10 Creepy Gaming Soundtracks Guaranteed To Fuel Your Nightmares
1. Alien: Isolation
It would seem that every countdown related to ‘scary’ games talks about Alien: Isolation at some point. But there’s a good reason for this:
It. Is. Scary.
Anyone who can tell you that they’ve played the game, or watched someone else play it without moving to the edge of their seat, white-knuckling their controller is a stone cold liar.
Wandering the corridors of an almost empty spaceship, trying not to get killed by the Xenomorph is a frightening experience, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was just the game's design and mechanics that caused players to emit shrieks of absolute terror upon being discovered cowering in a locker. In reality, this adrenaline fuelled nightmare is powered in large part by the games soundtrack.
The soundtrack relies on atmospheric use of sounds, as well as creating a sense of dissonance and quiet panic through its use of strings and woodwind instruments. This, in combination with the sound effects and empty corridors, makes gameplay spaces feel incredibly cold and, well, ‘isolated’, and is liable in the game's quieter moments, to bring about genuine shivers from the player, and at its most action fuelled, can cause even the most seasoned survival horror players to leap out of their seats.