Video games are unique compared to just about any other media genre, in that they can scare you the way nothing else can. Games have the luxury of building up terror over hours and hours of play, not just the 120 minutes of a movie. Since you are controlling the character, the scares are that much more potent and personal than in a book. However, it becomes much harder for the developer to scare you, because there are so many ways you can possibly play. Because of that, when horror is done right, it’s that much more scary than anything else you’ll run into. From psychological thrillers, to pulse-pounding action, video games can scare you any number of ways. These 13 games represent the most horrific titles you could possibly play.
13. Doom 3
There’s no denying Doom 3 is a scary game, but that’s because it’s cheap. The scares of shallow and forced, but still make you jump. They do nasty tricks, like having monster spawning triggers, and not letting you wield a weapon and flashlight at the same time. I’m sorry, was there no duct tape on Mars? Could you not figure out how to attach the flashlight to a shotgun or something? So by forcing you to switch between the two in the dark, Doom 3 amped up the pressure and terror. It’s not as cerebral or terrifying as some of the other entries on this list, but it still brings the scares.
12. F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. attempted to marry the terrifying child aesthetic of much Japanese horror with traditional fast-paced FPS gaming. It’s a bit of an odd combination, given that this horror type often relies on a creeping sense of dread, which is at odds with fast paced gunfire. There’s this dissonance between fighting off waves of security guards who use cover far too intelligently for their own good, and relying on a bullet time mechanic to get past certain areas; and then dealing with a creepy young/old psychic girl, who causes you to have horrific hallucinations. As odd as this combination is, F.E.A.R. succeeds because it’s really good at both. It’s a great FPS in its own right, and the horror element would still work under a different game type — thankfully the devs manage to combine the two without losing either.
11. Alone in the Dark
Alone in the Dark was one of the first ever polygonal games, when it debuted in 1992. I remember being in middle school and the demo was installed on one of the computers. Those frantic first couple of minutes, where you try and block the doors and escape the first room. Now it looks extremely quaint, with its impressive dozens of polys on screen at once — but when it first came out? Man oh man, that thing was scary! It’s thanks to this game we have the entire genre of third person survival horror. Without it, there would be no Resident Evil, no Silent Hill. It had all the elements we’ve come to expect: a haunted mansion, vastly more powerful than you enemies, object based puzzles, fixed camera angles, and a paranormal puzzle. Unfortunately, it also spawned an absolutely horrible Uwe Boll movie.
10. Sanitarium
Sanitarium was a point-and-click adventure game from 1998, which used an isometric based viewpoint, something you rarely see now. It starts in a titular sanitarium where the main character is suffering from amnesia. Even without his memories, he’s still the sanest person there, with the grounds filled with the self-harming and half-dead. The game starts odd, and rapidly goes surreal, with levels that take place in dreams, hallucinations, and other worlds. Adventure games are notorious for having puzzles that are often illogical, and need to be guessed or bruteforced in order to pass them. Sanitarium took the unusual step of having all the puzzles solvable by such radical ideas as “logic” and “observation”, no doubt earning them the enmity of adventure gamers the world over. While the game has a weak third act, the first two are amazing. Playing hide and seek with children in a completely deserted town? Yeah, that’s well creepy.
9. Resident Evil
When Resident Evil first landed on the original PlayStation, we didn’t know what we were in for. Our first exposure to Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation began with a haunted mansion and a couple of STAR agents trying to solve a string of murders. Resident Evil rapidly became the gold standard for survival horror. It certainly wasn’t a perfect game. The control scheme was unusual — you couldn’t walk and turn at the same time, nor move and shoot. The voice acting and translation where haphazard, and the load times were murder. The horror side of it was excellent though. Ammo was scarce, and enemies terrifying. There was a constant fear of making it to the next save point (the iconic typewriters), and trying to manage your limited inventory space was always hard. The sequels vary in both horror and quality. RE4 for the GameCube gave the title a major shot in the arm, and regeared the title for a more action oriented bent.
8. Shadow Man
Shadow Man is a massively underrated classic of a game. In the post Ocarina-of-Time landscape of late 90s/early 00s, there was a boom in third-person action-adventure titles, and a few tried their hands at the horror genre. The Legacy of Kain games were a popular example. But for sheer creeping dread, you can’t get past Shadow Man. The Shadow Man is one of the few who can easily travel between our world and the deadside, an afterlife of sorts. A group of serial killers and unimaginable evil are attempting to bring about the end of the earth, and it’s up to you to stop them. Shadow Man has to move between the worlds of the living and dead, taking on enemies and opponents in each, while leveling up various skills. It had a Metroidvania level of backtracking and exploration, as well as some of the most freaking disturbing level and sound design ever encountered. The Asylum in particular was very, very screwed up.
7. Dead Space
One of the more recent entrants on the list, Dead Space is a very action-oriented, but still a scary as hell, survival horror. You attempt to make your way through an abandoned mining space ship, trying to rescue your wife who should be onboard. Of course, the ship managed to delve to deep, and unleash untold horrors on the crew. Armed only with tools of the trade modified to kill the beasties, you have to find your way through the ship. The enemies are the horribly mutated bodies of the dead, and hence extremely difficult to kill. Often, the only way to properly take them out is to find a weak spot, and separate it from the rest of their body. Anyone who played Dead Space will probably also remember the huge and disturbing number of kill animations, for when you inevitably get killed by each and every beasty you cross. The developers also did away completely with the HUD, instead showing the important information like health in your armor itself, and ammo on the gun. You could even be attacked while upgrading your weapons, meaning the game had almost no safe locations.
6. Siren
Siren is a decidedly odd game, and one that is very…well…Japanese. Not in the usual “Oh, WTF Japan, how could you fap to that?” kind of way, but in that it involves a large degree of Japanese culture, views on religion, and the like. It’s a bit of a culture shock, is all. It also have a schizophrenic play style, divided into 10 chapters, with a different protagonist for each. All 10 were survivors of a xenophobic Japanese village ripped out of space and time by an occult ritual. Now surrounded by blood seas, a cult leader is trying to resurrect an ancient evil, and is turning the villagers into shibito — kind of like zombies. In each of the 10 chapters, you have to try and complete a task, while avoiding these creatures, who are much, much tougher than you. It’s sort of a horror/stealth game in that regard. Luckily, you have one trick up your sleeves, the ability to see through their eyes. Using on of the analog sticks, you could tune into the vision of nearby shibito, and figure out where they were, and what they’re doing — but leaving your body alone and defenseless in the process. The developers also made the decision of instead of normally texturing the shibito, they projecting photographs of people’s faces shot from different angles — giving a look of a mannequin with a face plastered on. Creepy-ass classic Japanese horror, done right.
5. Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 isn’t a horror game in the same sense as the other entrants on this list. Sure, it’s scary, but in a post-apocalyptic totalitarian way, rather than out and out horror. The battles of the ever-silent Gordon Freeman against the multidimensional forces of the Combine are more in the action/puzzle gametype than horror. But the creepiness of City 17, the faceless grub Advisors, the totalitarian pressure of the Combine’s rule. They all combine to make an exceedingly tense and terrifying game. So while HL2 might not be as intent on throwing creepy Japanese children and ghosts at you, it scares you anyway. And lets not forget the G-Man. “Rise and shine, Mister Freeman, rise and… shine”
4. System Shock 2
You remember a little game called BioShock? Well, back when it was just a rumor, floating around the blogosphere, all the hardcore geeks were super excited because it was being made by Ken Levine, the man behind System Shock 2. It was an incredibly well written FPS/RPG set on a space ship overrun with mutated humans. Levine always makes sure his games have excellent stories, which propel them from being good into being great. Combine that with tense gameplay, limited ammo, incredible isolation, an excellent RPG system, and an AI which may be trying to kill you or help you. It’s one of the finest FPSs to be found, and far and away the scariest. SHODAN was and is one of the greatest villains in videogame history. “Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?”
3. Fatal Frame 2
Say you’re going up against a horde of ghosts, what’s your weapon of choice? If you’re me, you’d automatically go for a proton pack. After that, maybe some holy items, or Luigi’s vacuum cleaner. In the Fatal Frame series, you have a camera. That’s it. It’s a special camera, that can capture ghosts, but that doesn’t make you feel very safe, does it? That’s what the series excels at, a complete sense of hopelessness in the face of the supernatural. Plus the usual Japanese combination of occult sacrifices, simpering female protagonists, and a whole bucketful of dead people. The second installment is generally considered the best, and the story of that focuses on a twin chasing her older sister through a ghostly village, trying to stop a sacrifice at a pit of lost souls. There’s something so delightfully macabre about the basic game mechanic forcing you to record and look at the most horrifying parts of the game in order to defeat them.
2. Silent Hill 2
The Silent Hill franchise has a lot going for it, but few will disagree that the second installment was the most terrifying (though SH4 gets some cred too). The second SH game took everything that was good about the first one — the creepy fog, amazing sound direction, the skipping between the normal world and a horrific other version, the terrifying monsters and limited UI, and added something extra. The psychological twist introduced in the second game was so perfect, so brilliantly executed that it automatically changed the genre. In the first game, you were just trying to rescue your daughter from a cult attempting to sacrifice her. The second game? You get a letter from your dead wife to meet her at Silent Hill. As you play, it slowly becomes revealed that all the monsters, all the horror, are reflections of the protagonist’s psyche. He killed his wife, and the monsters are actualization of his emotions and guilt. The terrifying sexy/scary nurses. The mannequins. The most iconic element in the series — Pyramid Head — is James’ need to punish himself. Unfortunately, the game was something of a victim of its own success, and the twist of Silent Hill reflecting the main character’s dark past was used in the sequels, and Pyramid Head was forced into them, even when he didn’t fit thematically.
1. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
I know not everyone’s going to agree with me on ED:SR being the most scary game of all time, but I think there’s a convincing argument to made for it. The story takes place over generations, with an interweaving, multi-layered plot linking the different time periods to the modern day. The terrifying bit is based around the “sanity meter”. As you encounter more enemies, the meter is depleted, which leads to increasingly unnerving effects. The camera angle skews, you enter new rooms on the ceiling, the walls start to bleed. Strange noises and screaming. A bathtub with a body in it, but for only a second. Healing spells causing you to explode. Your limbs dropping off. But that’s not the worst of it. When playing games, there’s a fundamental disconnect between you and the characters, as you’re inherently removed by the nature of screen and control. The horror is in there, you are out here. You can divorce yourself from that. When things got really bad, ED:SR broke the fourth wall, just to mess with you. The volume will start to lower, and a volume graphic will pop up on the screen as if you were doing it. The screen will slightly scramble. You’ll open your inventory, and it’ll be empty. A fly will crawl across the screen, and more and more will arrive. Blue screen of death. In the middle of a fight, it’ll tell you the controller is unplugged. The game will pretend to reset itself. Most terrifying, it’ll fake corrupting a save game — which is a horrible occurrence at any point. By scaring you, the player, as opposed to the character, ED:SR gets rated as the scariest game of all time.
