back to article Slideshow: A History of Horror in 20 Scary Games

Complimented on the cobwebs, skeletal remains and general stench of death in my flat the other day, I suddenly remembered it was Halloween this week, so here's another nostalgic slideshow to celebrate. This time it's a collection of 20 pant-cacking games, titles that raised the hair on the back of our necks or at least raised …

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  1. James Cullingham
    FAIL

    Foolishly, I was expecting that there would actually be a slideshow here

    Silly old me

    1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

      Re: Foolishly, I was expecting that there would actually be a slideshow here

      perhaps THAT is the actual horror - what you came to see has... [eery music] vanished! [/eery music]

      1. FartingHippo
        Holmes

        Re: Foolishly, I was expecting that there would actually be a slideshow here

        That more a yawn-inducing "Tales of the Unexpected" horror (US readers: Twilight Zone), than a true Carrie's-Grave trouser-filler.

    2. Caleb Cox (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Foolishly, I was expecting that there would actually be a slideshow here

      Apologies everyone, we had a couple problems in the back-end. Oooh er. Nothing a quick fiddle can't fix. All good now. :-)

  2. Anonymous Custard
    Joke

    Imaginatively scary?

    Is the slideshow supposed to be made extra-scary by leaving it all up to our imagination?

    (and yes I know about the send a correction link - I did that before posting this)

  3. Flugal

    Despite the link omission, the term 'pant-cacking' was worthy of a smile. Might try and slot it casually in to conversation this afternoon.

    1. Christopher Rogers
      Facepalm

      And El Reg might try and casually slot a slideshow into the article.

  4. wowfood
    Thumb Up

    Maybe a date for each game would also be good. See when the most horrific of games was released.

    As for games that should have been included. Personally I actually found some parts of the original DMC to be terrifying. Those mannequins in the first room gave me the heebies.

    As for any other scary games? I think you got most of them, at least most of the ones I can remember.

    1. Caleb Cox (Written by Reg staff)

      If you look below each picture, there is the release date, the developer and the platforms it was launched on. :-)

      1. wowfood

        And thus my blindness shows no bounds!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Erm..

    Where is fear? That was a well made game designed around creepy. Granted there was gore but it complemented the horror instead of being the horror

    1. Caleb Cox (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Erm..

      It is in there? Certainly gave me the creeps, so I couldn't omit it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Erm..

        my bad. Cant use a simple slideshow! Doh

  6. Infidellic_
    Unhappy

    Half Life 2

    Personally it's the head crabs wot done it for me. I know the game as a whole isn't that scary but I freaking hate head crabs :( and by extension most of Ravenholm

    1. Richard 81

      Re: Half Life 2

      The black poison headcrabs being the scariest. I read that during testing Valve found that subjects would freak when they heard the hissing rattle of a poison headcrab and turn all their attention towards hunting it down. They got so focussed they'd completely ignore anything else, even though a poison headcrab can't actually kill you on its own.

  7. Thomas 4
    Unhappy

    A shame

    You missed Pathalogic and Ice Pick Lodge's most recent creepfest The Void. Hearing the Brothers speak in their hellish metallic voices, not to mention what they *look* like certainly gives me the heebie-jeebies.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Slideshow?! BOO! HISS!

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Happy

      Slideshow is by far the scariest game I've encountered... it has its place here!

  9. Richard Wharram

    Silent Hill 2 is there.

    So all is well.

  10. Eddie Edwards

    The Lurking Horror?

    OK, so I guess Infocom games aren't known for their crowd-pleasing screenshots, but surely this was the very first horror game on a computer?

    1. Petrea Mitchell
      Go

      Re: The Lurking Horror?

      "OK, so I guess Infocom games aren't known for their crowd-pleasing screenshots [...]"

      Easy enough to get around-- just post a photo of the MIT campus at the time, as that's what GUE Tech was a thinly disguised copy of...

  11. Phage

    The original Doom ? When you could hear the monsters, but not see them...

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Happy

      Original doom .. pah

      the reboot/remake Doom 3 had me seriously creeped out.... especially the bit where you can hear children crying in the walls, then laughter and whispered 'save me'

      But if you're gonna give system shock 2 a mention, you may as well mention SS1 too

      For the time, a definite "do I save here and resume in daylight? " kinda game

  12. Mike Smith

    How could you forget

    The Alien Quake mod. Best played with headphones on and lights off for a truly pant-filling experience.

  13. deanpm

    ok so wheres the game that scared the crap outa me when i played it.. astounding audio effects made this game an absolute pants filler... the game.. clive barkers undying

    1. Tim 69
      Thumb Up

      And my flatmate...

      We scared the bejesus out of him whilst he was playing it in his room, creeping round his door and jumping out at him. He was so scared he jumped off his chair and landed on his arse.... Good Times....

    2. VaalDonkie

      I can't take any Clive barker game seriously because when I hear the name, I immediately think "South African Soccer Coach from the 1990's".

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, there was one bit I still remember, the Chapel with the ghost monks, every other bit of the game I explored thoroughly, but that section I got out as quickly as possible :)

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    7th Guest? Seriously?

    The only fear there was that this was all we could ever expect from the CD format...

    Alien Trilogy (Acclaim, PS1)? Splatterhouse (Namco, Arcade)? Cursed Mountain (Deep Silver, Wii)?

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  16. 1Rafayal

    Someone needs to mention Thief

    They really do, the first game scared me witless - the bits in the haunted cathedral.

    1. Brangdon
      Devil

      Re: Someone needs to mention Thief

      Have you played the third game? The game is supposed to be a first-person sneaker where darkness is your friend, and someone dropped a survival horror level into the middle of it. ("The Cradle".) Awesome.

    2. Ru
      Facepalm

      Re: Someone needs to mention Thief

      I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but this eye... its completely blind.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DarkSeed - Amiga... pretty spooky!

  18. Paul Webb

    "Limbo", especially the audio

    See http://limbogame.org/ (winner of a 'Best Horror' award from IGN).

    More about the audio here:

    https://www.develop-online.net/features/1434/Heard-about-Limbo

    ("How easily the ‘nothingness’ – the ‘notional silence’ – could have been tromped on and thereby the intensity and involvement diminished.")

  19. Tsung
    WTF?

    Ammensia

    How can you miss Ammensia? http://www.amnesiagame.com

    There is truly a scary game.

    1. Caleb Cox (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Ammensia

      Didn't glance through the whole slideshow? Amnesia is there bud, it's the second to last slide. ;-)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not a horror per se, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R gave me more than a few jumpy moments, especially with the poltergeists.

  21. McGaz

    Amnesia was a very good, and different play. The water monster chases inspired greater fear/creepiness than any other game or movie for me!

    Must be played in the dark, gamma down and with surround sound!

  22. TheTrouser

    What? No place for...

    Call of Cthu. . . Call of Chut. . . Call for Tchu. . . Call for Cutchyhoolahoops?

  23. walatam

    You missed

    Diablo, 1997 (?)

  24. Qwelak
    Alert

    Why Res Evil 2 not 1. I found the original far more scary than the second one. The camera angles were brilliantly (if annoyingly) positioned for max surprise. Made me jump out of my seat more than once.

    1. Caleb Cox (Written by Reg staff)

      It's all subjective, I guess. I found RE2 far scarier and it's definitely my favourite RE in the series.

    2. Tommy Pock

      That's the thing with Resident Evil 1 - nothing happens and then you jump out of your skin and then you kill a dog and then some more nothing continues to happen.

      Trying to find my way out of the alternative school in Silent Hill 1 - my god. Armed only with a torch and I can hear something shuffling about but I can't tell if it's down the corridor or up the stairs and I am absolutely bricking it; playing with a mate in the room, we both opted to switch it off, turn the light on and have a cup of tea. The claustrophobic fear that game generated was genuinely terrifying.

      It helped if you'd had a smoke, of course.

  25. McWibble
    Devil

    Realms of the Haunting

    While it's certainly an old game, I remember when I first played Realms of the Haunting - scared the crap out of me at the time!

    Admittedly nowadays it's a bit tame in comparison to more modern games, but so is everything that old.

  26. TheRealRoland
    Happy

    Dead Space on Playbook

    On a plane, with a noise-cancellation headset on... spilled a drink thanks to that one :-)

  27. Pirate Dave Silver badge

    Doom3?

    Really, how could anyone be scared by that game, considering that an hour in, the repetitive boredom had already induced a semi-coma?

    The Archvile in Doom2, now THAT gave us the definition of "pant-cacking". The alert sound made my skin crawl.

    And no mention of the HORROR that was DukeNukem Forever?

    1. 1Rafayal

      Re: Doom3?

      I thought Doom 3 was scary. Very grateful that the new version allows you to keep that flashlight on...

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    gabriel knight

    New Orleans, voodoo, went for atmosphere and a slow build rather than shocks IIRC

  29. Petrea Mitchell
    Flame

    Zork: Nemesis

    Scariest thing I've ever played.

    Not so much for actual chills produced by the game, but for the shock horror of what they were doing to the Zork series.

  30. Jock in a Frock
    Devil

    Another oldie

    Eye of the Beholder on the Amiga - pooped my pants more than once while blindly running through the catacombs.

  31. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    AID was the first ont that came to mind.

    Then Diablo. Then Doom.

    Special mention for nethack, wich would be first spot hands down if it wasn't possible to just get up and go get a nice cuppa in the knowledge that nothing will have changed in the meantime.

  32. Myopic Aardvark
    WTF?

    Clive Barker's Undying

    A game that so creeped me out that when the loading screen suddenly popped up as I was moving through an (empty) corridor, I cried out in terror. My wife winds me up about that to this day.

    Doom 3? Seriously? Oh look, there's a shadow/pickup - I bet a monster is going to appear... yep, it did. Yawn.

    Doom was far scarier than Doom 3.

  33. spiny norman

    Dungeon Master ....

    ... on an Atari ST. Scariest thing I'd seen at the time. Somehow I've never found PC games as absorbing as the Atari ones, despite, or maybe because of, all the technical advances.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alen resurrection on the playstation. Sadly overlooked as it didn't sell that well but had a super scary atmosphere and even a recommendation that you play the game in the dark...

  35. andy gibson

    Chiller

    Chiller - Commodore 64:

    http://www.commodorecomputerclub.com/images/103111/chiller.gif

    Or how about the NES version:

    http://www.gameclassification.com/EN/games/1930-Chiller/index.html

  36. Gazareth

    Loved the 7th Guest

    D was good as well, although I suspect it hasn't aged well.

    Half Life gave me a few jumpy moments, and the Ravenholm level in HL2...

    The opening of Bioshock, where you're trapped in the Bathysphere had the heart racing too!

  37. Number13
    Boffin

    It might sound crazy

    but the original XCom game scared the hell out of me.

    It was really atmospheric (and I were a nipper) and the "Alien Activity" noise between turns got me more and more wound up as I slowly progressed through the Fog of War :)

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