The game’s complex psychological narrative loosens your grip on reality while the visceral terror of creations such as Pyramid Head ensure that you’ll find no comfort in whatever answers you may uncover.įew games have the ability to scar you quite like Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 relies a little less on fog but secures its status as arguably the most intimidating horror game ever made by invoking similar feelings of uncertainty. Any second, a Necromorph could pop out of a vent or sneak behind you or…Īsk gamers what they remember about the first Silent Hill and they’ll likely say “the fog.” Granted, that game’s fog-filled streets can partially be attributed to the PlayStation’s atrocious draw distance, but there’s no denying the effectiveness of making a player feel like they’ll never know what’s around the next corner. What begins as gory jump scares quickly turns into a deeper feeling of dread for the player that, when combined with the incredible art and sound design inside the USG Ishimura, makes you feel like you’re constantly in danger. You’ll never forget the first time you fell for a Necromorph “playing dead,” a shocking moment that assured that you’d never feel safe in this game, whether in a save room or walking down a quiet hallway. While the game’s atmosphere and world-class sound design deserve all the praise they’ve gotten over the years, Dead Space truly distinguishes itself in the ways its enemy design influences the combat and storytelling.

That idea is at the heart of nearly everything that makes Dead Space brilliant. From Alien to Event Horizon, sci-fi horror stories often show us the consequences of going too far and facing something we don’t entirely understand. Many of the best examples of sci-fi horror rely on the terror of the unknown. From interactive horror movies like Until Dawn to first-person experiences beyond comprehension like P.T., the survival horror genre continues to prove why it’s one of the mainstays of the industry and why it will always rise from the grave for one last scare.ĭen of Geek has taken a look back at the long history of the horror genre and chosen 20 titles we think stand as the scariest games ever made: Dead Space

Today, the genre lives on and continues to evolve. With another push, thanks to titles such as Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark, the survival horror genre would give birth to some of its most frightening creations: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Eternal Darkness, and Dead Space, to name a few. While the seminal Haunted House Atari game, one of the earliest survival horror games, presented its scares through a mix of heavily-pixelated ghosts and spiders that weren’t so frightening at all, it was indicative of where the genre would one day go. Video games have been trying to scare us since the early ’80s.

Best time of day to play horror games