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- Kyle Townsend
- 302 VOTES. Silent Hill 2. Often referred to as one of the scariest franchises of all time, Silent Hill games may share a striking resemblance to the Resident Evil series, but while the latter emphasizes fast-paced gameplay and tension, the former is a slower and more atmospheric, focusing on pathological horror rather than tangible zombie opponents.
- 123 VOTES. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. As if the title wasn't enough to strike a sense of dread deep within your soul, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is cyberpunk horror game from the '90s that channels the insatiable feeling of a coming apocalypse.
- 93 VOTES. Nocturne. In the same vein as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Nocturne is an often overlooked 3rd-person survival horror game that takes place during the Great Depression, so you know it's going to be grim.
- 176 VOTES. Resident Evil. It's impossible to have an old-school horror games list without mentioning the original Resident Evil, and while every classic Resident Evil entry could easily make this list, we decided to go with the original.
- Alien Isolation
- Resident Evil 7
- Soma
- Prey
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
- Detention
- The Suffering
- The Evil Within
- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
- Silent Hill 3
2014 | Creative Assembly It’s kind of amazing that it took so long for someone to make a proper Alien horror game. We’ve been shooting at Xenomorphs for years, but few games based on the Alienfilms treated those creatures as the legends of horror that they truly are. Alien Isolation uses a single Xenomorph more effectively than any piece of Alien m...
2017 | Capcom Resident Evil 7 is the scariest Resident Evil game ever made. While there are some notable contenders to that title (a couple of them are on this list), Resident Evil 7 brought pure horror back to the Resident Evilfranchise in the biggest and best way possible. In fact, Resident Evil 7’s opening moments rank right up there with some o...
2017 | Frictional Games SOMA is certainly scary in all of the “traditional” ways. After all, this was made by the same team that delivered Amnesia. You can expect a ton of scary visuals and expertly executed jump scares. However, SOMAreally is that kind of horror game that gets under your skin in other ways. There’s a sense of hopelessness in this ...
2017 | Arkane Studios Prey flew under a lot of radars when it was released in 2017. Perhaps partially burdened by its association with the uneven Prey games of the past (an association its developers never really wanted in the first place), Preyfailed to reach the one audience who would have most appreciated it: horror game fans. Prey is a lot of t...
2007 | GSC Game World You would think that the scariest thing in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.would be the mutants that roam the wastelands of Chernobyl. At the very least, there are few games that offer anything more terrifying than suddenly turning a corner and staring at something you couldn’t find the words to describe even if you weren’t currently occupied w...
2017 | RedCandleGames Tragedies can be strange things. Most of us can relate to certain tragedies like the death of a loved one or the loss of something sacred. Yet, there are other tragedies that we may understand or empathize with but could never truly feel in the way that the person most affected by them must feel them. The magic of Detention ca...
2004 | Surreal Software I don’t know why there aren’t more works of horror set in prisons. Most prison systems are basically the biggest living nightmares possible, so you’d think we’d have more notable works of horror that push that natural nightmare to new extremes. The Suffering is certainly one of the most notable works of prison horror in any ...
2014 | Tango Gameworks To be entirely honest with you, The Evil Withinis kind of a disappointing game in many ways. Expectations were high for Shinji Mikami’s return to horror, and those expectations were somewhat deflated by this title’s iffy gameplay and pacing problems. In terms of scares, though, The Evil Withindoes everything but disappoint. M...
1995 | Cyberdreams Many of the scariest horror games tend to be a little more modern. Various advancements in technology and developers’ knowledge of the genre have led to increasingly scary games over the last 20 years or so. If you’re looking for the scariest game of the pre-Resident Evil era, though, it may very well be I Have No Mouth, and I Mu...
2003 | Team Silent Silent Hill 3 exists in a weird cultural vacuum. It’s clearly overshadowed by its legendary predecessors, and I’d argue that it sometimes gets lumped in with some of the…lesser Silent Hill efforts that would follow. However, there is a strong case to be made that Silent Hill 3 is the absolute scariest Silent Hill game ever made. ...
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. No. of Metacritic User Ratings: 230 (8.9 Score) Eternal Darkness. GameCube. June 24, 2002. Developer(s)
- Clive Barker's Undying. No. of Metacritic User Ratings: 170 (8.6 Score) PC. February 7, 2021. Developer. DreamWorks Interactive, Westlake Interactive.
- Cold Fear. No. of Metacritic User Ratings: 14 (9.4 Score) PC , PS2 , Xbox (Original) May 17, 2005. Developer. Genre(s) Survival Horror , Third-Person Shooter.
- Nosferatu: The Wrath Of Malachi. No. of Metacritic User Ratings: 52 (7.4 Score) PC. October 19, 2003.
- List Writer
- Sweet Home. Metacritc: N/A. Perma-death mechanics make you encourage you to carefully think about your next survival move. Gruesome and gory moments that frighten you in a mere instant.
- Silent Hill. Metascore: 86. Out-of-body experiences as you travel through dense, foggy nightmares. Consistently bringing about a feeling of dread the deeper you dive into the story.
- Alone In The Dark. Metascore: 72. Alluring mysteries around every corner. Lovecraftian tale that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
- Resident Evil. Metascore: 91. Grim soundtrack accompanied by a mysterious setting. An endlessly helpless feeling throughout the gameplay.
- As such, there’s one genre that retro gamers always seem to overlook: old-school horror games. And that’s a real shame. Like all retro games, horror games had their golden age in the 80s and 90s, too.
- Splatterhouse on the TurboGrafx-16 - Released 1990. What do you get when you (unofficially) turn the Friday the 13th film series into a hilariously murderous arcade beat-’em-up?
- Nightmare on Elm Street on the Nintendo NES - Released 1989. Freddy Krueger is one of horror’s most enduring villains because he has the ability to kill you in your dreams.
- Alone in The Dark on the Panasonic 3DO - Released in 1992. Resident Evil may be the most well-remembered pioneer of the ‘survival-horror’ genre. But actually, the first 3-D survival horror game was 1992’s Alone in The Dark.
Oct 23, 2023 · Resident Evil kicked off the popularity of horror games in the 90s, with many imitators to follow. The term "survival horror" originated from the first Resident Evil game. The 90s had a range of horror-themed games, including classics like House of the Dead 2 and Alone in the Dark.
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Oct 17, 2023 · With those scaredy-cats in mind, we’re rounding up games that fall everywhere on the spooky spectrum, from those that are simply horror-adjacent to games that might actually cause you to...
