Continuing on from page one. Our next list is for more modern games, roughly from 2000 and onward. Resident Evil and Silent Hill return for this list obviously, but several new or updated franchises really shine here.
Top 10 Scary Videogames – Modern Gaming
- Call of Cthulu Dark Corners of the Earth (PC)
- Condemned Criminal Origins (PC & Console)
- Dead Space Series (PC & Console)
- F.E.A.R. Series (PC & Console)
- Resident Evil Series (PC & Console)
- Silent Hill Series (PC & Console)
- The Suffering (PC & Console)
- Doom 3
- Alien vs Predator 2
- Eternal Darkness Sanity’s Requiem
Honorable Mentions: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines (for the Haunted House sequence), HL2 for Ravenholm, Alan Wake for suspense. Call of Cthulu is an overlooked action/adventure style game that has garnered some attention thanks to scary videogames list like this one and of course the truly unnerving town where the game
takes place. Condemned is all based on atmosphere achieved through dark lighting, brutal hand to hand combat and extreme lack of firearms. Dead Space has taken the crown for me in terms of scary games; there is tension, mild sweating and heart palpitations thanks to big scares. Here is a minor Dead Space scare. F.E.A.R. also thrives on sound design and darkness though I don’t feel the series is top-notch. Doom 3 was much maligned, but hell-demons in the dark counts as scary in my book. AVP 2: a marine being hunted by aliens in the you guessed it, dark, is creeeepy and those alien screeches….
So blood, gore, vampires/werewolves etc do not alone make a scary horror game. The strength of any good scary videogame or segment within a game must include quality sound design and music, a build-up of suspense or a series of quick scares that make you think its all over before the big one hits, much in the way that the best “scary movies” work. When big horror franchises in film turn to just relying on gore they often lose the elements that made them truly scary in the first place. The majority of these games take cues from quality film and use a combination of the above ideas to really get the heart-rate going. So, what are your picks for scariest game and what’s missing from the list?
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James Schumacher
A freelance writer and digital artist, operator of this website. My name is James Schumacher, and I hold a degree in Game Art & Design (BoFA) from the Art Institute in Portland. My passions are gaming, music, books, film and my friends. Select Photography to see some of my latests photos, with more found at 500px and Viewbug. Currently you can find much of my game reviews mostly at Only Single Player http://www.onlysp.com. I am available for freelance writing work, as well as for image and graphic editing.
