![]() Unfortunately, while the cover of Ork is truly monstrous, it loses points for lack of originality. That is one weird giant creature on the cover of the obscure Psygnosis platformer Ork. Orkġ991 | WJS Design| Commodore Amiga, Atari ST Too bad it doesn’t come with this awesome box art, though. We’ll probably never get a modern Shadow Mangame, but at least the original is now readily available on Steam. Acclaim made a lot of terrible decisions during this time period (which is why the company no longer exists), but they absolutely nailed this box art, featuring a very creepy image of protagonist Michael LeRoi holding a skull in front of some of the more unsettling enemies in the game. CARRION COVER ART SERIALMixing voodoo, serial killers, and regular trips to hell, Shadow Man was one especially freaky game for the late ‘90s. Manhunt is basically a playable snuff film, and the unnerving image of one of the game’s bloody masked killers on the cover is certainly gets across that this is not a game for the weak-stomached or easily offended. CARRION COVER ART TVYou play as an escaped death row inmate who must violently kill psychopaths with makeshift weapons like plastic bags and pieces of glass as part of a sick TV show. But the tone of the game itself is pretty damn disturbing. Certainly it’s one of Rockstar’s weaker titles. OK, in part, that’s because it’s not the greatest game. Manhunt is a game that will actually make you feel dirty from playing it. The vacant stare of a gray alien is always unnerving, but what really makes this cover over the top is when you look at it for a few seconds and realize that this gray is actually made of hundreds of human skulls. While the cover of first game in the rebooted series, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, focused on the military unit at your command, the second game perfectly illustrates the depressing state of the world in the sequel. The lore of the XCOM games has long portrayed the grays as uncaring conquerors of the human race, and XCOM 2 begins with the aliens actually controlling Earth. There are a lot of disturbing scenes in The Evil Within, and the first one actually hits you as soon as you pick up the box. ![]() Nothing gets that point across better than the cover, which features protagonist Sebastian Castellanos screaming, his face covered in barbed wire. Mikami has talked about how he wanted to get across to players the idea that every enemy in The Evil Within was being punished. Shinji Mikami’s follow-up to his work on the Resident Evil franchise received some flack for being much more difficult than those games, but that really just adds to the tension that makes The Evil Within a much more unsettling game than the last few Resident Eviltitles. Doom 3 may be something of a black sheep of the franchise now after the more action-packed follow-up came out earlier this year, but it easily holds the title of best box art in the franchise. Doom 3’s graphics were insanely advanced when the game first came out, and there was perhaps no better way to get that across than with the screaming face of a Hell-Knight standing in front of a pentagram on the front cover. ![]() There’s a lot to be said for understated and well-thought out box art (there’s quite a few of those on this list), but sometimes a giant, pissed-off demon just gets your point across just as well. If you have a psychopath with a chainsaw in your game, that’s something you really want to play up on the cover. It’s baffling as to why Capcom ever ditched this image for covers just focusing on Leon in later releases. While subsequent re-releases have added more modes and better graphics, the original release still has the very best box art, featuring an armed Leon Kennedy running from an army of Las Plagas and the iconic chainsaw guy. Resident Evil 4 has been released so many different times now that it’s easy to forget its roots as a GameCube exclusive. The game’s cover did look great while it collected dust on your shelf for all eternity. While every other publisher out there put cutesy cartoon characters on their boxes to copy Nintendo’s success, publisher LJN used a freaky photo of Jason Vorhees holding an ax with some psychedelic colors in the background. But pretty much everyone who had an NES back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s played it. ![]() The actual gameplay has no redeeming qualities. It’s not even so bad that it’s good and worth spending a few minutes watching on YouTube. ![]() Where better to start than with Friday the 13th? First things first: this is not a good game. ![]()
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