10 Unsettling Horror Games With TERRIFYING Sound Design
7. Silent Hill
One of the games that has helped define and shape the survival horror genre as we know it, Silent Hill is the epitome of a classic horror video game.
Playing as Harry Mason, players find themselves in the titular, fog-covered town in search of their daughter. Collecting a myriad of strange items and solving a collection of even stranger puzzles being how to progress further into the nightmarish town.
No survival horror game would be complete without the inclusion of some monstrous enemies. While the sights of these twisted beings were disturbing enough, the game's sound design (pioneered entirely by Akira Yamaoka) let players know when something unfriendly was close through a radio that would emit static.
Creating an effective fear response is all about the suspense that something unpleasant is about to happen. The game's fixed camera angles and fog-obscured streets already made it impossible to see what was lying out of view. And as the radio's shrill alarm is heard, the threat of something appearing is made all the more suspenseful and frightening.
An early example of a warning system in games much like Alien: Isolation's motion detector, hearing this radio sends many players' hearts racing.