50 Games like The House of the Dead that you should try

Gordon Freeman became the most popular nameless and voiceless protagonist in gaming history. He is painted as the most famous scientist and a hero within the world of Half-Life, and for a good reason.

Its enemy AI is still the reference point twenty years on: soldiers flank, suppress and call out movements, so firefights unfold differently each time. Slow-motion makes that legible instead of trivial. The horror sections have not aged as well — the same office corridors repeat for hours, and the scares telegraph themselves long before they land.

The second game returns us to the city of Rapture, on the New Year’s Eve, but this time player takes control of Subject Delta, Big Daddy, that’s been separated from his little sister and has been forced to shoot himself 2 years before the events of the first game took place.

A conventional military shooter wearing Quake's skin: corridor combat with heavy weapons, at its best in the mid-game once the Strogg conversion sequence gives it a hook. Level design is repetitive metal hallways for long stretches, and the squadmates who accompany you do little beyond soaking damage and opening doors.

Time manipulation applied to objects rather than the whole world: you age a crate to dust or restore a collapsed staircase, and it is used cleverly in traversal and combat. A tight, short campaign. It borrows heavily and openly from BioShock and Half-Life 2, and the shooting itself is unremarkable once the time device stops surprising you.

With over 2 million copies sold, the new episode of the most internationally successful S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series seamlessly connects to the first part of the Shadow of Chernobyl. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The one most people remember: more branching, better boss design, and an arcade pace that still holds up in short sessions. The infamous dialogue is part of its reputation. Same caveat as the original — it is a light-gun game, and without the hardware the aiming feels imprecise in a way that undercuts the whole design.

The second installment of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise is set one year before the events of Shadow of Chernobyl and serves as its prequel. You will explore the forbidden area around Chernobyl, Ukraine, after a new disaster that turned into The Zone, a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of mutants.

DOOM 3 is a first-person shooter, the third installment in the series, serving as a reboot to the previous games. ###Plot As the game is set in a science fiction universe, the events span accordingly.

The reset that pulled the series back to survival horror: first-person, confined to a single decaying Louisiana estate, with scarce ammo and a family that hunts you through it. The Baker house section is among the best horror the series has produced. After you leave it the game becomes far more scripted and linear, and the boss design is the weakest part of the package.