I feel like I’ve played a good amount of horror titles, and I find I don’t really get scared much anymore.
What are some titles that scared you the most? I would love to hear your recommendations!
It’s gotta be Penumbra: The Black Plague and Amnesia: The Dark Descent back when I played them 12 years ago. Not many games have created the same amount of tension for me while playing.
I am not a fan of horror games all that much, and Half-Life Alyx is not one, but the horror elements are stronger than previous titles and I still haven’t finished the game because of that. The game is incredible, but I just can’t get past the scary parts.
“Hey there, Jeff” (0.0) that bit had me stuck for a month until I decided to push through it!
Silent Hill 2
Halo: Combat Evolved (the Flood levels are horror masterpieces)
Minecraft probably. I avoid legitimate horror games (and movies) and the fact that you don’t have saves can get a little stressful when you’re down in a cave, don’t know how to find your way back (and thus probably won’t find your body) and then basically get jumpscared by dangerous enemies or holes in the ground.
Lol that’s true. Nothing like a creeper or two to sneak up behind you in the dark.
if you want to know how to get back, pick a side (i chose left) and always put torches on that side going down. to come back up, keep the torches on your right. 🔥
Doesn’t work that well when the way is constantly twisting and splitting. Cave layout can be extremely confusing.
Alien: Isolation. That shit is unplayable it’s so scary.
It has a VR version and I’m pretty sure if I tried it I’d run into a wall in a panic a few times at least.
When it came out, I saw the trailer and decided that it’s not for me. Way too scary. Then recently I watched a commented speed run and thought “Yep, I was right”.
It was definitely intense, that’s for sure. The aliens AI is pretty cool. At release, it was very exciting to see how advanced it seemed.
I don’t play horror games, Amnesia was too much for me. After that bit with the invisible creature in the flooded corridor, I uninstalled the thing and never touched it again. That was fifteen years ago
cliched yes, but I will always remember how scared as hell I was playing Silent Hill for the first time in high school, when you go down that dutch angle alleyway and the evil toddlers stab you to death…
i couldnt play any more for a few days haha, it was a pretty stand out memory for scary game stuff. Its hard to state how unexpected it was at the time, I hadnt played any early horror games, and I dont know how many similar experiences there were at the time (year 2000ish) so it really was brutal and surprising haha
I’ve yet to play the first 3 silent hills. I feel like they’re the elephant in the room for me lol
The first Layers of Fear was pretty spooky, very PT inspired. The second one was decent too, but not as scary.
Outlast is the standard I hold walking sim horror games to. I can speedrun through it now since I’ve played it so much, but the first few times were terrifying.
Some people have mentioned Amnesia, so I’ll throw in the recent iteration with Amnesia: The Bunker. It’s like Alien: Isolation in a WW1 setting.
Speaking of which, Alien: Isolation is probably no. 1 for me. Between the alien, the androids, and even other people, that game is very stress inducing.
I really liked Outlast when it first released. Outlast 2 was pretty good as well. I think the tricky part is if you die or mess up too many times in horror games, the fear gets dulled.
I don’t recall layers of fear creeping me out much, but I haven’t tried the second yet. Definitely worth a shot
I find Amnesia titles don’t do it for me anymore. I think maybe I played too much and got too familiar with how the AI works. I’ve peeled back the curtain, so to speak and ruined them for myself, aha.
I really liked alien isolation when it first came out. I thought it was a very cool take on horror. The AI seemed super impressive
If it’s any consolation, Amnesia: The Bunker has a different AI than the previous iterations. I mentioned it’s like Alien: Isolation, and the monster works very similarly, like reacting to how much noise you make and stalking which parts of the bunker you’re in. Most items with every run are also randomized, so you can’t memorize where to pick up supplies. (You can also customize the difficulty, which I thought was really cool.) But if you’ve already tried it, then my point is moot lol.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty okay! I ended up getting about halfway through, I think? I got caught by the monster a couple of times when he randomly decided to pop up, and I somewhat shifted from “this is spooky” to “I’m just avoiding this road block”
It’s super tricky because I don’t know how to keep myself immersed in the experience for a lot of these titles.
I did enjoy the fact that they tried something new with the bunker. I thought it was probably the closest I got to being scared since the Dark Descent, so I think that says something for sure.
I think I’ve been exposed to too much horror, which might have dulled the experience somewhat. I really enjoy hearing about what/why people enjoyed horror games, so I don’t think your point was moot! I think horror is a very unique genre that pushes game design to its extremes in a lot of ways.
the original resident evil. couldn’t even get through the first 15 minutes before i threw the controller across the room. i don’t play scary games anymore, but i love watching other people play!
silent hill was super fun to watch.
The friggin’ dogs in Resident Evil.
I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking it out of my dad’s collection of grownup games to try it anyway.
So there’s this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you’re running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.
So I hadn’t hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.
I still haven’t played the game since.
But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She’s playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn’t.
So I’m a little disappointed, but I figure it’s a remake so maybe they’re switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.
Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this “safe” corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.
Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I’m not alone.
it’s the dogs! i love dogs, but having them jump through the window destroyed me.
PT
I found the batman vr game on psvr scariest. It wasnt that scary a premise, but because of the immersion, it was extra. You knew joker was in a cell and you had to Kean in to see. Although you knew he would get you, you had no choice. You had to physically force yourself to be attacked bybsteppibg forwards.
Similarly, the jumping off a cliff to commit suicide in suoerhot vr was quite confronting and scary. I think they edited it out.
During my search, I keep seeing things about VR, and it seems like it very well could be the next big thing to scare me lol. The added immersion might be just the ticket.
I think some have said the start of resident evil village is quite scary on vr, but I havnt played it. Probably less so if you’ve already played it. There are a bunch of junonscare games but they interest me less.
I don’t much like scary games myself, but here’s someone asking /r/HorrorGaming what their scariest games are:
EDIT: And yet somehow, despite not liking scary games, I’ve wound up owning some of these, like Darkwood, the Amnesia games, Clive Barker’s Undying – which I wouldn’t call that scary – Doom 3, Lone Survivor, Outlast, and Subnautica.
I’ve also played Clock Tower, which was on there.
I’ve yet to try darkwood, clive barkers undying, doom3, lone survivor, or clock tower. So I’ll have to give those a try.
I’m specifically curious about darkwood because I’m unsure how a game in a top-down perspective could be scary. Same with Lone Survivor, actually. I’ll have to see!
The Cradle level in Thief 3 will forever and always be the scariest experience I’ve ever had in any video game, including horror games. It elevated an otherwise mediocre game to be a worthy entry besides the first two games.
I’ve never gotten a chance to play the thief games. They look right up my alley, though!
They’re great. Just avoid the reboot. Its developers didn’t even play the old ones.
Ahh, that’s such a shame when that happens. I’ll avoid it like the plague then!
Dead Space scared me so much it made me numb to lot of horror games since.
The first fear game really scared me when I was younger. I was 16 maybe and that’s how I found out I don’t like ghosts haha.
Playing in ym room at night alone in the dark. Ghosts coming out that I can’t hurt haha
Fuck that was bad
