Halloween’s coming up quick and while you could dole out poisoned candy to the kiddies or dress up as the slutty pumpkin, another option is to fire up the ol’ console and freak yourself the frack out with some scary-ass survival horror games.

Just as the Hollywood fills cinemas with scary movies this time of year, so do game publishers stock store shelves with frighteners, most monstrously EA’s Dead Space and Konami’s Silent Hill: Homecoming.

The former is a spooky, spiritual Alien-inspired creepfest set aboard a seemingly abandoned deep-space mining ship overrun by viral alien-zombies who can only be killed by gross dismemberment. The later is the sixth edition of the Silent Hill series and follows back-from-the-frontlines soldier Alex Shepherd returning to his hometown only to become embroiled in the series titular evil cult. Purists have griped that with an American company, Double Helix, producing the formerly Japanese-made franchise, Shepherd now boasts serious fighting skills. This equals bad in their eyes because the genre has historically been psychological rather than physical, rooted not in combat like most games but in running away.The goal is not to kill but simply not to be killed yourself.

This survival horror tradition—also known for dim lighting, gory graphics, limited ammunition and spooky sound design—dates back to at least the 1992 PC game Alone in the Dark, an HP Lovecraft-inspired romp through a haunted mansion filled with ghosts and zombies and occultist pirates. In 2005, much-hated director Uwe Boll directed a much-hated film adaptation starring Christian Slater and this past summer saw the fifth entry in the series, still starring monster-slaying private eye Edward Carnby.

After 1995’s Clock Tower, a hide-and-stalk scary mansion adventure on Super Nintendo, the genre saw the launch of it’s two biggest franchises: 1996’s zombie-tastic Resident Evil (itself based on the 1989 Japanese-only Nintendo game Sweet Home) and 1999’s cultish Silent Hill, both of which have also become movies. RE 5 is set to drop next spring, but has already sparked controversy over its African setting after a trailer was released featuring a white protagonist mowing down tribal zombies.

Tecmo’s acclaimed but less well-known Fatal Frame series is rooted in Japanese folklore but began in 2001 as yet another trapped-in-a-haunted-mansion game. The fourth edition, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, came out this year in Japan on the Wii with a North American release pending. Co-directed by cult game designer Suda 51, it centers around a kidnapping of several young girls and is set in—yep, you guessed it—a creepy mansion. Suda also recently announced he was working on an original horror  game with Resident Evil’s creator.

Survival horror games were always largely a niche genre, but they're going mainstream on the now-gen systems because technology has finally caught up to the designer's imaginations. In other words, it’s hella easier to scare up some scares with surround sound and big screens.

Speaking of, PS3 owners should go pick up the finally ported BioShock as soon as inhumanely possible. You will be so very creeped.