Xboxist

Get Your Spook On With Haunted House for Xbox Live Arcade

Halloween is finally here, and with it comes the inevitable flood of scary video games. There's Rockstar's Undead Nightmare for those of you who like a dash of zombie with your Wild West. Or, there's the Halloween update for Minecraft if you're on the PC platform. But for those of you who enjoy a more classic arcade fright fest, let us suggest Haunted House, which arrives on XBLA this weekend. And when we say classic, we really mean it. The original game was first released in 1981, featuring an adventure in which the player (represented by a pair of eyes) must navigate the haunted mansion of the late Zachary Graves to recover the three pieces of an urn.

The updated Haunted House pays homage to the classic favorite as players solve mysteries in Graves Mansion as the grandchildren of the original character, Samuel Silverspring, who disappeared without a trace in the evil mansion nearly 30 years ago. Chased by pesky poltergeists, haunted by scary skeletons and and ravenous rats, players are immersed in a goosebump-inducing adventure to explore the dark and creepy depths of Graves Mansion in search of the four lost pieces of a magical urn. The player's goal is to reassemble the urn and defend their family's legacy with the aid of mystical tomes, powerful light sources and mysterious artifacts.

This classic game has been remade for a new generation of gamers with enriched 3D environments, interactive objects, dynamic storylines, and new characters. Gamers must navigate their way through 16 levels of spooky environments, find hidden treasures, solve puzzles, fight new bosses, and manipulate the environment on their way to a showdown with Zachary Graves.

The graphics have had a major overhaul from the 1981 original, which was powered only by the player's imagination.