Rest In Pixels – The Top 10 Video Game Graveyards

Death is a natural part of life. It's also an integral consequence of playing poorly in video games. The worlds of Dark Souls are riddled with bloodstains where fellow adventurers perished, and Super Meat Boy players even get to watch the cute little guy die dozens of times after beating a level. With so many characters constantly dying in games, it makes sense there's a place to lay those fallen heroes to rest. In celebration of the afterlife and Halloween, we've gathered the most iconic and uniquely...executed graveyards in all of video games.

10. MediEvil - (1998 - PlayStation)
Sir Dan is the reanimated corpse of a knight who - legend has it - led the kingdom of Gallowmere in battle before dying from his battle wounds. But really, he was an incompetent warrior who died almost immediately in the fight. It makes sense that his afterlife adventure begins where he was buried - an elaborate mausoleum in a huge graveyard. Thanks to an evil wizard casting a reanimation spell on the hallowed grounds, Sir Dan must fight his way through crawling severed hands and deadly zombies, and leap past dozens of boulders inexplicably tumbling down the highest hill in the cemetery.

9. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008 - PlayStation 3)
The ending of Guns of the Patriots (MGS 4 spoilers ahead) is about as heartfelt and revealing as Solid Snake's convoluted-yet-compelling storyline gets. The veteran stealth maverick pays his respect to the grave of Big Boss - his genetic father by way of cloning. The graveyard itself is pretty standard, but the twist that occurs here makes it one of the most memorable in gaming. After Snake salutes his dad/mortal enemy's grave, he discovers that Big Boss lives on via Solidus' repurposed body parts. Then after a lengthy discussion, Big Boss explains that the only way to truly save the word is to kill a 105-year-old man right there and then. In the graveyard. Next to his own grave.

8. Max Payne 3 (2012 - PS3, 360, PC)
Speaking of unexpected twists while paying respects to your loved ones, Max Payne 3 really ratchets it up a notch. Continuing his streak as the unluckiest sad sack in all of video games, Max Payne is saying goodbye to his murdered wife and baby daughter when the cemetery erupts in gunfire. Max is forced to take cover behind the gravestone of his dead wife as mobsters take potshots. His wife's headstone gradually crumbles under the volley as Max is forced to battle his way out of the graveyard and eventually New York. Against all odds, his life only gets worse from there.

7. Silent Hill 2 (2001 - PS2, Xbox, PS3, 360, PC)
Silent Hill's notorious fog induces a stroll down an innocuous city street with a sense of dread. That unease is ramped up even more when James Sunderland's lonely path leads into a dreary graveyard early on in the game. While that initial cemetery is spooky, James stumbles upon something even scarier when exploring an underground labyrinth. James enters an unsettling room filled with a small plot of land and a few empty graves with headstones. Most of them are shallow, but one gives way to a dark, seemingly bottomless pit players must leap down to progress. The name on the headstone? "James Sunderland."

6. Ghosts 'n Goblins - (1986 - NES)
Making a graveyard look cutesy isn't a simple task. That also may not have been Capcom's primary goal when creating the first stage of Ghosts 'n Goblins, but that's what happened. The heroic knight, Arthur, is just hanging out in a graveyard with his girlfriend while wearing only his skivvies when suddenly a demon appears from nowhere and steals away his lover. Arthur then dashes through the cemetery to rescue her as coffins rise from the ground and the walking dead shamble out. One hit from these ghouls sends Arthur's armor flying off and he's back to wearing his undies - just another reason why you shouldn't take your date to a cemetery.

Up next: Ghosts that fit in your pocket and Raccoon City's dearly departed...

5. Pokémon: Red & Blue (1998 - Game Boy)
The Pokémon world is a cute, chibi world filled with cuddly little creatures that battle each other. The game is so saccharine that when Pokémon fall in battle they don't actually die - they faint. Death is addressed in the infamous Lavender Town, however. The Pokémon Tower is a multi-storied building where grieving Pokémon Trainers go to lay their dead battle pets to rest. Making things slightly more morbid is that this is the first section of the game that players can fight and catch ghost-type Pokémon like Gastly. Even in the afterlife, these poor Pokémon can't escape the unending cycle of pet battling.

4. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999 - PlayStation)
S.T.A.R.S. team member Jill Valentine defeated enough zombies in the Spencer Mansion to fill an entire graveyard. In Resident Evil 3, her escape from Raccoon City brings her to a cemetery. For the first time in the series, we see the undead rising from their graves to feast on the living (something that's not exactly congruous with RE's virus fiction). These risen nuisances are bad enough, but things get worse when an overgrown worm named Gravedigger tears up the entire cemetery, forcing Jill to fight in makeshift trenches.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998 - Nintendo 64)
Graveyards have always been a creepy place in Zelda games, usually crawling with ghostly Poes carrying lanterns and a grudge against the living. In Ocarina of time, Link can disturb the dead even more effectively by moving around gravestones willy nilly and stealing rupees from the deceased. This green-garbed defacer gets his comeuppance when he ventures beneath the graveyard into one of the large tombs. One of the cripplingly grotesque Redeads greets him there, enveloping him in a deadly embrace he won't soon forget.

2. Altered Beast (1988 - Arcade, Genesis)
This arcade-turned-Sega Genesis classic begins with Zeus himself commanding players to "Rise from your grave!" From there, these resurrected Roman warriors' sole purpose is to fight through throngs of zombies and demon dogs to save Zeus' daughter. Altered Beast was the best game to play if you wanted to ravage a graveyard as a fireball-shooting werewolf in the late '80s.

1. PlayStation Home (2009 - PS3)
Nobody knew what to expect when Sony opened the virtual gates to PlayStation Home back in 2009. Buzz for Sony's Second Life-style attempt to bring users' avatars together died down in the following months until the experiment became the butt of endless jokes. The jokes gradually faded into nonexistence, leaving the kind of gaping abyss that forms when something is completely forgotten. Home is practically a graveyard at this point, but a few lonely souls still wander the desolate wasteland. All this will come to an end when Sony finally pulls the plug on March 31, 2015. At that point we can only imagine the hundreds of lost avatar souls that will come flying out of PS3s everywhere like the end of Ghostbusters.