The Scariest Games Ever

[mooma482]

Anyone who says Doom 3 wasn't scary is forgetting some of the frankly brilliant parts.

I will always remember the first time you see a pinky demon, you walk into a small room with a window in the side, the door slams shut and the lights go out. You look out the window across the darkened room and see a pinky demon come out of the shadows and climb over a metal railing, bending it with its weight. It jumps down and looks at you without eyes through the window, then dashes around the side and smashes itself against the steel door, the door starts to buckle as the demon smashes into it again and again, at this point I'm backed up against the wall pointing the biggest gun I have at the rapidly failing door as my heart tries to hammer its way out of my chest.

Then it stops, utter quiet. The door is literally scrap but is still just hanging on. Out of the corner of my eye I see the dog like demon charging out of the darkness at the window, smashing through the glass to come at me in a rush of teeth and claws.

Seriously pants wetting stuff.

 

[frogsandbunnyears]

Silent hill 1 & 2, especially the nurses in the hospital..

and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

 

[Relgaro]

Honestly, this thread should have started and ended with one post:

Fatal Frame

When a games Pause menu even has a chance to scare the crap out of you, you have the winner. For every other game series you name, if you have NOT played the Fatal Frames, then you haven't seen video game horror.

Just trust me on this one. Fatal Frame. End of Topic.

Fatal Frame is called Project Zero for those in Europe i think, if its the one where you have to walk around that house in a first person mode with the camera then yes that was scary as hell. It was the one game i couldnt bring myself to finishing no matter how hard i tried i couldnt do it, the music/ambience was scary. The game i think was an 18+, it was violent in parts, it was like being part of something like the ring or the grudge.

"The ropes... theres to many ropes."

 

[XenoNick]

Project Zero (all 3) even while playing them in the day i felt uneasy. never finished any of them. Played part 3 at night an didnt sleep. Also when i played RE 2 when i was 6 (didnt play 1) the part where the zombies break into the gun shop and eat the guy..had nightmares for ages. RE on GC when a crimson head broke through a door and ran at me. i yellped like a girl.

I never found Doom3 scary, anything that came through a door screaming fro blood just got a shoty shell in the face.

F.E.A.R never really scared me. i got a little spooked on somebits but not pant shitting scared. I got jumpy at the end when alma can kill you in one hit and you only have a pistol. i was all calm at first 'cause she's at the other end of the room. then she teleports closer and i was like "oh shit oh shit" and then had to reload pistol >_<

Condemned 1 scared me. crazy ass hobbo's attacking outta nowhere. Bloodshot didnt scare me though..not sure why.
I played silent hill 2 and didnt feel scared. maybe im just odd.

 

[NeedAUserName]

Well the scariest game I played was Harry Potter: And the Philosophers Stone. (Don't judge me I was 5, and those bits of armor with nothing in them were damn scary!). I don't tend to play scary games really, mainly just FPS and very occasionally sport

 

[The Other Steve]

There's a couple kinds of scary. Pac-Man can be pretty terrifying when you're just barely evading the ghosts. But RE4 is scary when you hear a chainsaw revving. RE4 is probably the scariest game I've ever played; granted I desperately need to get around to Silent Hill 2.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

Final Fantasy 7.

OH MY GOD. IT'S SCARY AS FUCK!

The game itself is not scary, it's when you yell, "Final Fantasy VII sucked" to a crowd in an Anime Expo.

Yeah, those anime expo attendees are definitely some rough tumblers.

 

[Platinum117]

Bioshock wasn't scary, i found condemned scary actually, thats about the only scary game ive ever played i geuss

 

[Sofandi]

I had a Mac pretty much my whole childhood and only played games like Escape Velocity and such.

Then one day i come home and there is a brand new, glorious, sparkling PC and a strange, orange box next to it: Half-Life.

Now that was fkn scary, going from the colorful and innocent games of the Macintosh and straight into the incredibly realistic and bloody alien world of the original Half-Life.

HL gets my vote because no game has ever scared me like that ever since.

I can still remember how scared i was during the part where you first meet the BlackOps, hearing only footsteps and then all of a sudden i'm dead.

 

[jebussaves88]

Fatal Frame 2

Got to agree here. Fatal Frame/ Project Zero is the first game to actually unnnerve me since I was a kid and watched my uncle play Alien 3 on the Snes. The second ghost you fight (limping woman in the save point room of the first house) made me turn the lights on lol.

 

[Nozer]

Eternal Darkness has got to be up there, along with the GameCube re-make of ResEvil (those crimson haeds scared the hell outta me) but im gonna go with AvP. When your a marine and your motion detector goes off and that first alien jumps outta the steam at your face...

 

[type_zero]

Silent Hill 3 is great for scares, but Silent Hill 2 is the best for pure phycological mindfuck.

The Clock Tower series and Fatal Frames are great to play with others because they really make you panic.

I've never found the Resident Evils all that scary.

 

[Gapperjack]

I'd like to second the suggestion of "We Don't Go to Ravenholm..." from HL2. That level scared me so badly - I hate spiders, and those spider-crabs, well let's just say they were a little close to arachnid for my liking. At one point during the level I killed one with my crowbar, and was literally shouting at the screen "I'm not scared of you". My housemate was amused enough to point out that what I was doing was "a panic reaction." I hated those damn spider-crabs all the way through that game.

The other game that I found pants-wettingly frightening was Alone in the Dark 4 - at least until you leave the mansion. The first few hours of play (in the dark of course) had me shitting myself. There were so many nice touches - the flash of a face in a window in the lightning, the way that enemies were tough and used really sparingly, and wouldn't appear where the lights were on. The moment where I'd managed to light the entire house and had been wandering about enemy free for a good 30 minutes solving puzzles, when BAM the lights all went out... brillantly terrifying.

 

[DeadlyFred]

Fatal Frame is a good series and I enjoyed playing it, but I rarely found myself actually being creeped out by the experience. I mean there were definitely some neat moments but... I dunno, I felt too much like a spectator than a participant, which makes the literal chill-factor a good deal less. Not blaming perspective or anything like that (I played through in both), just... I dunno. Didn't really suck me in.

I'm going to put an aside here and give props to next-gen consoles for actually doing something besides upping poly-counts and particle effects: since horror-themed games rely so much upon visuals and atmosphere, I think they're just now getting to the point where they can really start to shine. Once again, I cite Condemned for this. In any other genre, graphics and such are a bit less important to the overall experience (though yes, of course, everyone likes it when it looks good) but with the horror genre, I think developers really have the platforms at their disposal to make some seriously awesome stuff with this console generation.

 

[Aerach]

Doom 3 and Bioshock are scary, but System Shock 2 almost gave me a nervous breakdown. That game is the epitome of frightening.

 

[DeadlyFred]

Doom 3's too predictable to be legitimately scary. I don't and never will count "knee-jerk" as legitimately frightening, its just not. System Shock 2 I didn't find scary at all, I thought it was kinda cool being chased around a ship by crazy mutant things with the voice of Nivek Ogre.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

Hey, just wanted to point out that after all the suggestions of Clock Tower, I finally went and found a copy of Clock Tower II (ct 1 in america, couldn't find the translated first fear game) and I have to say that after only an hour into it it's already one of the most terrifying games I've ever played. Someone mentioned that only now are games getting truly horrifying because of the advanced visuals we have now. After playing this game I have to disagree - the visuals in this game are blocky and ugly. The sound, however, is what makes up for it. Hearing the rusty clang of a giant pair of scissors get louder and louder as you dash into a bathroom to hide in the stall only to find the scissors-addled ribcage-exposed corpse of your primitively rendered friend is far scarier than anything Doom 3 ever cooked up.

I don't really consider those types of games to be scary because they rely on 'jump scares', not psychological fear. Clock Tower and Penumbra Black Plague are excellent examples of psychological horror due in great deal to the fact that you have no way to defend yourself. You are a victim fleeing in terror from a sadistic maniac who wants to tear you limb from limb, and there's no one there to help you. This creates a feeling of panic, rather than merely being startled, and when your only defense is a good hiding place and a prayer you have a perfect recipe for fear. I think the only truly scary horror games are ones that involve being chased.

Doom 3 had spooky environments for sure, but you're armed to the teeth. You know you can handle whatever it is that's coming after you. But when you're running from something far more dangerous than yourself you have a very different mindset than you do while fighting something slightly more dangerous than yourself. This is why, in my opinion, games like this can never truly be scary.

As a side note, I think the scariest movie I've ever seen was the Blair Witch Project (and i have seen a LOT of horror movies). Some people find it boring, but fear of the unknown is what I consider to be the most potent form of fear. Maybe that's why I feel the way I do about games like Clock Tower.

 

[Mr. Purple]

sadly enough ive never played a game that has done more than startle me...

 

[Wellby]

OK first off, a game where you shoot bees and fire from your hand (bioshock) IS NOT SCARY! i played through the whole thing and it was creepy at most! By the end of it the splicers were having to protect their disfigured little children from me and my hives!
And now for what i do find scary/ and why!
Ok so admittedly the silent hill series has SO MUCH POTENTIAL that is weighed down by poor camera and friggen annoying combat.
Now 2 games i find really scary (by the same developer) are Condemned: Criminal origins, and FEAR. THese two keep it scary, while also allowing you to take out your blind frustration.
Also Nothing tops Eternal Darkness' degree of mind fuckery. Oh and honorable mention goes too... i'd say dead rising if i didn't just kill my way across a shopping mall with a can of orange juice and a brick. Hmm hows about... well Resident Evil 4 has a few tense moments, but nothing truely scary. Ok System Shock 2, i'll be sure to pick you up in a store some time!

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

I can't understand why people keep saying FEAR. I didn't find anything scary about FEAR at all, the mere fact that between the gunfights there were come creepy special effects doesn't mean the game was scary.