In the spirit of Halloween, what better way to celebrate than by running down my personal top five scary moments in gaming. Now I’m a huge fan of horror movies. I have seen countless obscure movies in my time and loved them. When it comes to horror games however I turn into a five-year-old. This list is an assortment of games I’ve been forced to play by my friends who know I scare easy, so let’s begin.

5. Devil May Cry – Intro

Just for context, I was eight-years-old when this game came out. This was the first M-rated game my brother said I was not allowed to play or even watch him play.

 My most vivid memory behind this game is sitting away from the TV doing my homework while he played. While I wasn’t able to watch, I could still hear the creepy church choir music in the background. When I finally glanced over from finishing my homework, Dante had just gotten stabbed and stood up with the sword going through his whole body.

I had nightmares that night

 When I picked up the HD Collection, I still got chills from the choir music.

4. Resident Evil 4 – Chainsaw Man

AKA, the last good Resident Evil game.

 Now this experience felt more like watching a movie. I wasn’t playing Resident Evil 4 at the time, I was watching my friend Chingy play. It was both our first times playing this game and we had tried to pull an all nighter. As if the whole game wasn’t already scary, I watched my friend play with my hands covering my eyes the whole time.

Then came the infamous chainsaw encounter at midnight. With the sound blaring through the TV, we were both panicking. My friend forgot the controls, he couldn’t aim straight. After exhausting all his ammo he ran into the near by building and so did the chainsaw man. He threw any incendiary grenades he had, but he wouldn’t go down. Then came the gruesome chainsaw death.

We spent forever on that part repeatedly getting the brutal close up death.

3. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune – The Twist

I would hate to have this six year old game spoiled but here we go.

 I love the Uncharted series, period. Their storytelling is impeccable. I was so drawn in to this world and how grounded it was to reality. Until the damn zombie things! I hadn’t seen the Indiana Jones films, so I did not see this supernatural plot twist coming. With zombies being on my, “top things that scare the piss out of me,” list, it didn’t help that they matched the criteria to add to the creepiness. Being tall, skinny, pale looking creatures running towards you taking more damage than the average enemy.

Even when I went to replay the game on crushing for the platinum, I was still creeped out by those damn things

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum – Game Freezing

Bet you won’t find this on any other top five scary list.

After a long five hour sitting, this was the last thing I could ever expect from this game. If there is one experience every gamer has shared, it’s the loss of a save file at some point in our lives. Nothing is worse than putting hours worth of time into a game only to have it snatched away. While that never actually happened in Arkham Asylum, it was that fear that it almost did that is unmatched to any other fear that your average horror game can instill on someone.

But there is one game that has all these beat

1. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly – The Whole Damn Thing!

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Damn this game and everything about it!

So a little background on this game. The Fatal Frame series is based around some urban legends. In an area outside Tokyo, there lies a mansion in which it’s said seven people were murdered in a grisly fashion. People who are said to visit or just live around this area, are cursed. Still not creeped out?

The game’s sole mechanic is a camera you use to snap pictures of ghost as they attack you. Now, the game is in third person, so you can see the room, but when you switch to the camera, it’s first person. So if you haven’t pissed your pants at the sight of a ghost yet, you have to bring up a camera and snap a quick picture as this ghost is reaching towards you.

All the while the sound design behind this game is equivalent to any Japanese horror movie. Quiet. Silent. Then… BOOM! Screeching sound and eerie wire sound effects.

In addition, when I went to the bathroom, my brother thought it would be funny to hide in the dark with a blanket covering him and scare me. So that doesn’t help with the mentally scarred thoughts I have associated with this game.