When an influential horror game comes to mind, one that fully captured your interest in the genre, chances are it most likely came from the early to late 2000s. That was the era where horror games blossomed from their rudimentary concepts. Their mechanics, narrative design, and immersive qualities saw incredible improvement and would become the foundation for future horror titles.
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Posts 1Horror series saw new sequels that revitalized and expanded upon their traditional styles, and more unique design approaches from new studios also arose. Here are but a few of the most amazing horror gifts from the 2000s.
Updated on October 14, 2024, by Dennis Moiseyev: No one did horror games quite like developers in the 2000s, creating some of the most groundbreaking and acclaimed survival horror games that would go on to influence modern gaming. From hidden gems to more noteworthy hits in the survival horror genre, these are the best horror games to come from the 2000s era, with a couple of extra ones now added for you to check out.
20 Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth
Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Survival Horror Released October 24, 2005 Publisher(s) Bethesda Softworks, 2K Games Platform(s) PC, Xbox (Original) Developer Headfirst Productions How Long To Beat 12 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseWhile you now have more graphically improved titles like The Sinking City and Call of Cthulhu 2018, the 2000s had the Lovecraftian horror game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which was published by none other than Bethesda. It's an FPS survival horror that takes you to familiar locations from Lovecraft's stories and features iconic enemies like the Deep Ones and Dagon.
As standard for protagonists in a Lovecraftian adventure, you're in the shoes of a private investigator in the 1920s, who's tasked with solving a missing persons case in Innsmouth, where J. Edgar Hoover and his squad of FBI agents are even involved. One of the main highlights is the sanity system, which can cause your character to suffer from a range of conditions, including hallucinations, panic attacks, and vertigo.
19 The Suffering
The Suffering
Survival Horror Shooter Released March 9, 2004 Platform(s) PC, PS2, Xbox (Original) Developer Surreal Software Publisher Midway Games, Zoo Digital Publishing How Long To Beat 9 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseWhat if Stephen King's The Green Mile was made into a horror game? Well, you'd get something like The Suffering, a survival horror game where you play a death row inmate named Torque, who's sentenced to Old Sparky for the murder of his ex-wife and children that he seemingly has no recollection of.
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Posts 1After an earthquake hits the prison, Torque will have to fight some pretty grotesque and challenging monsters, which all come with very original and underrated designs. The other excellent feature this game brings is that it can be played either in the third-person point of view or first-person, whichever you'd find more immersive.
18 Cold Fear
Cold Fear
Survival Horror Third-Person Shooter Released May 17, 2005 Developer(s) Darkworks Publisher(s) Ubisoft Platform(s) PC, PS2, Xbox (Original) How Long To Beat 7 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseAlthough developer Ubisoft is more well-known for its zombie game ZombiU, Cold Fear remains an underrated gem in its library that brings survival horror to a Russian whaler ship. You're a one-man army Coast Guard veteran named Tom Hansen, who's summoned to the boat during an Arctic storm after picking up its distress signal.
What he discovers is that the crew have become zombie-type enemies called Exos. These were created by the tendril-y Facehugger-like parasitic organisms called Exocels, which the CIA and Russian mob were experimenting with. Hansen will have to make sure these parasites don't escape, with combat and movement mixing over-the-shoulder and fixed camera perspectives, which is made only trickier by the storm and the swaying of the boat.
17 Siren
Siren
Survival Horror Released April 20, 2004 Developer(s) Japan Studio Publisher(s) Sony Computer Entertainment Platform(s) PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 Powered by Expand CollapseA PlayStation-exclusive horror game directed by Keiichiro Toyama, who was the creator of Silent Hill and directed the first entry in 1999, Siren takes you to the village of Hanuda in Japan, which is overrun by the reanimated corpses of its villagers known as shibito. The story is also not told in a traditional way, presenting you with ten different character perspectives across Hanuda and not in chronological order.
The atmosphere and foggy environment may remind you of Silent Hill, and the combat is also quite unconventional but fits the lore, as you have melee and ranged weapons that you can use against shibito. However, they won't stay dead — only incapacitated for a limited time. The other mechanic Siren introduces is 'sightjacking,' which gives you a glimpse into the perspective of a shibito enemy.
16 Martian Gothic: Unification
Before Signalis, there was the sci-fi survival horror game Martian Gothic: Unification in 2000, which looks and plays exactly like the 1996 Resident Evil if the S.T.A.R.S. team members arrived at a Mars facility. You have tank controls, fixed camera angles, Martian zombies, and an inventory management system using Vac Tubes for item storage.
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PostsWhat sets it apart from Resident Evil, on top of its setting in the fictional Vita-01 base on Mars, is that there are three different characters you have to manage during your investigation of what's happened to all the crew. If the three ever cross paths with one another, it's an immediate game over due to their alien infection that can fuse them into a 'trimorph.'
15 Clive Barker's Undying
Clive Barker's Undying
Survival Horror FPS Released February 7, 2021 Publisher(s) Electronic Arts, Aspyr Platform(s) PC Developer DreamWorks Interactive, Westlake Interactive How Long To Beat 11 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseBritish author Clive Barker may be well-known for his iconic Hellraiser films and unique horror fantasy novels, but his frightening imagination has haunted games as well. 2001 saw the release of Undying, his first video game unrelated to past films or works. And there are notes of Lovecraft all around it.
It's a first-person shooter set in the post-WWI era, with a story tied to the occult practices of the Covenant family. You play as Patrick Galloway, a former soldier and Jeremiah Covenant’s distant friend summoned to cleanse his family home of an evil curse that conjures up demonic entities. Considering the style and year of its launch, Undying has fluid FPS combat and impressive creature designs.
14 Penumbra: Overture
Penumbra was the series that ultimately started it all for the developer Frictional Games, whose gameplay model and physic mechanics would later carry over into its Amnesia titles. The original plan envisioned Penumbra spanning three games, each defined as an episode, but only two and an expansion got made in the end.
Penumbra: Overture came first in 2007. It’s an atmospheric horror game taking you inside an abandoned mine in Greenland full of mutated animals and strange experiments, armed with nothing but a glow stick. There’s an excellent use of environmental storytelling through its puzzles and collectible letters. The UI icons for eyes to view an object, a hand to interact, and a closed hand to represent you moving an object became notable.
13 Saw: The Video Game
The Saw movie series from horror masterminds James Wan and Leigh Whannell was one of the most iconic of the 2000s for its 'Jigsaw' character John Kramer using sinister time-sensitive traps and escape rooms to torment victims along with the Billy puppet and a Pig-masked character to set up the games. And the series was already in its sixth installment when the 2009 game came out.
The storyline continues with Danny Glover's character, Detective David Tapp, after his gunshot wound at the hands of Zep Hindle in the original 2004 movie, waking up in an abandoned sanatorium rigged with Jigsaw's game. As part of the level design and progression, you have some familiar traps from the films, like the reverse bear trap, and some new ones to escape while fighting Jigsaw's other hostile test subjects.
12 Obscure
Obscure
Survival Horror Released April 6, 2005 Platform(s) PC, PS2, Xbox (Original) Developer Hydravision Entertainment Publisher DreamCatcher Interactive How Long To Beat 6 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseInfluenced by the teen horror films of the early 2000s, Obscure is a perfect blend of dark academia and Resident Evil. Despite the lack of interactive decisions and branching dialogue, this game feels like the predecessor to future horror IPs of Until Dawn and The Quarry from Supermassive. There are a lot of similarities in the settings, characters, and their movement in the game.
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PostsObscure follows a group of students attending a seemingly ordinary high school called Leafmore until strange mysteries occur around them, beginning with their friend’s disappearance. Then, the infrastructure throughout is overgrown by inexplicable vines pulsating with life that bring about grotesquely mutated creatures you must eliminate.
11 F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R.
FPS Horror 10.0/10 Released October 18, 2005 Developer(s) Monolith Productions Publisher(s) Vivendi Universal Platform(s) PC, PS3, Xbox 360 How Long To Beat 8 Hours Powered by Expand CollapseIf there's one game that effortlessly combines the first-person shooter genre with instances of horror, it's 2005's F.E.A.R. The title is short for First Encounter Assault Recon, a fictional military unit formed to resolve matters relating to paranormal and supernatural encounters. F.E.A.R.'s concept is reminiscent of Remedy's Control, a game where the Federal Bureau of Control investigates 'Altered World Events.'
Another connection to the industry-changing studio Remedy is its effective use of the slow motion 'bullet time' in combat, a popular feature of the earlier Max Payne games. Therefore, it's safe to say that this game was way ahead of its time in terms of graphics, combat design, the enemy AI, and seamlessly interweaving psychological horror into the gameplay.
