LogFAQs > #986058479

Depends.

Most horror doesn't. It can startle me if it's all just abrupt jump scares, but that's not really scary.

Good horror (which is rare these days) can creep me the fuck out, which should be the entire point of horror. Not to just give you little adrenaline spikes by occasionally metaphorically peeking around a corner and going "BOO!" Ideally, you should still be feeling on edge or ill at ease long after the movie ends.

Great horror combines the unsettling unease that lasts for a prolonged time and pants-shitting terror. That's hard to get from movies (because it's hard to get that invested in any story), but video games can do that well if the game is made by people who actually care about their work (because you're more actively engaged).

The first few Fatal Frame games were creepy as shit, and nearly gave me heart attacks multiple times.

The first time I played RE2 I went from playing with the lights out in my apartment for ambiance to having every light in the apartment turned on and the front door chain-locked, while I was sort of sitting in a fetal ball on the couch with my feet pulled up as the stress just kept building up.

When I played Clock Tower in college, I had an apartment full of multiple people all watching and screaming at me to "Grab the pan!" or "Hide in the closet!" or "Run!" or whatever other prompts popped up every time the Scissorman music and shearing noises started kicking in. It's hard to understand just how stressful that sort of thing can be until you actually experience it - but it takes a special kind of horror game to evoke that sort of response from onlookers who aren't even playing.

And the first Silent Hill was creepy as fuck. The game is pretty clearly designed from the ground up to try and make you feel as uneasy as possible with everything it does, which works really well for that sort of horror.