Having recently started going through The Suffering again and subsequently being freaked out by it I want to know which is the scariest game you've played.

What was that freaked you out? For me it's usually the soundscape used in a game. Particularly a game like Project Zero where you are absoulutley defenceless but for a camera and then it's all about timing and the film type used.

Also, the setting used can be unsettling. The first Suffering game is set in a prison and the feeling of being trapped can be cloying. While a game like Rule of Rose, set in the English Moorland is spooky because of so many Moorland Myths the permeate the British culture.

Playing games like these in the dark with head-phones on has given me more than a few sleepless nights.

Disclaimer: I did use the search function. Twice! In both boxes. Posts of "Been done before!" Will be read in whiney voice and then met with a derisive yawn.
Thank you very much and thank you.

I don't play too many scary games so I have to go with Condemned: Criminal Origins.

The_Deleted:
Disclaimer: I did use the search function. Twice! In both boxes. Posts of "Been done before!" Will be read in whiney voice and then met with a derisive yawn.
Thank you very much and thank you.

Fair enough - at least you had a look, but it has been done before.

System Shock 2. The monkeys are coming to eat me.

The_Deleted:
Playing games like these in the dark with head-phones on has given me more than a few sleepless nights.

Good to see a fellow headphone-r. You have to play survival horror at night with headphones. I think a lot of people underrate horror games (especially on consoles) because of the environment they play it in. Even a mediocre game like Doom 3 can be completely terrifying given the right atmosphere.

Anyway...

Silent Hill 2 is probably the most consistently unsettling, but in terms of pure "AAARRRGGHHHH!" moments I'd have to agree with Project Zero.

bioshock and oblivion. Im not kidding, Here I am in bioshock, looking for a splicer, and suddenly he pops behind me and attacks me. Then in oblivion (I hadnt played it in forever) I freaked out cause all i had to begin with was a whimpy glowing spell and the creak of skeletons made me piss myself.

Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl.
The bits where you're skulking around the underground do a fantastic job of creating a really creepy atmosphere. When I ran into my first bloodsucker he scared the living shit out of me. I was looting a body and hear this growl, turn around and see nothing. I get back to business only to glace back and see this thing decloak right in front of me and take a swipe.
Practically jumped out of my pants when that happened.

Silent Hill 1, I played it when I was like...9 or 10? Didn't sleep for a week :( Haven't yet played Condemned 1 or 2, they're on my shelf. I'm kinda scared to play them because I've heard stories of how crazy scary they are

5. TESIV:Oblivion with earphones. Delving into some of the pitch-black caves and dungeons and hearing the creak of bones or the chatter of a goblin from any direction is enough to creep you out, and then they start running towards you. Not to mention all the paranoia Dark Brotherhood missions induce.

4. Bioshock, once again with headphones. Splicers and scripted scenes alike made me jump, and then there's just the pure mindfuck parts like the "Artist" in Fort Frolic.

3. Not exactly a game, but the first tier mission on Jedi Academy with the sand-worms was scary as hell. *rumblerumble* Wha? *giant worm comes up five feet from where you're standing* $#*@!

2. Silent Hill 2, in terms of atmosphere and psychological effect.

1. Earthbound. This is mainly a nostalgia thing, because Giygas may be creepy when you see him as an adult, but when you're playing the game at age 10 in the middle of the night... He's bloody terrifying on both a visual and psychological level.

Amnestic:
Silent Hill 1, I played it when I was like...9 or 10? Didn't sleep for a week :( Haven't yet played Condemned 1 or 2, they're on my shelf. I'm kinda scared to play them because I've heard stories of how crazy scary they are

First time I played it I was in a room with 6 other guys. We lasted 5 minutes before we tried a different game.

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl gets pretty freaky the closer you get to the Powerplant. But still nothing has tight grip of fear on me like SIREN.

RAKtheUndead:

Fair enough - at least you had a look, but it has been done before.

Several times. Anyway, Project Zero 2 (Fatal Frame for the Americans) is the scariest game ever made. Your only weapon is a camera, and for it to be most effective you need to wait for the ghosts (that regularly appear out of thin air) to lunge for your face.

This is scary. Plus when you have locations like a torn-down dollmakers house with Spirits trapped in cupboards that attack you whenever you open them... Creepy doesn't quite cut it.

Grand Prix Legends. Simulating the 1967 Formula One season, it's known as one of the most accurate simulator games ever made, in that these cars will try to kill you in whatever ways they can. I've only played a demo, but I am now convinced that Jackie Stewart is superhuman. Your Fatal Frames and Silent Hills have nothing against what I am now convinced is the most frightening game ever made. It really hammers that statistic home that in the 1960s, the chances of a racing driver with a five-year career being killed at the track was two in three.

Condemned for me, those mannequins and the locker scene were truly terrifying to me...

Condemned: criminal origins, you step through a hallway see a line of mannequins along the wall, I suspected something to happen, so I start moving forward then the screen flickers and then all the mannequins are all right behind you, the more you move the more they multiply and they keep following you until you leave the area, they didn't do anything but with the weird music playing and me being alone it was just plain creepy, also I didn't like mannequins before this game and that part didn't help.

damn you spooky materializing mannequins.

Bioshock...I don't play much horror, and there where a few jump scares in that.

darkstone:
Condemned: criminal origins, you step through a hallway see a line of mannequins along the wall, I suspected something to happen, so I start moving forward then the screen flickers and then all the mannequins are all right behind you, the more you move the more they multiply and they keep following you until you leave the area, they didn't do anything but with the weird music playing and me being alone it was just plain creepy, also I didn't like mannequins before this game and that part didn't help.

damn you spooky materializing mannequins.

That SCARED THE SHIT THROUGH ME!!

The last one was RE4: any time I hear a chainsaw rev up, I automatically reach down to the hip expecting a Beretta at the hip...

Max Payne's nightmare sequences deserve mention: it's extremely unnerving to follow a trail of blood while your newborn cries and your wife screams bloody murder...

Resident Evil.

I was around seven years old at the time and that game was genuinly scary back then, atleast to a boy who spent his entire childhood playing nothing much else than the early Sonic The Hedgehog games, Tetris and Micro Machines.

Silent Hill (the series). The atmosphere is just plain unsettling (Brookhaven Hospital in SH3 is the creepiest I've seen).

Quake 4 for 360, not only was the stroggification process disgusting as hell, the frame rate was freakishly bad too.

Playing Resident Evil 4 at 2 AM, in the dark, with no one else in the house is a pretty damn good way to scare the shit out of yourself.

Silent Hill 3 was pretty damn scary, I was relatively young when I played it. Maybe 12 or 13, so I was easily scared by things at the time.

But the one that takes the cake:

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - That game was messed up to say the least. Aside from being a normal survival horror game with creepy enemies and such, the game had features specifically designed to scare the ever living shit out of the player. The screen randomly turns black as if the AV cables have been disconnected. Flies will appear on the screen that aren't really there. Swarms of enemies will come at you and disappear when you attack them. Yeah, it's messed up.

The_Deleted:
Having recently started going through The Suffering again and subsequently being freaked out by it I want to know which is the scariest game you've played.

I Downloaded That Free From Filefront That Is Far From Scary For Me. Im Playing Resident Evil (Remake) And Im Scared Shitless.

Silent Hill 2.

I agree with Silent Hill 1. Scared the piss out of me since it was the most ambient game I had played upon its release on the PS.

Silent Hill 3 had the better graphics which enhanced the experience and really allowed a clear visualisation of the alternative world

Shadow of chernobyl. The underground levels scared the crap out of me. The worst moment was the first controller you encounter in Strelok's stash. I'm running out of the level and can see the exit when the air is suddenly pierced by an eerie moan and i find myself being flung down the corrider towards this shambling grotesquerie.

I keep beating this horse, but it's not my fault it keeps being relevant. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines for the PC. You're moving through a haunted hotel that's scattered with old newspapers explaining why the place is haunted. One of them says about investigators finding a child's skull in a dryer. You file it mentally and proceed creeping around the basement. You accidentally stumble upon the laundry room and as you're moving past the front-loading dryers, one of them innocently pops open with a horror-movie soundbite.

Yeah, I jerked back so hard I almost broke my computer chair. By the time this happens this building has already freaked you out, and after that there's just no chance, you're going to be more spooked by the rest of it than you would have been otherwise. Just make sure you remember to get a vital key out of that particular dryer, or you'll have to go back down and get it later. Nothing happens the second time, but you'll still be so damaged from the first you'll be dreading it.

Dang. Just writing about it here gets me all edgy. *shiver*

For a joke my best friend bought me Alone in the Dark for PS2. I was so afraid i threw it out without even opening it.

Doom 3, Diablo 2 ( played it at 10) Doom 3 was far scarrier since you couldn't see 3 f**king feet in front of you.

Stalker shadow of chernobyl was freaky as shit!
I played that, alone in my room, headphones on, lights off, changing my pants every minute or so.

System Shock 2 with headphones alone in the middle of the night. Every time you were in a room and heard one of the freaky zombies with worms attached to their heads you litteraly had a heartattack and had to change your pants.

Project Zero 2 for me. Your only weapon is a camera!

Condemned: Criminal Origins. I can't play it for more than an hour without having to pull myself out of it in fear of wetting myself.
In the department store level, I screamed the house down. The bit with the mannequins (vague in fear of a spoiler, but I think if you played it you'd know what I mean) almost had me in tears. Playing it at 1am when I was on my own with all the lights off may have been a bad idea, retrospectively.

I'm glad it's not just me who needs the Tena Lady's when playing these games.
8D

Resident Evil 3 when nemesis jumped through the window and gave chase through the police dept. and the original Silent Hill, the first scene where you really have no weapons and no clue of what is happening.

Condemned: Criminal Origins. Even before the department store level, on the second level, I had a sledgehammer in my hand and went to look over what appeared to be a ledge overlooking a staircase. Next thing I know, a head's popping up, screaming in my face. My mom was sitting in a chair, down a 15 foot hallway and another 10 feet across the room (that's 25 feet away total), and I had my door closed, and my shout still caused her to ask if I was all right.

haveyouseen_mywallet:
Resident Evil 3 when nemesis jumped through the window and gave chase through the police dept.

Classic Resi!