10 Most Effective Jump Scares In Sci-Fi Video Games
2. Prey - The Hologram Fake-Out
This article talked earlier about how jump scares tend to be scripted events, designed by writers who want to wring the maximum amount of terror out of a scene.
Prey does something even more sinister - it makes you laugh.
While exploring Prey's alien-infested space station, the player will come across a test to calibrate a hologram. While running through the test, one of the objects in the room will suddenly transform into a Mimic - a shape-shifting alien that can assume the shape of any inorganic object.
At this point, instinct will take over and you'll start blasting the Mimic to kingdom come. Except - surprise! - it wasn't real. It was just another hologram, set up as a (somewhat cruel) practical joke by an engineer.
If you're like us, you'll laugh at this moment. It's rare for any game to pull one over on the player in this manner, and it's a welcome moment of levity amidst the horror. This makes it all the more shocking when an actual alien, lured in by the noise you made assaulting the fake Mimic, suddenly shows up and attacks.
As jump scares go, Prey's double-bluff is a masterpiece of the form. It took something truly special to dislodge this from the top spot on the list...