I used to believe that video and PC games couldn't be scary. Perhaps that belief was a product of my Nintendo upbringing - I loved Castlevania, but it's not the least bit frightening, nor are the later generation Nintendo titles. And I'm sure it had a lot to do with the graphics and visuals of the early and mid-90s. Doom was - and still is - a milestone achievement. But for all its thrills and action-packed gameplay, Doom wasn't a scary game.

Even after PlayStation was introduced in 1995, it took four more years for a game to make good on the system's potential; Silent Hill showed many gamers that the technology and, more importantly, skill level in game design had reached a point where games could create a highly immersive environment that swarmed the senses. And if we're talking about sleek cinematic sound and visuals, then the discussion must include Half-Life. We think of the PC game at a great first-person shooter, but we forget how Valve groundbreaking design created such a rich - and frightening - atmosphere.


There were games prior to Silent Hill that featured their share of frightening moments - Resident Evil 2 comes to mind - but a lot of the games were still true action titles with some horror elements mixed in. But soon even games that were classified as FPS title, such as System Shock 2, became better known for its scares. It wasn't until the most recent decade that the production of full-fledged horror and horror survival genre titles kicked into gear. The Silent Hill series continued to roll, while other titles like Clive Barker's Undying (2001), Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (2002), and Fatal Frame (2003 ushered in the current era of bona-fide horror games.

It occurred to me recently that I've probably enjoyed horror games more than horror movies lately. That's partially attributable to the fact that most Hollywood horror movies these days are weak, but mostly attributable to the maturation of game design for the horror genre. I've dove into the horror survival genre head first, and here are the scariest games I've played over the last few years. Some of them are pure horror games, while others are FPS titles full of scary moments.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but I didn't really like this game. The combat game play was weak, the tasks got a little tedious and there wasn't a whole lot of original elements in Condemned (in fact, it seemed to share a lot with another Monolith-developed title that will be featured later on this list). Yet the game still manages to construct an extremely detailed environment - condemned buildings, shadowy alleys, and dark subway stations - that maximizes the suspense and tension. The first time I had to track a blood trail with the UV light through a dark tunnel, knowing fully well that if someone or something jumped out at me I'd be completely defenceless, I was utterly terrified. There's a decent story behind the scares: you play an FBI forensic investigator who is tracking a mysterious serial killer through a crime-infested zone of a city, where a mysterious force has turned transients and junkies into violent killers. Instead of your usual point A to point B plot, there are many twists and turns along the way, which heightens the tension. You hardly get a moments rest, too, as you scour the depths of the city for the sinister killer. As for the ending, it's one creepy climax.

"We don't go to Ravenholm..."

Yeah, no sh*t. Half-Life 2 officially transformed into a scary game during the Ravenholm level, where Gordon Freeman navigates his way through an abandoned mining town at night that's infested with mutated creatures. Players are pretty much alone in this section of the game, and the terrain is dark and sinister. Along with being arguably the supreme shooter of the modern era, Half-Life 2 built upon the foundation of its predecessor by creating an all new world that's filled with old foes - head crabs and headcrab zombies - as well as gruesome new enemies like gonomes, antlions and shriekers. The Ravenholm environment is the best map of the game, as far as I'm concerned. But there are other scary moments later in Half-Life 2. For example, players are forced to deal with swarms of antlions (think the "bugs" from the movie "Starship Troopers") during the beach run, which erupt from underground. Later segment of the game puts players in underground sections of City 17, dodging fires and streams of toxic waste where zombies quietly and suddenly emerge from all around. Half-Life has the full package - brilliant visuals, excellent sound effects and eerie, pulse pounding music. But perhaps the best element, in terms of horror effects, is the richly designed City 17. Resembling a bombed-out Eastern European city, Valve created an ideal setting for its creepy narrative. A great FPS, yes, but Half-Life 2 is most definitely one scary game.

I was apprehensive going into F.E.A.R. Part of it was I had little interest in another slick-looking shooter. Another part was that I had played Condemned: Criminal Origins already and knew that Monolith was behind this one as well. And sure enough, there are many similarities between the two games, as F.E.A.R. shares some of the dark, narrow tunnels and corridors that appear in Condemned. However, F.E.A.R.'s game play is far superior, and it is indeed an excellent shooter. But let's forget about the FPS side of F.E.A.R. and talk about its horror side. It's good. It's very good. Instead of shrieking aliens and zombies, F.E.A.R. relies almost entirely on a sustained atmosphere of suspense and psychological horror. From the moment the game begins with its bizarre opening cut-scenes, you're not really sure what is going on. And by the time you enter the first building and see shadowy figures lurking at the end of the halls, the fear factor is cranked up to 10 (or, if you're using the Spinal Tap scale, an 11). There's not a whole lot of originality here; for example, Alma, the scary ghost child, is a familiar convention from Japanese horror films like "Ringu" and "Ju-on." But Monolith does an admirable job of constructing a solid psychological horror narrative. There aren't many jump moments where monsters burst out of the shadows. Instead, F.E.A.R. hits you with a relentlessly spooky feeling that gets under your skin from the moment the game starts. I can see why horror director John Carpenter - who was asked by Monolith and VU Games to provide feedback on the game - says F.E.A.R. is the best horror game he's ever played.

I had been waiting quite some time for a modern game based on "Aliens" that deliver on the movie's enormous potential. It finally arrived with AVP 2. Unfortunately, only one third of the game is truly scary because AVP 2 is divided into three campaigns -- marines, predators, and aliens - and each one tends to be tightly wound but short experiences. The marine campaign, however, packs in more jump-out-of-your-seat thrills than any other game I've played in the last five years. Essentially, the marine campaign is directly lifted from the storyline of "Aliens," which is a good thing. As a Colonial Marine nicknamed "Frosty," you're part of a rescue mission dispatched to a research facility on LV-1201. Sure enough, just like LV-426 in "Aliens," the facility is crawling with xenomorphs. Sure, there's a predator or two lurking around, killing xenomorphs and marines for sport. But the aliens are what drive the game, and Monolith gets them right: they burst out of air vents, floor panels, and every dark corner you can imagine. The creatures are just as terrifying, if not more, in AVP 2 as the movies. And any fan of the films will instantly recognize a number of the sequences in AVP 2, such as the second level "Collateral Damage" where Frosty must enter the research complex, which has been turned into a hive, to rescue another Marine. I was recoiling constantly and sweating like Patrick Ewing wearing a fur coat in a sauna. It was a tough decision to put this game at number two instead of the top spot, but the Marine campaign is the only frightening (and by far, the best) campaign and it's far too short. However, no other game I've ever played has delivered more jump-out-of-my-seat moments than AVP.

Speaking of John Carpenter, "The Thing" is without a doubt one of the best and most frightening horror films ever made. So it didn't surprise me when Konami and VU Games got together to make a video game spinoff-sequel to cult classic. The game picks up where the movie left off; players assume the role of Captain Blake, head of a military rescue mission to Outpost #31 in Antarctica. When the rescue team lands, they soon discover that that not only are the chameleon-like alien creatures still lurking at the camp, but an insidious military conspiracy appears to be at work. The Thing successfully replicates (pun intended) the elements that made the movie so terrifying. For example, NPCs such as fellow team members can suddenly turn into Thing-infect creatures. In addition, the game's gimmicky "trust" and "fear" meters display if NPCs are on the verge of freaking out and turning on other team members, including Blake, assuming that they are infected. The graphics are above average and the game play has its flaws - controlling team members can be a clunky process, for example - but now-defunct developer Computer Artworks did an admirable job of re-creating the harsh claustrophobic environment of the remote Antarctica camps and building all-new caverns, tunnels and sinister settings for players to explore. The game also uses similar sound effects and music from the film to create an unsettling mood of paranoia and sustained frights. There are plenty of chilling sequences, from Blake exploring the doomed Norwegian camp from the movie to a rescue mission inside an underwater lab. Quite frankly, even the cut scenes are good. The replay value of the game isn't great, since the NPCs that become infected are scripted into the game. But The Thing is still full of enough twists, turns and tension coupled with terrifying settings to make even the most hardcore gamers jump.

I'd say the list is about making you jump, and panic and many games do that, not really out of scariness, but out of being surprised and then clicking like a bitch to try and drop the aliens.

If you play on the original AvP, you'll see how your reaciton times are totally over the top and you end up blowing the crap out of walls and missing kill shots. If your totally detached from the experience you don't do this.