Scariest Games Ever

[allyourblood]

If I had to suggest anything I'd say, if you're a SH freak, play it. If not, play the other ones and don't let Shattered Memories be your first impression of the series.

Thanks for that mini-review. I think I'll try it, as I am quite the SH fan; I've played the first four in the series multiple times. I haven't gotten around to SH:0 or SH:H yet, but I will when I get the time. Now I'll add SH:SM to the list.

I also really enjoy the soundtracks in the SH series, with the first and second games being the real standouts; especially the title theme in the first and second games and Lisa's Theme from the first one. Absolutely haunting and beautiful. For the more ambient portions of the score, Yamaoka bummed a lot of ideas from the industrial genre (especially from the late 80s/early-mid 90s -- see Trent Reznor's Quake soundtrack, Scar Tissue's TMOTD and almost anything from In Slaughter Natives for some similar soundscapes), but to great effect; the blast drums, scrapes, and dissonant synth pads all nailed the vibe of the game perfectly.

[Theretrogamingroom]

I owned Friday the 13th on NES as a little kid and I always flipped when Jason
would pop outta nowhere and kill you.

[The Shawn]

Call of Cthulu - Dark corners of the Earth on the original xbox.


The game gave me the creeps, in a good way. Allthough it was a very difficult game to get through it was well worth the accomplishment.


Also the first Suffering game was eerie IMHO.

[balkiry]

I got the crap scared out of me the first time I played Code Veronica for Dreamcast. It was like 3:00 AM house was pitch black and my brother was watching me. All of a sudden the dogs burst out from the grates, I yelled : holy shit" and threw the controller out of my hand.

I had a very similar experience. However Resident Evil 4 trumped it with the regenerators. I have nightmares about them still... That breathing...

[TheCaptainniatpac]

What about Doom 3? It had it's moments.

[Gooch3008]

What about Doom 3? It had it's moments.

Oh man, some parts of that game were pretty damn unnerving. Best use of shadows in a game to date imo.

[TheCaptainniatpac]

I almost had a heart attack when i saw the one under the stairs after you had to go through the foom full of fire

[Holger Czukay]

Scratches for PC. Takes a while, but when it gets going it really gets going.

Penumbra Overture, and to a much greater extent Penumbra Black Plague for PC.

Friday the 13th for Commodore 64 (THAT GOD DAMN SCREAM)

The Laura Bow games on PC weren't exactly scary, but some of the ways you could die were outright disturbing.

[backtrax]

It's very rare that I find a game that actually frightens or unnerves me. Usually games which are specifically designed to this (read: Resident Evils, Silent Hills, Eternal Darkness...) fail miserably (not that they are bad games). However there have been a few titles which surprised me with their ability to frighten. I'm interested in knowing which games have had the same effect on you.

Here are my nightmares:

Thief - The Dark Project (PC)

The most immersive game I've ever played combined with extremely realistic audio and truly frightening zombies, undead, and mindblowing locale.

System Shock 2 (PC)

The tension this game induces is incredible. A binary nightmare.

Alone In The Dark (PC)

The plot became more and more insane the more you unraveled it. The ambient sound effects still freak me out.

Shadowgate (NES)

I had this game when I was 10. Not only did it's puzzles bewilder my young mind, but the music and monsters molested it.

Sweet Home (NES)

Despite it's graphical limitations, this game WILL unsettle you. The score is creepy and the monsters random and violent. Not to mention the haunted mansion you're in with all it's illusions and traps.[/img]

Silent hill is most scariest.

[Darko]

Silent Hill 2 made me paranoid like crazy. I decided to play it only at night in pitch black. I actually used blackout curtains. It was a fun experience.

[spongerob]

Silent Hill 2 made me paranoid like crazy. I decided to play it only at night in pitch black. I actually used blackout curtains. It was a fun experience.

That's awesome, that's what I do. I make sure the picture is as good as it can be, with 5.1 sound and no light. I also have to be alone. To me, that's just a great time.

[bohproper]

burgertime on acid was the scariest game i ever played haha

[Emperor Megas]

My of the games that come to mind would be:

Alone in the Dark (3DO version)
DOOM (3DO version)
Fatal Frame
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genma Onimusha
Mansion of Hidden Souls (SEGA CD)
Resident Evil (REmake)
Resident Evil 4
Silent Hill
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams
Silent Hill 3

As silly as it may sound, Silent Hill 2 was probably the scariest thing I ever experienced in my life. No movie, book, video game, or real world experience freaked me out as much as that game did the first time I played through it. It seriously got into my head and kept me up at night for weeks.

A lot of the games on my list most wouldn't consider 'scary', but for me, the atmosphere of some of the games (like Mansion of Hidden Souls and Genma Onimusha) really creeped me out, or managed to give me nightmares (DOOM, Silent Hill 2).

That's awesome, that's what I do. I make sure the picture is as good as it can be, with 5.1 sound and no light. I also have to be alone. To me, that's just a great time.

I tend get into it, too. I actually have a smoke machine that I use sometimes when I play horror games (especially Japanese themed games, like Fatal Frame and Onimusha). I always play alone, with the lights out, and with the surround sound turned up as well.

[jammajup]

Doom 3,Resident Evil and Silent Hill also i found Nomad Soul rather sinister too

[Collector_Gaming]

my favorite topic EVER!!!

i love love love trying to get the shit scared out of me. Cause its a adrenaline rush! and if you don't do that once in awhile then your not living imo

anyways

I agree specially after to listening to it again on youtube without having to fire up the ole NES or downloading a rom lol that Metroid original had some pretty crazy music and i remember when i was younger i had a hard time playing the game at night because of this. It was just so ambient and lonely.... That whole feeling of
"When in space..... no one can hear you scream...." and kinda got to me.
when i was really younger (say 6-7ish) i could not play Nightmare on Elm Street at my cousins house on his NES at night. I saw alot of 80s horror films as a kid and seen Nightmare on Elm St 3 (which the game takes place of) and just got to me badly to the point i couldn't play it.
now that i am older should be the big tough guy and such. I gotta say some games still give me the jump and "HOLY SHIT!!!" factor.

Resident Evil 2 when i played through that like 10 years ago on the N64 i got spooked. Was my first real surivival horror game experience so i didn't fully know what to expect. But i tell you what since then i got hooked on the genre.

Half Life series has some good moments to itself.

F.E.A.R the last game of its type i played through gave me some good goosebumps specially the end was like "HOLY SHIT!!! WATCH OUT!!!!!" and the game cuts right there like omg what just happened!!!

The Thing was pretty good but didn't really get to me much.

Eternal Darkness had some good moments (specially when your guy starts freaking out and weird stuff starts happening to the picture or sound or whatever)

Dead Space. Theres a reason why deadspace got to me and why the next game i will list did so too and is my fav horror game for jumps and scares
Dead space when you are walking along. you see blood streaks like something got dragged while dying. You hear faint voices out of no where from random locations. you find someone around a corner that looks deranged and offs themselves.
and the thing that gets me the most.
You'll be playing... Say your going through a hall way right... with lighting from behind.... you get close to the end of that hallway... and then you see a shadow run right by your shadow... like "WTF WAS THAT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!" cause you get that feeling like something snuck up behind you and is gonna kill you.

the better version of this comes from my favorite horror game and i have yet to beat it for this reason

FATAL FRAME

Fatal frame scares the shit out of me if i play it at night. with the volume up and all the lights out.
Why?
how would you like it if you walk into a room adn then you hear a eerie child giggling noise along foot steps running right behind you and you turn around and theres nothing there.
how would you like how your meter starts freaking out and you don't know what or where or how somethings coming out and then you turn around and BAM you find yourself face to face with a ghost that aims to kill you.
and all your armed with is a old friggin camera with mystical properties? I am out of here man. lol

[G-Boobie]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

I'm playing through it a second time now, and I swear to God, it's not any less terrifying. I've played almost every survival horror game released since Resident Evil, and nothing comes CLOSE to Amnesia. The first night I played it I screamed and woke my girlfriend up. It made my dreams a little uncomfortable too. I'm not used to that.

It's a PC game, and I know that might turn some of you Goddamn console only kids off, but trust me on this: this game is the new gold standard.

[Tommittaja]

The single scariest game of all time, in the entire universe... is...

Amnesia - the dark descent (by Frictional games)
from the makers of Penumbra. i cannot play it anymore. i almost lost my conciousness once in that game because i was SO scared.

E: Playing through Dead Space.... it's not scary. it's a slasher, not a horror game. survival horror does not equal horror
JUST as saw is not a horror movie, but a slasher. :P

[Roms-bb.org]

Deamon's Soul!

[FrankGarret316]

I'm really really ashamed to say this, but I CANNOT play scary games. Let me qualify this by saying that there is not a single scary movie I can't watch. You could put me in the basement of an abandoned mansion with the lights off, and make me watch the scariest movie you could think of, and I wouldn't feel scared one bit.

When it comes to games though, particularly first person scary games (but doesn't have to be first person), I don't have that same detachment feeling I have when watching movies, where the fact that it's "only" a scripted movie is constantly in my consciousness, with games I get scared as fuck because I feel like I'm really there.

Sorry for that tangent, to answer the question, I'd say any Silent Hill game, and most recently Dead Space.

[parski]

Silent Hill 3, no doubt. I still can't play that game. 1 and 2 are fine, but 3 freaks the crap out of me.

[Enigmus]

To me, the perfect scare game is...

...Myst.

Yes, Myst. Before you say anything, think of how its methods scare: the factor that it is on a desolate fantasmic island, in first person, with no one but you, the hellish books of the "gods" that control whether you escape or not, and videos recorded of another person who made it onto the island but seemingly vanished. This, when combined with the incredible and overwhelming choice of options down to the most minute details, provide a truly psychologically scarring game: you are scared senseless by loneliness, confusion, vast choices of action, and the sense that this all combines to make you realize you really have little to no control of your survival. I've played this a few times, but all of this has, IMO, brought it down from "confusing tech demo" to "brain bleach requiring psychological tormentor." This is what I believe is the purest form of all scary games.

[jwmollman]

I would have to say Silent Hill 2 and 3 were my scariest games. It's very rare that a game will keep my eyes glued to the screen and my ears open trying to find what's lurking in the darkness around the next corner. It was the limited vision in such dark places and the creepy/intelligent music that kept me scared. The creatures on that game were really odd and freaky too, but it's different from your typical zombie I guess.

[Collector_Gaming]

To me, the perfect scare game is...

...Myst.

Yes, Myst. Before you say anything, think of how its methods scare: the factor that it is on a desolate fantasmic island, in first person, with no one but you, the hellish books of the "gods" that control whether you escape or not, and videos recorded of another person who made it onto the island but seemingly vanished. This, when combined with the incredible and overwhelming choice of options down to the most minute details, provide a truly psychologically scarring game: you are scared senseless by loneliness, confusion, vast choices of action, and the sense that this all combines to make you realize you really have little to no control of your survival. I've played this a few times, but all of this has, IMO, brought it down from "confusing tech demo" to "brain bleach requiring psychological tormentor." This is what I believe is the purest form of all scary games.

you know what

when you put it like that. I actually agree with you

I'll help you out here

People think of what if you were dumped onto a island.. You don't where you are.. what world you are in what dimension you are in what time zone you are in.
And you find various buildings and contraptions but find that the island is completely isolated and has absolutely no one around to talk to... to explain things to you.

And then you find 2 books you open them up baiscally have these charecters who explain whats going on in their detail and you must choose which do you go with. 1 will lead you to hell. the other will lead you to heaven.

kinda reminds me of that episode of Twilight Zone where a farmer and his dog gets killed and he comes across a fellow who explains that they are dead and is in a very convincing manner explaining that the passage he is by is heaven. and to go there all he has to do is go past the gate and walk on down a path.
But can't bring his dog as his dog has its own gate to go through...
The farmer decides to hell with that and continues walking away from the gate not sure what to do and comes across another fellow who explains his gate is gate to heaven and that the other one is hell and that his dog is welcome with him. and they try and figure out which to believe... and decide to go through that gate

so yes when you think about it. The isolation and the loneliness of Myst does strike that fear in you when you think about it that much.

and i have a feeling thats what the game makers were trying to achieve when they made it.
Kinda like a what would you do.. how would you survive.. how resourceful are you

[DangerMan]

The original resident evil. As a kid it scared the hell out of me. I couldn't play it until i was older. No other game (even the sequels) have ever scared me like that one did.

If i was to give a 2nd place game, i might have to go with parasite eve.

[jordandavid]

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but the Redeads in Ocarina of Time. Just being anywhere near them when they get up and try to attack. Especially since Hyrule Castle Town is so deserted and run down except for the Redeads. I'm 22 and that shit still scares me. I literally run through that section of town as fast as possible every time I have to go through it.