Written by Alma

When I was young I tended to be a very nervous person, and in turn was not really into horror type games until I was much older. Yet sometimes there would be an enemy or a level in a game that really freaked me out despite the game not being an outright horror game.

The last thing I talked about was the fact that a set of nightmare levels in Max Payne scared the hell out of me but now I am here to give a more grandiose scale to that.

I will be talking about the 5 things in games that scared the hell out of me, horror game or not. While it's not really a top 5, I will make the last thing on the list the scariest thing I can think of.

5: MDK 2 - The Final Boss

As a kid I loved the MDK series, and still do. The third person controls are easily some of the best I have ever experienced in a game to this day and its weird humor mixed with solid gameplay make it a joy to replay from time to time. When I was a bit older I ended up getting MDK 2 and was very pleased with that too.

It kept its solid third person gameplay but added two more characters to play as, Max and Dr. Hawkens! Now as a kid I was stuck on the final BFB fight for, I'm not kidding, 2-3 months. For whatever reason I didn't think to look up a guide and was just stuck there until I figured out on my own you could do a certain jump move to beat him.

Anyways, I made it to the end and was faced with zizzy and thought after you beat him that was it! But nope, I was very wrong.

After you beat him he opens up his chest while groning, and your character is suddenly sucked into his body while resisting trying to go in, but it's to no avail.

You are suddenly plopped into a sickening moving fleshy room with green creatures almost running at you right away. When I saw this all happen I quickly shut the game off, uninstalled it, and didn't get back to it for a long long LONG time. It left a pretty big scar in my mind and has stuck with me for a lot in my life for just how much it put me off. In general body horror scares me and would be number 1 on this list but I am going more for moments/enemies/levels in games more than a whole genre of game.

Getting back to it didn't make it too much better since you have to destroy all his organs inside him to fully kill him including his heart, brain, lungs, and eyes.

I feel sick just writing this, so let's move on.

4: Blood 2 - Bone Leach

I, HATE, ENEMIES, THAT, LATCH, ON, YOUR, SCREEN. I always have and to this day still cant handle a first person game where an enemy can latch onto the screen to attack you like in alien or, this game, blood 2. Back a long time ago when I got this game a bit after high school I was hyped to play it because of how much I loved the first game.

I could not wait to dive back into this world even though I knew full well this second game was kinda a betrayal of what the first game was.

Even if it was bad, I had to see it for myself, you know? So I dived and adventured into a good chunk of the first level. The combat wasn't too bad, the guns were fairly fun, and I was pretty invested in the game, up to when I got to a part with a bridge and a weird sound.

This sound sounded like a slime enemy or a goo like sound getting closer and closer. It was such a weird sound I stood still and just listened to it, unaware of how loud it was actually getting. As luck would have it, just as I started to notice how loud the sound was, BAM! It happened, I suddenly was face to face with a creature of hell looking me right in the eyes and draining my health slowly. It scared me so much I jumped back in my seat and quickly paused the game to catch my breath.

This was one of the worst jump scare like experiences I had ever experienced in my life and may be one of the biggest reasons I can't play games with impending jumpscares like that. It physically and mentaly puts me in a bad mood now whenever I experience a jumpscare and I think it's because of this game.

3: Shadow Man - Teddy Bear Checkpoint

This one is a case of kinda-sorta-false memory. Back in the day my dad used to get demos for the PC for him to try out and I sometimes got to play them.

For the most part he got M rated games so I didn't get to play a large majority of games he got but one of the demos he got that I got to watch was the demo for Shadowman on PC. I dont exactly remember why it is I was as scared as I was towards the game right away but I just remember my dad playing the game and me being in absolute terror while watching it. What exactly happened between the time of my dad firing up the demo and him walking around the first area of the game?

I have absolutely no clue. It may have been the menu that looks weird, it could have been the intro that's creepish I guess but shouldn't have done anything, or maybe it was just the vibes of the game. Regardless, all I remember was the demo starting, and suddenly I was scared out of my mind watching this forest area.

While I sorta forgot what put me on edge with this game, I VERY much remember the moment that scared the hell out of me and made me leave the room.

In Shadow Man when you get a checkpoint your teddy bear shows up on screen in a ghostly way and makes a creepy sound to show that you now have a checkpoint that you can warp to from anywhere. If it played out the way it did in the main game I would have been creeped out, but not as scared as I was as a kid because how I remember it was the teddy bear suddenly appearing on the screen in a flash accompanied by a sudden squeaky sound. I freaked when this happened, hard.

I may have even cried but I really don't remember what happened after that.

Bonus: I actually fired up the demo to see if it's how I remember and I think what may have put me off was the VERY freaky imagery that shows up just before you start the game because the teddy bear still does what it does in the normal game. False memory? Who knows, but that teddy bear really did scare the hell out of me and that I know for sure!

2: Half Life - Barnacles.

Half-Life is one of my top games. It was one of my favorite games to play then, and its still one of my favorite games to play now with the mountains of amazing fan made content that continues to be made for it. I didn't really know what to make of it the first time I tried it since Unreal was my first true dive into first person shooter games but I ended up falling in love with it and the rest is history. This game also has a nice variety of enemies too from human to alien.

Now for this one you would think it would be something like the headcrab that can jump at your face, but no they didn't really bother me too much, what really bothered me in this game were the ceiling creatures known as barnacles!

The first time seeing these creatures was off putting enough but imagine my shock when I was walking down and suddenly found myself going up. Well, I thought, better look up to see what's going on! Oh man did I find out, because all I saw next was my screen full of a red creature with huge teeth coming at me. At this point the barnacle was pretty close so yes, I jumped pretty hard and had to pause the game to reload a checkpoint because I was very much NOT going to deal with that creature at that moment. Unlike MDK 2 I didn't uninstall the game and get back to it later, for some reason, and just continued the level while making sure to keep a sharp eye out for these creatures and their signature tongue.

1: Unreal - Tentacles

This, right here, is the ultimate thing that takes number 1 because it still makes me uncomfortable to this day. Unreal is my favorite game of all time as is a huge reason why videogames are a passion of mine. When I first saw that world on my monitor it literally felt like there was another world on my screen.

So much so I sometimes wished I could reach into the monitor to do stuff like feel the water, pat the nali cow, and other fun stuff like that.

Want to know another secret? Sometimes I would load up the Na Pali Haven map, park myself on the edge of the island, and just stare into the sky, stars, and other islands in the distance. My imagination sparked with the thoughts of what was going on on other islands besides the one I was on. It's a moment in life I wish I could recapture because it truly felt like magic.

Anyways, tentacle monsters stick themselves onto the ceiling and wait for you to get close so they can shoot thorns at you or melee you if you are super close.

The first time seeing this creature made me immediately uncomfortable because I was always scared they would jump off the ceiling and attach to my face or fall on my face. Plus the sound they made when they first see you is pretty uncomfortable. Hearing it sends a shiver down my spine because if you hear that sound, they can see you, even if you can't see them. To this day, I still try to take them out at a distance. One time while I was playing the game I actually had one get stuck on my player model and I freaked out, closed the game, and didn't get back to it for a few days. Funny thing is it never happened again after that so, bad luck I guess!

I hope you enjoyed this list, thank you for reading!