One of the most common enemy tropes in video game world definitely has to be zombies. Create about 10-15 zombie assets, copy them in giant hordes, and send them after the player. That’s not really a bad thing as there are as many great zombie games as there are bad.
Sure, gamers everywhere can enjoy the zombie games that allow them to unload magazines into hundreds of corpses to bring them down. However, the best zombie games make players fear the resurrected. So what are the scariest zombies gamers fear?
Updated October 4, 2022 By Ben Jessey: Gamers don’t tend to be scared of zombies these days, as they’ve killed thousands of the things over the years. In fact, they’re often seen as just cannon fodder. That is not the case with every type of zombie, though.
Some titles have managed to craft a legitimately horrifying type of zombie. Either it’s because of how they look or how they function. Either way, they can be spooky. And as we’re entering the Halloween season, we thought we’d update this list of the scariest zombies to add a few more to it.
15 Gas Zombies - Dead Rising 2
It isn’t hard to find zombies in Dead Rising 2, as almost every place you go is filled with them. These are just basic members of the undead horde, though. The really dangerous ones arrive later in the form of Gas Zombies.
These creatures don’t look too different from the average ones, besides being bulkier. Yet, they’re scarier because of how deadly they are. These monsters move faster and hit harder than regular zombies. Plus, they spew disgusting blood at you, which stuns your character.
14 Feral Wights - 7 Days To Die
7 Days To Die is a game that continually gets harder the longer you live. One way the difficulty gets upped is the addition of more dangerous enemies. The Feral Wight is a special type of zombie that gets added to the game at some point.
These beasts strike fear into people’s hearts for a number of reasons. For starters, they’re pretty gruesome-looking. More importantly, though, they are capable of running at all times and are very strong. That strength can allow them to smash down walls of your home base, which adds to how scary they are.
13 T-Virus Zombies – Resident Evil 2 And 3 Remakes
The T-Virus monsters from the early Resident Evil games are classic zombies. They move at a snail’s pace, with their feet scraping across the floor while groaning. In the RE2 and RE3 remakes, these creatures are even more terrifying.
This is because they look a lot more horrific due to the enhancements in graphics. Plus, they’re incredible bullet sponges. You can unload multiple pistol bullets into one of their heads without ever slowing them down.
12 Sleepers – Back 4 Blood
There are several different types of deadly creatures in Back 4 Blood. The Sleepers are technically one of the weakest, as it doesn’t take a lot to kill them, and they die if they miss their attack.
However, they’re the masters of jump scares. The creatures continually wait in pods, ready to attack. If you go near one, they immediately jump on you and start ripping you apart. Most of the time, you don’t see them coming, which is why they’re terrifying.
11 Freakers – Days Gone
Freakers is the name given to the standard zombies in Days Gone. Individually, they aren’t so tough, and you can kill them easily. It’s the hordes that invoke fear. Having a pack of the monsters charging at you is one of the most terrifying sights in gaming.
Unfortunately, it’s not a rare sight, as the Freakers tend to hang out in packs. Even if they aren’t together, once you attack one, the others tend to come running as they have incredible awareness.
10 Infected - Zombi (Or ZombiU)
Zombi focuses on slow, methodical traversal through London rather than fast pased gun action. The zombies in Zombi are pretty basic in design but the atmosphere and nearly pitch black setting help make the zombies scary.
What also makes these zombies scary is that they are much harder to kill. If the player dies, their character becomes a zombie and is forced to retrieve all their items from said zombie.
9 Slashers - Dead Space Series
Dead Space contains some of the most original versions of zombies in terms of concept and execution. Embracing John Carpenter’s The Thing creature designs, Necromorphs are the result of an alien plague transforming the dead into zombified monsters.
They aren’t all the same, though. One of the most common types is the Slasher. These freaky things have blades on their arms and are very creepy-looking. In fact, the visual of them is what makes the monsters so scary.
8 The Molded - Resident Evil 7
Imagine if the Venom symbiote from Marvel merged with the T-Virus from previous Resident Evil games. That’s the best description for the Molded from Resident Evil 7.
There is little to no build-up to their first appearance in the game. Up until this point, the player is dealing with immortal psychopaths and then suddenly, black oozy monsters appear to shock the player. They become the main enemy to fight for most of the rest of the game and they never get easier.
7 The Undead - Call Of Duty: Black Ops Series
The famous Zombies mode for the Call Of Duty: Black Ops series has always featured a neat universe of lore. This lore is usually backed up by unlimited hordes of zombies and solving puzzles on insane maps until the player perishes.
The zombies’ distorted screeches, moaning, and undeniable presence always keep the player on edge. If the player is not careful, one could simply pop out of a wall and nab them. With zombies as well designed and executed as these, it’s a shocker Treyarch have not created an entire Call Of Duty: Zombies spin-off game.
6 The Volatiles - Dying Light
Other than getting a little more aggravated at night, the zombies in Dying Light are not too bad to deal with. However, the more evolved and deadly zombies that appear later known as Volatiles are another story.
These zombies are a nightmare; they’re fewer zombies and more like mutant monsters. There is a chance the player can defeat them with the right weapon and circumstances. However, the more likely (and logical) scenario is that the player runs and parkours for safety and hopes for daylight to hurry back.
5 The First Zombie - Resident Evil
Whether it’s the original PlayStation classic or the multiple remakes, Resident Evil made history in survival horror. Why? The enemies were actually scary. However, not many zombies in the series match the very first encounter.
The angles, the music, the slow turning of the zombie’s head and eyes. It invokes fear of the undead rivaling that of the classic George A. Romero zombie movies. Since then, not even Nemesis or Mr. X matches the level of terror with their introductions as this.
4 The Hunter - Dead Space Series
Necromorphs are pretty scary on their own. Imagine one that won’t die no matter what the player does. Introducing the Hunter, a nightmare-inducing monster that will not stop chasing Isaac Clarke until he is dead.
There are no weakpoints to destroy or special weapons. Just avoid getting killed by it, escape the area, or find creative means of destroying it via the environment which is rare. Easily the most challenging enemy of the original Dead Space.
3 Clickers - The Last Of Us
These zombies can’t even see, how bad can they be? Very, very bad. If the player so much as love taps a bottle, these fungal zombies from The Last Of Us will find them and insta-kill them. How fun is that? Especially when the game forces the player to trek through a maze to get back to that one Clicker.
Much like the zombies from Call Of Duty, the Clickers’ most effective part of them is their sound design. The clicks they are named for combined with the creaky growls they let out send shivers through the spines of players. Advance with caution.
2 The Witch - Left 4 Dead Series
Speaking of bone-chilling sound design. Anybody who has played both Left 4 Dead games knows the horrors of the Witch. In a game mainly focused on tons of shooting and action, it comes as quite a shock when they briefly become survival horror.
First, the player hears a loud, and rather sad, cry. If the player tries to investigate, a woman zombie with long claws charges with a screech. The ending of this encounter is usually at least one teammate dying.
1 Stalkers - Dead Space Series
In Dead Space 2, players were introduced to many new Necromorph types including the Stalker. They are not indestructible like the Hunter but they are even scarier. They are like the velociraptors of Necromorphs: very fast, deadly, and heart attack-inducing.
They are another zombie breed that lets out a loud and shocking scream when they attack. Stalkers never hunt alone either so if a player spots one and kills it, more than like a brother and sister are preparing for a revenge attack.
NEXT: The Scariest Horror Games Of This Generation
