USgamer Halloween Community Question: What Game Gave you the Biggest Scare?

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Since it's Halloween this week, we thought it'd be a good time to ask you about the game that scared you the most. Perhaps you were but a tiny child, and some silly little game terrified you. Or perhaps it happened more recently, and a genuinely frightening game scared the pants off you as an adult

Whenever it was, and whatever the game - we'd love to hear about it. While you get thinking about your biggest video game scare, here are ours:

Jeremy Parish, Editor-in-Chief

This isn't quite a straight answer to the question at hand, because I can't really think of any time I've been legitimately frightened by a game. I tend to play pretty cautiously, and games specifically designed for cheap scares mostly just annoy me because I can see crap like that coming — game designers are still struggling not to tip their hand when they try to build up to a fright. Sure, I'll be startled by threats I didn't hear creeping up on me, especially in first-person shooters, but not geuinely scared.

Instead, let me tell you about a more systematic and pervasive sort of fear I sometimes experience: End-of-game anxiety. It's not a trembling-in-the-closet sort of raw terror, but rather a low-level sense of tension and reluctance to face off against whatever horrors await in the final stretch of a game. Especially RPGs. Final RPG dungeons are almost always the worst, and it's been that way for as long as I've been dabbling in the genre. Ever since that creepy castle at the end of Dragon Warrior, a ruin haunted by the most devastatingly powerful foes in the game. There's a sense of going past the point of no return, and given my tendency to play conservatively, it can be really unsettling to have my lifeline cut off.

Which brings us to Final Fantasy VII and the Northern Crater, where final boss Sephiroth awaited in an eerie hole in an icy wasteland. You reach the edge of the crater and the party discusses the road ahead, and it becomes clear that once you go in there's no turning back. The first time I played through FFVII, I wasn't exactly a newcomer to RPGs… but at the same time, I increasingly felt aware of the fact that I hadn't done a particularly good job of building and growing my party as I journeyed through FFVII.

The road to the Northern Crater had been pretty rough, and as I watched my little Popeye people pantomime their misgivings about this final assault on the bad guy, I shook my head and knew I wasn't ready. I tentatively took a few steps into the crater before being whisked into a random battle. My party barely pulled through. "Alright," I said, and hit reset. At the title screen, I selected New Game and watched as the star field dissolved into Aeris' face, lit by a street fire….

The second time around, I stomped the Northern Crater and its boss into a proverbial mudhole. Actually, kind of a literal mudhole, considering.

Jaz Rignall, Editor-at-Large

My biggest scare happened only a few months ago, when I rather stupidly decided that… well. Here's what I said in my review.

"I’m an idiot. I’d heard that Outlast was one of the scariest games ever released, so I thought I’d test out just how terrifying it was. I waited until my girlfriend went to bed, booted up my Xbox One, put my headphones on and turned out all the lights.

About 20 minutes later, my girlfriend was back in our living room, demanding why the hell I’d just woken her up with my yelling. At that point I was leaning back on the sofa, staring at the ceiling and muttering, “oh my God” under my breath, half laughing, and half a bag of nerves. I’d just walked through a door, and had been greeted by a headless torso swinging out of the dark towards me. It was a seriously cheap jump scare, but it was plenty effective."

After that, I made sure I played the game during the day. What Outlast does well is consistently maintain a creepy atmosphere, and a palpable level of tension. That door you just passed that was closed - now it's open. Something just walked around the corner ahead of you - is it now waiting to ambush you?

The game is also packed full of disturbing imagery, and features some well choreographed scenes that mess with your head in just the right way. That helps make it even scary during daylight, which I subsequently discovered. But definitely not as scary as all the lights off, post midnight, with headphones on. What was I thinking?

Mike Williams, Associate Editor

Honestly, the most terrifying game I've ever played was this year's P.T., the playable teaser for the upcoming Silent Hills. P.T. is horrifying because it makes no sense. The teaser has you wandering through part of an abandoned house. The thing is, you're trapped in one part of the house; there's a single hallway and four door available doors to you. One of the doors goes back to the room you woke up in, the front door never opens, the bathroom door opens at random, and the last door leads you back to the first door again.

Part of P.T.'s terror factor is its sheer atmosphere. The game bathes the house in shadow, but not enough that you can't see what's going on at all. The audio design backs that up with intermittent radio chatter and other haunting voices. And every time you walk through the final door and loop back, the house changes a bit. Maybe the hallway's lighting has changed, maybe the bathroom door is open this time, maybe there's a random spectre at one end of the hallway. You can't defend yourself in any way, so you just have to hope this loop is a safe one.

That randomness is P.T.'s greatest strength. You have no clue what is going to happen. You just wander through each loop, touching pictures and paintings, opening doors, and hoping you don't die. I've always said that true fear is rooted in the unknown and P.T. is nothing but the unknown. To this day, players aren't 100 percent sure what's required in order to finish the teaser. Hideo Kojima can be very weird, but it's this weirdness and willingness to experiment that made P.T. one of the most horrifying experiences I played.

Kat Bailey, Senior Editor

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I've had real difficulty playing first-person shooters set in the Alien universe over the years. Putting aside the fact that the last two before Alien Isolation have been really bad, I just can't handle facehuggers. Those little buggers scare the hell out of me.

My formative experience with the nasty little parasites came in the original Alien vs. Predator back in the late '90s. I happened to have a copy of the demo; but when I installed it, I found that I was having a really hard time getting up the nerve to leave the APC. Finally, one of the xenomorphs came in after me, and my gun flailed back and forth as I fired. I'm pretty sure I was then doused with its acidic blood and died.

That experience ought to have been enough, but I persevered, and eventually I got pretty far in the level. All the time though, the same question was in the back of my head: Where were the facehuggers? I didn't relish into one of them. Finally, as I dodged a xenomorph in one of my runs, I accidentally jumped off a stairwell and into the darkened area below. I saw the facehugger for only a moment, but it was enough. I actually let out this kind of strangled yell and actually dove away from the computer while the thing pounced. It then took all of my mental fortitude just to get close enough to my computer to turn it off while the facehugger wriggled on the screen above me.

Am I crazy person? Oh yes. I'm more than capable of telling reality from fantasy. But the interactive element of video games frequently makees them feel all too real, especially when they are set in the first-person. You are meant to insert yourself into the role of the unseen protagonist holding the gun on the screen. Thus, while I was aware that Alien vs. Predator was a fantasy, the reptillian part of my brain was screaming, "Run! Run! Facehugger! And run I did.

I'd like to add that the late '90s version of Alien vs. Predator was a really strong shooter with a truly inventive multiplayer mode (the asymmetric battle between human, alien, and predator was really novel for shooters at the time), and that I'm sorry I didn't get to experience it in its entirety. That's what stupid, irrational fear will do to you. God willing, however, I'll be able to play Alien: Isolation without too much trouble.... I think. I hope.

Bob Mackey, Senior Writer

Until an embarrassingly recent time in my life—let's say the mid-aughts—I generally avoided horror in most forms. I could stand the odd Stephen King book, but my brain carried the scars of having been exposed to certain scary movies before being developed enough to fully process them. And in terms of video games, it didn't take much to activate my flight-or-flight response. Midnight Rescue!, an edutainment title from the late '80s, wins an honorable mention, as its tendency to have loud, deadly robots appear suddenly from offscreen had me convinced evil automatons would likely murder me in my basement. And after that, I generally avoided any game sold on sheer spookiness, though I considered it a victory when I played through the entirety of Resident Evil 2 with the sound off and Green Day's Nimrod blasting in the background.

As I escaped high school and became an adult, I decided I should grow up and start taking horror seriously. And, after some serious thought, I chose Silent Hill 2 as the first game to break my yellow streak. I'd read nothing but praise from critics, digested several discussions of its story, and even burned some of the best songs from the soundtrack onto a mix CD for my car—how much more on board could I possibly be? I grabbed a used copy from a local EB Games, and immediately headed back to my apartment to play it… alone. (Good thing it was in the middle of a sunny autumn afternoon.)

This may sound hyperbolic, but Silent Hill 2 is the only game I can think of that actually made me physically ill. I wasn't projectile vomiting across the room, mind you, but, as soon as I passed the intro and entered those dark, foreboding apartments, the sheer anxiety of the experience was way too much for me. And my reaction only speaks to how effectively Silent Hill 2 works—it largely washes its hands of jump scares in exchange for an overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere that just bears down on you.

And, as a generally anxious person, I really couldn't take more than a few hours of what Silent Hill 2 had to offer. I've revisited it since through the magic of Let's Plays, and while I agree it's a fantastic game, it's not one I'm willing to fully experience.

Even though I've since learned to embrace horror in its many forms—I'm pretty sure that's the subject or focus of about half of the things I watch or read—Silent Hill 2 works its magic a little too well on me.