4 horror games that need to be remade in virtual reality

In an age of remakes, remasters, and reboots it can be easy to feel a little burnt out from seeing the same games appear time and time again.

But there are a few positives to publishers recent obsession with reviving their older games. Such as the possibility of seeing old games get remade for the upcoming fleet of virtual reality headsets.

And one type of game will benefit from this like no other: horror.

Survival horror and virtual reality go together like Xenomorphs and LV426. Simply put, it's impossible to hide behind the sofa when the screen is strapped to your face.

So, while we may be getting sick of constant retreads of old games, here are four horror games we'd re-buy in a quickened heartbeat if they came with virtual reality support.

Let's get the obvious choice out of the way now. Amnesia is a perfect fit for VR - from the motion based controls to the screen distorting sanity effects, the game is a virtual reality game from before virtual reality was a thing.

Take the "water monster" scene: an invisible monster that roams through the flooded corridor, racing towards any sound you make to immediately tear you apart. You can't fight back against the monster, you can't even see the monster. But it's there.

It's scary enough on a screen. With the Rift headset and headphones blocking out the outside world, this could be absolutely horrifying.

The way you have to move your mouse to open doors or turn valves would be better with the touch controls, because as you started to panic you would be scrabbling to close doors before getting pulped by a gigantic monster. If you stay in the dark too long, reality starts to deform before your eyes on the headset, courtesy of the games sanity mechanics.

The 'Water Monster' perfectly encapsulates what makes The Dark Descent so terrifying. You can't fight back or win, you can only look and listen and hope. With VR you can't look away or zone out, only face up to the terror.

Moving away from 'completely defenseless' Condemned takes you all the way from no combat to beating up homeless men in an alley with a lead pipe.

What starts as a smart thriller with an FBI agent hunting a serial killer soon devolves into relentlessly brutal melee combat in a variety of grimy settings. Complete with a plot that's B-movie nonsense, but one that's taken completely seriously at every stage.

Luckily, Condemned has two big strengths. For starters, it's got one of the bleakest settings in video games: a city gripped by a madness that's eating at its lower classes. It's a oppressive series of dingy basements and back alleys.

Its second strength? It is hands down the best melee-focussed horror game. Every swing and slash is gruesome and every skull you cave in reinforces the horrific situation you now find yourself in. You come away from each of the claustrophobic struggles a little more drained.

Both of these strengths would only be bolstered with the addition of VR to the mix. What better way to experience the dingy city than up close, looking at the fouler details for yourself? What better way to experience the terror of being attacked by a group of pipe-wielding thugs than with a VR headset?

The problem with unknowable horrors, is that by showing them on a screen you're making them known and taking away a lot of the impact. Somehow, Dark Corners Of The Earth manages to pull it off anyway.

Call of Cthulhu suffered from a lot of cuts during development but the running time of this largely linear horror game is scattered with incredibly set pieces. It's largely a faithful rendition of Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth and visiting this eldritch holiday resort in virtual reality would be excellent.

Innsmouth is clearly a town where something is very wrong. As you slowly work through the mystery your character starts to lose his mind and you're plunged into some incredibly set pieces. It's a fairly tight narrative experience and while the compromises made during the game's seven year development are visible, when you're in the middle of these set pieces it really shines.

Pathologic is a flawed masterpiece. To get a sense of what the game is about, Quintin Smith delivers a takedown of the game in one of the finer pieces of long form games writing.

On the surface, Pathologic is a game about three healers arriving at a town in the grip of a devastating plague. In seven days, everything will be over.

There are three different characters, each with their own motivations and unique storylines. You play the characters during seven days and make allies and enemies throughout the town. None of your three healers is perfect, and everyone in the town reacts to you in different ways.

Whether it's the strange cube housing the town's children, or the local police who believe one of the player characters is responsible for a murder they didn't commit.

What I'm saying, in short, is that Pathologic is a shiny golden example of a game that invites you to climb up inside it and take a look. There's depth here, and a real town that's taking its last breaths as you rattle around inside it.

This is a different experience to the other horror games on this list where the enemies are something tangible, something you can see - with Pathologic your real enemy is time. With virtual reality you can see the dying beauty of the town for yourself, experience the desperation up close.

It's not a game loaded with jump scares, but as the time ticks away you'll experience several new types of horror.