Doom II and F.E.A.R. gave me a few jumpscares. But the games that made me have a real sensation of fear were Condemned: Criminal Origins and Penumbra

I tend to avoid horror games, as I'd get chilled to the bone. It makes me over-imagine, getting me a lot more scared than I should have been. But sometimes, a curiosity will peek through and catch my attention. Of all things, it was a flash game that had me stiff!

In this one, you wake up in an abandoned ghost town with little recollection of how you got here, except that you were supposed to be on holiday with your folks, but they are all gone. You go on poking around and investigating, there's tension, tingles down your spine and things aren't right. Then you come to a point where you enter a school washroom. Most of the stalls that you can see, are covered with blood, but no bodies. This time, there are beastly-like noises that seem to just manifest from around.

Anyhow, after you leave, to proceed, you have to get to the video-room. So, over here, using the computer, you are supposed to view some old security footage, and this one is of the toilet stalls. When you hit the first one, you'd probably expect a gruesome scene to appear, but there was nothing. It was just the toilet stalls and no one was there.

But then again, that isn't wrong per se, as when you were investigating the stalls earlier, there was no one around either save for the gore and noises. So, you continue clicking through the days of the footage till the end, still nothing. That's weird, huh? Then you start retracing back, clicking back to the previous day, and woah! The scary shit jumps and happens, and you fall off your chair!

Many over the years. I'll just post the most recent one.

Subnautica - going into the void, playing with the Reaper

Love that game.

Oh, wait, also in Bloodlines, that porn studio with those nasty critters... Well, somehow I went in without one supposed to fly at me through a window triggering, and it did so when I came back out, when the studio itself had long since been cleared behind me. So bad trigger, obviously no way for it to come from inside through the window, game just created it there and shattered that window and had it jump me from behind very much out of nowhere.

system shock 2, respawn of zombies made me give up. I played the first where you can clear out rooms, but if they're going to spawn in the corridor behind you I just gave up trying

Medal of honour 2: There's a level where you're alone in a snowy field with no cover and little ammo. That sense of loneliness and vulnerability really got to me. Then the guard dogs started to charge me and I really started to feel scared.

Unreal: Near the end of the game I got lost in a spaceship with no lighting and only one torch. The idea I'd run out of light and be trapped in total darkness really creeped me out.

Oh damn, my memories of such moments fade. What do I remember :

- Spider legs noises in Eye of the Beholder (damn poisonous opponents in RPGs).

- Haunted hotel in Bloodlines (weird to act like a vampire scared of ghosts).

- The horror of missiles being constructed in Homeworld Cataclysm/Emergence.

- Having to enter the Derelict in AvP (inoffensive in practice, but I didn't know that).

- Having to enter the Rickenbacker in System Shock 2.

- The general atmosphere in Penumbra and Black Plague (no precise memories, alas).

- Nosferatu. Damn. Nothing as creepy as the surreal poetry of Murnau-inspired vampires. And oh the tension and sense of hopelessness.

- That very first encounter with an Alien in AvP, after all the deserted corridors. Not helped by the fact that it was my first 3D fps and I was clumsy as fuck.

Oh yes, respawn of... anything in that one made me give up. But not because it was scary in that way, just... wearing you down and no point in it all, keep having to deal with the same things in the same areas time and time again as I kept wandering around, and using up stuff I wasn't getting back by looting them, just said no way I'll keep putting up with that and gave up.

As a kid I was scared of some of my Commodore 64 games, I think the scariest of them all was Forbidden Forest. :)

Respawn could be turned off, or dramatically toned down, through the .ini file or the difficulty options, if I remember well. I considered this as a prequisite. For me, anguish functions better through the emptiness of corridors and the believability of enemy presences than through the gamey mowing down of magical zombie crowds.

I was pretty tense before the first Mancubus encounter in Doom 3. The growls were unnerving back then.

As a kid I found the cannibal village in Monkey Island 1 and the cemetery in Monkey Island 2 somewhat scary. Probably the music had something to do with it.

I don't play horror games so I don't have truly terrifying experiences.

This is exactly what I just got done doing hours ago.

Probably the hovering ghosts in Silent Hill 4.