I’ve enjoyed exploring virtual worlds for most of my life, and over the course of my now decades-long gaming career I’ve played what I would consider to be a mildly impressive number of horror games. Looking back, I can think of numerous times when I’ve been startled to full-on terrified of the game I was playing — some of these moments have even been immortalized on the Internet — but oddly enough, a surprising number of the memories I’ve accrued didn’t actually come from games that most people would consider horror.

That idea is what inspired me to write this, because I’m sure plenty of you can relate to this, perhaps even with one or more of the games on this list.

Spec Ops: The Line

I don’t know about you, but somewhere between that one Call of Duty and that other Battlefield, I’ve lost most of my interest in shooters set in the modern day. They do nothing for me anymore, and because Spec Ops: The Line shares that theme, I almost skipped it. Good thing I didn’t, because this game is unforgettable.

It’s also disturbing, horrifying and forced me to make some decisions — more than once — that almost always made me feel like a truly awful human being.

The Line popped my Spec Ops cherry, though from what I’ve heard about its predecessors, it sounds like it’s nothing like them. The story is hands-down the bravest and grimmest tale of the horrors of war that I’ve ever been willing endure. You will make tough decisions, and you will also get to see the consequences. It’s a dark game that will stick with you and it’s absolutely worth playing, even though the game-y bits are lacking.

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