10 MORE Scariest Levels In Non-Horror Video Games

3. The Flood - Halo: Combat Evolved

Early on, the Halo series wasn’t much praised for its plot. Fans and critics alike embraced the first game primarily as a quantum leap in co-op and PVP. “Halo killers,” “Halo clones” and the game’s own sequels emphasize visceral, complex multiplayer.

That’s a shame. Halo’s story was solid scifi, continuing themes of artificial intelligence and complex morality from developer Bungie’s brilliant Marathon series.

It also came with chills. The nightmarish Flood may not have been new – gaming has been teeming with mindless alien swarms since Space Invaders – but they were done well, driving home the terror of death by a million hungry mouths.

Better, Halo showed its Marathon DNA, taking its ideas to the furthest extent. Marathon asked “what would an artificial intelligence actually want?” Halo asks “confronted with a superior organism, what could humans do?” Halo provides multiple possible answers to that question, all horrifying, all ruthlessly logical, and shows its stalwart hero completely unequal to doing any of them. At the end of Halo, the Flood are still coming. The only way to stop them is unimaginable for a human. That means Flood are better at being alive than we are.

That’s scary.