Over the years, I've played a myriad of (survival) horror games, so brace yourself if you read this post 
. Scenes and games of note, in no particular order:
(0) Alone in the Dark 1: I will never forget the room with the transparent figure sitting in the chair, its burning eyes following your every move, only to stand up and transform into an extremely deadly "vectorball vortex" as soon as you dare to pick up a certain item. That scene really scared me, especially since my young mind was trying to figure out why this happened. Was the being a guardian of the item, or simply emotionally attached to it? How did the being come into existence? To this day, I still don't know the answer, but I did realise that in order to really scare someone and make it last, you have to "suggest" just the right amount of horror to the viewer so that the mind fills in the blanks in its own personal way, which may amplify the scare more than if it were displayed in full detail (and thus is fully defined).
(1) Silent Hill 1: Lovecraftian Horror in full 3D, an all new in console land. The intro scene gripped me like nothing before, and then there are all the brilliant moments after it: the radio, the telephone, the locker, Sheryl's appearances, the dawning realisation that Lisa is... Disturbing stuff. I did not sleep well at all while playing this game.
(2) Silent Hill 2: Also pretty disturbing - the premise (hey there, I'm a letter from your deceased wife!), Pyramid Head, the oddity of the puzzles, the prison, the hotel, the protagonist's realisation of what he had done, "saying goodbye" (by killing them or actually saying goodbye) to the other characters in the game... are emotionally very intense. I strongly recommend reading the plot analysis at gamefaqs.com to fully understand the madness behind this game.
My landmark experience, though, is none of the above - it is the elevator sequence, and the scare was fully due to my own imagination. Upon entering the service elevator, you will notice that you can't use it. Why? Because the maximum weight limit of 300 pounds (or something like that) has been breached. Now, our hero certainly doesn't weigh 300 pounds, so for 10 minutes I'm scared to death - what is causing the extra weight? Is there... something else, something invisible standing next to you, waiting for the kill? Of course, it was none of this and I eventually discovered the truth behind the situation, but for those ten minutes the game scared me with something not implemented in the game at all. Now that's brilliance - again, personal imagination amplifies something which isn't there, but only mildly "suggested".
(3) Silent Hill 3: The Haunted House, the Mirror Room. The final area with the confessional stand, before and after the "confession": brr.
(4) Silent Hill 4: Back when I played this game, I just moved into my first apartment, alone in a big, new city. Needless to say, the scenes in The Room itself scared me because the in-game situation was so similar. Some of the scares in The Room (in the hospital, or once you stop regenerating health) are pretty memorable: the shoes, the fridge, the boy in the closet, the faces on the wall and oh, did I mention the knock on the door, Falling Head, Pointing Man or the purple stuffed bunny? Pity that the rest of the game - except those insane hospital rooms - wasn't as intense.
(5) Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil 4: the Resident Evils never really scared me, except for the Remake, which - thanks to the realistic graphics - really makes you feel like you're in a very dangerous place. Oh, and take this advice from a Resident Evil pro: don't kill Zombies in the Remake unless you can somehow burn them to a crisp. Resident Evil 4 had a few scenes where I was absolutely on my toes during the first playthrough: the garden maze, the sewer system, the Regeneradores, and Oven Man.
(6) Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame) 3: this game forces you to get up close and personal with wandering ghosts, which makes the experience extremely intense. I prefer part 3 because it has "The Room"-ish apartment elements in it with related scares, and also houses a key first playthrough scare for me: the Corridor with Flickering Lights. When you enter that scary room late in the game (nothing as unnerving as a room in a haunted mansion where the lights go on and off without pause), you might encounter a foe who *really* enjoys wrapping her "hands" around your face from behind to blind and kill you. First time I saw that happen, I immediatly paused the game to get out of the room to calm my nerves. Then I returned, and almost had a heart attack - did you know that Project Zero 3 has a screen saver? I didn't, until that moment.
Parts 1 and 2 are great, too, but 3 takes the cake in my book.
(7) Vampire: The Masquerade - Blood Lines. Play as a Malkavian, and you might encounter some weird things in your apartment at times (at first, I thought they were coding bugs, but things become increasingly disturbing over time). Play as any vampire type, and enjoy the haunted hotel. It's awesomely scary - and over too soon for my tastes. Still, very highly recommended.
(8) A classic for me: the second part of Platoon on the Commodore 64. This part takes place in an underground tunnel network. Very claustrophobic, and unexpected surprise attacks from Vietcong assassins keep you on edge. The music really works well to make the experience extremely creepy. Give that part a whirl if you have a working c64 emulator and manage to find the game.
(9) Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. For me, the creepiness really began after acquiring a red filter for your flashlight, which allows you to detect hidden markings. Let's just say that will detect more than you bargained for. Before that, Aline's "dream scenes" with Decerto were pretty creepy, too.
(10) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The sanity effects, all of them. At first, they hardly ever appear because the enemies aren't a challenge initially but once they do and the sanity effects really begin to play, get ready for some very, very disturbing stuff.
(11) Exmortis, Exmortis 2 and Goliath the Soothsayer: this trio of free Flash games made by Ben Leffler is pretty damn scary altogether thanks to nice atmospheric graphics and high impact sounds. Give them a shot if you have the time ( Exmortis 1 and 2 can be found at newgrounds.com, Goliath the Soothsayer is here: http://www.freegamesnews.com/en/games/2008/GoliaththeSoothsayer.html ). The games are short, but I promise you that they have a good chance of entertaining you/totally creeping you out.
(12) Snatcher: I don't know about you, but I was on the edge of my seat the first time I played this game. Huh, why am I supposed to raise the volume? Oh no, what's that noise? Could he be a Snatcher? Or she? Maybe the character I am playing is actually a Snatcher? Why did he just sneeze? Feeling mighty uncomfortable here...
That about wraps it up for my personal video game horror shocks. There are more, but this post has gone on for long enough. If you made it this far, thanks for reading
. Scenes and games of note, in no particular order:(0) Alone in the Dark 1: I will never forget the room with the transparent figure sitting in the chair, its burning eyes following your every move, only to stand up and transform into an extremely deadly "vectorball vortex" as soon as you dare to pick up a certain item. That scene really scared me, especially since my young mind was trying to figure out why this happened. Was the being a guardian of the item, or simply emotionally attached to it? How did the being come into existence? To this day, I still don't know the answer, but I did realise that in order to really scare someone and make it last, you have to "suggest" just the right amount of horror to the viewer so that the mind fills in the blanks in its own personal way, which may amplify the scare more than if it were displayed in full detail (and thus is fully defined).
(1) Silent Hill 1: Lovecraftian Horror in full 3D, an all new in console land. The intro scene gripped me like nothing before, and then there are all the brilliant moments after it: the radio, the telephone, the locker, Sheryl's appearances, the dawning realisation that Lisa is... Disturbing stuff. I did not sleep well at all while playing this game.
(2) Silent Hill 2: Also pretty disturbing - the premise (hey there, I'm a letter from your deceased wife!), Pyramid Head, the oddity of the puzzles, the prison, the hotel, the protagonist's realisation of what he had done, "saying goodbye" (by killing them or actually saying goodbye) to the other characters in the game... are emotionally very intense. I strongly recommend reading the plot analysis at gamefaqs.com to fully understand the madness behind this game.
My landmark experience, though, is none of the above - it is the elevator sequence, and the scare was fully due to my own imagination. Upon entering the service elevator, you will notice that you can't use it. Why? Because the maximum weight limit of 300 pounds (or something like that) has been breached. Now, our hero certainly doesn't weigh 300 pounds, so for 10 minutes I'm scared to death - what is causing the extra weight? Is there... something else, something invisible standing next to you, waiting for the kill? Of course, it was none of this and I eventually discovered the truth behind the situation, but for those ten minutes the game scared me with something not implemented in the game at all. Now that's brilliance - again, personal imagination amplifies something which isn't there, but only mildly "suggested".
(3) Silent Hill 3: The Haunted House, the Mirror Room. The final area with the confessional stand, before and after the "confession": brr.
(4) Silent Hill 4: Back when I played this game, I just moved into my first apartment, alone in a big, new city. Needless to say, the scenes in The Room itself scared me because the in-game situation was so similar. Some of the scares in The Room (in the hospital, or once you stop regenerating health) are pretty memorable: the shoes, the fridge, the boy in the closet, the faces on the wall and oh, did I mention the knock on the door, Falling Head, Pointing Man or the purple stuffed bunny? Pity that the rest of the game - except those insane hospital rooms - wasn't as intense.
(5) Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil 4: the Resident Evils never really scared me, except for the Remake, which - thanks to the realistic graphics - really makes you feel like you're in a very dangerous place. Oh, and take this advice from a Resident Evil pro: don't kill Zombies in the Remake unless you can somehow burn them to a crisp. Resident Evil 4 had a few scenes where I was absolutely on my toes during the first playthrough: the garden maze, the sewer system, the Regeneradores, and Oven Man.
(6) Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame) 3: this game forces you to get up close and personal with wandering ghosts, which makes the experience extremely intense. I prefer part 3 because it has "The Room"-ish apartment elements in it with related scares, and also houses a key first playthrough scare for me: the Corridor with Flickering Lights. When you enter that scary room late in the game (nothing as unnerving as a room in a haunted mansion where the lights go on and off without pause), you might encounter a foe who *really* enjoys wrapping her "hands" around your face from behind to blind and kill you. First time I saw that happen, I immediatly paused the game to get out of the room to calm my nerves. Then I returned, and almost had a heart attack - did you know that Project Zero 3 has a screen saver? I didn't, until that moment
.Parts 1 and 2 are great, too, but 3 takes the cake in my book.
(7) Vampire: The Masquerade - Blood Lines. Play as a Malkavian, and you might encounter some weird things in your apartment at times (at first, I thought they were coding bugs, but things become increasingly disturbing over time). Play as any vampire type, and enjoy the haunted hotel. It's awesomely scary - and over too soon for my tastes. Still, very highly recommended.
(8) A classic for me: the second part of Platoon on the Commodore 64. This part takes place in an underground tunnel network. Very claustrophobic, and unexpected surprise attacks from Vietcong assassins keep you on edge. The music really works well to make the experience extremely creepy. Give that part a whirl if you have a working c64 emulator and manage to find the game.
(9) Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. For me, the creepiness really began after acquiring a red filter for your flashlight, which allows you to detect hidden markings. Let's just say that will detect more than you bargained for. Before that, Aline's "dream scenes" with Decerto were pretty creepy, too.
(10) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The sanity effects, all of them. At first, they hardly ever appear because the enemies aren't a challenge initially but once they do and the sanity effects really begin to play, get ready for some very, very disturbing stuff.
(11) Exmortis, Exmortis 2 and Goliath the Soothsayer: this trio of free Flash games made by Ben Leffler is pretty damn scary altogether thanks to nice atmospheric graphics and high impact sounds. Give them a shot if you have the time ( Exmortis 1 and 2 can be found at newgrounds.com, Goliath the Soothsayer is here: http://www.freegamesnews.com/en/games/2008/GoliaththeSoothsayer.html ). The games are short, but I promise you that they have a good chance of entertaining you/totally creeping you out.
(12) Snatcher: I don't know about you, but I was on the edge of my seat the first time I played this game. Huh, why am I supposed to raise the volume? Oh no, what's that noise? Could he be a Snatcher? Or she? Maybe the character I am playing is actually a Snatcher? Why did he just sneeze? Feeling mighty uncomfortable here...
That about wraps it up for my personal video game horror shocks. There are more, but this post has gone on for long enough. If you made it this far, thanks for reading
