Here is my list of my favorite scary video games in reverse order:
5. Adventure
As a ten-year-old playing games in world where a colored squared seemed magical, I might be showing my age to admit that the dragons of Adventure were among the first video game characters to get my little heart pumping. Whenever I saw them floating awkwardly towards me, I felt a jolt of adrenaline and panic. They seemed unpredictable. None were as scary as the red dragon, the fiercest of the three. Few fates felt as frightening as ending up in the belly of a dragon and having to hit the dread “reset” button.
4. Condemned: Criminal Origins
Walking through an abandoned mall is unnerving enough in the daylight, let alone having to use a flashlight to distinguish between mannequins and monsters. Dead birds litter the streets and buildings. This was one of the first survival horror games that I played through alone–mostly during the day. Did something move in the shadows of my torchlight?
3. Clocktower 3
This game is as creepy as any I have seen, heard of, or played. Sure, there is gore, but it’s the fact that you are chased and have to hide that adds to the tension. You have a panic mode which can cause you to move more slowly. You are a young girl named Alyssa, relentlessly pursued by bosses by the names of Sledgehammer, Chopper, and Corroder. Anyone who is not creeped out by Scissorman and Scissorwoman has my undying respect.
2. Fatal Frame
Tape recordings, distorted photographs, old houses that contain tormented ghosts, Fatal Frame nearly took my number one spot. One ghost in particular cries out, “My eyes” in such a chilling voice that the soun d of it will echo in your worst nightmares. You do not have any weapons in this game but a camera. You have to take pictures of the various ghosts to contain them and their evil energy. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly and Fatal Frame III: The Tormented are equally as haunting as this first in the series.
1. Silent Hill 2
My scariest video game is one of the all-time classics: Silent Hill 2. Bloodied hospital walls, clues that possess a chilling familiarity, and being hunted by Pyramid Head create a world as horrifying to the psyche of the avatar as it is to the player . I experienced this game with my cousin and her husband in their old creaky farmhouse on series of warm summer nights. I moved to Iowa that fall, and I still remember sitting awake in my apartment, hearing the rattle of my fridge and thinking about how the night noises sounded just like those in Silent Hill 2.
