The Five Scariest Video Game Enemies of All Time

Many video games, at their heart, have an adversarial relationship with the player. Predator and prey, the hunter and the hunted, ad infinitum. However, some video game enemies take this beyond being an obstacle for the hero or heroine and are just straight-up scary. Turn on all the lights, gather up your courage, and soldier on to take a look at the top 5 scariest video game enemies of all time.

5. Advisors
Game: Half-Life Episode 2
System: PC

The Advisors are an enemy that cannot be killed. That fact alone doesn't make the Advisors scary. The fact that they are an enemy that cannot be killed that also has telekenesis, telepathy, can fly, look a cross between a maggot, a spider and have long phensiles "toungues" that can burrow into a humans brain to extract information is a better reason to find themscary. They are also enourmous-- about the size of a rhinocerous-- and a single Advisor doesn't just kill a main character, it tosses that character's corpse aside like it was nothing but an empty bag of chips.

Oh! The Advisors also hunt in packs.

4. Nemesis
Game: Resident Evil 3
System: Playstation

Nemsis would be a formidable video game boss based on its resistance to explsions and bullets, sheer strength and inhuman speed. If that wasn't enough, when he doesn't swing his enormous fists at you, he will whip out a rocket launcher. His appearance keeps mutating, looking more and more inhuman. His growl of "STARS!" as he pursues you while the music becomes frenetic leads to making his appearances terrifying. Speaking of appearances, Nemesis will appear when you least expect it, such as dropping down off of rooftops, bursting through doors and even waiting behind blind corners. The scariest part is that Nemesis is relentless. He will not stay down. He will chase you across screen after screen in the game. When you finally topple such a scary opponent in the endgame, it is very satisfying.

3. Giygas
Game: Earthbound
System: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Earthbound was a rather light-hearted role playing game for the Super Nintendo, and the final boss was was Giygas, a mysterious and cryptic alien power. During the first phase of the fight, all attacks against Giygas are reflected back on the attacker. Giygas even uses Ness's unique PSI attack. The background is wavy and distorted, and the music is an odd, atonal groan. Giygas morphs into other disturbing forms an eye with an image of Ness' head in the center. Giygas also babbles cryptic statements like "It hurts, it hurts" and calling out Ness' name over and over. All of this was a rather dramatic shift in tone-- it was much darker than anything else that had appeared in the game.

Adding to this boss' overall scary demeanor was the fact that in the final phase of the fight, the only attack that will work is one character praying for victory several times in a row.

2. Poison Headcrabs
Game: Half-Life 2
System: PC

The poison headcrabs look rather unsettling, like the mutant offspring of a face-hugger from the movie Alien mixed with a horseshoe crab. They could easily leap halfway across the room and attach themselves directly to your face-- this looked very disturbing in a first-person shooter game. If these poisonous headcrabs manage to sting you, your health will immediately drop to one percent. This then causes the game to loudly sound a warning buzzer and screech "EMERGENCY: USER DEATH IMMINENT". And in many of the shadowy corners of Half-Life 2 made these small and deadly enemies very hard to see, so that the only way one could tell these headcrabs were around were by listening to the strained, otherworldly screech.

1. Pyramid Head
Game: Silent Hill 2
System: Playstation 2

Pyramid Head pops up at several times in the game brandishing a knife that is so massive it scrapes along the ground. Other times Pyramid Head will use a spear a tall as itself. Pyramid Head is a massive, hulking, faceless monstrosity that is invincible. You cannot harm it with any of the standard weapons in the game. Pyramid Head always follows the protagonist of Silent Hill 2. Most disturbing of all, this enemy shows itself as the embodiment of the protagonists' dark side when it sexually assaults another enemy in the game. Pyramid Head has become so associated with the Silent Hill franchise that it was given a major role in the movie adaptation of the Silent Hill game, as well as in Silent Hill: Homecoming and as a boss in the arcade version in the Silent Hill light gun game. This disturbing, eerie enemy has wormed its way into the psyches of survival horror game fans, becoming as iconic of Silent Hill as the swirling dense fog that hides its secrets.