Image: Zeekerss
Sometimes, horror games are best enjoyed with company - especially on Halloween!
Halloween is nigh, and you might already have your favourite horror games lined up for a spine-tingling gaming session or two. Before you jump on those, however, consider the malleability of the horror genre, and how it might be better enjoyed with a friend by your side. One might think that playing horror games while in good company can only help to push through those harsh scares, but the opposite can also be true: with two (virtual) lives hanging in the balance, the stakes can only get higher, the tension that much more palpable and the screams of ensuing terror that much louder.
This Halloween, try playing these five co-op horror games together for maximum chills and thrills:
The Outlast Trials
The third entry in Red Barrels’ Outlast series of first-person horror games is a little different from its predecessors. For one, it’s a prequel set in the Cold War, following the unwitting test subjects of a strange experiment. More importantly, it’s a four-player co-op multiplayer game with a slightly different gameplay format. The Outlast Trials can be completed solo, yes - but it’s best enjoyed with a group that’s trying to figure out how to survive together.
Abject darkness and dangerous monsters remain the biggest threats to players in The Outlast Trials, forcing them to make use of night-vision goggles and various hiding places to get around environments safely. Despite all this, your ultimate objective is simple: survive the Trials, and you’ll be set free. Easier said than done, I suppose.
Lethal Company
Lethal Company went viral at launch for good reason: it’s as terrifying as it is hilarious. This co-op multiplayer game has players step into the shoes of contracted workers for the Company, tasked with collecting scrap from abandoned moons to meet a profit quota. Unfortunately, while these moons are abandoned, they aren’t exactly empty. Several creatures populate the locations players need to rummage through as they work to fulfill their profit quota, endangering their mission and, less importantly, their lives.
The beauty of Lethal Company is that it’s a fun game even without its horror elements. Working as a team to fulfil objectives and explore alien worlds is fun enough, but throw in a few monsters and you get an added dose of unpredictability. Hearing your friends going about their business before wildly screaming without any context whatsoever is both gut-bustingly funny and wildly terrifying, proving that horror really is more fun with friends.
Resident Evil 5
Every other game on this list is a legitimately scary time, so let’s switch things up a little. While Resident Evil 5 is still packed with tension and all manner of beasties, it’s a much sillier game than it looks, and it’s a lot of fun with a friend by your side. This co-op game allows players to step into the shoes of either Chris Redfield of Sheva Alomar, two members of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance who enter Kijuju in West Africa to apprehend a known criminal. Unfortunately, the duo arrives in a village filled with infected locals and even worse monsters, and quickly realise they might have bitten off more than they could chew.
Resident Evil 5 is an essential game in franchise canon, thanks to the way it incorporates legacy characters like Chris, Jill Valentine and Albert Wesker into its campy (to put it nicely) story campaign. That makes it worth playing for all fans - despite the fact that the game also features some of the weakest bosses and level design in the entire mainline Resident Evil series, along with an avalanche of quicktime events to deal with. All of these problems are rendered completely moot however, when the game is played with a friend - the sheer fun factor of running through hordes of zombies and solving puzzles in couch co-op makes this game one of the best to ever do it.
The Quarry
If you loved Supermassive Games’ horror-adventure game Until Dawn, one of their most recent releases - The Quarry - might float your boat. This game follows a group of teenage camp counsellors in Hackett’s Quarry who decide to throw a big ol’ party to celebrate the final day of summer camp, after all the adults and kids have gone home. Things take a turn however, when their complex group dynamics and multiple external threats - some of which are supernatural - threaten to end relationships, if not entire lives, before the night is over.
The Quarry follows the co-op multiplayer formula of Supermassive’s The Dark Picture Anthology. Players can assume control of nine individual camp counselors, and guide them through increasingly dangerous scenarios in an effort to help them survive the night. Some of them may live, and some of them may die - but that’s up to you and whoever you’re playing this game with.
No More Room in Hell
No More Room in Hell might have come out a long 13 years ago, but its thrills are positively timeless. This co-op first-person survival horror game is set during the zombie apocalypse, where millions of undead nightmares shamble about the world looking for human beings to munch on. All it takes is a bite to turn into one of these creatures, so staying cautious is key to survival.
No More Room in Hell can be played with up to eight players on a single server in two game modes: Objective mode and Survival mode. Objective mode has players follow a series of quests to escape the map with their lives intact. Survival mode is a little more difficult, pitting them against waves of zombies to protect certain areas in a level. It’s tense, it’s scary and it’s almost unnecessarily realistic - making it lots of fun to play with friends who enjoy a good scream.
