This is not a game you play to be scared. This is a game you play because you love Halloween, and all the campy spookiness that comes with it. I'm a lifelong Halloween fanatic, and when I found out that there was an entire game on Steam that was centered around the holiday, I knew right away that I had to give it a try. From the word “go”, I was not disappointed. The scenery and atmosphere in this game are exactly what you'd hope they would be. The first level is a sort of semi-open world hub, set in a suburban neighborhood that's jam packed with side quests, bonus objectives, and a plethora of festive frights. Virtually every house in this area is thoroughly adorned with a wide variety of Halloween decorations, and the only NPCs not wearing costumes are the local cops, and the monsters themselves, of which there are a wide and impressive variety! All across this game you'll encounter everything from zombies, ghosts, and werewolves, to giant spiders, chainsaw butchers, Treebeard's grumpy cousins, and more.
From there, you'll gather up your friends and proceed to the local haunted house, which is by far my favorite level in the game. The suspense and the tension in this house are cranked steadily higher and higher as you continue to explore, until you come face-to-face with the zombie-like witch's ghost that haunts the place. Easily the most effective boss encounter in the entire game, especially in VR, though the downside is that this stage is about as scary as the game gets. Once you've beaten it, Sinister Halloween becomes significantly less frightening from that point onward.
Your journey will take you everywhere from a haunted cemetery, to a grand mansion where a local Halloween party went very, horribly wrong, ultimately culminating in a climactic showdown with the Grim Reaper himself. Along the way, you'll come to rely heavily upon your trusty torch to drive away the monsters, before trading it in for the most ridiculously overpowered weapon in the game: the shotgun. Not only does this thing have substantially better range than the torch, but it takes down literally every non-boss enemy in one well-aimed shot. It got to the point where I literally played E1M1 from DOOM over the final manor level, because I was having that much fun blasting the monsters away. Ever wanted to see evil spirits pop like balloons when gunned down? They do in Sinister Halloween.
That does, however, bring me to some of my critiques of this game. I'd still highly recommend Sinister Halloween to anyone looking for a new and unique experience to add to their library, but it should be said that it's not perfect. For starters, technically speaking, it's impossible to die in this game. You can run out of health, but within seconds, you're plopped right back to the latest checkpoint and are free to run right back into the fray. While this didn't prevent me personally from having a blast, it did somewhat hamper the tension and could definitely interfere with other people's experience. Furthermore, I can't remember a single time when I ever ran out of ammo for my guns, even in the latter half of the base game when I was relying solely on the shotgun. There were times when I had to reload, but big whoop. One push of a button still meant doomsday for every ghoul and goblin unlucky enough to cross my path.
And on that note, this does unfortunately bring me to my biggest and most important critique of Sinister Halloween, as mentioned at the beginning of this review: it's not scary. It has its moments, don't get me wrong, but those are most prominent at the start of the game. As mentioned earlier, once you've vanquished the first haunted house on the block, you've officially conquered the scariest part of the game and will be less afraid of whatever else it has to offer. This is due primarily to the availability – and effectiveness – of the weapons available, and the emphasis that this game has on combat. It will throw a lot of enemies at you, and the most ideal way to deal with them – especially when they're in groups, like the werewolves for example – is to permanently introduce their craniums to your shrapnel. I can count on exactly one hand the number of times that my weapons weren't able to dispatch a given foe with a single shot. And by the time I reached the last level, nine times out of ten, I was shooting down the monsters faster than they could even reach me. For some, especially those who are just getting into scary games, I could see this as a plus! But if you're looking for a more intense experience that inhibits the player's ability to fight back against the monsters, definitely look elsewhere. NPCs will even make remarks like “it's Halloween~!” or “we want candy~!” despite being in a horrific situation. You'll even find one chained to a cross at one point, and the most she can seem to muster from this predicament is mild annoyance.
The game is clearly a labor of love for the Halloween season, and it shows. It is extremely low-budget, but frankly, I adore this game for it. The voice acting is absolutely atrocious, all the base character models for the human NPCs look exactly the same, and I wouldn't change a single thing about any of it, because those qualities made the game that much more enjoyable for me. Sinister Halloween is a special kind of game because it “gets” the Halloween season, more so than many other, more conventional horror games do. It blends its frights with campy silliness, and if you're in the mood for something other than Resident Evil or Outlast, then be sure to get yourself a nice big bag of candy, a suitably scary costume, and possibly a couple drinks, because Sinister Halloween is goofy holiday fun from start to finish.
