Highlights
- The PlayStation 3 allowed for more realistic and detailed horror games with its improved graphical fidelity.
- Vampire Rain: Altered Species received poor reception due to its boring stealth gameplay and lack of innovation in comparison to other games in the genre.
- Siren: Blood Curse was a critical success, offering truly frightening gameplay and impeccable sound design, but it marked the end of the franchise as the development team moved on to other projects.
Horror games continued their evolution (which truly began back on the PS1) on Sony’s third foray into the console business. As developers and players alike began to seek more realism in their games, the graphical fidelity of the PlayStation 3 was starting to be able to oblige.
Best PlayStation Plus Horror Games (June 2024)
Sony's PS Plus Premium and Extra subscription tiers are packed with horror games, but which are the best and scariest titles?
As reliable as the third-person perspective was for most of the PS2’s horror catalog, the PS3 allowed for varied views of their more horrifically meticulous models and environments. That attention to detail, of course, extended to the genre’s staple blood and gore. Regardless of how traumatizing even the earliest PS3 horror games ended up being, some of them have still been forgotten.
1 Vampire Rain: Altered Species
Release Year: 2008
In Vampire Rain: Altered Species, vampires have covertly invaded the United States, and it's up to John Lloyd and his team of secret agents to stop them from taking over. Through stealth gameplay, the player must make their way through the streets of Los Angeles, wading through a sea of deadly monsters that can tear Lloyd apart in no time.
8 Underrated PS3 Stealth Games
Although these PS3 games were the underdogs of the stealth genre, they still featured enjoyable gameplay for fans of the genre.
The game was originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2006 before being ported to the PS3 the following year. However, the extra year seemed to do nothing for what critics saw as boring stealth gameplay that had been done leagues better in games like Metal Gear Solid. Couple the poor reception with the merging of the studio that made it, Artoon, with AQ Interactive, and what's left is a series that has no hope of a second chance.
2 Siren: Blood Curse
Release Year: 2008
The final game in the Siren series, Siren: Blood Curse is not a sequel, but more of a redo of the first game. It keeps the setting of the original but adds detail and more robust gameplay that probably couldn't have been done on the previous console generation. Like the first game, play as multiple characters working to escape the village of Hanuda while attempting to overcome its curse that's keeping them in a time loop.
Siren: Blood Curse was a critical success for many of the same reasons that the first game in the series was, being truly frightening in part because of its impeccable sound design. This would be the last time the franchise has been heard from, however, as the team behind it would move on to the arguably more recognizable Gravity Rush series.
3 ImabikisÅ
Release Year: 2007
Visual Novels are something of a niche genre in the West, and for that reason, ImabikisÅ was never brought over from Japan. However, it was well received there, having been co-produced by Taka Ichise who also produced horror movie classics like Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge. With a powerhouse Ichise on board, it made for a story that resonated incredibly well with fans who managed to get their hands on it.
6 Japanese Franchises That Started On PC
The following six iconic Japanese franchises first appeared on PC.
The story revolves around some college students investigating the correlation between a hot new drug and several mysterious deaths happening in their town. While the game was released on iOS in 2012, it was never serialized in the States. The developer, Chunsoft, would go on to merge with Spike and make the rather popular Danganronpa series, making the return to ImabikisÅ even less likely.
4 Clive Barker’s Jericho
Release Year: 2007
Video games and book authors have a long history of crossovers. Clive Barker was no stranger to the idea by 2007, being a prolific author who also worked on game adaptations of his films, Nightbreed, as well as Undying. Clive Barker'sJericho is an FPS that tells the story of an abomination created by God, and The Department of Occult Warfare's fight to keep it from being unleashed on the world.
10 Famous Authors Who Worked On Video Games
People who write books can, naturally, write a pretty good story for a video game. These authors have excelled at just that.
Players are given control of the Jericho Squad and can switch between them whenever needed as they all have particular playstyles that work in different situations. The game received middling reviews overall, with many saying that the gameplay, and in particular the enemy and squad AI, were not up to par with what was a generally interesting story. Since its release, the game has been taken down from Steam, making the prospect of another Jericho game all the more unlikely.
5 Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Release Year: 2008
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360
- Developer(s)
- Monolith
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror , Shooter
Condemned 2: Bloodshot is a sequel to the pretty well-received Condemned: Criminal Origins, which was released on the Xbox 360 a few years prior. Ethan Thomas is recruited to search for a missing friend who was featured prominently in the previous game but ends up stumbling into a dangerous plot to take over the masses and make them more violent.
14 Forgotten Local Co-Op & Split-Screen PlayStation 3 Games
PlayStation 3 had some surprisingly good local co-op and split-screen games, many of which were forgotten throughout the years.
It's a survival horror game with an emphasis on melee combat, having the player brawl their way through enemies, while also periodically stopping to conduct forensic investigations. Condemned 2 is the last in the series, as the studio started making games in the DC and Lord of the Rings universes, like Gotham City Imposters and the excellent Middle-earth:Shadow of Mordor.
