Happy Halloween, gamers: a roundup of video-game reviews

Astronauts trapped on alien-infested spaceships, Dracula rising from the dead, knife-wielding zombie nurses in tightfitting dresses, and presidential hopefuls taking off their gloves. ... Halloween must be right around the corner.

Computer and video games have long specialized in horror lands and fantasy worlds. This year, however, the gaming world has really outdone itself.

Twenty horror-themed games for various platforms are coming out this Halloween season -- 21 if you include "Littlest Pet Shop," which isn't really a horror game but a plethora of kittens with saucer-sized eyes that will give most gamers the willies.

Here, grouped by age ratings, are some of the best gorefests this Halloween season:

For younger kids

These games are rated E, appropriate for players ages 6 and up. They have ghosts and goblins but little to no blood.

Nancy Drew:

The Haunting of Castle Malloy

Her Interactive

Windows

$19.99

When Nancy Drew travels to an old Irish castle for a friend's wedding, she finds herself in the middle of a mystery. The groom is missing, the castle is haunted, the caretaker isn't friendly, and the bride wants Nancy to make everything good again.

The setting and the gameplay are as comfortable and familiar as a 2-year-old tennis shoe. You steer Nancy around the castle grounds, interviewing people and locating puzzles involving locks, sliding tiles, gears, etc. You solve puzzles that lead you to clues and more puzzles.

This is Bellevue-based Her Interactive's 19th Nancy Drew mystery, and the company has the formula down pat.

Igor

Legacy Interactive

Windows, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii

$29.99 (Windows, DS), $39.99 (Wii)

Based on a disappointing feature-length cartoon of the same name, this game follows the story of a hunchbacked lab assistant who wants to become a mad scientist in his own right. The DS version of this game is slightly better than the movie ... but that isn't saying much.

Master of the Monster Lair

Atlus

Nintendo DS

$29.99

Here's a novel game concept: Use a magic talking shovel to create dungeons that attract and kill monsters menacing the town.

Terrifying teens

These games are rated T, suitable for players ages 13 and older. They may have blood, disturbing images and low-level violence.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Konami

Nintendo DS

$29.99

Some things never get old.

Konami first introduced its side-scrolling "Castlevania" series as an arcade game in 1986. Over the years, the gameplay basics of this series have remained unchanged. It's still a side-scrolling, two-dimensional game in which players fight zombies and demons of every description as they search out Dracula or some similar facsimile.

Unlike most previous "Castlevanias," which took place in a single, seemingly endless castle, "Order of Ecclesia" lets players slog across a haunted countryside going from one haunt to the next. The graphics are vastly improved.

Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon

Encore

Windows

$19.99

The setting is Romania in 1921. As the country tries to heal its war wounds, an ancient terror rises.

"Dracula 3" is a traditional adventure game in which players tour a 3-D countryside one slide at a time, interviewing a cast of locals and solving puzzles. The gameplay is in the very traditional point-and-click adventure tradition.

Sometimes traditional games come across as classic; sometimes they simply feel old. In the case of "Dracula 3," the gameplay feels as dead and bloodless as the bodies of the evil count's victims.

M-rated

When it comes to the M rating, the correlation with movie ratings falls flat. With few exceptions, the sexual content of M-rated games is lower than what is allowed in R-rated movies. When it comes to violence, however, the games in this category are closer to NC-17.

Silent Hill: Homecoming

Konami

Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

$59.99

When Alex Shepherd returns to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen, the reunion is more terrifying than touching.

Shepherd's Glen is a neighboring township of Silent Hill, a locale familiar to many video-game players as the setting of five previous adventures and one rather lame movie. Alex's return sets off a string of disappearances and killings that sometimes take place in the real world, sometimes in another reality.

The real-world version of Shepherd's Glen is dark, dilapidated and shrouded in fog. The Otherworld version is crusted with blood and decay. Neither is cheery.

Alex's parents are cold and distant, and there is a mystery surrounding the death of his brother, Josh. Play the game through and you discover that the answers are even more unsettling than the mysteries. This is a game about coming to grips with internal demons that manifest themselves in hideous external forms.

"Homecoming" is a survival horror game, meaning you have limited ammunition and health supplies to help you through a landscape populated by an endless supply of horrors. You can't fight them all, so you spend a lot of the game limping from fights and hoping to survive.

"Homecoming" has problems, some of which run deep. A lot of the game takes place in pitch-black settings lit mostly by Alex's flashlight. While this makes the atmosphere more mysterious, the lack of light gets downright irritating.

The game introduces improved fighting controls that longtime fans of the "Silent Hill" series may find too powerful but new players will genuinely appreciate.

One final note for parents: Along with gallons of gore, this game includes graphic depictions of terror and torture.

BioShock

2K Games

PlayStation 3

$59.99

Considered by many to be the best game of 2007 -- the game was released last year for Xbox 360 and Windows PCs -- "BioShock" makes its PlayStation 3 debut today.

A hybrid, first-person shooter/role-playing game, "BioShock" takes players to Rapture, an undersea city filled with monsters and mutated humans. If you are looking for a game that can draw you into a vibrant world of absolute terror, this is the one.

Left 4 Dead

Electronic Arts

Windows, Xbox 360

$49.99 (Windows), $59.99 (Xbox 360)

A fast-paced, first-person shooter in which players try to help a team of four humans survive in a city filled with zombies, "Left 4 Dead" is not so much a horror game as a war game with horror elements. This game was created by Valve, the Bellevue-based company that gave the world such brilliant games as "Half-Life" and "Team Fortress."

Dead Space

Electronic Arts

Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

$49.99 (Windows), $59.99 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)

Astronauts board a derelict ship called the USS Ishimura and find themselves trapped in a world in which death comes in all shapes and sizes. This first-person shooter pulls out all of the horror stops -- dark locations lit only by flashlights, aliens that spring out of the walls.

Steven L. Kent is a freelance writer and frequent electronic-game reviewer in the Seattle area.