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Top 10 horrifying handheld Halloween games

Spooky stuff

Top 10 horrifying handheld Halloween games
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iPhone + DS + Game Boy ...

“How about a ‘Top 10 handheld horror games’”, my editor helpfully suggests, with Halloween fast approaching.

Sounds easy enough right? The portable space should be rife with mobile spooks, perfect for late night fright fests under the covers - the grown-up equivalent of reading Goosebumps books by torchlight.

However, it’s not as prolific a genre as you might think. While console gaming is filled to bursting with spooky scares and survival horrors - with blockbuster franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, or more niche frights like Siren, Fatal Frame, and Clock Tower - the portable space just isn’t very scary.

Maybe it’s size of the screen, or the unpredictability of where a portable gamer might be playing. Even Pyramid Head fails to frighten when played on a picnic blanket. Whatever the reason, portable frights are in short supply, but here are ten of the best. Enjooooooy.

Zombie Infection (iPhone, iPad)

Perhaps the scariest thing about Zombie Infection is just how shameless the developer is in lifting from Resident Evil 5. Gameloft’s South American zombie blaster rips off elements of Capcom’s action-horror game like they were buy one get one free.

Sunny local? Check. Fishy pharmaceuticals company? Check. Dodging crocodiles in button-tapping quick-time events? Oh come on now, that’s just too far.

Still, with Capcom’s own stop-and-pop zombie gunner ending up so lacklustre on iPhone, we’ll give Gameloft a free pass for borrowing the Resi formula and making it pop on the portable. Not the spookiest game, but a brilliant shooter.

Dementium: The Ward
(DS)

Texas developer Renegade Kid has made a name for itself for successfully squeezing the FPS genre on the ill-fitting DS console. Between spooky shooter Dementium and criminally underrated lunar blaster Moon, these guys know their stuff.

Take The Ward, a terrifying romp around a spooky psychiatric ward where your trembling flashlight will reveal the monsters creeping down the corridors and lurking in the offices.

Did you know that the Japanese Association of Psychiatric Hospitals published a protest against the DS title in 2008 because the game has you attacking mentally ill patients.

Yeah, but they’re monsters!

Resident Evil Gaiden (Game Boy Color)

Cor, blinding beardy type Barry Burton teaming up with Raccoon City pretty boy Leon Kennedy. It’s the most ill-fitting relationship since Paula Abdul hooked up with that cartoon cat.

This Game Boy Color adventure has the pair of protagonists deck a bunch of zombies aboard a luxury passenger ship. It’s all top-down for the exploration bits, but pops into first-person when you need to pop a zombie’s think kettle.

The game is actually pretty terrible, receiving scathing reviews for its shoddy graphics, rubbish save system, and poo puzzles. But the story’s pretty interesting, written by Code: Veronica director Hiroki Kato, so it’s worth a go.

iDracula (iPhone)

iDracula has you, a strapping fedora-wearing vampire hunter who absolutely isn’t Van Helsing Mr Copyright Inspector, fending off against endless droves of vampires, werewolves, and witches with an assortment of weapons.

With oodles of weapons, bolt-firing crossbows, giant miniguns, blazing flamethrowers, and bazookas at your disposable, the game is about as scary as a sponge.

But its got Dracula. He’s scary, right?

The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror (Game Boy Color)

There are loads of Simpsons games. Loads and loads. Bowling ones and wrestling ones and pinball ones. Games where Bart fights aliens and trots around the globe and meets radioactive man. Loads of them.

This one’s all about horror,though, matching up with the scary and twisted Treehouse of Horror episodes Fox rolls out around Halloween. The game’s a side-scroller, and has members of the Simpson family play out segments from the first five TOH shows.

You’ve got a section where Maggie is a human fly, one where the house is trying to kill Marge, and a Rampage style level with King Homer.

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (DS)

The original Resident Evil, the one with the terrible voice acting and embarrassing full motion video, has been remade and ported enough times. PC, GameCube, Sega Saturn. Heck, a Game Boy Color edition was shelved.

This DS edition, Deadly Silence, was farted out for the game’s tenth anniversary. You can play the game with little more than touch screen enhancements, or a new Rebirth Mode, with more enemies and puzzles.

Did you know? Touch Jill Valentine’s butt with your DS stylus and she’ll do a special animation. You can do it with Chris too, if you so desire.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (iPhone, iPad)

When it comes to Halloween, everyone concentrates on the spooky mainstays: ghosts, devils, pumpkins, and witches. Does everyone forget about the creepy crawling furry eight legged monstrosities that are spiders, spooking us for the other 364 days of the year?

Give the unloved arachnid some love with The Secret of Bryce Manor, a much loved iPhone classic about netting nuisance bugs in your carefully constructed cobweb. You’ll also find the titular secret as you play through the game.

Silent Hill: Origins (PSP)

This one’s a prequel, set before the events of the PS2 games, in a time where Pyramid Head didn’t exist yet and people didn’t control like tanks.

It’s probably the spookiest game on this list, with the titular town’s thick fog hiding away nasties and monstrosities not for the faint of heart.

If you want a real handheld scare this month, and Marge Simpson being chased by a vacuum cleaner isn’t doing it for you, then Origins is your game.

Soul (iPhone)

Apparently, Soul “packs in the chills and scares like no game has managed since the original Resident Evil”, says ex-Pocket Gamer news editor Spanner Spencer in his review. I never found it particularly creepy, but I also never got past Level 2. Too bloody hard.

The game has you controlling the pulsing soul of a recently deceased bloke, now lying on a mortuary slab. It’s your job to get his essence from the murky darkness to the purity of light by tilting your mobile.

Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins (PSP)

Like iDracula, Capcom’s PSP revisit to classic arcade side-scroller Ghosts ‘n Goblins, is about as scary as an X-Factor episode. But its packed to the gills with spooky imagery and nightmarish creatures that it made our list.

This rock hard game has a armour-plated Arthur trying to save his missus from a who’s who of Halloween creatures, including flying demons, bats, and skeletons. The scariest thing is the difficulty. Put it on Ultimate Mode and see if you can finish it before next Halloween.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer