Scariest Game You Ever Played?

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Back to that old topic, the scariest game I played was Silent Hill 3, which uses psychological horror very well, I just don't wanna continue. Next was FEAR, interesting scares, certainly shocking at some points.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm talking about to early ladder scare in FEAR.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not mentioning, these are pretty much the only scary games I played; I heard alot of other scary games.

[Xiahou]

I don't know that I could settle on just one, but 3 that immediately come to mind are:

Eternal Darkness
Silent Hill 2
Vampire: Bloodlines (certain parts at least)

[Ramses II CP]

I don't think I would call any game I've played scary, but FEAR definitely made me jump a few times. Heck, Doom II made me jump the first time I got charged by one of those red guys. Half Life 2 with the black out in the underground areas was pretty tense, and the black face huggers made me twitch once or twice.

...but scary? Nah, just startling.

[Veho Nex]

ummmm, CoD3 for that first melee part. Wasnt expecting it scared the turd out me.

[Kekvit Irae]

System Shock 2 was creepy, but hardly worth mentioning for me. No real big scares.
The scariest game I've ever played was Aliens vs Predator. I am a BIG Aliens fan, and the whole atmosphere scared the crap out of me, along with the futility of resting (no thanks to unlimited waves of Xenomorphs).

[TinCow]

No doubt on my answer: Doom 3.

I only played it at night with the lights out and the sound pumped way up. Took me several nights to get through due to the need for perfect darkness. It's a heavily scripted game that doesn't have much replayability, but the first run through was fabulous. I nearly jumped out of my chair several times.

[drone]

Aliens mod for Doom II. Very limited ammo, xenos coming out of nowhere, great sound effects for the time.


Yes, I'm old. :getoffmylawn:

[frogbeastegg]

System Shock 2. Certain chimp noises made me break into a cold sweat all these years later.

Thief I/II. Like System Shock 2 it's mainly a matter of sound and atmosphere.

That's all I can think of right now. Scary games don't work on me, and because of this I don't play them unless there's something else about them which attracts me. I laughed at Resident Evil, much to my Resi addict friend's disgust. I loved Eternal Darkness, and found it at best mildly unsettling at a couple of points. Silent Hill 2 bored me. Project zero (or fatal frame depending on where you are) was more irritating than anything else. Doom? Didn't bother my young froggy self, though it gave someone I knew nightmares for months.

[Kekvit Irae]

Aliens mod for Doom II. Very limited ammo, xenos coming out of nowhere, great sound effects for the time.


Yes, I'm old. :getoffmylawn:

I remember playing the Aliens mod for Quake before it got Foxed.
I think I still have my old "thousands of WADs" CDs somewhere...

[The Spartan (Returns)]

System Shock 2. Certain chimp noises made me break into a cold sweat all these years later.

Thief I/II. Like System Shock 2 it's mainly a matter of sound and atmosphere.

That's all I can think of right now. Scary games don't work on me, and because of this I don't play them unless there's something else about them which attracts me. I laughed at Resident Evil, much to my Resi addict friend's disgust. I loved Eternal Darkness, and found it at best mildly unsettling at a couple of points. Silent Hill 2 bored me. Project zero (or fatal frame depending on where you are) was more irritating than anything else. Doom? Didn't bother my young froggy self, though it gave someone I knew nightmares for months.

Yes, I find games using psychological horror more scary than games with big shocks. It's just how people get scared.

[Decker]

Doom II. I was in elementary when I first started playing it. It was my first ever game but... it wasn't tooo scary after the discovery of the BFG I've also just started playing Penumbra. (didn't get far...chickened out)

[TinCow]

For non-haunted house style fear... I wouldn't quite call it scary, but American McGee's Alice certainly creeped me out a great deal. Sanitarium as well.

[naut]

Quake IV is reasonably tense.

[Mikeus Caesar]

The underground labs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R are horrifying, especially when done alone at 1 in the morning.

The only thing more terrifying was the AvP games, which Kek already mentioned.

[KukriKhan]

Doom.

I guess that would be Doom I, 1993.

The (in those days) innovative story-line and gameplay had me, by turns, riveted to, then repulsed out of, my seat.

It apparently immunized me from "scarey" games. Nothing since has evoked such a reaction from me.

NB: some of today's 'scarey' is just gratuitously bloody, IMO. In those cases, the dev's has misunderstood the concept of horror, mistaking the appeal of their 'more blood' tactic, for the suspense, surprise, and immersion gamers crave.

Graphics iz cool, but content rulz.

[CountArach]

FEAR didn't scare me per-se, just shocked me a few times. However, FEAR: Extraction Point, certainly scared me.

[Fragony]

The first Thief, it's unbearable.

[Xiahou]

FEAR didn't scare me per-se, just shocked me a few times. However, FEAR: Extraction Point, certainly scared me.

That's an important distinction too. I don't really consider games that just have a few sudden surprise moments to be scary- that can be part of it, but it doesn't stand on its own. A game really needs to create an oppressive, creepy atmosphere for it to truly be scary.

[spmetla]

Aliens vs Predator but playing the Marine campaign. Fricking creepy! It's always dark so you need to rely more on hearing to hear face huggers, aliens, and of course your motion detector. You'd hear something, then you need to do a 360 so you're detector knows where its coming from then as the beeps get quicker you start popping flares like crazy so you can make out the alien as it comes crawling on the ceiling or running or whatever as you shoot madly empty clip after clip of pulse rifle ammo and applying ample grenades if there are a lot of them.

Playing as an alien or predator isn't scary though, they're not blind like us humans.

[Raz]

Silent Hill, the first one, made me freak out when I first played it, but I was pretty young when I played it, so, compared to it's successors, it's like a walk in the park. =D
Blood and Doom are notable as well, also played when I was much younger. A more recent one would be the newer Resident Evils and Project Zero, though they didn't make me fear what was under my bed or behind my curtain - they made me jump and gasp, but that's about it.

There should be a horror RPG, these survival horror games are just the same old, same old.

[Fragony]

There should be a horror RPG, these survival horror games are just the same old, same old.

Vampire: Bloodlines

[The Spartan (Returns)]

FEAR didn't scare me per-se, just shocked me a few times. However, FEAR: Extraction Point, certainly scared me.

Really how? I might check this out.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Aliens vs Predator but playing the Marine campaign. Fricking creepy! It's always dark so you need to rely more on hearing to hear face huggers, aliens, and of course your motion detector. You'd hear something, then you need to do a 360 so you're detector knows where its coming from then as the beeps get quicker you start popping flares like crazy so you can make out the alien as it comes crawling on the ceiling or running or whatever as you shoot madly empty clip after clip of pulse rifle ammo and applying ample grenades if there are a lot of them.

Playing as an alien or predator isn't scary though, they're not blind like us humans.

Hahah, never mind singleplayer, multiplayer was just as terrifying when playing a survivor or evac game. Typically, all the humans would gang up somewhere, and gradually be picked off one by one. It was truly a game where standing alone was not an option.

It still stands as the only game where the multiplayer has made me **** bricks.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Aliens versus Predator marine campaign
Thief 3 shalebridge cradle mission
VTM:Bloodlines haunted hotel mission

...in that order, I think

[Navaros]

Scariest game I ever played: Nocturne. A very little known PC game from 1999. I've never seen a game that perfectly oozes horror atmosphere and is genuinely scary to the degree that game is.

Silent Hill 2 was scary but I ran out of freakin' ammo killing the ceiling boss and wasn't able to advance once I got to the next level due to having no ammo at all. So not sure if the whole game holds up as well as the parts up until the ceiling boss do.

I didn't find Doom 3 or FEAR to be scary at all. They were way too repetitive (both in terms of monsters, and environments) to be scary past a few hours into the game.

[TevashSzat]

I usually don't play that much creepy games, but the scariest for me was in Half Life 2 Episode 1(I think) when you have to get the elevator working again in pitch black and as soon as you do, all of the zombies start waking up and charging at you

[Gregoshi]

For me it was Doom 3. It didn't help that I played it at night, in the dark, wearing headphones. Some of the scares I got in that game had me worrying that my wife would find me in the morning sitting at the computer and dead from a heartattack. The audio is what accounted for most of my scares. Walking down a corridor with nerves on edge and suddenly having a creepy voice whispering in your ear... Don't know if the effect was enhanced with headphone - TinCow, I gather it was fairly intense with speak volume jacked up too? Other audio effects just sent chills down my spine. The "baby" demons were the worst. They were pretty easy to kill, but hearing that dreadful cry just stopped me dead in my tracks everytime.

[Veho Nex]

Actually now I think the scariest game I've ever played was Silent Hunter 3. I had 4 destroyers on me and I've been lurking off the coast of britian for 2 years... I died in the end but it was incredibly scarey...

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

STALKER but I'm a sissy and usually avoid scary stuff.

[Zenicetus]

There should be a horror RPG, these survival horror games are just the same old, same old.

I've been playing "The Witcher" off and on for the last few months, and I suppose that theoretically qualifies as an RPG that's supposed to be scary.

But you spend too much time in safe areas like villages and towns. There isn't the constant sense of being trapped in a really bad situation that you can't escape, like there was in System Shock 2, or (recently) Bioshock. I think a "scary" game really needs that constant sense of threat in the environment.