Best Horror games: A good horror story may keep most of us awake at night, but a scary video game will ensure that we won't sleep for weeks. Gameranx stepped into the wayback machine to create this tidy list of the top 25 horror games of all time.
Horror occupies a strange place in a person’s heart. We turn down the lights, don our headphones and want the game to make us jump out of their seats. We want to cry out, whimper and scream at what we are putting ourselves through.
Many games have scary elements in them, but then there are the games whose sole purpose is send paralyzing shivers down your spine. The games that stick with you long after you’ve turned your console or computer off and when you do coat you with an inescapable dread.
From jump scares to the psychological, from monsters to murderers, here is what I believe to be the top 25 best horror games of all time.
25. Amber: Journeys Beyond
Amber was an adventure horror game from 1998. The game began with you off to meet your friend Roxy who is performing paranormal tests on a haunted house in North Carolina. On the way, a mishap loses you your car and you complete the trip on foot only to find her unconscious in the garage, with the electricity out. As you search the house and its grounds, you delve into another world to help ghosts move to the great beyond and get Roxy’s spirit back that she lost while using the AMBER device.
Needy ghosts and the atmospheric other world make for a truly unsettling time. But most of all is the question at the end that will leave you frozen in your chair as the credits roll.
24. Sanitarium
No, it's not based off the Metallica song. Sanitarium is a horror adventure game where you play as an amnesiac patient who arrived at a mental asylum after his car crashed and is now trying to figure out what is going on. The mystery doesn’t lie in the titular facility, but in the worlds trapped inside your head.
Part allegory, part symbolism, all disturbing—Sanitarium is a story that sends you through your own warped and unknown psyche filled with deformed children (some missing their eyes), ancient gods, and ghosts from your past. The settings pay homage to the classic Universal horror films of the 1930s that lends the perfect aesthetic to match the pace of the game.
23. Scratches
Scratches is an adventure horror game from Argentinean developer Agustin Cordes, released in 2006. It places you in the first person perspective of Michael Arthate, a mystery author seeking seclusion to work on his next book. But after he’s moved in he discovers that the house contains a secret past, and he can literally hear scratches all around the house.
A puzzle game at heart, the atmosphere and tension are pitch perfect as the moments are timed to ratchet up the player’s terror using next to nothing. You’ll be scared of sounds and the cinematic tricks of the trade as you end up committing all the things you yell at characters in movies not to do.
22. Dead Space
What can be said about Dead Space that hasn’t already been said? It was the game to turn certain monster fighting conventions on their head. Players trained to aim for the head soon found themselves out of their depth, as the only way to kill the Necromorphs were to cut their limbs off, the same limbs being slashed in your face ready to cut it off at a moment’s notice.
The USG Ishimura was terrifying setting with half of the ship in disrepair and the other half filled with slavering monsters. So not only was Dead Space the master of the jump scare, it gave you the uneasy feeling the whole time you were in it that the ship would fall apart right under your feet.
And then there was the shoggoth in the tumble dryer...
21. Silent Hill
Back in 1999, the processing power of the PlayStation wasn’t up to snuff—as Konami discovered—to get their entry into the survival horror genre. Thank goodness for that. The draw distance was so short that they had to add Silent Hill’s trademark fog that obscured everything and made you rely on the sounds around you.
The game had a clever way of keeping you on edge. It forced you out into the street with only two bullets in your gun—the sound of flying monsters growing louder or fading away as you ambled across the deserted thoroughfare. You were always outmatched in any fight. Seeing the monsters only made things worse.
Despite the doofus brigade of the death cult, the series—like the town itself—was just getting into the swing of things, but still had the terror ratcheted up.
Silent Hill 4: The Room? I hardly found that to be scary at all. It was more irritating than frightening.
It took a few years, but I'm glad to finally run into someone else who really appreciated Rule of Rose.
Bioshock?
I agree on Undying and Phantasmagoria.
Freudian slip there on "Silent Hell." Spellcheck ftl.
Undying?
You don't have Phantasmagoria or any of the Gabriel Knight games on this list? Your list officially sucks