Video Games You Should Never Play By Yourself

Released as a demo during E3 2014, PT was a mysterious new spookfest crafted exclusively for the PlayStation 4 by the pseudonymous 7780s Studios. Players were dropped into a barren room with a single door, and on the other side was a seemingly innocuous hallway that repeated on a loop until gamers met certain exploration requirements. Eventually, an apparition of a deceased woman named Lisa appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly the halls changed into something akin to the Amityville Horror. That's when things got weird.

Radio transmissions recalled murderous events. A discarded fetus talked to players in a bathroom sink. The hall turned to a hellish path of evil eyes. All while Lisa laughed and chased players through her home. Not only did players need someone nearby to keep them from losing their minds, but those extra eyes helped solve PT's obtuse riddles, even if they were peeking out from behind closed hands.

Though early players were thrilled that there was a new horror game coming to the PlayStation 4, PT earned more fans when they discovered its initials stood for "playable teaser." PT was actually hype for a new Silent Hill game from the minds of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. Unfortunately, Konami and Kojima Productions parted ways before Silent Hills could be completed. The PT demo is all that remains for those lucky enough to have downloaded it back in 2014 before Konami yanked it from the PlayStation store.

They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. While the science behind that statement may be true, it's not something that applies to trips to space in a video game. One hour with 2008's Dead Space was enough to prove that. Developed by EA's Redwood Studios, which went on to become Visceral Games, Dead Space was a brilliant third-person, action-horror game that terrified players from the moment they stepped foot on the USG Ishimura.

As engineer Isaac Clarke, gamers went head-to-head with a new galactic menace, the necromorphs. These creatures were once human, but were infected by a massive, ancient spire that seemingly had a connection straight to your worst visions of the monster in the closet. Not only were necromorphs nasty creatures, they were also tough to beat. They had to be dismembered in order to be vanquished, and while it was a great video game mechanic, it made every encounter a white-knuckle battle.

To make things even more dramatic, the AI for the necromorphs always made them incredibly aggressive. While that might mean one necromorph would come at you head on at top speed, it also meant that groups of necromorphs would find different paths of attack so they didn't gum up a hallway. Isaac was never truly safe, which meant players were never at ease.

Supermassive Games' Until Dawn was in development for years before it finally saw the light of day on PlayStation 4 in 2015. Originally conceived as a PlayStation 3 game with a heavy focus on Move controls, Until Dawn featured Hollywood stars like Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere in a slasher film heavily steeped in horror film tropes. What helped Until Dawn stand out and thrive in spite of years in development was the "choose your own adventure" style gameplay. Giving players even a modicum of control over each character's fate lent much more appeal than any number of similar scripted experiences.

Until Dawn is best played with others not because of its scares, but so your friends can also partake in the action. All of the gameplay is pretty simple, with quick-time events making up the bulk of interactivity, so even more casual gamers can get in on Until Dawn without feeling too pressured to perform. What's more, failure doesn't result in a game over, but instead just leads down another path towards one of Until Dawn's numerous different endings.

All those choices and possibilities also mean Until Dawn is the perfect game for replaying with different friends to learn which of your pals would have the best chances of survival if they were stranded in a cabin in the woods.

The Silent Hill series is known for being a very atmospheric and downright terrifying horror franchise. Though the early PlayStation games certainly get a lot of the credit for establishing the tone, the lone Wii game in the family certainly earned its place by being just as tense and frightening as any encounter with Pyramid Head.

As a re-imagining of the original Silent Hill, Shattered Memories put players back in the role of Harry Mason as he searched for his daughter after a car crash on the outskirts of town. Armed with only a flashlight and his cellphone, Harry must solve puzzles and explore the abandoned depths of the snowy town, while also dealing with being transported to the alternate nightmare dimension. There's no combat in Shattered Memories, so you can only evade Silent Hill's monsters...or else find yourself trapped forever in the nightmare realm.

If all that wasn't creepy enough, Shattered Memories also incorporated the Wii controller to act as the cellphone, as messages and calls came through the device's speaker. Now that's creepy.

Okay, it's true: Bloodborne isn't traditionally scary. There aren't many frights you don't see coming, and the action-intensive focus of Bloodborne's gameplay doesn't serve as a great mold for a spookfest either. Even with that all in mind, the Gothic horror at the center of Bloodborne and its creature design is downright gnarly.

Heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, the nightmare landscape of Bloodborne is what makes it such a necessary title for this list. A great deal of horror games focus on traditional mythic undead monsters, but Bloodborne's influences gave it a much more creative creepiness. Let's be real. There are very few games that feature bosses as uneasy on the eyes as the Blood-starved Beast, Ebrietas, and The One, Reborn.

At least with Lovecraft, you know you're getting a tentacle monster or two. Bloodborne's bosses scoff at such simplistic nether-gods. If you don't have 65 skulls popping out of glowing orifices, each with their own mutated baby brain, you aren't tough enough to make it in the land of Yharnam.

There have been numerous Alien games, but it wasn't until developer Creative Assembly went back to the mold of the original 1979 movie that we got an Alien game that made players afraid of the dark once more. Alien: Isolation put players in the role of Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda, as she tried to uncover the fate of her mother's derelict ship. Unfortunately for her, and everyone aboard the space station where Isolation takes place, a xenomorph is on the loose.

Isolation calls back to the wonderful design and atmosphere of Ridley Scott's film, with stark corridors filled with barely-there ambient light. Most of Isolation pits Amanda against a lone xenomorph as it hunts her down through each and every section of the station. Creative Assembly created a spectacular dual-intelligence for the creature, with one brain controlling its body, and the other providing hints as to the player's whereabouts throughout the game.

The AI keeps tensions high, not only making every new hallway terrifying, but exhausting players mentally by forcing them to constantly be on the defensive. Couple that with a haunting score culled from the original film, and you've got a game that's barely safe to play in broad daylight with all the house lights on.

Like the other entries on this list, Deadly Premonition is one that's best experienced playing with others. Unlike other games that are too spooky to encounter alone, Deadly Premonition is worth having someone to play with due to its unique approach to storytelling. Imagine if you will, Twin Peaks meets The Room. That's just about where Deadly Premonition starts, and it only gets weirder from there.

As FBI agent Francis Morgan, players arrive in Greenvale to solve the murder of a teen girl. This death bears a striking similarity to several others across the country, but it's the Greenvale case that takes things up a notch with its numerous supernatural elements. Oh, and there's the presence of a second bad guy, the Raincoat Killer, that Francis must deal with while trying to solve the case. We haven't even talked about the government conspiracies, odd psychological elements, or that Francis might not be as reliable a protagonist as expected.

Deadly Premonition doesn't have the greatest visuals, or a memorable soundtrack, and the characters are so bizarre, it's almost hard to believe this game made it out of development at all. To be fair, it almost didn't, but that lack of polish and abundance of absurdity is what makes Deadly Premonition such a fantastically good bad game. And one you definitely want to play with some friends around to witness.

After creating the Resident Evil series and ushering that franchise into legendary game status, designer Shinji Mikami turned his attentions to new horrifying game. Mikami believed the survival horror tropes had evolved to the point where players weren't so easily scared anymore. So with The Evil Within, he and his development team made sure to instill panic and tension in players by relying on some classic tricks.

Almost all of The Evil Within's battles take place in tight, confined spaces, making escape from whatever disgusting creature is chasing you nearly impossible. Ammunition and weapons are in short supply, meaning every shot and strike must count–otherwise some weird guy with a safe for a head may chop you in half. Oh, did we forget to mention the nightmarish character designs?

Yeah, The Evil Within is chock full of nasty looking folks looking to put you down for good. Some may have barbed-wire heads; some might look as if they were caught in an explosion in a glass factory. They're all creepy and violent, but what makes the world scarier is the idea that something more monstrous is the driving force. These creatures are out to get you, but like you, they're just victims of a greater evil...(wait for it)...within.

Though FEAR is revered for being a first-person shooter with some of the best artificial intelligence in the genre, it's also home to more than its fair share of creepy supernatural elements. For much of FEAR's campaign, players are rewarded with sharp shooting and challenging computer opponents. Like all good games, just as players become their most powerful, they encounter new, tougher elements to put them back in their places.

Oh, you just cleared out a huge room full of bad guys? Then where did that little girl come from over in the corner? And how did she suddenly appear right in your face? If the world wasn't already terrified of pale, creepy children at the end of dark corridors, FEAR ensured we'd walk away from them forever if we ever saw them again.

Lights dim. Body parts and pools of blood appear. What was once a very good shooter immediately turns into a very good shooter that has you jumping at every moment. Whatever reflexes you had are shot, making surviving the game that much more challenging.

Few developers have a penchant for mixing storytelling and action in the way Remedy does, which is what helps make Alan Wake such a unique thriller compared to the rest of the games we've been talking about. Though Alan Wake isn't an outright frightfest, it's a well-crafted mystery in a town that recalls echoes of Twin Peaks and Stephen King's The Dark Half, where an author must confront elements of his latest suspense novel that have come to life.

The episodic structure of Alan Wake keeps pacing on point, constantly moving players towards the ultimate goal of finding out what the heck is happening, while also deepening the mystery with every chapter. While trying to get to the bottom of a bizarre occurrence, Alan must also fend off the darkness and actual shadow creatures that aren't just out to kill him, but everyone that lives in his town, too.

Alan Wake won't have you gripping your significant other's hand in fright, but it will keep you from ever taking up writing that great American novel you've been planning. Unless you're already almost finished. In that case, it's already too late.

SadSquare Studio's 2018 survival horror game Visage has been highly anticipated since the project was first announced in 2015. Early previews of the game saw it as a spiritual successor to Silent Hill P.T., which was abandoned long before the full game was ever released. As fans of the survival horror genre were unanimously upset by the cancellation of the Silent Hill game, Visage seemed like a perfect replacement to give fans of horror the scream-fest they so desperately wanted.

As with Silent Hill P.T., players find themselves in a photorealistic home, stalked by a force that frequently remains unseen. The subtle changes in the surrounding environment begin to convince you that you might just be seeing things. As your protagonist wanders the house trying to piece together the violent history of past tenants, players must worry about their sanity while attempting to stay in well-lit areas and away from the horrors that will make you lose your mind. Because the house is set up in a semi-open-world format, you are given free rein of the environment, including rooms that aren't relevant to the plot or puzzles. This open environment only builds the tension, as you never know when something will come for you and the large map makes escape particularly tricky.

Unless you've been living under a rock, chances are you've heard of the long-limbed antagonist who doesn't appreciate being looked at named Slenderman. Born from an internet contest, this nightmare has been haunting our screens for years in one form or another. From movies to games and creepypastas, Slenderman is a true modern urban legend. Of all of the incarnations of him, Blue Isle Studios' 2013 survival horror game Slender: The Arrival may be the best known and most feared.

In Slender: The Arrival, you play as Lauren, childhood friend of Kate from the game Slender: The Eight Pages. There are numerous tasks and mechanics throughout the different areas of the game that keep players on their toes, changing the rules as soon as they get comfortable. Between trying not to look at Slenderman in the forest to making sure that you shine your flashlight on the Chaser in the mines, all of the different rules can get confusing. Mixed with the panic of suddenly seeing an enemy and having to make a split-second decision on which rule to follow, and Arrival will keep your heart rate elevated throughout your entire playthrough. The jump scares aren't in short supply on this game, so make sure you're in a well-lit and populated area before you play it.

While horror games are already terrifying enough on their own, the option to play through these games in VR has only added to the terror. If there's one thing VR is good at, it's making the player feel totally immersed in an environment. The only problem is that may not be entirely desirable if the environment is the Baker home from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Though Resident Evil 7 is scary enough to play through on console, when you place that VR headset on to experience the nightmare in a fully immersive way, you'll find that you're scared of more than just the Bakers themselves. 

Resident Evil 7 has been praised as one of the most innovative and horrifying in the storied franchise. Even when placed against the fan favorites of the past, this installment really raised the bar. Having to solve intricate puzzles and use stealth to navigate your way through the Baker home replaced the normal "grab a gun and kill some zombies" formula. This new, smarter version of horror forced players to remain calm enough to solve difficult problems while still keeping their adrenaline high enough to get themselves out of harm's way throughout the game. This constant balancing act helped to create the perfect horror game that will haunt players with not only jump scares, but slow-burn terror as well. Needless to say, this isn't a game you want to play alone.