The Year’s Scariest Xbox One Gaming Moments

Halloween is the perfect time to delve into the scariest, weirdest, and most gruesome games that the Xbox One has to offer. And what better way to give you and your friends a fright than to play some of these games that made us jump out of our seats? Here are our five favorite “Oh crap!” moments from 2014.

Alien: Isolation – Crawling through the air ducts. The entirety of Alien: Isolation is a tense, claustrophobic experience… but the air ducts in particular are panic-inducing. There’s a reason the demise of Dallas in the original film is so unnerving, and Alien: Isolation hits those notes perfectly, making the player confused, lost, and very often murdered horribly by a Xenomorph.

The Evil Within – When that lady who is also a spider drags you kicking and screaming back to her, so she can smash your head to a pulp with her bare hands. The craziest part is that this is a totally typical experience in The Evil Within. That game is crammed full of insane, gruesome, horrifying nightmares. The way this particular creature slinks and moves – her long black hair covering her face – gave us ALL the goosebumps. Then, she murdered us.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – The first time you use your wraith powers to wreck a whole gang of goblins. Zipping around like a ghost between a huge group of enemies is a cool power, but Shadow of Mordor protagonist Talion doesn’t just kill his enemies. He cracks one of their skulls wide open, spins around and decapitates another, spins back around to decapitate the first goblin for good measure, then lunges and disembowels a third. Before you know it, there are 10 dead goblins at your feet, and most of them are missing limbs and/or heads. It’s not terrifying in a traditional sense; rather, it’s scary how powerful the game makes you feel. Damn, Talion, you cold!

Outlast – The Wallrider. We’ve never seen anyone play the first encounter with the Wallrider and not shout expletives the entire time. It’s not enough that the ghostly figure is terrifying and seemingly indestructible; within seconds of his appearance, he kills the biggest, strongest threat in the game by shoving him through an air vent grate and turning him to monstrous lunatic slush.

D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die – The cat woman. You’d expect the maker of Deadly Premonition to pump out a bizarre game, but D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is awesomely insane. The first major part of the game involves a woman in a skimpy Halloween cat costume with a dead mouse in her mouth, who breaks into your character’s home and proceeds to savage him. And the game only gets weirder from there.

Each of these Xbox One games feature enough scares, blood, and weirdness to last your whole Halloween (and well beyond). Happy scaring, gamers!