I'm a huge fan of horror games. I never used to be, but some game or another changed that a while back. I honestly don't even remember which one it was, but the important thing is that I love them now.

To get myself ready for the just-around-the-corner release of Resident Evil 5, I've been playing through the previous games in the series. But when you play games like that, you can't just pop them in and have music going in the background or something --- You need to do it right. Shut the curtains, turn the lights out, and blast the volume. While it's fun to play these types of games with a bunch of people around, it's more of an in-depth experience if you play them alone.

Because when you're alone, no one can hear you scream. Unless there are people in another room.



I believe that if you play a horror game alone, you can be "pulled into" the game more, for lack of a better term. Think about the horror games we currently have at our disposal --- Most have you play as just one character at a time (with a few exceptions, such as Resident Evil 0 and parts of Fatal Frame II), and that character has to brave the darkness and demons all by him/herself. If you're playing the game alone, it's like you truly are the character. Just as he/she is going through the unknown solo, so are you. You don't know what's coming, and there's no one around to help you (or for you to cling on to). This makes it much easier to relate to the main character in the game.



Horror is also one of the very few genres that I believe is much more rewarding when the graphics and sounds of the games are as HD and realistic as they can be. I'm all for gameplay before graphics --- The Wii was my first current-gen console, after all.* But when it comes to scaring the crap out of a player, realism is everything. The ambiance of a horror game can make or break the experience. One of the most perfect examples of this is Dead Space. Everything in that game was executed amazingly --- The lighting, shadows, scratches in the walls, and sound effects were all strung together with fear in mind, and fear is exactly what it instilled. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for the Wii version that's in the works, but I don't see the environments being detailed enough to compete with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. But we'll just have to see about that one.

Games in the horror genre can also kind of have a lasting effect on a player. I'm not talking about thinking something like "Oh, wow, that game was cool!" I'm talking about a psychological effect. When you play a scary game for a long time, depending on how freaked out you got, you can go through the day thinking you're seeing something out of the corner of your eye, or hearing something that isn't really there, because the experience is still fresh in your mind. I know that for at least a few hours after finishing F.E.A.R. for the first time, I was jumping at every little sound that came from something I wasn't looking at directly. I'm not a big fan of hallucinating or anything, but the fact that a game can have that kind of impact is pretty impressive if you ask me.

There are very few games that I find more entertaining when I play them by myself than with friends, but anything that's supposed to make it harder for me to sleep at night definitely falls into that category. Braving the unknown and finishing a horror game is one of the most satisfying things I can think of in the world of gaming, and I can't wait to see how much scarier the games of the next gaming generation will be.

*I don't think the Wii has bad graphics --- I can understand how that comment may lead people to believe that. I actually think the Wii has amazing graphics if games are done well on it.