Gaming! So many games, not enough posts!
Throwback Thursday: Games That Scared Us!
In honor of Hallowimzy and Halloween, this week's Throwback Thursday discussion prompt focused on games that scared us, whether or not we expected some scary stuff.
What game scared you in a memorable way?
Looking forward to reading your answers and discussing spooky gaming experiences!




The first Half-Life scared the crap out of me. I really wasn't expecting the sheer terror generated by the enemies in that game. Valve really did a phenomenal job.
By comparison, Half-Life 2 wasn't very scary. Maybe I grew out of some fear between the games, but it seemed more mild to me.
Yeah, I think Half-Life 1 was definitely scarier. Nothing in HL2 even slightly compared to the Icthyosaur, and they didn't have as many jumpscares. Ravenholm was certainly unnerving though.
Omg yes! I remember at the beginning after the nuclear explosion you'd go back to the beginning and there was a little hole where a headcrab could jump through. I remember playing that and getting attacked. Scared the life out of me.
The very first Resident Evil. Those dogs through the window right in the beginning of the house in that little hallway, i think, to the left. They scared the hell out of me and my friends.
Also, the cyborg midwives from System shock 2 still give me the heebie-jeebies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjtSogs0qM "I'll hunt you."
Silent hill 1 was pretty scary. Dead space 1 of course, and Alien: Isolation got me a few times with those jump scares.
Fatal Frame. Without a doubt.
YES! I never finished that game because I could not handle it!
Dead Space - for some reason I recalled it getting middling reviews when I picked it up, but I figured, eh, I'll give it a shot. Hours later and I'm hooked and/or terrified.
That series had incredible environment design, lighting effects, and encounter scripting, which joined forces to soil the pants of gamers everywhere. The team really did a great job!
YES! It was both a horrific game but also beautiful in its own way.
There was one point in Bioshock Infinite that got me real good. It's when you're going through the asylum and after viewing the future (I think it was that point) and everything is all melancholic. You turn around and SUDDENLY there's a creepy enemy RIGHT behind you. I think it made a loud noise too, I don't remember, it's been a long time. But I do remember being at that part at 3am and letting out the loudest scream. Hopefully my neighbors didn't mind hahaha.
those weird guys with the horns (like honk-honk not demonic) coming out of their heads??? I know exactly what you mean! Most intense part of the game!
Horror is my favorite genre of films but I've always been extremely wimpy when it comes to games. I just refuse to play anything I know is supposed to be scary.
I have beaten Amnesia, but I only played that when I had a group of friends sitting with me for moral support - none of that "headphones on, lights off" shit.
So the only games that have managed to scare me were ones I wasn't expecting anything scary from. I remember being terrified when I played the first Halo in 2001 when I was 10.
343 Guilty Spark. That cutscene haunted me. I refused to play that level alone ever again.
343 Guilty Spark... Holy mother of frights... Good choice!
Oh man...Amnesia...so very much Amnesia...it's the only game that's caused me to feel fear, not just alarm or shock or worry, but fear. It actually ruined scary movies and other scary games for me. I used to love them; now I have little to no interest in them.
I don't typically play Horror games (Until Dawn is the big exception - that game is great). I once tried to play FEAR and noped out early on when you climb down a ladder, turn around, and there's the scary ghost girl staring right at you. I recently tried to play SOMA because I heard many good things about it but the atmosphere just messed with me too much. I couldn't continue that one either. I'm not very good at scary games...
I'd much rather a game have an uneasy atmosphere without being explicitly horror. Gone Home did that really well for me. The whole time I had this sense of unease about what mind convinced me had happened to the girls up until the reveal. That was some great tension!
The first FEAR I played was 3, in the 2 player mode - my partner played as Pointman and I was Vettel. I had a great time but my partner had just played 1 and 2 and kept getting scared by me standing close behind them and them turning round and seeing Vettel right there looming XD
Doom 3 but then I didn't complete it cause I'm a scardiy cat :(
Alien: Isolation. There's nothing else like casually strolling along a space station and having a xenomorph plop somewhere around you.
I watched my brother play that and I'm still working up the courage to start a game. Intense!
I got used to seeing the jumpscares for a while! It's a blast though.
I'd have to say Alan Wake made me jump more than a few times. With nothing but a revolver and a shot gun against enimies I couldn't hurt unless I hit them with a flashlight before they got close. I never felt like I had a serious advantage. As a matter of fact, when they flanked me and got a little too close I swore as I hit them with my flashlight more than a few times....
Two immediately come to mind: Amnesia, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Amnesia was, honestly, a mindf*k. The concept of being told to go and kill someone by your pre-amnesia self because he'll end the world? PLUS the creepy monsters and the reduction in your sanity? Yeah, scared the crap outta me.
But Zelda... It was a simpler time. TVs were less pixel dense, we hadn't found the upper limits of CGI, and I was nine.
Queen Gohma's introduction... just.
My brother, me, and a cousin were taking turns passing the controller around. We crept into this dark, cavernous, yet empty place after being told a monster dwelt within. We wandered around the edges as Link, poking at things, wondering if there was a secret door.
And then we stepped into the center, and shit got real.
A horrifying, monstrous skittering noise, an angry hiss, and then this glowing, angry, inhuman red eye glared at us from the ceiling before dropping on Link's head.
We all screamed.
.
Man, that's some good times.
Also, dude, the Shadow Temple was creepy as all get out.
Sounds lame, but Parasite Eve 2. Those crazy horse-people things were creepy AF. I put down the game shortly after. To be honest, seems like the direction of the game sorta went towards Resident Evil, so that was a bit of a turn off anyway.
I absolutely love those games. It is a shame the series went nowhere. Aya was a badass! I still haven't played the 3rd birthday, though.
Some parts of Witcher 3 scared me - generally monsters jumping out of places, or the anticipation before I fought certain bosses (leshens, eek).
Outlast 1! I almost had a heart attack
Same! Can't wait till the next one, tho! #gluttonofpunishment
It's on my Steam list because my partner thinks its funny to buy me scary games but I haven't dared play it yet!!
koudelka is my favorite scary game im acctually playing it agin this month for halloween im also a fan of fatel phrame and parasite evil,i own alot of scary games but find the storys better the older the game,xenosaga wasnt a horror but the first one was scary when i first played it...
White Day and the second Fatal Frame scared younger me, and still scared the living crap out of me to this day. The clunky controls just made the fear of being chased or stalked by something even worse.
Marathon: Infinity is a hell of a trip to go into blind. "Ne Cede Malis" is an incredibly spooky introductory level - and reading a message from Durandal where he admits defeat only makes it worse - and then you get thrown into working for the villain from the second game, and then you run into the dream levels and everything switches around again... Maybe it's more WTF than actual scary, but I still get the shivers playing it. Fantastic atmosphere, that game.
Also, absolutely seconding the asylum part of Bioshock Infinite. Though mostly I wanted to cry because ELIZABETH, NO, MY BABY. Bioshock had a couple of great scares, too, like the first time you meet a Big Daddy...
Oh man, Outlast for sure did the trick, i wasn't even playing i just watched my brother play it... oh the nightmares
I've started playing Silent Hill 5. After about 25 minutes, I silently quit and uninstalled the game forever. I can't play horror games any more. The good ol' times when F.E.A.R. was the thing and I could take it...
Undertale. [SPOILER ALERT] Geez, that neutral ending scared the s***t out of me. I'm very sensitive to this kind of things, I get scared really easily, so I always try to avoid playing horror games. I started Undertale thinking that it was just a normal rpg, the more I played it the more I realized I had something special in my hands, that felt very different from the others. But still, I didn't expect that. Asgore killed, Flowey's laugh, game's crash. I was terrified. I looked at that steam icon afraid to do anything, I didn't believe in anything anymore (drama queen mode: on). Then I saw that corrupted save file, then the dialog, then that damn boss hard as hell. I still believe that it's pheraps the most beautiful game I've ever played.
Silent Hill 4. It's the creepiest Silent Hill
The zombies in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time were pretty scary! Those creepers.
The Redeads? Absolutely terrifying when I was a kid.
Even now, if I play Silent Hill in the dark it gives me creeps. Planning that this weekend, actually !
Condemned and Condemned 2. In the first Condemned you're armed with a flashlight and whatever you can find in the world around you (pipes, rebar, axes) and you're on a mission to hunt someone who is killing serial killers. You visit lots of abandoned locations like an abandoned shopping mall, full of creepy mannequins, and Christmas music playing faintly in the background. I'd love to see a 3rd game to the series.
For me, the first Half-Life was scary, but more in a jump-scare type way. The first game that truly filled me with a terrifying sense of dread, which is of course what we all want from a scary movie or game, was Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on GameCube. That game was kind of meta and pretended to mess with your TV settings and did weird things when you were running low on "sanity" in the game. I should go back and play it again.
Also, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its spiritual sequel SOMA from the same developers are really scary and really well-made.
Yup. The sanity effects in ED:SR scarred me for life. Especially the one that created a pretty convincing error message that your hard drive had just been wiped. Nasty.
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Those freaking doberman.. at least i think they were. They jumped through the windows i dropped the remote.
I have two memories of being totally freaked out by a game. The first would be "Fatal Frame II" which a friend bought me as a birthday present. The game is about two Japanese girls who end up in an abandoned village that is haunted by malevolent spirits. You can only actually see the spirits through a camera and you can only fight them by taking their photo - and it only really hurts once they get very close to you. It was too much. I think I played for about 15 minutes and then I had to just give up. I was so tense. Even in the afternoon with all the lights on.
The second would be "Silent Hill 3". I was freaking out while running through the mall and I ran into a bathroom. I walked in and I think the stall door rattled so I freaked out and tried to run out the door, but when I turned around, the camera angle changed and it showed my reflection in the mirror, which was now bleeding, I was so caught off guard that I threw the control and in my panic I also managed to hit START+SELECT which apparently reboots the PS2. So I lost all my progress and had to live through it all again to move on!!!!!
Does anyone remember 'Eternal Darkness' on the Gamecube??? That game was BRILLIANT at messing with your head. That is a reboot I could get behind.
YES. Eternal Darkness. First game that truly scared me.
I still remember the moment when it pretended to reboot the GameCube! I can't think of another game that freaked me out in that way!
Botanicula. It's fun and whimsical up until the very last chapter and then it's nightmare fuel.
It doesn't help that I played that last section late in the evening, when I was the only one home, with a storm raging outside...
Crysis. haha. Not really a scary game, but there is this one part where you're swimming in liquid and aliens are swimming around you. I had decent headphones on, and I remember getting goosebumps when I'd hear one creeping up behind me. It's really awesome when a game can give that kind of experience.
Amnesia - it does a good job of "ohshithshsoshhit" moments mixed with puzzle solving while feeling a bit scared but safe.
Afraid of Monsters - DC.
Some old school half life mod that made me fall out of my chair when I was 10
Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube, ugh. That one took me almost three months to complete. They nailed it as far as the atmosphere at the time! Now my scary game of choice is Outlast: Whistleblower.
Doom 3 based almost entirely because of the excellent sound effects in the game. First L4D was creepy as well for the same reason if you played by yourself. Both games capture the atmosphere quite well.
Silent Hill 2 was hands down the best horror story I've experienced. I haven't even seen a horror movie come close to that game.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but there was a point in King's Quest VI where I talked to a little boy ghost... and a spider crawls by in the background. At the same time this was happening, a Seal song called Prayer for the Dying came on my CD player. I freaked. :P
System Shock 2! There were parts of the game which I played with one hand on the WASD and the other on the quicksave button. It wasn't really rational but I was scared as hell.