There hasn’t really been that many horror games so far this generation, and there have been even less really scary ones. Games such as Siren: Blood Curse, Alone in the Dark – Inferno and Jericho were disappointing and Silent Hill: Homecoming continued the series’ habit of being mediocre since the first few games, and it’s left us with few horror games to make us wet ourselves. And we love wetting ourselves. Well, you know what I mean.

The few games we’re left with are Resident Evil 5, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, FEAR 2, Left 4 Dead and Dead Space. Did I miss anything? There’s nothing that immediately springs to mind, so there can’t be anything left (that’s how these things work, right?).

Resident Evil 5 isn’t so much a horror game than an action game, now, with revamped controls that stop you from moving whilst aiming in an attempt to artificially ramp up the tension. This doesn’t work too well, mostly just annoying a large group of people who don’t agree with such moronic ways to making a game ’scarier’. Resi 5 isn’t a bad game – in fact, it’s a pretty great action game, but it sure as hell isn’t scary. Zombies that run towards you holding a sickle might well be a good way to make things harder and slightly more tense, unless, of course, you have them stop 15 feet ahead of you and walk towards you slowly like they were shouted at by a passing hall monitor. Enemies that just soak up bullets are just cheap, too – they’re supposed to be challenging and hard to kill, not a way to destroy your ammo supply.

So we move on to Condemned 2. Condemned 2 is a scary game. The emphasis on first person melee fighting makes it relatively unique and the atmosphere making every corner a dreaded turn into what could be anything from a crack addict with a pipe to some kind of monster that rises out of the ground. However, when you get a gun the game seems to get less terrifying as you’re no longer staring whatever you’re trying to kill in the eyes anymore, which is what made the game so terrifying in the first place, and the use of some effects that aren’t particularly impressive when they’re used in movies doesn’t help things, like a glass suddenly filling with blood, except that it didn’t really happen. Oooh, scary!

Dead Space? The necromorphs are horrifying. They’re misshappen, ugly figures that do a great job of making you swear and, whilst they move slowly, you can shoot their arms off and they’ll keep coming. You can shoot their legs off and they will pull themselves towards you with their arms. You can shoot their heads off and they’ll burst into thousands of tiny aliens that swarm towards you. Any game that features strategic dismemberment is clearly two things; awesome and terrifying. Just think about it – if anything that is trying to kill you requires you to strategically remove it’s frickin’ limbs to stop it there is no doubt that it’s pissing terrifying.

FEAR 2 features a curvier version of Alma, who happens to be a telekinetic little-girl ghost. Alma first appeared in FEAR, which did a great job of making you jump like an weed abuser in a police station by having her pop up out of nowhere as you turn around, whisper in your ear when you’re wandering around and flickering your HUD when something about to happening, which was a brilliant way to make you suddenly stop dead (pun unintended). These ghostly terrors were broken up by relatively repetitive combat which wasn’t saved even by it’s astoundingly intelligent AI. The really jumpy part was when you first came across those invisible buggers that climb all over the walls and jump at you with just a flicker of their invisibility as warning, making you do a double-take that’s immediately accompanied by the need to change your pants.

FEAR 2 brought the whole formula back with a new spin – no, wait, it brought the whole formula back and kept it pretty much the same. This might have been fine, except that the game was somehow less jumpy than the first, despite the fact that it was exactly the same. In fact, it was probably because it was exactly the same as the first game – no evolution, no new techniques, just the same thing with a bit of a makeover and a less interesting storyline.

Before we move on to the scariest game, which you’ve probably guessed already (if not, I want to be the first to tell you, you’re not a particularly observant person), we’re going to explore a few games that manage to force an underwear change without even trying to be horror games in the first place. Metal Gear Solid 4, for example. You might not like Kojima’s slightly heavy-handed storytelling or his long, long, long cutscenes, but you have to admit that, when you’re hiding behind a very small wall and there’s a 15 foot Gekko on the other side, you really feel like lying down and sleeping for a while to stop yourself shaking. The boss battle against Crying Wolf is amongst the most tension-filled boss battles you’ll ever play. Crying Wolf could be anywhere, just ready to pounce on you, and you can her, too. It’s this kind of thing that makes a game scary, but in a different way than an armless monster that just won’t stop.

Now we move onto the scariest of recent games. The game that terrifies us both due to making us jump out of our skin and through the use of an atmosphere in which you could cut the tension with a, presumably blood-stained, knife. Left 4 Dead is the epitome of terror when it comes to video games. There are hundreds of zombies on the horde, all of which will run at you like children for the ice cream van – if the ice cream van is you and your organs are ice cream. The special zombies are all brilliantly designed to scare you in various ways. The Hunter dives on you from a distance, frequently doing so when you can’t even see the bastard, so all you actually notice is a small movement on top of a building and suddenly you’re pinned to the ground with a crazed member of the undead ripping away at you in search of your spleen..

The Smoker is similar – it attacks from a distance, frequently when you can’t even see it, except that instead of launching himself at you, he just shoots his tongue at you, which then grabs you and he continues to pull you towards him. The Boomer uses a completely different tactic; he gets up close and frickin’ vomits on you, the uncivilised bugger. The vomit attracts the horde, which will proceed to spawn from around a corner and charge directly at whoever was vomited on. Not only are you being accosted by a large amount of hungry dead people, but your vision is impaired, too, the whole screen being covered with the Boomer’s sick. On top of this, when you kill Mr.Boomer, he explodes so, if you’re too close, you get covered in his vomit anyway.

The Tank is a large, muscular zombie-shaped bullet sponge that can punch cars and trees around, pick up large chunks of rock out of the ground to launch at you (even on the second floor of a building, oddly enough) and punch you a good few meters into the air. The way to beat a tank is to the run the fuck away whilst your survivor friends unload clips into him as fast as they possibly can. However, despite the Tank being the most rare of the special zombies in L4D, he is not the scariest. He’s much more of an urgent ‘holy god that is awesome’ than a terrified ‘holy god I just excreted my bowels’ and, if you’ve played L4D (and you should have), you already know what’s left.

The Witch is possibly the most terrifying enemy you can find in a game. She sits and cries. This, in itself, doesn’t sound particularly scary. I’m sure you see people do this all the time. However, they probably don’t have long claws or glowing red eyes. When you’re getting close to a Witch you can here her tragic sobs regardless of whatever is between you. They begin very faint and get louder as you get closer until you’re a few meters away and some rather creepy music starts and gets even louder. This itself is enough to make you grip your mouse/controller like it’s going to save you from whatever perils await, but when you get next to her, she slowly stands up, staring directly at you with glowing red eyes and growling. She continues to stand, slowly and, when she gets all the way up, she charges at the unlucky soul who was closest with demonic speed and pounces on them, instantly incapacitating them. The person is helpless until the Witch is killed by their fellow survivors and they’ve been revived.

An enemy that is best left alone? Well, that’s an interesting thing. If you shoot the witch whilst she’s on the ground crying to herself, she’ll immediately charge at whoever was moronic enough to do so. The Witch is basically there to encourage a change of pace, because setting her off is so dangerous, the best thing to do is to slow down, turn of your flashlights and creep past, hoping with every last fibre of your being that you manage to get past without her charging you.

She isn’t the only thing that makes the game scary of course. When any of the other special zombies are around, you can hear them too – the Hunter growls, the Smoker coughs, the Boomer burps and gargles, and the Tank sets off some dramatic music. Hordes of zombies will set off some of their own dramatic music too, so you know when you need to find somewhere you can defend and hope they don’t come from behind you instead. The whole game works together to give you a sense of isolation from the rest of the world – it’s just you and three other survivors, battling your way through thousands of zombies, just on the faintest glimmer of hope that there’s someone at the end waiting to rescue you from the hordes.

And so we conclude that Left 4 Dead is the most terrifying, the most blood-curdling and the most awesome horror game you can get so far this generation. Obviously, it’s a game you should play if you haven’t already, provided you’re not too squeamish or easily scared.