Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption (2000, RPG) DEMO
Although it only supports 4 player multiplayer, it claims to have a Dungeon Master mode where someone can control the game for the other adventurers. Sounds a little bit like Neverwinter Nights. I'm only reviewing the demo so I can't testify to how well the DM mode works. The games starts with you as Christof Romuald, a 12th century Teutonic knight and vampire hunter. What a cool resume. Don't envy this character. He soon falls in love with a nun that was healing his wound from some battle that went wrong. He can't flesh out the relationship because duty calls (Nell!) and then later is turned into a vampire. Oh, how that table was turned. Wait! It gets better! The nun tries to find a way to cure him and during her search suddenly disappears. Now he has to go find her while dealing with his inner conflict. Boy, I was expecting to see Fabio on the cover of this software box.
The demo reminds me of a good old fashioned Dungeon crawl. You and your party of vampires (4 total in party), with differing abilities, both fight and spell cast your way free from imprisonment. The full version game spans into modern time and will hopefully broaden the game horizon a bit. I did enjoy fighting off knights and vampire wizards. Retrieving new equipment and reorganizing the party inventory to best distribute the booty was easy and enjoyable. The demo has many glitches with people standing half in walls and rats running through a wall instead of around it. The background graphics are adequate and the player models are nice. Being a vampire, the more blood you drink the more magic spells you can cast. Vials of blood and small rats can be stored for later blood chugs and you can grab a prisoner or two for a nice long drink. Careful, the vampire wizards I mentioned can grab you and take a drink, if you ignore them in the fight. The demo is very generous and can play for a couple hours depending on how meticulous you are in the castle crawl to freedom.

House of the Dead (1998, Arcade) DEMO
It may be old and the graphics reflect that, but at least it goes with Halloween and there is a free demo to play for some fun undead killing thrills. The demo is a little short but it plays very similar to the arcade game. It looks like the full version can have 2 people playing at the same computer using mouse, keyboard keys or joystick to control the 2 players. Makes me wish I had a light gun attachment. The graphics are not as good as the arcade but it was nice to see the similar cut scenes that I was familiar with playing the arcade version. It's a fun throw back. You can still find it on FilePlanet servers. Scroll down a bit to see the demo download link. Sega did release a sequel, House of the Dead 2 for Dreamcast.

Nocturne (1999, RPG) DEMO1 -- DEMO2
I keep reading statements like "the X-files of the 1920s and 1930s". I have to say I'm interested in this late 1999 release. The game engine graphics provide wonderfully spooky settings.  I am very impressed by the treatment of shadows. They adjust to light sources and if you are hugging close to a wall your shadow will stretch down the wall in a realistic manner. In the demo mysterious shadows streaking across the room as you walk through with appropriately timed music blast. I was given quite a scare. It fools the eye. It truly provides feeling of someone sneaking up behind you or away from you. Stranger, the name of the character you play, wears an overcoat that flows in the wind as you run around. It gave a sense of reality to the character. The environment is sectioned off like movie scenes. When you move the character into a different scene (there is a brief pause between scenes) it can be a different perspective and the camera view is locked. If you don't turn your gamma up (F11 and F12 toggle gamma in the game) it can be hard to see and with perspective changing it's easy to get turned the wrong direction. One of the two demos I sampled placed Stranger in a run down movie theatre. There is a particular scene I enjoyed where you are on the old stage, behind the movie screen (back when movie houses were made from old live theaters). You can see the movie running in reverse on the back side of the screen and a creepy character silhouette on the front side of the screen slinking towards the door that you have to exit by. The backgrounds and the staging of the scenes are excellent.
It looks like your mission is to kill creatures of the night. Even with Auto Aim turned on it is very hard to shoot the undead which are also well armed. That is until you shoot the arm off that was holding the gun then they just swat at you which still really hurts. I did find it funny that on one of the undead I could pick up the severed arm and throw it back down again. I'm assuming I could carry it around for a while but I was too busy keeping my Tommy Gun drawn which I picked up off a defeated undead. Stranger starts off with twin hand guns. You have to respect that. The demo didn't sample much story. To sum it up I would say that the graphics are excellent especially for late 1999 but the story needs to be good because the action sequences are difficult and sometimes plain annoying to deal with.
The Nocturne engine is also used in the Blair Witch games.

Blair Witch (2000, RPG) Official Web site and DEMO links for 1 & 2
While a bunch of you Goths are watching Blair Witch for the 13th time over Halloween don't forget you can experience it through not one, not two, but three games. Reviewer consensus is that they started out OK with the first game and grew worse with each release. The Nocturne game engine it runs on provides nice graphics, but the game engine was hard pressed to support the high action third installment, The Elly Kedward Tale.

Volume 1: Rustin Parr
They definitely set an eerie feel to the game in Volume 1. Vague ghostly images moving at the corner of the screen establish an uneasy feel. The backgrounds are detailed and laid out well. There is a little too much ghost monsters shooting for a game based on a movie where you never really saw a ghost, monster, witch or anything for that matter. I guess they had to add the fear of being killed off in some way. There are elements to the game that are direct references to the movie which are very apparent in the Volume 1 demo. Auto Aim has been improved since the game Nocturne. I suggest you use Auto Aim. Fights are much more boring but it's almost impossible to aim otherwise. As for game play, it works very similar to Nocturne's game controls. I do feel they have attempted to put together a compelling story but I can't say that it does the original movie justice.

Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock
The story is set in Civil War times with an amnesiac soldier as the protagonist. His mission is to rescue a girl, Robin Weaver, who has run off into the haunted woods. Silly little girl. The Weaver household had rescued him so that must be why he feels a little obligated. The demo seems a little boring and the backgrounds were not as detailed or scary.

Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale
Although there is no demo available it most likely has nothing new to show graphically. Critics claim that it is more action than mystery and adventure. This trilogy took the prequel concept too far by setting this back in the witch hunting days where, guess what, you are a witch hunter on a mission with a flint lock rifle and various other trinkets. A quote from the Blair Witch games official web site declares that this release focuses on action. Based on the difficulty of playing action sequences in Nocturne with Manual Aim and the fact the Auto Aim results in boring combat, tells me I don't have to see a demo or the full game. Most reviews stomped the third and final game of the trilogy. I would suggest sticking to the first two. I'm not panning something for a sadistic B movie plot, but B movie controls is just plain masochistic.

NOTE: the first demo is 54MB and the second is 93MB so if you have a slow connection you may want to think long and hard about downloading them.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (2001, Action Adventure) DEMO
Although this series is apparently popular on Playstation (including Resident Evil 1 & 2) Resident Evil 3's port to PC just didn't overly impress anyone. This is often the case for games brought from game stations. The graphics and the game is dated before they bother to port it to PC and no effort is made to enhance it for the port. The demo is poorly put together and the graphics are awful. I would assume they improved this before the final release. If not, this was a pitiful release.

Dracula
Two games and counting.

Dracula: Resurrection (2000, Adventure)
The story begins with the "defeat" of the Dracula at the end of Bram Stokers tale. Mina is still bitten and everyone is worried for her. Seven years later the bite marks appear on her neck again and she runs off to (bluh bluh) Transylvania (bluh). You play Jonathon and must go to the castle and save your wife, also known as Satan's concubine. Game play is compared to Myst but better. Sorry no demo but I've seen this posted as low as $13-$15

Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary (2001, Adventure)
First I want to say that the cover art for this game box rocks. They spared no cash on the printing of it either. The art isn't that creative of a style but the creepy face is just great. According to my dark sources this game is a good continuation of Dracula: the Resurrection but does not alienate anyone who has not played the prior game. The game play format is the same as Resurrections. The game is longer and has more puzzles to solve but generally critics felt that the puzzles were more frustrating and didn't drive the plot. Example: Code Cracking. We all hate them. Admit it! The graphics are beautiful and if you are a fan of eye candy, buy this game. Again, no demo. I've found this games as low as $17-$19. One cannot live on demos alone but goodness knows I try.

Nightmare Creatures (1998, Arcade) DEMO
Early 1998 release, mediocre reviews and a really bad game name. BUT there is a free demo to download and anything free that entertains for at least a couple minutes is all right by me. That's about all this games does is entertain for 2 minutes. In the demo you can play what looks to be a priest with a pole arm weapon or a lady with a sword. You run around in arcade fashion beating up monsters in an almost dungeon crawl manner. Like I said. It's fun for about 2 minutes. Don't download the demo or buy the game unless you are searching for classic arcade-like game nostalgia.

Necrocide: The Dead Must Die (2001, Shooter)
I agree with the title. It looks kind of neat but isn't out yet nor is a demo available. It is described as you, the player, are a female vigilante vampire set to the task of ridding the city of all the undead creatures. That just sells the point right home doesn't it? Looks like it will be released on 11-1-2001. They are missing Halloween by one day! There are 8 fun screen shots to take a gander at here.

One little piece of related trivia. Necrocide is developed by Novalogic who also developed the game Tachyon in which Bruce Campbell's voice is featured. Bruce Campbell is star of Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. I highly recommend watching any or all of those movies on Halloween.

Evil Dead: Hail to the King
For some reason the PC version has dropped off the face of the earth. Most agree is was really not good. So I'm not going to bother with reviewing it. The subject matter is great and they could have made this really scary. Oh well can't win them all. No demo to be found.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (late 2001, Action)
It could be spooky. It's like Halloween. Come on! It's Buffy! O.k. maybe it won't give you a really eerie feeling but at least you can feel like part of the franchise.  The site doesn't have anything but screen shots (bottom right torch). These shots look nicer than I've seen elsewhere. No demo is available.

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001, Action/Adventure) DEMO
Boooo! And I don't mean scary ghost boooo!. Booo! JEeeeeerr! It wants to be any of a slew of scene change, frozen camera angle, hard to control hard to shoot baddens game. The backgrounds are so-so. The model is nothing spectacular and it's hard to aim and shoot. In my opinion, don't bother.

Clive Barker: Undying (2001, Action) DEMO
Just look at the name that is backing it. This should be creepy. The demo is of decent length. It feels like the Quake 2 engine but I won't swear to it. The shot gun is cool but takes too much time to reload. I like the scythe much better. Choppy Choppy! There are some crazy creatures and moments where you lapse into day dream mode that are really creepy. It's definitely worth a look.

System Shock 2 (1999, Shooter) DEMO
I really didn't like this demo. The training was boring. I don't like the looks of the game engine either. It was too much of a mix of shooter and RPG. There are 2 modes. One is for shootin' one is for everyday stuff. (picking up items, cracking door codes) Hopefully the plot of the game allows for easy use of both modes. I hate the idea of getting stuck in inventory while something shoots you all to hell. When the demo starts you into the game I appreciate a pause to get adjusted to controls but I feel the training covers that. When the adventure begins, I didn't need to be locked into a room where rubble blocks the door and my first puzzle was to find my way out. There was no obvious answer so I became bored and quit. I have been told that it is very scary at times with good freak out moments but the demo did not deliver right out the gate. I would suggest committing to the full game for full appreciation.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (we hope 2001, Shooter)
DEMO: PC & MAC
This game is designed on a tweaked Quake 3 engine. The demo is incredible but unfortunately if you want to see any action you have to go online and play with the net heads. The single player does promise lots of undead things to shoot. Looks like the release will make Christmas, not Halloween. It would have been nice if they had sprinkled in a couple of undead baddies to kill in the demo. Oh well, patience is a virtue. Fear the flame thrower. Love the artillery strike.