This sterile, bleak premise helps the atmosphere as you mow down autonomatons, but what really helps this title is how it gets into your head and messes with you. The game is set in the year 2114, stranded on a ship, desperate to prevent the outbreak of a rather nasty infection. It’s a precise first-person shooter with RPG elements, and it certainly doesn’t look so scary at first glance, but that’s what makes this innocuous game’s power hit you even harder. System Shock 2 might not appear to be the scariest game on paper.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into a cyberpunk future dystopia… Regardless as to whether you are a pushover with these sort of games and throw your controller at the wall after every jump scare, or a veteran survival horror gamer who is actively hungry for their next fright, this list will show you the height of horror that will keep you haunted. Survival horror is one of the more (relatively) recent video game genres, but it’s more than exploded in the past decade. You’re immersing yourself right into that experience, and that’s pretty special. And when we get this experience while playing a video game, it’s so much more effective than watching a movie.

Everyone loves to get scared, plain and simple.

Scariest video games System Shock