Evil minions of the dark caverns of death!...

Um..Ahem.. Anyway, the question I put to you is this: What makes a good Horror Game?..

Is it lots of blood?. Is it dark corners?. Is it Gooey Monsters with tubes?. Or is it perhaps something more subtle and sinister?.

What to you makes the best Horror game?.

Personally I'm a believer in subtlety, so creepy sounds, well done gore, unpredictability, and intense action makes a good horror game in my books..

Me like Dead Space, me like Doom 3.

If it's real horror, I've heard that 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' is the king of the mountain

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is an excellent horror adventure/fps game. Other than the first bit of excitement and the final boss both being frustratingly complicated if you've nevee done them before, a very excellent, atmospheric game. Made me jump on more than one occasion.

The Penumbra games, made on the same engine, by the same guys who made Amnesia, had a similar feel to CoC:DCotE, and made me not want to continue several times because I was not excited to see what horror awaits me next.

Clive Barker's Undying is an excellent example of a Horror Action shooter done right. Most 'horror' games with a lot of combat leave themselves not feeingl very scary since, you know, you can just kill the bad guys easily enough. Undying avoids this with an excellent pacing, dangerous enemies that are hard to kill for one reason or another, excellent story, and outstanding atmosphere. This game featured magic being used in tandem with the guns, a la bioshock, but way earlier. Unfortunately the weapons were horribly balanced, from being replaced by another weapon completely or bot even being useful to begin with. Not a good thing when you only have 8 weapons. Fortunately, this being an unreal engine game, its pretty easy to remedy that yourself. I felt the later pevels were a bit lacking in atmosphere though.

But as far as what makes a game scary for me? Atmosphere. The build up, the tension. Everything setting you up for the auctual horror. You don't have to see what it is, you only have to know its always there, watching you, always ready to strike. And never, ever, make the player too powerful. Ever.

I found the labs in Stalker some of the best 'horror' elements I've experienced.
Doom 3, was ok as well in some places.
Also some places in Batman: Arkam Asylum were quite creepy.

In horror, I would say it's not down to blood and gore but very strong immersion.
Sound is much more important that blood and action is something to be used very carefully as it could easily destroy the fear elements.

Most horror games are a joke and about as believable as any lame Hollywood stereotype.

To me, a good horror game fully immerses the player in a world which plays on the instinctal fears of mankind.

People fear the unknown. Darkness lessens vision, leaving people guessing what is coming after them. In Amnesia, you don't know what's around the next corner, you don't know if there's a monster, or you're just hearing things.

But the unknown is not all. I've played the first part of amnesia again and I knew no monsters would come at first, but still I wondered, what if I'm wrong? That alone made me move through each room very carefully.

Being startled is also a tool. Catching the player off guard and giving him a short chance to get away can keep players on edge, because they never know when they're going to need to act quickly. Especially when if they fail to get out, they die in the game. With the full immersion in the game, dying is something people instinctively try to avoid.

Real consequence of getting caught is also scary. In minecraft, new players think creepers are scary because they sneak up on you and can easily kill you and your home. Since death can't be reversed, people want to avoid dying at all cost.

There is PLENTY of more things that make a good horror game. But for me in summary:
Full immersion, never knowing what's going to happen, a good motivation to not die and the oppertunity and challenge to survive.

Oooh, good point with mincraft. Totally forgot about that, but it is so true. Though I don't know if its horror so much for me as it just was immersion plus basic survival. But the same basic ideas still apply. Sadly i was never very terrified of the endermen when they were first introduced, I was on a boat.

Still prettyndang creepy critters though.

You never want a horror game to give the player too much power, and you also don't want them to have no power...

The best thing to do is to mix both an intense creepy atmosphere with intense and brutal combat where the monsters are very very aggressive, not necessarily tough, but very dramatic...

This way you get a nice combination, and you don't leave the combat uneventful, plain, or soft..

One of the best things is unpredictability and subtle suggestion of an impending threat...

ie: Walking down a dark alley you hear footsteps behind you, yet each time you look back, you see nothing, leaving you wondering, "Was I imagining it?". This plays on humanity's greatest fear, the unknown, and their imagination..

The most powerful asset of making the player genuinely on-the-edge is to make nothing happen. Not every noise needs to lead to combat or any sort of encounter, just look at The Cradle mission in Thief 3, one of the scariest levels I have ever played to date as a gamer, and it was fairly light on actual combat, especially in the first half.

Though the problem with well executed horror games is that you don't really want to go through it again in a long while. After the immense sense of accomplishment and returning back to the warmth of human civilization you don't exactly want another tour of the scary, abandoned orphanage/asylum.

If there is a game that scared me, is F.E.A.R.

You didn't know what could happen to you around every corner, the lights and sounds playing with you, footsteps and rooms with blood, apparitions and hallucinations, a ghost girl... This game made me go real terror, was chilling...

Also, Doom 3 was also scares.

Afraid I don't know F.E.A.R, haha, what a pun..

Anyway, I'd have to say the most scary/creepy moment was the Shalebridge Cradle from Thief: Deadly Shadows, the atmosphere was great, until a bit later through it...

That place was awesome!, and in contrast to such a game as Thief which isn't meant to be scary...

Unfortunately I didn't find Doom 3 scary, its was way too predictable, the only time it got a jump out of me was when it did something it hadn't before, a corpse suddenly leaped a few feet into the air..

While I found Dead Space was also predictable(Not as much as doom), it was far more creepy, and that twinkle twinkle little star thing, way creepy!... That was cool..

The Shalebridge Cradle has a storyline of its own, it is like being a part of one of those cool ghost films that take place in a mansion. That mission is quite trippy, too, when you have those out-of-body experiences and jump into the Cradle's memory to help Emily (and yourself) escape, learn the dark history of the residents, etc. It was all incredibly chilling.

For me it's stalker and System Shock 2 even if though I didn't fully played STALKER, but still.