A good horror game is like nothing else - the immersion that games offer up is at its most intense when you’re being frightened out of your mind, in our opinion.
There are countless scary games to pick from, and thePlayStation 5has its fair share of creepy titles, so we’ve picked out the very best options to give you a range of highlights.
If you’re looking for our other genre guides to the PS5’s catalogue, check out the links in the table below.
Dead Space
Resident Evil Village
The Last of Us: Part 1 (2022)
A Plague Tale: Requiem
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!
Resident Evil 2
The Quarry
Brilliant horror
An unbelievably effective horror game that will have you creeping round every corner.
Dead Space is the lucky recipient of the best remake we can remember since Resident Evil 2, which you’ll find further down this list. It’s astonishingly good, with a supremely well-managed sense of tension and a super-scary sound
Superb scares
A brilliant horror game that’s action-packed but still has moments of total tension.
The latest full entry in the Resident Evil series,Villageis a smorgasbord for horror fans, with inventory management and suspense that takes its time to build, all keeping you on the edge of your seat. It has a gallery of baddies for you to sneak past and eventually overcome, with a range of vivid settings to move through.
A central sequence involving a master puppeteer’s house of horrors will stay with us for the rest of our lives, cementing this as a must-play for anyone serious about their horror games.
Creepy encounters
One of gaming’s great stories also just so happens to be really scary at various points.
It might not seem like a horror game at first glance, given its focus on shooting and story, but the reality is thatNaughty Dog’s remade opushas some of the scariest sequences in gaming to offer up, as you carefully sneak around deadly infected enemies.
The fact that it has a brilliant story for you to experience while this is all happening is what elevates it - you truly care about the characters you control, making it even more terrifying when they’re in peril.
Excellent sequel
This excellent sequel ups the ante and really kicks things up a notch.
Thissuperb sequelis a creepy, emotional tale of siblings trying to stay true to each other, told against a backdrop of a plague-hit France in the 14th Century. You play as Amicia, stealthily threading your way through levels full of ravenous rats and violent guards.
It’s a tense game rather than an openly scary one, but if you choose to play it with the aim of staying undetected then it gets really, really nail-biting at various points. You have a lot of tools to use, though. Requiem is also absolutely ravishing graphically.
Truly terrifying
A super scary psychological thriller that masquerades as something far more innocent.
Okay, now here’s a game that doesn’t look like it’s going to be scary. This visual novel is pretty chilled-out to play, letting the story take the front seat while you make light choices and steer your way through high school.
We’re extremely mindful of not spoiling the surprise of how things unfold, but its inclusion on this list should be a tip-off that things get creepy at a certain point, and that’s an understatement. This is some of the scariest stuff in gaming.
Classic action
A revived classic, Resident Evil 2 looks better than ever now.
Resident Evil makes another welcome appearance thanks to a PS5 upgrade that came for free, making this excellent-looking PS4 title all the prettier on newer hardware. It’s one of the best remakes we’ve ever seen, carefully recreating what was special about the originalResi 2without losing its heart.
Despite that, there are some welcome modernisations and the game looks really impressive, with improved acting and pacing all making for a sterling and very scary adventure.
Movie-like
This excellent horror game is alike a fun interactive movie, great to play with friends.
Supermassive Games is getting extremely good at building Hollywood-quality control-the-narrative horror games, where you get to control parts of the action and make key choices under time pressure while watching what is basically a horror movie.
It’s great fun for playing with friends, cackling over wrong decisions and watching beautiful people die gory deaths as a result, and The Quarry is the latest and greatest. This is a fun, scary thrill ride that’s accessible and enjoyable.
