Most Frightening Enemies in Gaming - A Halloween Special

[Bazooka]

The yetis from Tomb Raider 2, terrifying groans emitting from the dark.

[Bhazor]

Is there a scarier enemy of the 8bit era than the mask from Mario Bros 2? Unstoppable, it ignores all laws of the game passing through platforms wrapping around the screen, the music, the anticipation as you know its coming when you take the key. Complete bastard.

[alan nagsworth]

Is there a scarier enemy of the 8bit era than the mask from Mario Bros 2? Unstoppable, it ignores all laws of the game passing through platforms wrapping around the screen, the music, the anticipation as you know its coming when you take the key. Complete bastard.

Yeah the mask is way scarier than the sun from SMB3. I used to dread those levels. SMB2 was wonderfully weird in many ways. Birdo was a freakish character, coupled with the relentless boss music and the BOW egg-spitting noise, very odd.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

"Beware, coward. I live."



"Run! Run! Run!"

[beanheadmcginty]

These terrifying cunts from Moonstone:

https://youtu.be/-_pLfeM4FaU

[Blue Jam]

I think it's the noise, flickering lights and music that makes the poltergeist so creepy

I know what you mean, but personally the Phantoms are the creepiest ones to me. It's the sound of the heavy footsteps and the distorted voices, and that noise they make when they're rushing you. Also knowing that every Phantom is generated from a human corpse and the way some of them have names and keep repeating certain phrases, with the implication that these are things the human they're inhabiting used to say before they died. There's something particularly nightmarish about encountering one of your work colleagues, now in the form of a Typhon trying to kill you, and with a creepy distorted voice, but still going on about the banalities of their last project.

[Blue Jam]

All of the enemies in SOMA, even if you're playing on Wuss Mode. Robot Head Girl  is probably the creepiest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_euYfOY5g

They're all just very sad and disturbing, crying out and suffering. The exception is Disco Ball Head, who just sounds like Mr Blobby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQy90Ac5AA

[Kryton]

The invisible thing in Amnesia: The dark descent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPmw_c1vRuc

[Bhazor]

They're all just very sad and disturbing, crying out and suffering. The exception is Disco Ball Head, who just sounds like Mr Blobby and as such is three times scarier than all the rest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQy90Ac5AA

[Mister Six]

Surely it's the Looking Glass prank:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dom4bcfQah8

Dr Calvino, you absolute fucker.

Ha, I didn't find that room until I had to go looking for the soldier bloke's second-in-command so I totally missed it!

Scary baddies? The Scissorman from Clock Tower can fuck right off with his jumping-out-of-the-scenery antics.

[greenman]

Gynoug on the Megadrive

[Bhazor]

The werewolf in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. Partly because its reveal is so sudden and powerful but mostly because I was playing on the original unpatched version of Bloodlines so just walking across a room felt like at any moment my computer would catch fire or delete my OS. Like sitting with a ticking bomb on the table next to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_Wig7q_8I

[Phil_A]

All of the enemies in SOMA, even if you're playing on Wuss Mode. Robot Head Girl  is probably the creepiest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_euYfOY5g

That makes me think of Karras's Servants from Thief 2, essentially the reanimated corpses of his followers imprisoned in mechanical armour. Their constant soft muttering and strange giggle/cry when they get knocked out is deeply unsettling.

https://youtu.be/g7C6AEZRk9Y?list=PL6F4B263A044174BD&t=555

Also, the Hammer Haunts from Thief 1.

Flaaaaaames around you, flaaaaames, nothing but flaaaaames, burning your flesh!

https://youtu.be/rNSh-MJRwAA?t=84

[Brundle-Fly]

"Beware, coward. I live."



"Run! Run! Run!"

Absolutely!

More recent...

Left 4 Dead witch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBeaLwGYg08

[magval]

Is there a scarier enemy of the 8bit era than the mask from Mario Bros 2? Unstoppable, it ignores all laws of the game passing through platforms wrapping around the screen, the music, the anticipation as you know its coming when you take the key. Complete bastard.

Phanto!

I was always especially unnerved by the Mirelurks in Fallout 3, but only because I accidentally misjudged their faces and could never unsee it.

They look like this:


But I always thought they looked like THIS:


Like many of the others in this thread, it's the combination of slow movement and a horrible grin that does it.

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

You all seem to be just searching "Top 10 Scariest Video Game Enemies"...




Granny is the most fear filled.

[machotrouts]

Scavengers from Drakan: Order of the Flame. Drakan was a fantasy dragons-and-shit Tomb Raidery adventure game from my childhood that I never really played myself – I sat with my friend, on his dad's spinny office chair big enough to fit two children, and watched him play.

I can't find any pictures of them online (googling 'drakan scavengers' will only show you ones from the sequel, where they were given stupid glowing eyes and look far too "ooh look at me I'm scary" to actually be scary, the fucking posers), so I've had to screenshot them from a YouTube walkthrough, which is an arse-ache because they're pretty much exclusively found 1: in the dark, and 2: at a wonky camera angle. I've linked the videos and you're better off clicking on them to get a sense of what they're about.



They were fairly minor enemies that looked more fiddly and awkward to defeat than genuinely challenging, but they were frightening to 11-year-old me.



It's their horrible flailing death throes that upset me more than anything. Fucking drama queens, the lot of them. Attention-seeking. It's a shame that I'm just giving them what they want by posting this.

[Twed]

Granny is the most fear filled.

The way she's puffing her mouth makes me think she definitely has emphysema, which somehow makes her scarier. She's huffing and a puffing, but she still has the energy to getcha.

[samadriel]

The werewolf in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. Partly because its reveal is so sudden and powerful but mostly because I was playing on the original unpatched version of Bloodlines so just walking across a room felt like at any moment my computer would catch fire or delete my OS. Like sitting with a ticking bomb on the table next to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_Wig7q_8I

Oh god, yes, what a terror.

[magval]

Who's Granny, then?

[Kelvin]

We all like Resident Evil 4. It wasn't very scary thought, was it?



Just you try telling that to these bastards.


Everything about them is horrifying: Their slow but sure gait. That terrible grin full of huge, razor sharp teeth. Those blood red eyes. That wheezing laugh.
No problem, you think. You'll just blast their head off with your trusty shotgun. OH SHITTING HELL!!! It's not stopping!

Resi 4 doesn't maintain a constant level of high tension, but it does feature several other properly scary monsters, like the creepy muttering monks, Salazar's "Right Hand":



and this guy:



I've told this story before on here, but when I first played through Resi 4, I was at uni, and my housemates were all sat in my room watching me play. At the point chainsaw guy first appeared in the game, the entire room (six people) started screaming and shouting, simultaneously jumping whenever he burst out, and laughing hysterically. It's one of my happiest gaming memories, remembering how into that game we all got. It reached the point where people were literally asking me not to play it when we weren't all together in the same room. 

[alan nagsworth]

Who's Granny, then?

https://youtu.be/d3_6r6_1D3M?t=181

[Phil_A]

https://youtu.be/d3_6r6_1D3M?t=181

That's the Witch, not Granny.

[Thursday]

Is there an actual let's play of someone beating all of Granny's Garden? Is it possible?

[The Boston Crab]

Castle Quest on the BBC Micro. These toothbrush lads were absolutely shit scary and they still are!

[BlodwynPig]

[BlodwynPig]

Haven't played computer games since

[Phil_A]

Is there an actual let's play of someone beating all of Granny's Garden? Is it possible?

Wasn't it nearly all just trial and error? From memory, only the puzzle with the dragons was any real challenge

[Thursday]

I honestly cannot remember if I ever played it. It all seems familiar, but I might have been mixing it up in my head with other games.

[Mister Six]

Wasn't it nearly all just trial and error? From memory, only the puzzle with the dragons was any real challenge

And FIG.

The stuff with the insects was probably a bit trial and error.

Hm, I wonder if there's a decent emulation out there? I remember looking about 15 years back but I couldn't get any of them to work.