GAMING A bunch of new games up the ghouls game for Halloween

CREEPS, CURSES AND COSMIC CRITTERS HAUNT OCTOBER’S GAME LINEUP

Turtle Rock Studio's Back 4 Blood leads the ghoulish pack of frightening new games this month By ZACK KOTZER

Ghouls and ghosts have been with video games from the very start. Nothing gets the blood pumping, or the run button held down, like a good fright.

The last year has given us a frightening range of scary games: from the action-packed monster mash Resident Evil Village to the more reserved folk tale Mundaun.

Appropriately, October 2021 has some of the most anticipated horror games of the year, filled with space freak-outs, ancient evils and zombies by the droves.

There’s a joke that Half-Life, Portal and Team Fortress creator Valve never gets around to making a third in its franchises. Some games don’t die so easily. The creator of the Left 4 Dead series, Turtle Rock Studios, has returned with Back 4 Blood, bringing along an army of undead.

Released in 2008, Left 4 Dead saw up to four players make their way across a zombie-riddled America, safe house to safe house, collecting supplies and keeping corpses at bay. Back 4 Blood reanimates the beloved formula with some twists.

Multiplayer games have shifted seismically since 2008, a challenge Turtle Rock is taking on. Back 4 Blood features new ways to play, including a more intricate versus mode in which four players fortify their surroundings while four others attack as supercharged ghoulies known as the Ridden.

The main campaign features eight cantankerous survivors and even added deck-building elements. Between safe houses, players can collect and manage cards that can boost their own skills or benefit the entire team. But beware: hands are dealt against squads too, subjecting additional challenges like time limits and larger hordes — making sure those navigating the apocalypse aren’t too comfortable.

Back 4 Blood had an extensive open beta over the summer but releases in full on Oct. 12 for PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Left 4 Dead isn’t the only game back from the grave. From 2019, Control was a colossal hit for Remedy, but it also gave us an update on the studio’s previous paranormal investigator, Alan Wake.

ALAN WAKE

WATCH THE OFFICIAL BACK 4 BLOOD TRAILER HERE

HOUSE OF ASHES

A novelist trapped in a horror ripped from his own pages and star of their own 2010 game, Wake passed through the halls of Control’s Oldest House before falling deeper into some ethereal passage.

Be it renewed interest in Wake or an opportunity to replay the original in full (DLC chapters were pulled from digital stores over, kid you not, the rights to Harry Nilsson’s song, “Coconut”), Remedy recently unveiled a full remaster.

When Alan Wake and his wife, Alice, booked a cabin in Bright Falls, it was to relax and alleviate Wake’s creative block and nightmares. Little did Wake know that greater, sinister beings of Bright Falls set up a trap for him and other artists for generations.

The game wears its Stephen King and David Lynch influences on its sleeve, though the aesthetic cocktail feels more like a horror set in the Northern Exposure opening. Alan Wake Remastered comes to PlayStation, Xbox and PC on Oct. 5. Nintendo’s most diligent hunter returns this October with Metroid Dread. Last we saw Samus Aran, she barely escaped a research station in 2002’s Metroid Fusion, battling a vicious parasite called X that could imitate the most dangerous beings in the universe. Including herself.

This long-awaited next chapter sees Samus investigating an outpost where Federation robots have been vanishing en masse, raising concern that X, or even the vampiric Metroid, has survived.

Samus will have to evade haywire EMMI drones, space pirates and a mysterious adversary using Chozo weaponry — the elusive race of Samus’s adopted family whose training and tech gives Samus an edge against fearsome monsters. Samus’s new nightmare begins Oct. 8 on the Nintendo Switch.

Supermassive Games, creator of the hit chooseyour-own-adventure PlayStation horror Until Dawn, continues its Dark Pictures Anthology this Halloween with House of Ashes.

Previous chapters Man of Medan and Little Hope have subjected their motion-captured TV actors to ghost ships and witch covens, respectably. House of Ashes offers a spin on another familiar monster.

Set during the Iraq war, a group of American soldiers are hit with an ambush before both groups are surprised by a sinkhole. Suddenly, all involved find themselves in a bizarre subterranean and labyrinthian crypt, awakening an unknown evil.

The player’s choices can radically change the course of this ghost story and the ultimate fate of these survivors. See how you fare against the House of Ashes on Oct. 22 when the game launches on PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

Lastly, if you’re looking for something a little more lighthearted but still packed with little ghoulies, you can treat yourself to SPOOKWARE. An homage to the manic WarioWare series, SPOOKWARE follows three skelebros who decide to make up for lost time in the afterlife after waning their existence on horror movies.

Split into four chapters, the game will feature over 200 lightning-quick and quirky mini-games — from hatchet attacks to skeleton synth solos — all inspired by all manner of creepy crawlies. The first chapter is available on PC.

METROID DREAD SPOOKWARE