5 of October’s spookiest games, reviewed

Halloween is a week away, and we’ve harvested the season’s spookiest games — from survival horror to gruesome, gothic action.

I race towards my girlfriend as something horrific drags her toward an abandoned mine. I make a snap decision to shimmy across a chasm rather than jump it. Despite nailing every button prompt, this choice wastes crucial seconds — I’m too late to save her.

More fatal decisions await in “Until Dawn,” a remake of a 2015 cult classic about guiding eight unlucky campers through a night of terror. Despite its updated animations and gorgeous mountain snowscapes, the game can’t quite escape the uncanny valley. The original characters were just realistic enough to emote through infatuations, suspicions and betrayals. The remake’s, by contrast, look like unnervingly detailed wax figures — which can, admittedly, enhance the creepy tone (and help sell Rami Malek’s particularly off-kilter performance).

Stuttering graphics and awkward controls aside, “Until Dawn” hooked me as it skated from teen drama to slasher romp to something altogether weirder. But the remake’s improvements aren’t quite solid enough to justify the $60 premium while the PS4 original goes for under a third of that price.

“Silent Hill 2” has haunted me for decades. It was too lurid for my 10-year-old self when it came out in 2001. I attempted it in college only to struggle with its opaque design. But in 2024, a new remake led me to embrace its dense fog and denser storytelling.

While literal zombies, insectile parasites and fungal beasts stalk the rival “Resident Evil” series, “Silent Hill” oozes with horrors inseparable from its characters’ psychology. The game doesn’t reveal much about protagonist James Sunderland — but the fleshy corridors and bizarrely sexualized monsters speak volumes. You’ll steer him to plunge his hand into pustulant orifices in apartment walls, gun down twisted, feminine mannequins and batter inhuman nurses in high heels and tights. Pure as James’ goal to find his missing wife might seem, something’s clearly plaguing his mind.

Never have I played a game that so excruciatingly earned its “Mature” rating. Thankfully, “Silent Hill 2” is worth the trauma. Many questioned Konami for entrusting this remake to a Polish developer known for middling horror games — but Bloober Team pulled it off with potent imagery, oppressive sound design and music that ranges from beautiful to brutal. While its pacing lagged over the 16 hours it took me to complete it (twice the runtime of the original), “Silent Hill 2” is easily the most disturbing and heart-thumping game I’ve played.

“Vessel of Hatred” leans into what surprised me most about “Diablo IV”: its story. On the grandest scale, it’s a game about an “eternal conflict” between heaven and hell and the desperate attempts to transcend it. But on a more personal level, it’s about a grizzled mentor forced to oppose his protege, a father regretting every decision that led to him losing his son, and a daughter, tormented by her mother’s betrayal, shouldering an impossible burden.

While these quieter moments appeal to me most, “Vessel of Hatred” has all the gear-grinding and gory battles you could expect. It’s got a whole new area to explore, an overhauled loot system and new “mercenaries” to add to your entourage. The fresh Spiritborn class empowers martial arts with elemental magic — it didn’t click with me like the Necromancer did, but I welcome its inclusion.

Despite this expansion’s clear aim to extend the game’s replayability, my colleague Alex Curley, who reviewed the main game for NPR, told me that he doesn’t think it “addresses players’ concerns about late game repetition, but the new campaign sure does make progressing through the first 50 character levels engaging.” As a more casual player, “Vessel of Hatred” has been a welcome couch co-op diversion for my wife and I. It’s not as seamless as I’d hope; I had to rely on helpful Blizzard folks to set it up after encountering Xbox glitches that, thankfully, don’t appear to be widespread.

All that said, I can’t blame anyone for getting off the “Diablo IV” treadmill. While this new campaign may be worth the $40, fans have long grumbled about the game’s expensive (and lucrative) cosmetic store. For my money, that’s the real “eternal conflict” at the heart of modern “Diablo” design.

“Batman: Arkham Shadow” blends style and substance, singing like a whizzing batarang. Though the “Arkham” franchise peaked years ago, this virtual reality game from developer Camouflaj lets you embody the caped crusader: solving crimes using keen detective skills and maneuvering from precipice to precipice with a cape and grappling hook.

Like in previous “Arkham” games, you’re encouraged to stealthily take out enemies one by one. Sometimes, your only option is to fight, and luckily the game’s methodical VR combat shines. Requiring physicality, quick reaction time and calm nerves, you’ll have to punch and parry through on-screen prompts. With the exception of a few glitches (my cape would not deploy reliably enough, for example), bat tools are a joy to use. Puzzles could be underwhelming but served the story.

The presentation is also glorious. “Arkham Shadow” is gritty and grimy, particularly when you’re undercover at Blackgate Prison. The game’s music, scored like a Hollywood film, really sets the mood. We’ve seen many excellent blockbuster titles for headsets like the Meta Quest 3 recently, but Batman has swooped in as a top contender for VR game of the year. — Will Mitchell, senior manager, Digital Content Operations

“Alan Wake” has always been about how art shapes reality. “Alan Wake 2: The Lake House,” surprise-dropped this week, takes that premise to its most literal conclusion.

You play Agent Kiran Estevez, a bit player in the main story, as she explores a shadowy government facility’s attempt to manipulate a paranormal entity through captive artists (there’s even a jab at generative AI!). Ever the professional, Estevez dispatches corrupted scientists and Jackson Pollock monsters with the exasperation of an official dealing with a breach in protocol. She’s unfazed even when interrogating a sentient abstract painting.

I only wish the combat was so charmingly efficient. Where “Silent Hill 2” provided a near-perfectly balanced rollercoaster ride, “The Lake House” is either too difficult or way too simple. But if you can forgive its ham-fisted enemy encounters, Remedy’s trademark combination of gameplay and filmed footage make “The Lake House” a worthy postlude to the experimental zaniness of “Alan Wake 2.”