10 Best Horror Shooter Games you should play

Doom Eternal

It’s time to load your shotguns with malicious intent once again, ladies and gentlemen. The demons have invaded Earth this time, so you’ll have to rip and tear until they’re all dead and our planet is finally safe.

Doom Slayer brought some new toys to help him in his crusade. In addition to a wide variety of firearms and melee weapons, you can also use a meat hook attached to your Super Shotgun that works as a grappling hook to aid you in either combat or traversing the environment. You also have an Equipment Launcher mounted on your shoulders that shoots grenades and ice bombs. There’s a bunch of new toys for some clever executions that’ll yield armor, health and ammo pickups.

Image credit: id Software

Yup, that’s what the game is all about: using proper weapons against a particular demon type, making good use of the power-ups lying around, as well as exploiting various tactical advantages each arena offers. You need to keep moving, shooting and thinking fast.

Doom Eternal also features asymmetric multiplayer. One of the modes, Battlemode, pits two players controlling demons (there are several types available) against a lone Doom Slayer (fully locked and loaded, mind you). Who’s going to win?

The game has also received an additional campaign, The Ancient Gods, as a DLC.

DOOM Eternal Deluxe Edition

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DOOM

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F.E.A.R.

What do you get if you mix The Ring with The Matrix? The answer is: F.E.A.R. Expect a lot of intense shootouts coupled with a dreadful atmosphere and a handful of jump scares.

F.E.A.R. does all these things exceptionally well. For example, the AI in this game is phenomenal. Your enemies don’t just stand in one place and shoot at you, they seek to work as a team, flank you, suppress you with their fire and simply demolish you. If the odds are not in their favor, they retreat.

Image credit: Monolith

You have a lot of deadly tools at your disposal, too. A wide range of firearms, including some more futuristic types (nail gun and particle beam), explosives – frag and proximity grenades, as well as remote bombs – and some melee moves work well mixed with the so-called reflex time, which is basically bullet time culled from The Matrix movies. It slows down time, but you get to keep moving at your normal speed. All these make combat in F.E.A.R. super fun.

What about the psychological horror aspect, though? Ah yes, there’s this creepy little ghost girl that looks like she’s straight from The Ring who stalks you throughout the game. Expect a lot of unexpected, paranormal stuff out of nowhere!

F.E.A.R. received two expansion packs – Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate – as well as two sequels, with the last one released in 2011. Too bad they were kind of sub-par compared to the original one… There has also been a free-to-play, multi-player-only game, F.E.A.R. Online, but its servers have been shut down in 2015.

F.E.A.R. Collection

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Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was the first RE game to be presented from the first-person perspective. Village continues this trend but puts more emphasis on action, which means it can totally land on a list like this one.

RE Village once again puts you in the shoes of Ethan Winters, known from RE 7. Out of nowhere, Chris Redfield – the main hero of many previous Resident Evil games – arrives with his men, kills Ethan’s wife, Mia, and kidnaps their daughter, Rosemary, taking her to a creepy village somewhere in Europe. Your job is of course to save Rosemary from the clutches of some nightmarish aristocrats that rule the place.

Image credit: Capcom Development Division 1

And so you get to explore the village and ward off werewolf-like enemies known as the Lycans. They’re super agile and attack in packs. Their intelligence is commendable and the fact that they can use weapons is pretty scary. You, of course, are not defenseless, although you need to make note that ammunition is scarce here, so you need to manage your resources well. A tactical retreat (i.e. simply running away) is always an option.

You can also try out an arcade-style Mercenaries Mode where you have to beat various timed stages. You can get new items and upgrades at the Duke’s Emporium. A multiplayer version of Village, Resident Evil RE:Verse should be released sometime in October 2022 after several delays.

Resident Evil Village

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Set in an alternate reality, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. depicts the events that occurred after a second disaster in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This causes widespread destruction and mutation. Still, the Zone is super attractive to scavengers known as Stalkers who search the Zone for valuable artifacts.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. blends several genres into one: first-person shooter, role-playing game and survival horror. You get to explore the Zone, which is a large area with varied landscapes, ranging from wilds to settlements and military bases. Mutated animals roam these wastes and behave in realistic ways, much like their real-life counterparts would.

Image credit: GSC Game World

Aside from these monsters, you need to be on the lookout for enemy Stalkers, anomalies that are deadly to both NPCs and yourself, as well as radiation. There are also certain elements of survival games thrown in the mix. You need to manage your hunger levels and avoid bleeding. Combined with non-linear storytelling and seven different endings that you can achieve based on your actions and decisions, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a thrilling, highly replayable experience.

The game spawned an entire series, including a prequel, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and a sequel, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. A second sequel, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, is in the works, with a release planned for 2023.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Bundle

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Prey

Not to be confused with either the game from 2006 or the latest Predator movie, Prey is yet another immersive sim in Arkane’s portfolio. A blend of System Shock and Arx Fatalis, this one pits you against a race of deadly shapeshifters known as the Typhon.

Image credit: Arkane Studios

They can pose as chairs, they can turn themselves into other everyday items. Yeah, after playing Prey you’ll never trust your coffee mug ever again. Anyway, this game is where you play as Morgan You, a customizable human whose goal is to escape the space station they’re on and avoid hostile aliens. Who knew forks and plates could be a source of terror?

Apart from various weapons that you can use and resources to collect, you can acquire alien abilities through something called a psychoscope. That’s right: if you envy the Typhon’s shapeshifting powers, you can steal them and become a chair, too.

There are multiple endings to the story too, depending on your actions throughout the game. All in all, Prey is a very fun spiritual successor to System Shock. Two expansion packs have been released. Mooncrash turns Prey into a roguelike. Typhon Hunter features both a single-player and a multiplayer mode. The former is a VR escape room-type experience. The latter pits one player (playing as Morgan Yu) against other players who are Mimic Typhons. It’s a deadly game of hide and seek where Morgan’s task is to eliminate Mimics within the time limit. What fun!

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Metro Exodus

What would life after an apocalypse look like? The Metro trilogy of video games (previous releases are Metro 2033 of 2010 and Metro: Last Light of 2013), based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels of the same title, is an interesting take on that, different from the Fallout series, for example.

Exodus is the final part of the trilogy. This one is a first-person shooter mixed with stealth and survival horror where you explore what’s left of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan. You won’t encounter just hostile survivors out there: various creepy mutated beasts also await you, often lurking in the shadow.

Image credit: 4A GAMES

So, as Artyom, you get to explore both linear and sandbox levels, craft upgrades for your weapons and try to survive while completing your objectives.

The game definitely offers some beautiful sights and environments. There’s a dynamic weather system and a day-night cycle, too. The plot spans an entire year during which you’ll get to see a major part of the Asian continent. So, will Aurora (the locomotive you and your allies are using to travel across the land) reach its destination? It’s all up to you.

Metro Exodus | Gold Edition

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Metro Redux Bundle

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BioShock

Welcome to the city of Rapture! Well, at least what’s left of it. The city went into decline when its inhabitants got crazy about harvesting ADAM, a genetic material that grants people superhuman powers. Now, you got to escape this mess.

BioShock is yet another spiritual successor to System Shock on this list. As Jack, a fellow stranded after a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean, you end up in Rapture. Here, you need to fight enemies obsessed with ADAM. This includes the now-iconic Big Daddies if you choose to bother Little Sisters (strange little girls harvesting ADAM from the corpses lying around the city), since they are – unfortunately – the best source of power here.

Image credit: 2K Australia

The gameplay itself is a mixture of first-person shooter, stealth and role-playing. You can take on the enemies directly using various firearms and plasmids that give you special powers, or you can avoid them and use the city’s automated defenses against them instead.

All in all, it’s a creepy, artsy game with themes inspired by various dystopian and utopian thinkers of the 20th century. If you’re looking for gaming works of art, this might be it. BioShock spawned an entire series that consists of two sequels: BioShock 2 (also set in the city of Rapture, but eight years later) and BioShock Infinite, which takes place in a different setting (although it’s been linked to rapture through the Burial at Sea expansion).

BioShock: The Collection

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Painkiller

Alright, enough of that artsy or scary nonsense. Painkiller is a shooter in the vein of classics, such as Quake, Doom and Serious Sam. Your goal? Kill as many monsters as possible!

You play as Daniel Garner, a young man who causes an accident that kills both him and his wife. While she ends up in Heaven, Daniel is stuck in Purgatory to atone for his sins. An angel named Samael visits him one day and tasks him with killing Luciferian generals who are planning to start a war between Heaven and Hell. Quite an undertaking, isn’t it?

Image credit: People Can Fly

You will visit numerous locations inspired by various historical epochs and realms. There are castles, monasteries, ancient locations, battlefields and so on. Quite a variety, isn’t it? So, you move from one battle to another, slaughtering hundreds of demons. There are also five bosses to defeat. Painkiller also offers a multiplayer mode which received particular praise and was part of the e-sports competitions for a while.

Painkiller received several expansion packs: Battle Out of Hell (2004), Overdose (2007), Resurrection (2009), Redemption (2011) and Recurring Evil (2012). Only the first one requires the base game, the rest of them are stand-alone. They feature new levels, weapons, and even protagonists at times. As you can see, there’s plenty of demon slaughtering to do.

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Blood Fresh Supply

Speaking of classics, this one is the most classic horror shooter of all time. With its gory imagery and twisted, dark humor, Blood is to this day considered one of the best games in the genre, mentioned along with the likes of Quake and Doom.

Blood is basically Duke Nukem 3D, but turned into a B-class horror. Expect slaughtering zombies, cultists and demons as Caleb, a charismatic anti-hero who seeks revenge against the dark god Tchernobog who betrayed him.

Image credit: Nightdive Studios

There’s quite a variety of interesting weapons in here, including the famous flare gun, Voodoo doll and a can of aerosol that serves as a flamethrower. The tools of destruction also have secondary attack modes. Aside from killing monsters, you also need to search for keys, avoid traps, make precise jumps and so on.

Blood received two expansion packs: Plasma Pak (also developed by Monolith) and Cryptic Passage (this time authored by Sunstorm Interactive). 1998 saw the release of the sequel, Blood II: The Chosen. Blood received a remaster in 2019, titled Fresh Supply. It looks better and runs much better on modern systems. If you’re looking for classic horror stuff with lots of dark humor, this one is a perfect choice.

Blood Fresh Supply

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Dusk

We’ll end our list with a loving homage to the classic shooters of the 1990s. Dusk (stylized as DUSK) puts you in the shoes of a nameless treasure hunter ready to exact his revenge for being left to die by the denizens of the titular Pennsylvanian city.

Expect a classic shooter gameplay reminiscent of Blood and the like, as well as tons of Lovecraftian influences and references. You’ll get to eradicate all sorts of vermin, ranging from cultists through demonic livestock to scarecrows, using a wide variety of weapons, including some magic ones. There’s no regenerating health, here, either, so you better go looking for those med kits.

Image credit: David Szymanski

What’s interesting about Dusk is that the rotational-axis has been unlocked here, so that you can perform some sick front and back-flips.

There’s even a multiplayer mode: deathmatch for up to sixteen players. Dusk features a soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, known for his super heavy music in Quake Champions and Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods, among others.

Dusk

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