The 10 WORST PS2 Horror Games
Cold Fear (2005)
Sometimes a game begins with all the right ideas and intentions but is let down by its execution, and thats exactly what happened with Cold Fear. Released mere months after the juggernaut that was Resident Evil 4, Cold Fear also had an over-the-shoulder camera perspective and attempted to balance action and horror, just a lot less successfully. Instead of an infected village, players explore a ship left adrift in the middle of the Bering Strait and need to constantly deal with the unpredictable waves and motion of the ship alongside the numerous experiments set loose on board. So far, so good, right? Well, no not really. Playing into B-Movie horror tropes, the dialogue is as bad as its delivery, important lore is buried in ridiculously long and missable documents and the horror aspect of the game is almost non-existent. The only thing scarier than the ocean is surviving this game.
Ghost Vibration (2004)
When Sonic Team isnt struggling to make Sonic work in 3D, they have attempted to dip their toes into the horror genre, and the results arent even mixed, its just bad all around. Taking inspiration from Luigis Mansion and Ghostbusters, players must navigate a haunted mansion and suck up any spirits they cross paths with. However, whereas Luigi is free to explore his mansion, Ghost Vibration is entirely on rails and players can only move forward until they encounter a ghost and then must clumsily fumble around the room attempting to capture them. The environments are well designed and some of the ghosts are genuinely creepy, but the on rails gameplay when the environments are begging to be explored is just bizarre. However, without question, the scariest thing about this game is the facial animations. Just, what? What is that? Why does he keep making that face for the WHOLE game?
Curse: The Eye of Isis (2003)
Despite Resident Evil and even Silent Hill laying the groundwork for survival horror for years by the time Curse: The Eye of Isis released, many still struggled with the concept. With an interesting premise of exploring an increasingly haunted museum in Victorian London, players will spend more time fighting the games camera and controls than the haunted attractions themselves. The Eye of Isis utilizes the standard fixed camera but makes it dynamic by moving through the environment. However, the controls didnt get the message, and youll often find yourself walking into walls or other obstacles while you try to keep up with the changing perspective. This is really the main thing holding this game back from even achieving cult following status as the story, graphics, environments and enemies are all well designed and interesting. It's just a shame that the games greatest horror is its own unwieldy camera and controls.
Michigan: Report From Hell (2004)
Suda51 is one of the industry's most eccentric game developers, and thats putting it mildly. With games such as Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw and the No More Heroes series to his name, the guy has a reputation for off-the-wall bizarre game concepts. However, even with that caveat in mind, Michigan: Report from Hell is so bizarre that even simply attempting to describe the game is enough to drive someone mad. The characters themselves are so weird and incapable of surviving on their own that even babies would get annoyed with their ineptitude. The gameplay loop revolves around the player, as a news cameraman, leading reporters through different environments and pointing out things for the reporters to investigate. There are monsters that you fight by pointing in their general direction and hoping the reporters take them out, but even as a babysitting simulator, this game is painfully unfun and more frustrating than anything resembling horror.
Lifeline (2003)
Lifelines problems can be boiled down to two words: voice commands. The PS2 allowed developers to get more experimental than ever before, but the technology wasnt always able to match the developers ambitions. While novel in concept, the execution of guiding an AI using only voice commands leaves quite a lot lost in translation. Rio only responds to perfectly enunciated words and will ignore anything she doesnt understand even if it leads to her death. And with over 500 possible voice prompts, the player will spend just as much time with their head buried in the word guidebook as attempting to guide Rio through the environment. The idea definitely had potential, but at the same time, Lifeline also managed to inadvertently prove all horror movies tropes true by making the protagonist ignore the only rational person attempting to keep them alive.
Clock Tower 3 (2003)
Clock Tower 3 is a strange case in which every single aspect of the game comes together perfectly. The story, the characters and setting, and even the games presentation were all top notch, but the mechanics sour the entire experience. The stealth game mechanics the series was known for were as bare bones and repetitive as you could possibly imagine, removing any possibility of tension or horror almost by force from boredom. The addition of the Panic Meter in which main character Alyssa begins to panic while being pursued, wrestles the controls away from the player, making her more difficult to control until she calms down. Even the boss fights are infuriating as the player must charge up their shots and is unable to move or adjust their aim while charging, leaving them vulnerable amid missed shots. Clock Tower 3 will raise your blood pressure for all the wrong reasons.
Galerians: Ash (2002)
Galerians on the PS1 was a decent Resident Evil-style survival horror title that had some interesting ideas, but its follow-up needed a lot more time in the lab. The secret lab setting might sound cool on the surface, but it leads to a lot of samey looking hallways and an unhealthy amount of backtracking. The idea of using a myriad of injectable cocktails to unlock your psychic powers is a novel one, but when combat is this underwhelming, its nothing more than an interesting blurb on the back of the game box. The story remains the games only redeeming quality but is wholly designed around players having completed the first game. Fans of the first game and especially Akira will be able to overlook a lot of the games shortcomings but for anyone looking for a true survival horror option besides Resident Evil, theyd be better off looking elsewhere.
Alone in the Dark (2008)
The rebooted Alone in the Dark on the Xbox 360 and PS3 was already a broken disaster, so you can only imagine how much worse the last gen version ended up being. Due to the limitations of the hardware, the PS2 version of the game was substantially different from its next-gen counterparts. The open world was stripped away and the devs struggled to scale down the title to a manageable port, meaning the title struggled to even function properly half the time. Not to mention for a series that is more or less the grandfather of survival horror, there isnt even a single thing within the game that could be considered scary by any stretch of the imagination. The fact the game even gives you the option to skip certain sections is indicative of its design that the game itself doesnt even want you to play it.
Daemon Summoner (2006)
Oftentimes a game starts off with good intentions and then, from either publisher interference or poor mismanagement, things can go off the rails VERY quickly. Unfortunately, BOTH were true with Daemon Summoner and the titles only legacy is just how downright awful it is. The story of a vampire hunter in Victorian London tracking down his vampiric wife to release her from the vampires curse is an intriguing one, but the game fumbles absolutely every other aspect of the experience. Abysmal enemy AI, poor collision detection, laughably awful voice acting and scripting, poorly designed and broken stealth sections, and just a myriad of bugs, glitches and other game mechanics that made even playing the game feel like youre punishing yourself. Couple this with unskippable cutscenes that often glitch and have no dialogue, making the story completely nonsensical, and Daemon Summoner is more likely to summon your rage than anything else.
RLH: Run Like Hell (2002)
Studio interference strikes again. Long before Dead Space, Run Like Hell was aiming to be Resident Evil in Space but corporate mandates significantly changed the games direction over the course of its development. An overabundance of enemies completely overshadows any attempts at scares the original game was intending, and the simplest mechanics are broken or half-baked with even the all-important hit detection when shooting enemies being literally hit or miss. Sadly, even a surprisingly stacked cast with the likes of Lance Hendrickson wasnt enough to save this game from mediocrity, and the shift from survival horror to almost straight up action was the worst decision that could have been made and crippled a game already stuck in development hell from reaching its full potential. Run Like Hell away from this one and dont waste your time.
What PS2 game failed to scare you no matter how hard it tried? Share your most un-frightening adventures in the comments.
