18 Games with a horror setting like Zortch that you should try

The strongest of the Half-Life 2 releases: open forest driving, the best encounter design in the series, and a Hunter fight that remains a high point of enemy AI. Roughly six hours. It ends on the cliffhanger that was never resolved, which for many is harder to sit with now than it was in 2007.

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.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first-person horror game that combines intense action and adventure elements. You will draw upon your skills in exploration, investigation, and combat while faced with the seemingly impossible task of battling evil incarnate.

A short follow-up focused almost entirely on Alyx as a companion — the AI and dialogue work is what it was really testing, and it holds up. Roughly four hours. It is the slightest of the three: much of it is dark corridors and elevator sequences, and it functions more as a bridge than as a game in its own right.

Columbia is the achievement — one of the most striking settings of its generation, with skyline traversal that gives fights genuine verticality. Elizabeth is well handled as a companion. Combat is narrower than the first BioShock: two weapons at a time, fewer environmental options, and the plasmid experimentation is largely gone.

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.

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.

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.

An arcade light-gun shooter, which means it is built for short bursts and score chasing, not for sitting down with. Branching paths reward saving civilians. On a controller or mouse it loses most of what made it work, the voice acting is famously poor, and the whole thing runs under an hour per credit-fed run.

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.