411 Games Top 5 10.29.09: Week 35 - Top Horror Games

Posted by Todd Vote on 10.29.2009

Our Halloween celebration concludes with a look at our favorite horror themed games. From Resident Evil to Silent Hill, all the way to... Shining Force? See how it all comes together inside.

Week 34 is in the books, and it may have featured the most positive comments section yet for the Top 5, so lets get right into all the awesome lists and more.


Comment Time with Toddo!

Our first bit of feedback is an email from reader John Bateman, John decided not to stop with a top 5, and sent us his top ten villains, with honorable mentions. Check it out below:

Honorable Mentions: Ganon: Zelda , Ridley: He's a Dragon why not add him here & Jecht

10: Revolver Ocelot

9: Nobunaga Oda: One of the most vicious and sadistic men in all of history, and you saw it firsthand in the Samurai Warriors and Onimusha games.

8: Mother Brain: Metroid

7: Nemesis: Resident Evil. a near un-killable monster, what's not to fear?
6: Dracula: The King of Vampires deserves to have a spot he's survived the best that the Belmonts could dish out.

5: Bowser: The oldest and most recognizable villian in all of VG history.

4: Shao Kahn, Nightmare and Heihachi Mishima

3:Sephiroth. a man responsible for the single most memorable and heartbreaking moment for gamers worldwide

2: Kefka: he killed the world, Nuff said

1:Saren from Mass Effect: he tried to unleash an genocidal race of machines upon all civilization

Thanks for taking the time to email John, and thanks for all the great ideas on future subjects.

no target terror love?
Posted By: Guest#0914 (Guest) on October 21, 2009 at 11:38 PM

No, Mark only joins us on rare occasion, and contrary to popular belief, he may be the only person in the entire world to have ever played Target Terror.

Maybe the format could be different every other week? Either way always a good read!
Posted By: Guest#0406 (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 12:13 AM

Thank you kind sir, it is always appreciated to hear that.

An honorable mention for Andrew Ryan FTW. Best twist in a video game I have ever expirienced.
Buuuuuuuuut no love for Robo-Hitler?
Posted By: Bruce Lee's ghost (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 02:04 AM

Who the hell is robo-Hitler?

Game play wise I would always give Bowser a number one spot since you play against him and as him in so many different games in so many different ways. None of which are unpleasant.

But straight up "Awesomeness" has to go to Goro. If you ever played Mortal Kombat one and can remember the first time you came upon this bad ass of bad asses that is Goro, you were blown away. Then left wondering... okay how do I beat THIS?! Plus not even Sonya's "Low blow" could affect him! And not because he didn't have testicles, but because they were undoubtedly made of steel or rock.
Posted By: AG Awesome (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 07:32 AM

Bet you guys can't guess how this got in here? No it's not only because it is MK related. It's so I could tell AG Awesome that he was close, Sonya did not have a low blow in the original MK, or any MK that I can think of. You are thinking of Johnny Cage my friend. But on a side note, Goro was a complete bad-ass.

Lists!!

Props to Todd for mentioning Starkweather (I think I was one of the "readers" who mentioned Cox) ... but wouldn't Piggsy be a better top 5 entry? he was AWESOME!
5)Neo Cortex (no love for Clancy?)
4)Piggsy
3)Nemesis
2)Psycho Mantis
1)Albert Wesker
Posted By: BBM (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 07:49 AM

So many choices, so little spots.
5. Ganon
4. M. Bison
3. Shang Tsung/Quan Chi (it's a toss up as to who's the bigger backstabbing son of a bitch)
2. Dr. Wily
1. Bowser
Posted By: His Bubbliness (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 12:15 AM

Good lists, but I'd probably say:
5. Bowser (Super Mario Bros.)
4. Seymour (Final Fantasy X)
3. Ganon (Ocarina of Time)
2. Ridley (Super Metroid)
1. Magus (Chrono Trigger)
Posted By: Empire Of Ownage (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 12:25 AM

Honorable mentions: Sadler - Resident Evil 4, Lou - Guitar Hero 3, Joker - Batman: AA

5. Bowser - all Mario Games
4. Psycho Mantis - MGS
3. Albert Wesker - Resident Evil 5
2. Tyrant - Resident Evil
1. Nemesis - Resident Evil 3
Posted By: Hdj360 (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 02:51 AM

To me, the main thing that makes a villain great is the justification for his or her actions. Not necessarily that they are right, but that their actions could be justified when viewed from the right angle. As such, my picks are somewhat different from the norm and have a decided RPG slant.

#5. Jecht/Sin - Final Fantasy X (He became Sin voluntarily to save Spira and later performed destructive acts solely to guide his son to him so he could finally put things at peace between them.)

#4. Liquid Snake - Metal Gear Solid (His actions were due to a perceived inferiority complex and a desire to get back at his father, rather than blind evil.)

#3. Albert Simon - Shadow Hearts (Wishing to wipe the world clean so that a new breed of humanity might be born free of greed and corruption. Driven by personal heartache and sadness, his actions can be justifiable despite their extreme nature.)

#2. Luca Blight - Suikoden II (While undoubtedly cruel and evil, his past can serve as a reasonable, but not justifiable reason. Luca's mother was raped and slaughtered in front of his eyes by bandits while his father fled in fear. As a result, he grew up lacking empathy and harboring only hatred. With such trauma and no help, one can see why he would harbor such violent tendencies.)

#1. Krelian - Xenogears (I've said previously that Xenogears is my favorite game, and Krelian is a big reason. His actions, while extreme, were rooted in a deep-seeded sadness for the limits of humanity. Krelian's ultimate goal was to evolve humanity to a better form that wouldn't suffer pain and loss. A noble goal, just the wrong type of implementation.)
Posted By: Adam B. (Guest) on October 22, 2009 at 09:08 AM

"The Playstation received as much love as the SNES did. So the real question to you readers now becomes this: Which was the better system? The PS1, or the SNES?"

I have to say SNES. Like stronelis said, the PS1 had less games that either aged gracefully, or weren't comprehensively surpassed by their sequels. As for our main subject, I'll pick the following:

Honourable mention: The Witch from Left 4 Dead. The little girl sobbing noises juxtaposed with the spooky music that got louder as you got closer was unsettling. It gets worse when you try and fail to get the headshot achievement before basically getting your arse kicked by her.

5. Glados (Portal) - This character is arguably like Shodan from the System Shock games, except with a distinct black comedy factor going for her.
4. Psycho Mantis (Metal Gear Solid) - He accounted for some of the best spots in the game. Activating the rumble to telekinetically move the Dual Shock, reading your Memory Card, and best of all, having to plug your Dual Shock in port 2 to counter his telepathy.
3. The Chainsaw guy (Resident Evil 4). While there was boss fights in the game that took some doing, I put them on the list because Chainsaw Charlie (as I liked to call him) could inflict instant death.
2. Evil Otto (Beserk) - The earliest example of a relentless unstoppable game villian that I could think of.
1. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII).
Posted By: WadeMcG (Guest) on October 23, 2009 at 01:54 AM

Thank you all so much for the feedback, and I love reading the lists, especially the well thought out lists like WadeMcG and Adam B. It gives a bit of insight into the thought process of the readers. Keep it coming.


This column is approved by Christina Hendricks


Welcome back to the Top 5, as our little mini-celebration of Halloween, and all things spooky concludes. This week we are taking a look at our Top 5 favorite Survival Horror type games. It's a fact that most people enjoy a good scare, so below you can see what scared us as far as gaming. Be sure to leave your favorites in the comments.

First up is Lee Price. Have you sent your gaming questions to Lee yet? If not be sure to get him some questions so he can get the Ask 411 Games up and running soon. You can sendSend your gaming questions here! to Lee's email: [e-mail]

Lee "Phantom" PriceHONORABLE MENTIONS

Resident Evil - Dogs and windows. That moment alone gets the game an honorable mention.

Fear Effect - Unbelievably frustrating at times, but great graphics and an adult oriented story made this game worth playing.

Silent Hill - The original may not be the best but its still damned good.



5.Parasite Eve 2 - A brilliant little game mixing survival horror and RPG. I never did get to play the first in the series but I remember playing this game quite vividly as a teen for two reasons. First the shower scene in which you see a bit of side boob. Mana from heaven for a horny teenager with limited internet access at the time. The second is the massive boss that followed that scene. I was terrified the entire time I was running around that balcony trying to take down an enemy that was the size of the hotel I was staying in with a shotgun. Classic game if you can find it.

4.Resident Evil 2 - I'm a massive fan of the Resi games, as you can probably tell with this list, and I consider Resident Evil 2 to be the pinnacle of the old style games. This game was just such a step up from the first in the series, graphically and gameplay wise. Being stalked by Mr X. in the second scenarios was always disconcerting, especially seeing as he didn't react to anything you shot him with, and William Birkin's massive eye was just weird. Couple that with massive alligators and the usual assortment of zombies and dogs and you have a classic horror game.

3.Dino Crisis - There is much love for the PS1 going on in this list. That is because the little 32-Bit wonder was the breeding ground for top quality survival horror games when the genre really started getting off the ground. Dino Crisis gets in because of the pant wettingly terrifying battle against a massive T-Rex when you have your back to a locked door and have nowhere to run. All you can do is time your shotgun blasts and hope the massive beastie can't wrap its jaws around you. And joy of joys if you survive that you get to be chased around by an assortment of other dinosaurs as well as encountering Rexie again later on.

2.Resident Evil 4 - I'm not sure whether to add this game because it didn't really scare me all that much, outside of a few jumps. Then again for me this is one of, if not the best games of last generation. I absolutely love this game. Everything about it just makes me want to play it more. Granted you get the usual B-movie script like you do with all Resi games, but Resident Evil 4 made killing Ganados fun. And I lied when I said this game didn't scare me. Come up against a big guy with a sack on his head and wielding a chainsaw when you're armed with a pistol... that's a shit your pants moment right there.

1.Silent Hill 2 - I could just say Pyramid Head and have that be the end of my reasons why this is number one. But the game is so much more than this iconic character. Konami do psychological horror better than anyone with the Silent Hill series and the tension in this game is absolutely unbearable at times. Cracking storyline too, but the atmosphere, the sounds, the feel of Silent Hill 2 is what puts it above and beyond any survival horror game for me. Must be experienced.

Next up is a man who is making his return to the games zone. Joshua's re-debut in the game zone is the column Level Up, in which Joshua details what he would like to see in future updates from Microsoft.

Joshua "Rotting Corpse" RicheyHONORABLE MENTIONS

Clock Tower - The first video game to ever strike fear into me.

5. Resident Evil 2 - It's pretty messed up that it was when you opened up a door in Resident Evil and heard a bunch a zombies nomming on a corpse, that it was a good thing. At least then you knew what was about to go down. It was when things got quiet that your butt hole would clench up and your heartbeat would start to race.

4. Eternal Darkness - Everything about this game was terrifying. The lighting, the sound, the story, the camera angles, the voice acting, it all combined to make a game that scared the bijesus out of me more times than I'd care to admit here.



3. F.E.A.R - While I love F.E.A.R, I also hate it. I love the gameplay and the action; I just hate having the shit scared out of me, which is something that F.E.A.R did constantly.

2. Silent Hill - The original Silent Hill is still the only game in the series that I've played. I was a quick learner. I knew half way through that first game that I didn't want anything to do with foggy towns, flashlights, and undead nurses. No thank you.

1. Dead Space - Dead Space probably benefits from being fresh in my memory, but I think that people will still be talking about this series 5-10 years from now. It took elements from other games on this list and enhanced them. A fantastic survival horror game that'll be scaring us with sequels for years to come.

That brings us the man from the movie zone. Steve Gustafson. Steve's latest Hollywood 5&1 is the Celebrity Trick or Treat edition. Check it out when you get a chance, by clicking here.

Steve "Ghost" GustafsonHONORABLE MENTIONS

Hunt the Wumpus - I caught flack for owning a Texas Instrument computer but this game was intense (as a kid). As you got closer and closer to the Wumpus...the thrill level rising...just when you think you're safe...BOOM! You walked right in the lair of...the Wumpus!.

Doom 3 - You know what always got me? "They took my baby!"

BioShock - "I am Andrew Ryan and I am here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man in Washington; it belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican; it belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow; it belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture." Scary good.

5.System Shock 2 - Man, this list was difficult to put together. I had to leave off some gems. Sorry Half-Life 1 Anthology. Sad fact: This is another game I borrowed from a friend and have not returned it yet. Horrible. Just horrible. But this game is awesome. Not was. Is. You are the lone troop fighting the outbreak of a genetic infection on board of a ship. Not only is it a great first-person shooter but it hinted at the possibilities the horror video game genre held. As solid as this game is, the most disturbing factor to me was the sound. Along with the graphics, the use of sound sent chills while playing this. Shock to the system and my senses!



4.Condemned: Criminal Origins - Speaking of disturbing! As my tastes in what I play changes like the weather, I loved this game because it goes the realistic route. As realistic as fighting crazy vagrants while trailing a serial killer is. Then again, I live close to Baltimore. The only knock I have on this game is it's almost too much. I know going in that playing this game is going to mess with my head so I have to be "in the mood". Make that "in the mood" to explore the doom and gloom environments that this game presents.

3.Resident Evil - At the time, nothing could touch Resident Evil to me. It was scary, mesmerizing, and fun all rolled into one. This is what survival games should be! All I have to say is dogs through the window and you know what I'm talking about. Another game that opened my eyes to what games could be. What they could provide in terms of entertainment and scare factors.

2.Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - GameCube love! Eternal Darkness took Resident Evil and injected the SANITY METER! An instrument that measure your state of mind and effected how you played. As you encounter psychological horror after psychological horror, your insanity grows. You get the usual sounds, like footsteps, rattling chains, women and children screaming, doors slamming. Then you get disoriented with walking on the ceiling after entering a room or the walls bleeding. It even touches your TV, making you question your own stuff. How crazy was this game? It was the first video game published by Nintendo, rather than a third-party developer, to be rated M for mature by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

1.Silent Hill 2 - It was hard to pick which Silent Hill got to me the most out of the first three. This gets the edge thanks to Pyramid Head. Whoever thought this...character up...have mercy on your soul!

Last this week we have another return of sorts in the fact that Armando Rodriguez has taken time to join our Halloween celebration. Armando has been absent from the Top 5 due to being extremely busy. Let me just say welcome back. Be sure to read The Ultra Combo News Report here at 411 each and every Monday.

Armando "The Rage" Rodriguez

5.Shining Force: I know this is quickly becoming my Target Terror; I always find ways to bring it up. However, my first experience with this game was when I was six years old and the end boss was really scary for me. It was the first time I got cold chills down my spine, meeting this three-headed dragon monstrosity, right after beating who was supposed to be the end boss. I think that the sensation of achievement I felt when I finally took him down is what turned me into such a life-long fan.

4.Fallout 3: Another game that is not supposed to be scary, but I have found myself jumping out of my seat when an unexpected feral ghoul shows up on a dark tunnel or when you stumble upon a deathclaw lair long before you are supposed to: It's not fun to meet them at level 7, when you know you need to be level 16 or so to be competitive.

3.Doom: Probably the scariest game my young mind played at the time. I was around 9 when I first experienced the blocky, pixilated demons in this game. I have never been a fan of survival horror games because I used to have nightmares about the demons in this game. Heck, I am almost 25 now and I still can't stand survival horror games. Anyway, I remember I used to go to church around this time and one of the priests started preaching about it and how it was the devil trying to posses our minds and such. I was naive enough to believe it and never played it again.



2.Alien vs. Predator 2: I don't remember if this is the one that came with a free pair of underwear, you know, because it was scary and stuff. I think it might have been the original, but I loved the sequel more than the first. The predators are cool, so I was never scared of them in-game, but the aliens really made me crap my pants sometimes. Even as the all-mighty predator, aliens where always coming from where you least expected them to and made me jump in my seat.

1.Resident Evil: There is one reason this game pretty much created the whole genre. It was scary, it made you think about survival and everything was scarce. You could see scary zombies and have a gun in your hands, but you knew bullets where too precious and wasting them on a couple of zombies meant certain doom. I don't know what was scarier, the zombies, or the prospect of an empty gun.

Todd VoteHONORABLE MENTIONS

Friday The 13th NES - Yeah, this game scared the crap out of me when I was a youngster. The reason it doesn't rank higher on the list is because no matter how I tried, I was never able to finish this game. Come to think of it, every time I seen Jason Voorhees, it was met with an untimely death. Fuck that guy.

Ghostbusters - Yeah, just an honorable mention. I went back and forth on whether or not this would be classified as survival horror. I would say yes, but just barely. Either way it was a fun game that had me killing ghosts and ghouls. Honorable mention worthy if I say so myself.

Resident Evil 5 - With nearly all semblance of survival horror gone from this franchise by this sequel, it barely makes the list. Don't get me wrong, the game itself I thought was great, but it is not something I will put in when I am in need of some good scares.

5.Evil Dead Games - On the comedy side of survival horror, but still fun games, made better by the inclusion of Bruce Campbell. If I had to pick on as my favorite, it would probably be Regeneration. In case you don't know Regeneration was a what if type of sequel. It looks at the series as if Army of Darkness never happened, and Ash was committed for what happened at the cabin.

4.The Suffering - This game was awesome. Nothing screams horror more than a prison haunted by inmates past. The game also included several documentaries detailing the prisons the game was based on, spooky stuff. Dr. Killjoy was a creepy bastard, and the way he would just pop up and start talking to Torque was always at a time when you were least expecting it.

3.Indigo Prophecy - Again, I went back and forth on whether or not this would qualify as Survival Horror. Let's do a check list. A group of people looking to jump start Armageddon? Check. Supernatural powers? Check. Only one person with the power to stop the evil plot? Check. Battle against giant creepy bug like creatures? check. The game is probably not classified as survival horror by most, but if you have ever played it, you should know that it easily could be presented as such.

2.Resident Evil 2 - To this day, still my favorite Resident Evil game out of all of them. The story of Leon Kennedy, and Claire Redfield will always have a spot on my list. Not only was it a kick ass game, but it was the first Resident Evil to pop up on a Nintendo console. Besides what would a list of Survival Horror be with out a zombie game or two.



1.Left 4 Dead - The only thing that made this number one, instead of Resident Evil 2, is the fact that I can enjoy this game with friends. RE 2 probably deserves the nod, but Left 4 Dead captured the heart of a zombie movie better than RE did in my opinion. If there is one thing I have learned from zombie flicks it's that there is always a group of survivors to start with. Left 4 Dead captured this perfectly. An adverse group of people forced to put differences aside for the survival of the whole group.


Bonus Video:
Jason Voorhees kills everything... in under 10 minutes



I hope you enjoyed the little Halloween celebration we had here at the Top 5. What are your favorite horror themed games? Be sure to let us know down in the comments section. Here's hoping you all have a fun and safe Halloween. Be sure to get the kids candy checked before eating any. You never know what people will do these days.