Whenever you have an influential horror game in your 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.
Past series expanded their horror library with new sequels that revitalized and expanded upon their traditional styles, and more original design approaches from new studios also arose. Here are but a few of the horror gifts from the 2000s.
Updated on August 5, 2023, by Dennis Moiseyev: The 2000s are a gold mine for horror games. There's really no end to the amazing titles that came out of that period, almost too many to account for. That's why we couldn't help but add a few more to give a definitive list that best considers all those that changed and elevated the horror genre to what it is today.
15 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.
What 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.'
14 Clive Barker's Undying
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British 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 a 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.
13 Penumbra: Overture
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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.
12 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.
11 Obscure
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Influenced 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.
Obscure 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.
10 F.E.A.R.
If 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.
9 Haunting Ground
This is a perfect case of a spiritual successor that resulted in something even better than the original, which, in this sense, would be the Clock Tower series. Haunting Ground is very similar to Capcom's 2003 horror game Clock Tower 3 in terms of the panic mode and playing another young female protagonist in an eerie castle, but this time having a companion dog named Hewie along for the harrowing journey.
Hewie improves much of the overall gameplay experience since the dog has the mechanics of obeying your commands, which can be anything from finding you items and helping you with enemies to even giving you a paw and obtaining some pets in return, like Bullet in the Blair Witch game. The story is tied to protagonist Fiona Belli's family history and alchemy, with many compelling secrets to uncover inside the castle.
8 Dead Rising
This period was quite a busy one for Capcom because not only did it consistently develop new Resident Evil games, it started an entirely refreshing new zombie series known as Dead Rising. Dead Rising was a remarkable shift from the more suspenseful undertones of Resident Evil to more carnage fun in dealing with giant hordes of zombies on-screen.
There was controversy around the game's resemblance to the Dawn of the Dead films, where a zombie outbreak traps the main characters inside a shopping mall. But all was fine in the end, and more games followed. Dead Rising is notable for the funny customizable outfits you can wear and that any object can become a weapon, improved upon in later installments through the mechanic of building outlandish weapon combos.
7 Condemned: Criminal Origins
Monolith didn't stop with just F.E.A.R. in 2005, launching yet another compelling FPS psychological thriller called Condemned: Criminal Origins within months. However, this game saw less of the supernatural and trades in the guns and bullet time for more focus on accurate physics-based melee combat with weapons you can find around you or steal off enemies.
You're in the shoes of an FBI agent working in the Serial Crimes Unit and hunting a serial killer known as the "Match Maker." Your pursuit goes awry, and you now stand wrongly accused of a double homicide of police officers. The story becomes a race to clear your name and find the true killer, with other homicidal foes in the city pursuing you along the way.
6 Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly
The Fatal Frame series reimagined survival horror from the bloody violence and gore most games in the genre were known for and instead developed the innovative mechanic where the camera is your primary protection against the malevolent spirits trying to harm you. The particular name of this camera is the Camera Obscura, and every snapshot equals a hit for the ghost that eventually dissipates.
Although it sounds a bit unconventional, it's a fantastic way of producing more scares. Because the apparitions fade into the environment and are sometimes barely visible, their grotesque features will forcefully appear right in your face when you zoom that camera at them. The setting of the haunted village in the second game also adds to the unsettling atmosphere.
5 Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
While you can play through multiple character perspectives in Supermassive horror games, it's usually during the same evening. However, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem has 12 characters isolated across multiple settings and time periods, all connected by the Tome of Eternal Darkness book, which is bound in human flesh like Evil Dead's Necronomicon Ex-Mortis.
It all begins when Alexandra Roivas takes matters into her own hands by trying to solve the mysterious murder of her grandfather in his Rhode Island estate. She finds the book and soon opens Pandora's Box of Lovecraft-inspired entities known as the Ancients that all these historical figures have been attempting to defeat, including multiple generations of the Roivas family.
4 Dead Space
Under the direction of creator Glen Schofield and the former team of the since-dissolved Visceral Games came Dead Space, perhaps one of the best and most brutal sci-fi survival horror games ever made. From the captivating sound design to the dreadful dimly lit hallways and utterly terrifying Necromorph enemy designs, it delivers on all fronts of having the terror unfold in outer space.
The immersive quality gets even further amplified by the fact there are no HUD elements appearing anywhere on-screen to take your attention away from the masterful scares awaiting you in about every area you visit. The health bar is part of your suit, and the ammo count is a hologram visible as you aim your weapon. Another choice in Dead Space that generates more intrigue and spookiness is that the main protagonist, Isaac Clarke, is silent and devoid of dialogue the entire time. Though, that's not the case anymore in the remake.
3 BioShock
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In 2007, BioShock brought the shock and the horror down to the ocean depths with its wondrous and eerie environment of an underwater city known as Rapture. Alongside Dead Space, this game was another pivotal piece of gaming history for its polished first-person combat, engrossing set pieces, the iconic Big Daddy diver enemies wielding massive drills, and its brilliant dark story full of twists and turns.
The central mystery lies in your transport to this dreary ruinous underwater civilization overrun by murderous Splicer inhabitants, where you must face not only them but other horrors, such as harvesting souls from the creepy Little Sisters and dealing with their protectors. There to help you is an array of weapons and unique supernatural powers derived from ADAM.
2 Resident Evil 4
The 2000s were a period of evolution and growth for the Resident Evil series. There was a remake of the first game in 2002, two sequels to the main story, a prequel, and countless other spin-off games that closed out the decade. Resident Evil 4 is the most significant of those for how it redefined the beloved series from the classic fixed camera angles to a third-person over-the-shoulder point of view.
This entry sees the return of Leon S. Kennedy in a narrative that moves away from the nightmarish cityscape of Raccoon City to an ominous remote Spanish village and offers even more variety of unique bosses infected with a parasitic Las Plagas insect. The 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4 is its own masterpiece, but the camp humor is unmatched in this one.
1 Silent Hill 2
Hardly any surprise, Silent Hill 2 is no doubt the absolute winner in being one of the best horror games of the 2000s era. Like Resident Evil, Konami was on a roll with its Silent Hill titles, but none quite matched the gripping story and deeply atmospheric psychological and supernatural horror encapsulating Silent Hill 2.
The town of Silent Hill feeds off your torment and trauma, which manifests from the figurative into the physical with hideous monsters that are out for your soul. The new victim of Silent Hill is James Sunderland, a bereft husband traveling there under unusual orders from his deceased wife. He's met with unspeakable horrors, but none like the grisly encounters with the relentless Pyramid Head.