For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies....
Resident Evil 1. I saw bits and pieces of my older brother playing it on the PS1, but was too scared to watch very long. I remember the iconic opening up to the zombie looking over its shoulder and then standing up right in front of you.
I rented it years later for the Gamecube and tried to play it while my little brother watched. I was playing super slowly and wasting all my ammo on every zombie because I was so scared. I remember one part vividly, I was in the long hallway where you pick up the arrowhead and theres a zombie just around the corner. I could hear the zombie so I baited him down the hallway so I could shoot him from a distance. I started shooting when he was off-camera and coming towards me, and when he appeared at the bottom of the screen and his head rotting head being very large in the perpective, I said “woah look at his head” at the exact moment before I got a headshot and the zombies head exploded. Me and my brother were really shocked, so I just paused and quit out. That was enough resident evil for me.
More years later I got resident evil for the DS for cheap at EB games and it became the first game I ever beat repeatedly for different endings and faster times, eventually leading me to now say that horror is my favorite genre.
Also, I never got into Silent Hill as a kid but since playing them in recent years I think they perfectly encapsulate my love for that age of gaming and survival horror in general.
And The Evil Within 1 is the best survival-horror action game ever made. In all its extreme jankiness and difficulty. I did a challenge run of no keys, no upgrades, no cheese in the cheese spots, single segment, no dlcs items, AKUMU difficulty and got 5 deaths. Shit is hard.
What type of game you want to see that doesn't fully exist yet?
What was the formative horror game of your childhood?
For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies....