooter, it’s as corny as a farmer’s field and as serious as a rodeo clown trying to do a straight-faced Clint Eastwood impersonation with his pants down, and it’s only a dollar. Worth it. Cheap, violent fun packaged in the form of a black trench coat and fedora wearing edge lord with enough firepower to make the action heroes club proud set on a monster slaying rampage across country in a bloody massacre that will take ages to clean. Also proof that in the event of a worldwide hellspawned apocalypse, the U.S. is the most likely to survive by virtue of having the world’s No.1 supply of gun wielding lunatics.

Well worth the price of a single dollar. Full story campaign with solid quality and quantity of content, plus a survival and multiplayer modes. It’s not perfect, nor does it innovate of invent anything new to the top-down shooter genre, but what it does it does well. Fun, simple, cathartic combat, levels that vary from open and sprawling to more linear and narrow. There’s a typical but still varied arsenal of weapons, plenty of monsters to kill and collectibles to find. You can also enjoy some side missions and choices along the way, as well as a pretty good B-movie story and narration by what is basically the dream persona of basement dwelling neckbeards the world over. If you like shooters, this is a cheap and fun kill fest that I wholly recommend. To sum up, buy this instead of that overpriced Halloween chocolate bar. Far better bang for your buck, and will tide you over until that sweet after-holiday candy sale.

Dead Space

Genre: Action/Adventure

Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

I admit, I’m a bit of a Kinemortophobe, and as a result, I really can’t play this game all that well. Seriously, I just can’t deal with it psychologically. But it’s not just because they’re undead, I can kill undead of all kinds in any fantasy game. Demon thralls in DOOM, no sweat nor worry. Ghouls and mutants in Fallout, pa-lease. Necromorphs?…..Can I get a nightlight…and maybe a teddy bear? The zombies in this game really do resurrect that childhood fear born from watching all the zombie movies my mother loved when I was 4 years old and on to when I was 10, that fear that kept me up at night hoping for dear life that my closet only had clothes in them, and that there wouldn’t be something decaying and drooling mouth open standing over my bed if I closed my eyes too long. The fear that lead to a long lived habit of always ensuring every part of my body was covered whenever I went to sleep to give some vestige of security by being as hidden as possible.

Okay, getting personal I know, and I know that for some people, Dead Space is to horror games in the same way the Evil Dead is to horror movies, but zombies are really just my weakness, and Dead space has some of the scariest zombies I’ve seen in video games. Psychological horror doesn’t scare me because my mind is already FUBAR. Slasher horror doesn’t scare me because I’m too busy thinking of all the better ways the serial killer could have decapitated that screaming girl to be scared by him (much to the unease of my friends and family). No, creature features are where I’m the most mentally vulnerable, and the zombie has been for my life at the top of the pile, right above giant insects, sea monsters, and juuust scraping above evil clowns.

…Oh right, Dead Space. Basically mutated alien space zombies that act like Xenomorphs, and a reminder why I shouldn’t buy games based on popularity despite my fears.

Grim Dawn

Genre: Action-RPG

Platforms: PC, Xbox One

While not really a Horror game per say, I can probably best describe Grim Dawn as the ARPG successor Diablo 1 & 2 wish they had. Dark doesn’t begin to describe thematic tone of Grim Dawn, whose story and lore are steeped in pretty much every kind of horror fantasy concept out there.

Unholy dark cults sacrificing people to evil, eldritch elder gods and their minions that look like a mix between a child of Cthulhu and Satan, check! Ancient curses condemning a whole civilization’s population’s undying souls to unending torment and suffering, check! Primordial ghost aliens  invading Carin (Earth) to perform a body stealing/enslavement and global assimilation of humanity agenda that makes Body Snatchers look mild and merciful by comparison, check! And of course the hordes of barbarous, treacherous bandits and madmen proving that whatever interdimensional demon or otherworldly horror is turning the human race into the proverbial meat snack of the universe, humanity can still be its own worst enemy, checkedy check check check!

Lovecraftian, Occult, and a slight degree of Sci-fi, Grim Dawn is a mishmash of a multitude of supernatural horror elements, but blends them together to create an engrossing, dark fantasy world.

Horror themes aside, Grim Dawn is an ARPG that has solid storytelling, characters, and lore, particularly for the genre, visceral and cathartic hack n’ slash combat and a gorgeously gritty and gloomy world to explore and plunder of all its many secrets and loot. With three expansions that further build the world and add even more to the already packed main game, full modding, and plenty of replayability with its many different class combinations, Grim Dawn is, while not a real horror title in experience. It’s one of the best, darkest, bloodiest, and gruesomest action-RPGs on the market.

How to Survive

Genre: Action/Survival

Platforms: PC

The weapon building of Dead Rising, mixed with Left for Dead zombie variety, stewed in top-down, twin stick action, and a dash of survival elements for extra flavoring. What do you get? Blood, lots and lots of blood. Plenty of guts, bullets, hacking and dismemberin. There’s also trying not to sh!t yourself because you ate too many berries and now have the runs like the Nile river. How to Survive blends everything you would expect if you actually found yourself trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Running around, killing everything you see with whatever you can get your hands on and jury-rig into a functional weapon. All the while trying to keep your belly full, thirst quenched, health up, and body rested. And also, you know…not get eaten.

The story is meh. You are a random guy/girl shipwrecked upon the shore of one island of an archipelago of undead. With the help of a highly questionable Russian survivalist, go from poor schmuck to Rambo, zombie killer as you quest to get off this tropical nightmare. There’s also traveling from island to island, facing greater threats and hazards as you build your arsenal of tools as well as items to keep you alive, and make everything else dead…again.

Though pacing can get slowed due to the survival elements necessitating you keep stocked up on healing items and supplies. There’s also staying rested at the specified safe rooms, the more compact level design, added with the fun combinations of gear and varied array of challenges to deal with, both from enemies and the environment, kept the fun high and the repetition relatively low considering the genre. Definitely recommend this as both a action/survival zombie game, and a potential survival guide for when science goes to far and unleashes a zombie plague that wipes out almost all of humanity.

With list this you’ll have plenty of horror action choices for your Halloween. If you’re looking for more grim tales on the psychological side, be sure to check out next Halloween Horror Games 2019: 5 Best Psychological Horror Games.

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