9 Underrated Horror Games You Must Play Before You Die

1. Call Of Cthulu: Dark Corners Of The Earth

Layers Of Fear
Headfirst Productions

What it is: Dark Corners of the Earth sold a pitiful 5,000 copies in its country of origin on launch, a criminally small number for arguably the best adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's cryptic horror fiction to ever grace a games console. Police detective Jack Walters, rehabilitated and released from Arkham Asylum (no, not that one) following a traumatic event six years prior, gets straight back to work as a private detective, his first assignment being that of a missing person case at Innsmouth.

As expected of Lovecraft's cosmic horror, Innsmouth's population has gone a touch doolally under the influence of demigods Dagon and Mother Hydra and Jack's forced to continue his investigation in the midst of a bloodthirsty, brainwashed mob.

Why it's scary: Remember your very first run-in with the Ganado in Resident Evil 4's fictional backwater Spanish village? Dark Corners adopts that very same palpable sense of hostility, but constantly, without even the briefest respite. Jack isn't a special agent armed to the teeth - he's an ordinary man trapped in a town self-removed from wider society.

The sense of isolation only comes to an end when Jack escapes Innsmouth, but that's when even worse horrors from the deep claw themselves out of the deep sea.

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Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.