The Scariest PS4 Games

Konami broke gamers’ hearts earlier this year when the company pulled its free Silent Hills teaser, P.T., from the PlayStation Network.  Despite lasting roughly 25 minutes, the demo was among the scariest experiences one could find on Sony’s console, complete with tension and a handful of jump from your seat moments.

P.T. will forever RIP, but there are still a handful of spooky video games on PSN worth playing, all of which will make you think twice about peeking around the next virtual corner. If you enjoy a good fright, put these scary PS4 games at the top of your must play list before picking up Sony’s promising exclusive, Until Dawn on August 25.

Make it out alive with Prima’s free The Evil Within walkthrough, and see the must have PS4 games of 2015.

Alien: Isolation

Most of the video games inspired by the Alien franchise pay homage to James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, Aliens, where space marines square off against terrifying xenomorphs.  Its hero, Ellen Ripley, becomes the quintessential action hero by the end of the movie, rushing into the creatures’ hive carrying a taped together pulse rifle (complete with grenade launcher attachment) and flamethrower, which brings to mind typical action games where the player effortlessly switches between several high-powered weapons and proceeds to slaughter hundreds of enemies, DOOM in particular.

Sega and Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation ditches this overused concept in favor of Ridley Scott’s shocking 1979 prequel. Instead of carrying rocket launchers and machine guns, gamers must rely on their wits and a bleeping motion tracker to avoid a single creature with advanced artificial intelligence; a bunch of malfunctioning androids make the situation even scarier. What ensues is survival horror at its best, with players carefully choosing their next steps while scavenging whatever they can find to make crude devices. Even if they manage to pick up a shotgun, a weapon so reliable in countless games, it’s mostly useless against the Alien.  You almost never have the advantage, making Isolation one of the best horror and movie-themed games in recent memory.

Survive with Prima’s free Alien: Isolation walkthrough.

Dying Light

Whereas Alien: Isolation limits the number of weapons you carry, Dying Light provides a wonderful lineup of customizable axes and machetes, with the occasional pistol and assault rifle.  You literally become a one-person army, so what makes this open world zombie adventure hair-raising? For starters, the undead can and will sneak up on you at the worst possible moments; while lock picking, for instance.  Additionally, things go from bad to worse at night when the super zombies come out to play, forcing you to rethink strategy since they use the same parkour maneuvers as the protagonist, which makes giving these monsters the slip almost impossible. Bottom line, having several of these things in hot pursuit with the nearest safe house five blocks away may result in soiled underpants.

Rip through the zombie horde with Prima’s free Dying Light walkthrough.

Outlast

The thought of wandering through an abandoned mental asylum seems like a bad idea in reality, but a genius setup for a video game.  Outlast casts you as a journalist searching for clues inside of a psychiatric hospital overrun by its patients. Jump scares are everywhere, and you cheat death by hiding beneath beds and shimmying through tight spaces, using a camcorder with night vision to identify threats. You can forget about plasma rifles and grenades in this game. It’s hide or die, and you better find batteries for the camera, or else it’s lights out.

The Last of Us Remastered

Sony’s beloved PS3 adventure received impressive polish for its PlayStation 4 debut, making it the desired version among fans. In it, you assume the role of Joel, an apocalypse survivor charged with transporting a girl through harsh territory while dealing with fungus-infected victims. Although you carry a decent stash of weapons, it’s much smarter to use stealth to slip by adversaries and conserve ammo for when you need it.  Similar to Alien: Isolation, The Last of Us is a puzzle game of sorts, where you give serious thought on the best way to tackle a given scenario without alerting enemies much stronger than you are. Side note, make sure you absorb every painstaking detail of this gorgeous world.

Find all of the collectibles with Prima’s free The Last of Remastered walkthrough.

The Evil Within

Godfather of the Resident Evil franchise, Shinji Mikami, teamed with Bethesda to create this gruesome thriller starring a detective hurled into a plethora of eerie environments, filled with reanimated corpses, mutants and a chainsaw-wielding maniac.  Although you have a limited amount of weapons, stealth plays a key role in your survival; you’ll want to throw bottles to distract enemies. Additionally, you encounter a variety of traps, where quick thinking and found puzzle pieces ensure your survival; spikes lowering from the ceiling or a doorway with spinning blades are among the dangers you’ll face.

Critics say The Evil Within has one foot in the past, but old school horror fans will find plenty of like about Mikami’s blood-splattered gore fest, especially if they enjoyed Resident Evil 4, the game The Evil Within emulates most.