I'd say Dead Space best reflects well-crafted fear. Being in a closed environment with little ammo against monstrosities capable of appearing almost out of nowhere at times can bring fear to new heights. There are also parts where the sound gets muted so you have no idea if something appears behind you until you turn around or see it come up and attack you.

I think it depends on the frame of mind you take into the game.  To mirror the above comment, Dead Space can be a good example.  The first time I started it, I only made it to chapter 4 before I said, I can't do this anymore.  I'm going to break a bone jumping out of my seat like this.  After a few months hiatus, I picked it up again last week, this time walking into it with a pissed off, "eff these nercromorphs" feeling (as well as a whole bunch of backstory research from the movie and comic), and now I'm walking through it like Duke Nukem and am having a ton more fun. 

Some people play horror games for the sake of being horrified.  I don't think people who don't like being scared will ever understand it necessarily.  Personally, I'm going to start playing them to have fun, like I do with other games. 

The original Resident Evil certainly had me scared. I avoided playing it alone for that reason, especially at night. The chilling stare of that first zombie is a simple but powerful moment that none of the sequels (or remake) got right again. But as I wrote in my RE5 DLC reviews, Lost in Nightmares did a pretty good job of recreating the scary mansion from the first game. I was on edge throughout the level, uncertain of when something might burst through a door or shuffle down the stairs.

BioShock was not a horror game but I would certainly file it under "games that scared me" for its dread-filled atmosphere. Even when Splicers weren't much of a threat in the later stages, their babbling and tendency to turn up in unexpected places frightened me.

I guess the common scary element in these two disparate games relies on my nature to really think about what it is I see in video games. When a game gets me worked up to the point that I am ANTICIPATING horror, I become scared even if that horror never turns up. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for dark mansions and mad surgeons.

Setting aside jump scares (Resident Evil) and disturbing moments (the first 3 Silent Hill games), the only game I can think of that truly scared me was Fatal Frame.

I think of really being scared as being so filled with dread that it's a struggle to take action, and Fatal Frame was brilliant at evoking that kind of feeling. I especially liked that they masked the load times between rooms by making your character pause for a moment with her hand on the doorknob, like she was afraid of what she was going to see when she opened it. I also liked the way you had to go from 3rd person to 1st person to fight, which took away some of your mobility, and your ability to see everything that was in the room with you. Normally I would think that was gimmicky, but since your only weapon in the game is a camera, it makes sense.

I guess Dave mind be right in the mindset point. Much of what other people walked in to Bioshock being freaked out by, I was looking around thinking about how cool it was they put those things in there. RE's controls always frustrated me to the point I didn't couldn't get into much else before 5 and RE5 was such an action-game to me I never thought about it scaring anyone.

I guess, if there's anything I can relate to it's that tension Daniel points to in anticipation. And again, maybe that's where it just becomes me feeling the same things and having a different understanding of it. Take the museum (or was it a library?) sequence in Ghostbusters. Hearing the sounds, not knowing where things were coming from really helped build tension for me but I can't say it equated to the dread I feel in things that scare me. Again, I equate it to the tension of a one of those key moments in a sports game where you have no idea what someone's about to throw at you and you have to be ready. But it could very well be the same thing every else experiences as fear and I play too self-aware as a gamer to enjoy it in that same manner.

If so, that's really a shame on my end.

Scary games cause me to be far more scared then any movie. The interactivity and sound in a game can scare the jeebers out of me and I was known to have thrown the controller more then once playing Fatal Frame. Movies tend to give me the creepys but nothing really bad. Now this isn't to say that I'm scared of nothing in real life, of course I am! But they are different types of fear.

You can always win in singleplayer games, unless they're particularly badly designed or you don't know how to hold a controller. You can't in multiplayer games though, so they make me sweat more than any traditionally scary game though.

It's closer to the biological fear response (muscles tensing, adrenaline flowing, etc.) but I still wouldn't say I'm scared when playing Battlefield.

It might depend on the atmosphere in the real world that you're playing games in as well. When you watch a scary movie most people do that at night, with the lights off, surround sound up, and blankets on. That's not the typical setting for playing a game though (maybe).

I'd like to humbly recommend that you try out Condemned: Criminal Origins; just be sure to play it starting at 11 PM, with all the lights out, and with properly booming surround sound. For  a launch title it holds up surprisingly well. Consider playing it with a self-imposed one-life rule; I hear that adds to the tension.

The original Silent Hill is the only game to legitimately creep me out enough to turn it off and stop playing.

The school in particular.  Playing late at night in the basement during a thunderstorm... that did me in.  Those little kids that would disappear.  No thank you.

Kinda curious to give it another shot and see if I'm still a gigantic pussy these days. 

Son of a...

@Jordan I think that does help a bit. I will admit there was a bit of a difference playing the Bioshock demo at nearly 11pm in a dark room and playing the game proper when I normally play. I haven't tried out Condemned yet, so I'll give that a whirl when I can and see how it affects me. Thanks for the recommendation.

Shoe has finally noticed. NOW I'm a little scared. : )

I'm not sure if a game has ever scared me, though I don't play many survival horror games. The game I felt the most tension with and caused me to jump a bit in my chair was Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear. Creeping around a building looking for that last terrorist with the only sounds being my movements pulled me in. One shot can kill you so if the bad guy sees you before you see him it's probably over. Peek around the wrong corner and *bang* you're dead.

It's not uncommon for me to feel anxious and uncomfortable playing such games as Dead Space or Resident Evil 4, but the only game I can ever think of that literally scared me so bad I couldn't play it was the original Silent Hill back in the game. The feeling of sheer claustrophobic dread that game gave me while playing it was just way too intense for me. A few years after the fact I faced down my fear and finally played it, but I never played a silent hill game after that. Props to Konami, but man, not for me. 

Scary movies don't scare me as much as scary games. It's because they're interactive, so you actually have to explore every nook and cranny of this oppressive world. The only movie to truly scare me from beginning to end is [b][Rec][/b]. 

If you haven't played [b]Condemned: Criminal Origins[/b], you're in for the most terrifying virtual experience of your life. And the game doesn't have monsters!

How can a game without monsters be scary? You'll have to play to find out! 

Having never played a proper horror game I can't say much about games that are supposed to be scary. But the final Colossi in Shadows of the Colossus sent a huge shiver down my spine—I can't recall another video game that had made me feel so small. Come to think of it I can pretty safely say that about the first Colossi, too. Very few adventure games nowadays can pull off a boss entrance that actually shakes you up a little bit, but that game did.

@Meghan Shadow was something special. I still vividly remember the first time I played it. It was actually the demo including in the old Official U.S. Playstation Magazine disc. I had read thought it was interesting but didn't expect anything. Coming on the that first Colossus, I had my world-out-of-Midgar moment. Fear no, but it was a definite since of "how in the hell am I supposed to take THAT down." And after doing it, it was satisfying a friend and I basically immediate went out to buy it.