Depending on when you read this, you’re either preparing for or recovering from the annual candy and alcohol feast that is Halloween.  Well, what better way to get into a gruesome frame of mind or shake out last night’s cobwebs than a discussion of some holiday-appropriate games.  It’s likely you’re familiar with horror classics like Resident Evil and Fatal Frame, as well as more recent hits hits like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Slender, so I thought I’d take a different angle and talk about a handful of games that were unexpectedly chill-inducing and the ways in which they strike fear into our hearts (and thumbs).

Silent Hill 2 is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time. And until recently, it has been one of the gold stars on my pile of shame. What better time to play it than the end of October, the month of horror and dread? But then what can I say about the game that has not already been said.

Silent Hill 2 is one of the most picked over games in history. Everyone knows the themes, the meaning, and the more unnerving moments of the title. Likewise, the tenets of design are so well known that even people that haven’t experienced the game first hand can sing along. This was no more obvious than in Konami’s recent HD Silent Hill 2 and 3 collection in which they removed the fog. Nary a word of explanation had to be said before everyone scrunched their eyebrows together, tilted their head, and mouthed “what the hell?” However, to know is one thing, to understand first hand is another.

In a recent issue of Game Informer, Matt Miller describes the addition of a new mechanic to the Assassin’s Creed series that involves taking on what Ubisoft Sofia is calling “personas” in Assassin’s Creed: Liberation.  Miller explains that the first female protagonist in an Assassin’s Creed game, Aveline, is “a woman of mixed race who also has access to significant financial resources,” and as a result that the character will have “access to three personas as she wanders New Orleans [. . .] each represented by a change in abilities and clothing (“10 Cool Features You Don’t Know about Assasssin’s Creed III . . . and 5 More from Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, Game Informer.  November 2012. p. 97).  Barring the persona of the assassin, the two other personas available to Aveline are “the lady persona,” which consists of “the constraining dress of an affluent New Orleans woman” that will limit “her mobility [. . .], but she [will] gain the ability to charm her way past soldiers and other obstacles that would stand in her way.”  The final persona puts her in the guise of “a local slave,” which allows her to “slip unnoticed past opponents or incite a riot with the local populace.”

Last month, Bioware officially announced that they will be releasing Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. The mix of life-like feudal politics with high fantasy tropes seems to have created the series that keeps on giving, which Bioware no doubt intends to keep up with. Dragon Age is one of the better narrative experiences in games of the last decade and continuing with what has become a recognizable series is only sensible on a fiscal level. There are still several areas of the game’s continent of Thedas still to be explored, to say nothing of the many characters with as yet unresolved plots. But without speculating too much over some preliminary announcements, now is as good a time as any to review where the series has been.

Dragon Age: Origins featured about as pared down a plot as one can get. Once every few centuries, creatures called darkspawn amass and rise from beneath the earth to conquer the surface in what is known as the Blight. Only an order known as the Grey Wardens is able to stop the Blight. The player controls a new Grey Warden recruit and is tasked with stopping the blight. That’s it. Ultimately, there is never any question of where the player stands or what they need to do: all paths lead to ending the Blight. It’s Tolkien’s orcs attacking Middle Earth. But unlike Tolkien’s universe, Dragon Age: Origins took place in a world unchecked by fate. Royalty was not always good, usurpers weren’t always bad, curses were justified and war was not glorious.

Indie Horror Month nears its end with the biggest, most ambitious game yet. One that succeeds on all fronts, Lone Survivior. Previous weeks highlighted The 4th Wall, Paranormal, and Home.

Lone Survivor is a compact, hardcore survival-horror game. Clocking in at around 4-5 hours in length, it’s long enough to effectively squeeze as much horror as possible out of its little world, but also short enough that it never becomes tedious or repetitive. It’s filled with frightening imagery, half of which might just exist in my head, since the great pixel art leaves a lot to the imagination.