My 5 Favorite Scary Games

I love Halloween. The weather begins to cool (yes, even here in South Carolina), the leaves crunch underfoot and the yearly deluge of pumpkin flavored foods commences. We as gamers also partake in yearly traditions that involve turning out the lights, cranking up the sound and plunging into our favorite scary games. Here are five of my all time favorites, in no particular order:

Rank Game Release Date GameSpot Score Pyreofkol's Score
4

Slender

This little indie gem made waves almost immediately for its deeply unsettling atmosphere, minimalistic gameplay and the brilliantly utilized titular antagonist.

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1

Penumbra Collection

The Penumbra series comes from the same acclaimed developers behind the Amnesia games, and believe me, these games are of the same high quality. A lonesome atmosphere in a remote, dilapidated military base lays a fantastic foundation for a chilling, sanity-testing adventure into the protagonist's past.

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10
2

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

This criminally underrated cult classic from Bethesda uses the classic fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (my favorite author) to great effect in this first person action/adventure title. You follow a detective as he explores locales and tries to fight creatures right from the pages of Lovecraft, all the while trying to maintain his sanity as he delves deeper in the dark world of the Cthulhu Mythos.

10
3

BioShock

BioShock is renowned for its atmosphere as it lends the city of Rapture so much life as to make it a character of its own. We follow Jack as he stumbles into this dilapidated underwater utopia and faces truly frightening enemies, including the mentally unhinged splicers and the enormous, terrifying Big Daddies.

10
5

Dead Space (2008)

Science fiction and horror have always gone hand in hand, and few stories have used that combination as well as Dead Space. You play as Isaac, a simple miner responding to a distress call from a massive ship called the ISS Ishimura. You find the ship seemingly abandoned with most of its systems shut down, and make your way inside to find out why. You immediately realize that something awful happened in this place and are forced to find out how to stop it to aid not only your survival, but the survival of mankind. A sense of total isolation, a fantastic story, and pitch perfect encounters make this one of the most terrifying games ever made.

10