Resident Evil 4 shook the world when it was released in 2005, completely changing the face of gaming forever. Unfortunately, going back to the original almost feels derivative. It is the origin of the over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter, after all. So it feels overly familiar. Thankfully, Resident Evil 4 Remake captures all the magic of that experience with a few tweaks for a modern take.
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Once you prove you’re a bad enough dude to rescue the president’s daughter, you’ll probably be hungry as a zombie for similar content. But don’t worry - we have plenty of games to satisfy that insatiable appetite.
10 Resident Evil 2 Remake
There’s nothing quite like an origin story. The confident, himbo-adjacent Leon you meet in Resident Evil 4 cut his teeth in the dark and dreary Raccoon City as a clueless rookie cop, dealing with the lumbering dead and avoiding the persistent Mr. X. He wasn’t alone, thankfully - he had a few allies, including the returning Ada Wong and the tenacious Claire Redfield, your other playable protagonist.
Resident Evil 2 is a tense, terrifying experience that keeps you in the shadows as you try to escape alive. Its setting is the most frightening of all the Resident Evil games - it’s not some labyrinthian house or remote cultish village - it’s a city like any other. It’s a perversion of the familiar, a haunting reminder that things can go bad faster than you’re prepared for.
9 Resident Evil 3 Remake
Resident Evil 3’s remake should be bundled with Resident Evil 2’s - they are two sides of the same event, though they never significantly overlap. In it, you predominantly play as Jill Valentine - an elite STARS agent in the Raccoon City Police Department, as she tries to escape the cataclysmic event overtaking everything, and everyone, around her.
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The action of Resident Evil 3 is ramped up significantly from Resident Evil 2 at the expense of horror. While this fits the more combat-experienced nature of Jill and her co-lead, Carlos Oliviera, it may be a tad disappointing when coming off of a more terror-oriented experience. Still, it’s a game worth your time - especially if you’re into B-movies.
8 The Last Of Us Part 1
A game that needs no introduction, The Last of Us is one of the most celebrated games of all time, enjoying a boost in profile since its extremely successful HBO adaptation. Balancing high emotion with tense scares, The Last of Us tells a somber story about a post-apocalyptic world still dealing with the ongoing threat of a fungal infection that turns people into feral mushroom monsters.
Like Resident Evil 4, you’re charged with protecting a younger girl as you escort her to safety. Ellie set the bar pretty high regarding companion characters, somehow putting you at ease with her presence alone - she’s capable and funny. As The Last of Us is available on PC now, there’s no better time to jump in.
7 Dead Space Remake
What’s scarier? The cold, uncaring vacuum of space, or the twisted bodies of what once were humans stalking you through the dark? Dead Space’s remake is a tense horror experience that ratchets up the fear factor - you’re not Leon S. Kennedy, who was still trained for combat even in his rookie days. Instead, you’re an engineer, trying to survive long enough to find your girlfriend on the USG Ishimura.
The original Dead Space took a lot of pages from Resident Evil’s book - to be fair, most shooters did - but went for a much tighter, lonelier experience. There are no goofy moments here, no banter or cheesy jokes. Instead, it is just one long, terrifying experience that will haunt your worst nightmares.
6 Prey
While it’s not a survival horror game, Prey hits on many of the same elements. It’s a lonely, desolate experience - what friends you find are few and far between, and the space station you call your home is crawling with hostile alien beings known as the Typhon. Unfortunately, it is already too late for Talos 1. But it’s not too late for Earth.
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As Morgan Yu, you can harness the abilities of the Typhon through neuromods as you trek through the deserted halls of the space station. You’ll feel more powerful than you ever would in any Resident Evil game - yet, you're just as solitary.
5 SOMA
The sea is deep and wide and so terribly lonely. SOMA is an interesting experience, a game that focuses heavily on the realities of being while simultaneously trying to scare your pants off. What was a basic brain scan in modern-day Toronto becomes a nightmare when you awake at the bottom of the sea further in the future than you were ever meant to be.
And that’s just the opening. You can play Soma as a story vehicle, making the hostile creatures docile as you explore the research station. Or, it can be an intense game of cat and mouse - unlike in Resident Evil, you have no way to fight back. Your only move is forward.
4 Silent Hill 2
There’s something about mid-2000s horror games that just hit differently. Silent Hill 2 is considered by many to be one of the best horror experiences ever made, weaving an intense, psychologically driven story with the kind of dread that only video games can give. Welcome back to Silent Hill, the little resort town where the fog cloaks monster and man alike.
You’re not entirely helpless as James Sunderland - but you’re not exactly ready to face the nightmare creatures, either. James is, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary man. If Resident Evil 4 didn’t give you the scares you wanted - or you felt a little too powerful as Leon, this classic is always open for newcomers.
3 Signalis
We should never have dug so deep. Signalis is a lo-fi love letter to survival horror, its terror cosmic and unending. In it, you play as Elster, a Replika - synthetic human - who is searching for her beloved human partner in a vast, corrupted system of tunnels full of flesh and blood and the twisted bodies of beings who were like you once.
Signalis is a game unstuck in time - something that could only be made now, though everything from its art style to its use of blocky, Soviet-style architecture harkens back to eras gone by. It’s a perfect distillation of the survival horror experience.
2 Alien: Isolation
Like her mother before her, Amanda Ripley did not sign up for this. Alien: Isolation perfectly captures what made the original Alien film so unique - there are only so many places to run, and, eventually, the Xenomorph will find you. Is it around that corner, in that vent? Is it preparing to strike - can you even trust your instincts?
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Winning is unimportant. You can’t fight what is almost indestructible. All you can do is survive - and that has to be enough. So go on, and make your space momma proud.
1 Darkest Dungeon
Oh, so you like games set in European-flavored villages haunted by mostly man-made horrors beyond your comprehension? Well, that’s great because Darkest Dungeon is a lot more of that - just be prepared for a full gameplay and aesthetic shift.
Darkest Dungeon is a turned-based RPG that treats your party as nothing more than disposable bodies to trample over in pursuit of your goals. You crawl through winding, wretched dungeons with dwindling supplies and your shadowy companions clinging to their sliver of life. Leon probably wouldn’t like it here. But you might.
NEXT: Resident Evil 4 Remake: Scariest Enemies
