I recently played through “Dead Space,” the game that is being touted as one of the scariest survival horror games ever.  I have to say, it was a great game; good graphics, fantastic physics, but scary…meh.  Don’t get me wrong, the game had several moments that got me, but they were “BOO” moments.  You know, like you’re reading some shitty web post and then “BOO”…okay maybe it doesn’t really work in print, but you get what I mean.

You see, early in the game (TINY SPOILER ALERT) you find out that the “monsters” are moving around through the ventilation system of the space ship you are on, which, as it turns out, must be the most well air conditioned space ship ever because air vents are fucking everywhere.  So, the first ten times a monster jumps on my head or into the elevator with me or up from the fucking floor, it worked, but after that, I started to expect it and the scare factor went south.  Again, I really liked the game, but once I realized that it wasn’t going to offer much more to scare me apart from shit jumping out at me, it was just, well…fun.

So what was the game that got me?  It was that dirty bastard “Silent Hill” on the PS1.  Yeah, the game that starts with you waking from a car wreck to find that your daughter who was riding with you is gone.  Child sacrifice, too much fog, kind of shitty game play; that’s right, while I definitely enjoyed my time with “Dead Space” more, it was “Silent Hill” that I remember as being the most genuinely frightening game I’ve ever played.  There was something about the whole game and its story that was really kind of sinister.  Early on in the game, as I’m searching through a school full of ghost shadow babies that don’t hurt my character, but just seem to be there to scare the shit out of me, I find a phone on a desk.  I try to use the phone to see if it will let me call for some help or get some helpful info, only to find the phone is dead.  “Crap,” I think as I start to leave the room and then, “double crap,” the phone rings and I pick it up, and on the other end of the line is my lost daughter crying for help, only to be drowned out by some demon gargle, and then the phone goes dead again.  That is probably my all time scariest gaming moment, and one that set the tone for the rest of the game.  Anyway, I finished the game with the shit ending that had me killing my own daughter and ending with all of the characters of the game dancing around during the credits like some fucking David Lynch movie.  It wasn’t until a while later that I learned that I missed something during the game and I could go back and play it again to get the better ending, but fuck that, I wasn’t going back to Silent Hill.

That was my game that scared me, what’s yours?