By Staff
Design by Collin Oguro

alloween comes once a year, and with it comes a number of different annual rituals. You can don a costume and go trick-or-treating, get spooked in a haunted house, or simply sit in front of the TV and watch a good old-fashioned horror flick. Historically, video games have not been created with Halloween in mind, but unintentionally they tend to evoke many of the same feelings. Whether it's the thrill of being scared, the excitement of dressing up, or the horror of zombies, ghouls, ghosts, and terrible gameplay, you'll find many video games embody the spirit of Halloween. Come with us while we rediscover the 13 recent and upcoming games that will give you all the thrills you can expect from the holiday.

Resident Evil 4 (GC, PS2)

When you think of Halloween, you might think of scary, and when you think of scary games, the Resident Evil series is probably the first thing to pop into your mind. After all, it's the series that popularized the survival horror genre. And just as that genre started to get stale, Resident Evil 4 came along to once again make it fun to be scared.

You can describe Resident Evil 4 to someone who hasn't played it, but it's difficult to put that sense of creepiness and tension into words. After all, the game is really just a basic action game at heart. You walk around, collect a few items here and there, and waste tons of bad guys...which is nothing new. But what makes Resident Evil 4 different (and better) is the atmosphere. From the weird, desolate village in the beginning of the game to the creepy, dark castle you explore later, every place you go feels like a place you really shouldn't be. It's that atmosphere that pushes down on you and makes you tighten your grip on the controller or tense up when you hear that first moan or grunt from the creep waiting to grab you around the neck and feast on your flesh.

The atmosphere makes the game scary even when there's no perceived danger. Sure, there are a few jump-out-of-your-seat moments where things burst out at you unexpectedly, but the real tension comes from those silent moments where you have a chance to look around and check your ammo supply. Then, just when you start to get an idea of exactly how much trouble you're in, you hear the sound of a chainsaw in the distance and your heart starts beating faster and faster as you run for your life. Then inevitably there will come that moment when that chainsaw makes contact and Leon's head is as good as gone, leaving you with a bloody stump and a simple "You Are Dead" as a reminder of why fear is a good thing, because it keeps us from venturing through rural Europe with anything less than a SWAT team--or at least an infinite rocket launcher.

World of Warcraft (PC)

Do you like scrumptious candy? Trick-or-treating? How about masks, costumes, and egging your neighbor's house? World of Warcraft's Hallow's End holiday wraps up both the delicious and the delinquent aspects of Halloween tradition into a single cross-faction time of fun that includes something for just about everyone. Cities and towns across Azeroth are festooned with giant jack-o'-lanterns and other ornaments in windows and on doorsteps, and the streets are thronged with players of every level and class who are munching candy and strutting around in their spooky best.

Every town's innkeeper lets characters trick-or-treat, and the treats range from simple candy that can restore health and mana, to masks that fit over your face and resemble every race and gender type in the game (undead male is predictably the scariest, though gnome female comes in a close second), to wands that can turn unsuspecting party members into a variety of costumes, to getting a costume put on yourself. Costumes include pirates and ninjas, ghosts and goblins, leper gnomes, wisps, giant skeletons, and bats. Some of these costumes even grant subtle bonuses: the pirate costume lets you swim faster; the ghost costume lets you float over water or safely fall from high places. What about the tricks? Well, you'll get changed into something for about 30 seconds...not nearly enough time to rampage around as a mini diablo, which is one of the options. Still, you can scamper about and pretend to savage some night elf's knee before the trick wears off.

There are also some all-new quests in place for the holiday. One line of quests has you going to the various capital cities, gathering candy for a hapless orphan, performing feats like flexing, or making chicken noises to secure the sugary prizes. Another line of quests centers about the contested Alliance town of Southshore, where horde players are ordered to pelt the Alliance with stink bombs and eggs, while the defenders must cleanse away the foul gifts with pine-scented power. The rewards for such great feats include experience and the treasured Hallow's End pumpkin treats that players can then eat for a variety of effects--either a chance at one of the costumes, or a chance at becoming very large (and very orange) for a period of time.

You can only trick-or-treat once an hour, and eventually all your masks, wands, and pumpkin treats will disappear as the holiday comes to a close. But memories of the Hallow's End holiday will endure throughout the World of Warcraft as a time of much merriment...except for when those horde jokers try to taint Southshore's fabled ale, which isn't cool at all!

Hellgate: London (PC)

The creators of the insanely addictive Diablo action role-playing series have left the nest and set out to start a new company, and a new project, Hellgate: London. This intriguing new game for the PC will feature tons of hack-and-slash action from a first-person perspective, similar to a first-person shooter. The game will take place in a near-future version of London, England, which has been overrun by a demonic invasion. Your character will be among the city's few surviving humans, and one of the few beings that can strike back against the demonic hordes.

Like you'd expect from a game with this kind of pedigree, Hellgate: London will attempt to get you hooked on hacking and slashing your way through huge armies of monsters while gaining experience points and levels, learning new skills, and picking up piles and piles of loot. However, Hellgate's developers have learned a thing or two from their Diablo days, and they plan to introduce a hack-and-slash system that is more streamlined but also more open-ended. There won't be any dead-end skill choices, since you'll be able to learn, tweak, improve, and change up your many, many combat and defensive skills on the fly. In the meantime, you'll be able to customize your weapons and armor, like an ancient holy sword you've recovered from the skeletal hands of a dead saint or a repurposed military rifle infused with demonic energy and different modifications. And like you'd expect from a game by the creators of Diablo, Hellgate: London will not only have a comprehensive single-player campaign, but it will also have online cooperative play for all the dungeon-hacking you'll be doing with your buddies. Unfortunately, Hellgate's developers haven't revealed an exact release date for the game and have only claimed that it will be "done when it's done." With any luck, we won't be waiting too long for this promising action RPG.

King Kong (PS3, Xbox 360, GC, PC, Xbox, PS2, PSP, DS, GBA)

Though any time of year can be well suited to a night home with a good monster movie, Halloween seems particularly fitting. The days darken earlier and you've got spooky things on the brain, so what better time to pop a few movies into the DVD player about a tale of giant killer ants, the dinosaur who destroyed Tokyo, or everyone's favorite building-ravaging primate, King Kong. Peter Jackson's remake of the classic 1933 movie is being accompanied by a game for virtually every system. In some ways, being a part of the experience in this format removes you from simply getting to observe the action; in other ways, it's much more terrifying and immersive than any non-interactive experience could be. Though the game is still unfinished, it's clear early on that if you leave with one thing, it will likely be heart palpitations.

Clearly, one of the game's successes is that it puts you right in the middle of the action. Whether you're navigating a puny human being and hauling ass away from a giant chomping tyrannosaurus, or you're beating down the fearsome lizards with the mighty arms of King Kong himself, at all moments you feel the worry of the uncertain outcome and the dread of impending defeat. In part, this is due to the game's first-person presentation and lack of a heads-up display. When the T-rex takes a bite out of you, the camera shakes and reddens, and you bleed as you stumble through the environments. But there's also something about the perspective that makes you feel as small and inadequate next to the dinosaurs as you would expect to be. Conversely, as King Kong, you get to experience the world as both the protector of the fragile heroine Ann, and the destroyer, as you peel apart the gaping mouths of the enemies attacking you. Though it won't be out in time for Halloween, King Kong evokes all the emotions that are often linked with that night. Whenever you do get the chance to experience King Kong's extraordinarily immersive action, you'll see what it's like to live inside a monster movie, instead of simply watching it.

Dead Rising (Xbox 360)

What would Halloween be without zombies? It'd be like a birthday party without cake, a disco without music, an Electronic Entertainment Expo without video games...in other words, it would suck. While Wideload Games and Aspyr Media have done an admirable job of reminding us that zombies are (or at least were) real people with real feelings in Stubbs the Zombie, there are other companies out there that are determined to "keep it real" by using games to draw attention to the obvious danger that zombies represent to humankind. Case in point: Capcom's Dead Rising, which is currently in development for the Xbox 360.

Capcom's sentiments toward the undead are well documented, but in many of the company's Resident Evil games, zombies have been an occasional nuisance more than anything else. In Dead Rising, however, you'll be battling your way through a shopping mall filled with them. You're predicament in the game isn't dissimilar to that which George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead protagonists find themselves in, though in Capcom's offering you'll assume the role of a photojournalist who is every bit as intent on getting a good story as he is on survival.

Based on what we've played of Dead Rising thus far, it's not a game that will scare you per se, but it's one that will do a great job of just making you feel helpless and overwhelmed at times. The zombies that we've killed in various demo versions have started respawning the moment we turn our backs, and since there are very few places where the zombies can't get to you, the action doesn't let up for a second.

Much of your time in Dead Rising, then, will be spent killing zombies, which, after the first few hundred or so, might become tiresome and repetitive if it weren't for the many different ways to do it. At the start of the game, for example, you'll be armed only with a baseball bat, but as you explore the mall you'll be able to arm yourself with just about anything that you find. Chainsaws from the hardware store and guns stolen from zombie cops are among the more obvious examples. But there's a lot to be said for a game that lets you beat zombies over the head with a cash register or make a hole in one with some golf equipment from a sporting goods emporium.

So remember kids, the next time your hometown is invaded by zombies, the mall might not be the safest place to go, but you'll be guaranteed a good time there.

City of Villains (PC)

Just in time for Halloween, Cryptic Studios' upcoming massively multiplayer sequel will let you don a cape of a different color. The developer's previous game, City of Heroes, let you create a superhero character who could punch, kick, blast, fly over and run circles around evildoers on the clean, well-lit streets of Paragon City. The sequel, City of Villains, will let you play as a supervillain, trying to rise through the ranks of an organized cadre of criminals that inhabits a dingy and dangerous island as corrupt as the brutes that live there.

The sequel will not only introduce new superpowers and a new area to explore, but it will also have new character classes, such as the "mastermind" profession, which has the ability to summon armies of robots (or ninjas, if you prefer). It will also let you create a base of operations that you can decorate with office furniture, stately stonework, and a plasma cannon or two to defend the sequel's new power crystals--useful artifacts that provide bonuses to the team of players that controls them. In addition to offering enhanced missions and better graphics, City of Villains will have beefed-up player-versus-player battle options. If you think you're the baddest villain on the block, you'll be able to prove it in the new game's arenas. And if you happen to have, let's say, a difference of opinion with other players that own both City of Heroes and City of Villains, you'll even be able to get into some hero-versus-villain brawls. Interestingly enough, Cryptic Studios has decided to encourage players who already own City of Heroes to join in on City of Villains. The company is hoping to do this by getting rid of the sequel's monthly fees for those players who play and already pay for the original game. Arguably, there might not be a better time to be bad than on Halloween, but you'll be able to decide for yourself when the game ships on that day.