The 10 Most Freakishly Scary Video Game Enemies

Image via Complex Original

In the spirit of Halloween, we present to you the most stress-inducing, freakish, deformed and enraged enemies you will encounter in video games. You wouldn't want to meet these baddies in person, but you'll have to face them off in these games.

Child with a Chainsaw

Terrorizing you in: Catherine

Vincent can’t catch a break. Ever since drunkenly cheating on his longtime girlfriend, he’s been terrorized by nightmarish, stories-tall monsters he can only escape by frantically scaling massive dream towers.

The scariest of these is arguably a mangled, chainsaw-wielding fetus that blubbers screaming accusations of would-be paternal abandonment while simultaneously inundating your path with firebombs, spinning buzzsaws and massive chainsaw cuts that increasingly narrow your already-limited range of movement. If you weren’t afraid of commitment before…

Jason

Terrorizing you in: Friday the 13th

The whole idea of taking on the role of a relatively defenseless camp counselor opposite a psychotic killer like Jason seems pretty ridiculous, considering a chief tenet of ‘80s slasher films (still used today) is that you’re watching to see when, not if, the principal cast will die.

Friday the 13th follows suit; should you avoid the inexplicable zombie hordes that have inexplicably overrun the campground, any eventual encounter with Jason will result in a pitiful attempt at defending yourself with whatever weak makeshift weaponry you can manage before your inevitable demise. Repeat until all the counselors are dead or you’re crying in a corner.

E0

Terrorizing you in: Enemy Zero

When it was still around, Kenji Eno’s offbeat dev studio WARP was known for creating some pretty weird games that often used a company-created “digital actress” named Laura and had a penchant for weird, borderline-fetishized cocktails of sexual content and violence.

The Alien-esque Enemy Zero certainly has these things, but what makes this one notable is that the enemies you encounter in the game are all invisible. Your only tools are audio cues (think Aliens’ motion-tracker) and a gun that’s both weak, has a steep charge-up time and requires frequent energy replenishment. Don’t bother trying to run, either—these invisible bastards are everywhere, and they’ll kill you in a single hit.

Verdugo

Terrorizing you in: Resident Evil 4 

Though these cloaked and stoic bodyguards initially foil RE4’s boisterously obnoxious and eminently hatable Napoleon-alike Ramon Salazar, once the metaphorical gloves come off, you’ll be face-to-face with a fast and horrifying Giger-like monstrosity you’ll wish had stayed hidden behind its robes. What makes the Verdugo fight (Spanish for “executioner”) so harrowing, aside from its elusive tactics, high HP count and terrifying speed, is that it forces you to constantly move, compounding your own psychological stress.

Though the Verdugo is actually the only monster on this list you can technically escape, a swipe from its prehensile, talon-like tail can instantly decaptitate Leon and the only way to stun it is to blow up canisters of liquid nitrogen. Chances are you’re not going to be packing a rocket launcher at this point, making the battle with this abomination pretty harrowing.

Galamoth

Terrorizing you in: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

There are several enemies in SotN that would probably qualify for this list, but Galamoth, (i.e. Dracula’s own personal Hell-Anubis) beats them out of sheer longevity.

The beast’s massive form is bigger than the screen, and when he’s not dual-thrusting at you with his massive melee weapons or otherwise trying to bludgeon you with his clawed feet, he’s populating the screen with volleys of heavy damage lightning orbs and magical electrical storms that cover a wide swath of the screen.

Don’t be fooled by those exposed shins—even with good reflexes and strong weapons, Galamoth can take upwards of ten minutes to kill. If you don’t know what you’re doing, he’ll make a mockery of you.

SHODAN

Terrorizing you in: System Shock 2

Though this malevolent AI is hard to quantify in terms of toughness, her constant presence, and the subsequent psychological damage she causes through her previous actions, is enough to land her on the list.

As your central adversary on the starship Von Braun, SHODAN has overrun the ship with horrific aliens that mutated what remains of the criew into horrible monsters, most of whom have just enough humanity left to beg you to kill them even as they lunge towards you.

But SHODAN’s most unsettling trait is the enjoyment she gets from mind games: after being led around by your nose for nearly half the game by a fellow survivor, Dr. Polito, instructing you to meet her on another deck, you eventually learn Polito is dead and the AI has been posing as her to gain your trust. Even after the terrifying reveal you still have contend with SHODAN’s handiwork—a ship full of infected, once-human freaks.

Walter Sullivan

Terrorizing you in: Silent Hill 4: The Room

Serial killer Walter Sullivan started out as little more than a grim figure featured some of Silent Hill 2’s newspaper clippings, but in The Room he becomes a far bigger problem. Sullivan’s ghost comes back to haunt Henry Townshend throughout his journeys from a hole in his possessed apartment to various locales within Silent Hill, packing a magnum and an unyielding tendency to show up at the most inopportune times.

You can put the murderer down with several rounds from the game’s more powerful weapons, but any respite is only momentary. Move on to another room and he’ll likely be there waiting to plug you full of holes once again. Sullivan’s immortality can be permanent, as well—fail to keep too many monsters from beating up Henry’s neighbor, Eileen, and in the final boss fight you won’t have enough to time to keep Sullivan from killing her and ending the game.

Stalker Necromorph

Terrorizing you in: Dead Space 2

Stalkers probably aren’t the hardest enemies in the Dead Space universe, but their raptor-type behavior is the stuff of nightmares. Unlike more traditional necros, these arrow-headed, bird-like creatures won’t just blindly attack you on sight, preferring instead to wait in obstacle-filled rooms, poking their heads out at Isaac and squawking at their comrades until he is deep enough into a room.

Psych warfare aside, when they deem you close enough these hunters start working in tandem, attacking from the sides, darting behind obstacles and leaping to higher ground to gain better vantage points all while seeming to coordinate with each other on the fly. Their maze-like environs Stalkers frequent mean there’s virtual no way to protect yourself from all sides, and the guttural shrieks these monsters let loose when charging at you are guaranteed to make your blood run cold.

Crimson Head

Terrorizing you in: Resident Evil (GC Remake)

When Capcom decided to give the original Resident Evil a high-res remake for the Gamecube, they decided it wouldn’t be enough to simply upscale the existing undead. Enter the Crimson head zombie. With their razor sharp, foot-long claws and heart-attack inducing speed, the only thing you can hope to do with a crimson head is run. Of course, it’s not that simple.

Any normal zombie that isn’t either decapitated or subjected to corpse burning upon death may or may not become a crimson head, meaning all of a sudden you’re forced to make the difficult decision of either using precious resources to make sure a foe stays dead or desperately evading zombies so they can’t come back to life later.

Crimson heads also like to play dead themselves, will randomly appear in your vicinity and, unlike normal zombies, are smart enough to chase you through the mansion. Good luck ever feeling safe.

Maneater

Terrorizing you in: Demon’s Souls

Demon’s Souls’ reputation as one of the hardest games this console generation means that even coming across a few measly low-level ghouls can result in a quick death if you’re not paying attention—when everything you can encounter can make you feel the weight of death, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one beast.

However, the Maneater is particularly special. This hulking chimera will make mincemeat of you in a matter of seconds even with high level spells and equipment, giving you no warning as to when it may pounce (easily taking off at least half your health in one swipe) or send devastating magic projectiles toward you.

Fought near the top of a very high tower, the Maneater’s sonic blast can also easily send you flying into the abyss before you have time to react, and the frequency of its attacks are as sudden as they are impossibly erratic.

The peace de resistance occurs after you’ve dealt a certain amount of damage to the monster: after so many fearful minutes of spamming fireballs or hacking away at the chimera’s health bar, suddenly, without warning, a second Maneater enters the fray. You may as well dive off the side of the tower at this point; your only hope now is to cheat.