Let’s face it: horror games aren’t for everyone. While us here at Prima Games love a good scare, we’d be considered the minority in some circles. However, horror games are more than just the sum of all their terrifying parts. Not every title can be a hit, and more often than not they can actually be a miss. While we’ve already put out a list of horror games for the Nintendo Switch that we’d recommend, here’s the other side of the coin: our list of the worst horror games (in our opinion) that shouldn’t even exist. Yes, you’ve been warned. This spooky list will be scathing.
Worst Horror Games That Shouldn’t Even Exist – AMY
This is a bit of an infamous pick, but AMY has been notorious in both critic and fan circles for being, well, difficult to love. Billed as a survival stealth horror game and released in 2012, the plot of the game would probably be a little more scrutinized now: a young girl on the autism spectrum is paired up with a worldly older woman and the pair have to escape from zombies. It was a whole thing. However, the reason why AMY was so derided was because as a game, it just didn’t really work. It was almost aggressively bugged on release, had repetitive quests, clumsy gameplay, and was too poorly acted to sell its emotional hooks. It also didn’t really know how to sell itself as a stealth title mechanically, and the camera had an awful reputation for shooting right up into the character model therefore making the game almost unplayable.
Worst Horror Games That Shouldn’t Even Exist – Blade II
If you considered yourself a fan of the vampiric and monstrous school of horror, then it would have been difficult to go past Blade II on release. However, we regret to report that it was honesty an utter travesty. Blade II handled like a drunken sailor on release, and even now the voice acting in the game is the subject of many a terrible meme compilation because of how awful it was. Combat was about as smooth as dragging one’s prone body over sharp rocks, and it definitely soured the tone for the series. Can you remember a noteworthy Blade game after that one? Neither can we.
Worst Horror Games That Shouldn’t Even Exist – Lifeline
Lifeline is an excellent example of a game that would probably have popped off in today’s technological age, cluttered with VR and motion control options as we are now. Lifeline was a game where you controlled everything via your voice, which was about as painful as one would expect considering that this was the era of the PS2. The sheer frustration of working with the game in its state would often negate any worthy scares that the title had: it’s hard to care about something looming on the screen when rounding a corner ends up with you yelling louder than any terrifying sound effect that it might throw at you.
Worst Horror Games That Shouldn’t Even Exist – The Letter
It was only a matter of time until we got to an entry that was on the Wii U. If you’re not familiar with The Letter, well, we wouldn’t recommend that you get familiar at this stage in the game. The Letter might actually be inaccessible, in which case please consider yourself saved by the bell. The premise is spooky enough: a missing father, potential homicide, and creepy letters. However, that’s really where the buck stops on the fear front. The graphics quality of the title overall really lets it down when it comes to scares. That, and the fact that most people could clock the game in under an hour didn’t bode well at all: part of a good horror game is getting invested in the fate of its characters, and a game topping out at less than 60 minutes isn’t at all enough time to care about anything other than the awful loading screen times. With repetitive and grainy backdrops making up the most of your visual experience, it’s no wonder that people weren’t impressed.
There you have it. We’ve gone through our memory palaces and dredged up the absolute worst horror titles that we can remember, just to warn you away from them. Talk about a public service! However, it’s not all doom and gloom over here at Prima Games during the spooky season: we’ve got a list of highly anticipated horror titles as well to keep you ticking over until the fateful day.
