DeadSpace

When you mention creepy soundtracks, people tend to think of movies. I understand why this happens--because a good soundtrack can make an average movie terrifying--but it's hardly the only place where a spooky bit of music can set the mood and freak out an audience. Gaming is still in its infancy as an artform (and we'll save the "are games art?" debate for another day...), but music in horror games is as vital to the overall experience as it is in horror films. Unfortunately, it rarely gets any kind of recognition from the masses.

With that idea in mind, I had the brilliant idea to come up with a list of the creepiest music from horror videogames. Like most of my ideas, it sounded really great when it occurred to me. How hard can it be to come up with ten or so scary tracks? I thought to myself. Like all projects I undertake, this one turned out to be way more work than I expected. There's a lot of horror game music out there, and I've spent the last week or so going through it track by track trying to find the best of the best. This is the fruit of my labor...

Jump past the break for the list.

2009 has been a good year for horror at the box office (I don't have official statistics, but there have been a surprising number of genre flicks that have opened in the top spot or exceeded their earning estimates), but apparently it's also been a fantastic year for horror in video games.

A technology article posted today at Reuters cites financial figures from Wedbush Morgan Securites' video game analyst Michael Pachter, numbers that show horror games posted 147 million dollars in sales in 2009--up from 131 million in 2008. That makes 2009 a record year for games designed to creep out their audience.

While there have been a large number of horror titles released on the console and PC this year that have added to the overall haul, it's Capcom's popular Resident Evil series that's done the bulk of the heavy lifting. 2009 saw the release of Resident Evil 5, a game that has sold 1.94 million copies to date according to the NPD Group's tracking numbers. Pachter says that while other games in the genre have done well, "to date, the "Resident Evil" brand is exactly half of all sales."

The franchise will have an opportunity to build on that impressive figure with the November debut of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. Other recent and upcoming horror game releases include Dead Space: Extraction, Saw: The Video game, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and the eagerly anticipated Left 4 Dead 2.

Priest finally gets its time table.
Unless you work at The Orphanage - no, not the provider of ghosts or scary children; the effects company - you probably don't know who Scott Stewart is, but someone at Screen Gems is a big fan. Not only is Stewart the man with his hand on the wheel of the apocalypse in Legion, but now it is known he'll be going post-apocalyptic with directing duties on the oft-mentioned, never-committed Priest comic adaptation, also to star Legion's Paul Betttany.

World War Z hits a setback.
Paramount's adaptation of Max Brooks' hit novel recounting the (almost) end of the world looks to be in the middle of some creative differences. It came out at the Con that Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster was off the project, leaving Paramount on the hunt for new talent to bring home World War Z. Personally I think this is great news. Given Forster's stab at Bond didn't prove the drama director deft with action set pieces, I was dreading how he'd handle a global zombie outbreak. Not that I have any position to do so, but I'd like to offer up Peter Berg, who has already proven great with action and, most recently, showed an affinity for the one-on-one confessional style of WWZ, as seen in his great pilot for Virtuality, a Sci-Fi show that'll never be.

Dead Space to get its limbs sliced off on the big screen.
If you own a current gen console and you're reading this site, chances are very good you love Electronic Art's inventive survival horror game Dead Space. Considering EA gave the game a huge multi-media push when it came out last year (with several comics, action figures and an animated film), it was only a matter of time before the gaming giant announced a live action feature. Now the film adaptation of extreme horrors on a space station may not have a screenwriter or a studio, but it does have Eagle Eye/Disturbia director D.J. Caruso lined up to kick off the inevitable journey to a galaxy, er, movie theater near you.

E3 is to computer / console stuff what Comic-Con is to ... bad movies we won't get to see for three months. But if you're a big-time video game junkie, there's no better place to meander through than E3. (I've never attended, but it sure seems like a cross between Best Buy and a time machine!) For a ton of reports on all sorts of nifty new products, you can find the scoops on Joystiq or Engadget, but our good pal Peter Hall has broken the game previews down to the most important stuff: the horror games.

Just like horror flicks, the gaming biz is awash in impending sequels ... but since we're talking about titles like Bioshock 2, Dead Space: Extraction, and Left 4 Dead 2, well, I won't be complaining all that much. But of course there are a few non-sequel scare games that look pretty damn cool -- and you can find all the info at HorrorsNotDead.com. I'm still really curious about this Saw game ... and I'm always down for a fresh trip to Silent Hill!