10 Horror Games that Disrespect Your Time

3 hours ago 1

Horror Games that Disrespect Your Time Ellie The Last of Us Part II Five Nights at Freddy's FNAF Security Breach Glamrock Freddy Dead Space Isaac Clarke

Published Jun 13, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT

Elena is a Contributing Writer at DualShockers specializing in horror games, survival horror, open-world RPGs, fantasy, and historical fiction. She began covering games professionally in 2024, with her early gaming focus tied to Baldur’s Gate 3 before her interest in horror coverage grew through games like Silent Hill 2 Remake and Silent Hill f.

Before joining DualShockers, Elena worked as an award-winning journalist for local news stations and newspapers in central Indiana, including FOX59/CBS4Indy, and has also contributed to CBR. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Telecommunications, has a Career Specialist Permit to teach Journalism, and won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Best Column Award in 2019. Outside of games writing, Elena is also a high school teacher, where she teaches job readiness, financial literacy, and college preparation.

When it comes to horror games, they're pretty notorious for not respecting your time, either by running around in circles trying to figure out what's going on/what you need to do, immense trial-and-error, or by just taking a long time to progress. Some of these horror games will eat your time as if it skipped breakfast.

To put it lightly, there is nothing short, sweet, and to the point with these games.

10 Most Addictive Horror Games

There are some games you just can't put down, and these ones just so happen to also creep you out.

You can expect to waste some time with these games, regardless of if you've played them before or not — but if this is your first time playing through one of these titles, you can expect to spend far more time than anticipated there (typically on the struggle bus). Try not to get frustrated.

Don't get me wrong, these games are lovely and sometimes among the horror giants that defined horror gaming as a whole; it just so happens that these games also completely disrespect your time.

While many of these games have been out for years, there will be spoilers.

10 Cry of Fear

The Platforming Alone

Cry of Fear is a horror game that people tend to love or hate due to the gameplay, and the issues with these janky controls will become much more prominent in specific sections. The platforming sections with the crashed train and books are the worst culprits in this example — if you are merely a breath inaccurate while jumping across, you're going to fall to your death and be forced to try again. This doesn't include how you can just get stuck, and you have to restart your progress manually.

This isn't even mentioning various other sections of the game where the gameplay becomes more frustrating; it's as if the game itself has turned against you, curb-stomping your progress without any operator error. The maze in particular was another section that brings out the bubbling frustration in players, even if you just hug the right wall the entire time.

Even regular areas are difficult to get through, typically because of your (incredibly) limited inventory and surplus of enemies you need to survive, which is far easier said than done. By the time you get to the end, you're less afraid of everything around you and more afraid of what nonsense you're going to die to in this chapter.

It's a notoriously difficult survival horror game for this very reason — so while the game takes about nine hours, expect to double the time to account for all the dying you're going to do.

9 The Last of Us Part II

Not Even a Crumb of Revenge?

The Last of Us was a story of love and hope, despite horrifically trying times — while on the flipside, The Last of Us Part II is about pure hatred and the destructive pursuit of revenge. Ellie's flavour of revenge is particularly bloody and violent, and there is no shortage of brutality when you run through the game as her.

However, there is another protagonist we sometimes play, the one that we're seeking our very revenge against: Abby. Unfortunately, we play as Abby right after she kills Joel (which caused players to immediately hate her already), and it almost feels like a slap in the face for what we had just endured. Yet, Neil Druckmann doesn't stop slapping.

And while playing as Ellie, we see her revenge quest completely consume her, all the way to the end where she nearly has Abby's life in her hands ... but lets her free anyway. After literal years of this pursuit, she lets it get away. While, yes, it's great storytelling to show just how fleeting the incessant need for revenge truly is, but at the same time ... it feels like the entire events of the game are for nothing. The Last of Us Part II remains incredibly divisive among fans for this very reason.

If you go in understanding that you don't actually get revenge, you're going to feel a lot more satisfied with the story. Many players felt that their time was wasted, but that's due to being completely blindsided — knowing the moral of the story ahead of time will actually help make your time feel more worthwhile.

8 Dead Space (2023)

Anything for Nicole

It's well-known by this point that the Dead Space games were heavily inspired by the Resident Evil games (specifically Resident Evil 4), so it plays similarly ... including the excessive backtracking.

As you play the game and get through the Ishimura in the Dead Space Remake, you'll notice that there are areas that you can't get into just yet — but as you continue to progress, you'll eventually gain access to those areas. It's not a suggestion to backtrack to those areas and see what they're hiding, but a requirement in order to beat the game.

10 Horror Games Where You’re Actually the Villain

Sometimes, the worst monsters are the one you control.

Seriously, the backtracking can get dizzying if you aren't sure what you're doing (but thankfully, the game makes it easy by openly telling you where you need to go and what to do. You're going to have the layout of the ship fully memorized by the time you're done with it, and it's all going to be worth it because you're going to rescue your girlfriend Nicole in the end ... right?

Unfortunately, all that you had done has been for naught. The game even spells it out for you from the very beginning, detailing the truth that's in front of our faces the whole time: Nicole is dead.

7 Five Nights at Freddy's Sequels

We've Lost the Plot

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach

There was something special about the first Five Nights at Freddy's game. It was completely distinct, unique to anything we had seen prior to its release in 2014 — and its next couple of sequels help expand on it more. They're not as good as the first game, but the original trilogy provides genuinely interesting content.

Every sequel after that, though, is a different story (literally).

The sequels that kept coming (and are still releasing) after FNAF 3 turn the franchise into a joke. They don't take themselves even a fraction as seriously as they did in the original titles. And considering how Scott Cawthon insists on retconning his own lore and then throwing curveballs just for the sake of confusing MatPat, it just makes the series feel more like a mess than anything else.

And considering how many bits of lore require you to go through not just all the games, but the books, movies, and even colouring pages, players are left wondering what the point even is to try and figure things out. After all, it's going to be completely thrown for a loop by the end anyway, resorting to meme-bait and losing the original plot that made it so special in the first place.

6 The Evil Within

So. Many. Cutscenes.

You typically want a decent game-to-cutscene ratio in whatever game you're playing, about 80 percent gameplay and 20 percent cutscenes is standard — but The Evil Within pushes that limit. There are about four hours worth of cutscenes in this game.

Normally, that isn't a big deal (after all, there are simply bigger stories to tell) but the problem with The Evil Within cutscenes is the fact that you can't skip them at all, even if you've already beaten the game. There's disrespecting your time, and then there's disrespecting you as a player; the fact you can't skip cutscenes at all makes the game end up feeling like a chore, especially when you're stopped so frequently for an unskippable cutscene.

This fact alone kills any replayability this game has, because who genuinely wants to sit through all the cutscenes every single time? It just ruins the pacing and makes everything sluggish, and the last thing players want to feel is their time being actively wasted.

Thankfully, Shinji Mikami seemed to have learned from his mistake with The Evil Within 2, since you can actually skip those cutscenes.

5 Outlast 2

Good Luck Grinding

At first glance, Outlast 2 seems to be on par with the first game, complete with horrifyingly grotesque imagery and unexpected chase sequences. Yet, players weren't prepared for how much harder this game was going to be — even in milder difficulties, there is a significant amount of trial-and-error.

The main critiques at first were about how the story wasn't as strong as the original Outlast, but as players genuinely started to sink their teeth into the gameplay itself, they'd find that the story wasn't the only thing with a few cuts. It's not bad, but nowhere near as strong as the first game ... just with some padding (mostly with more chase sequences, and that gets old real quick).

10 Horror Games Where the World Feels Bigger the More You Learn About It

Knowledge is power, but it's also holds secrets you simply can't ignore, especially in the horror genre.

Players will spend a couple more hours on this game than the first, but if they're wanting something that's easier to chew and swallow, they won't find it here. Combine this with a story that's obtuse for the sake of it, and it ends up being incredibly disappointing, especially when compared to how strong the original Outlast was.

Basically, it can all be boiled down to you're playing hide-and-seek from hell, and it feels like it if you don't have time to waste.

4 Alien: Isolation

Get Used to Being Caught

Alien: Isolation is a revolutionary game that still holds up (thanks to the incredible A.I. from the Xenomorph), and many players were captivated by the bleak world and genuinely suspenseful gameplay. After a while, though, you're more frustrated at your lack of progression than anything else, especially since you're going to be caught by the Xenomorph (and Working Joe) many times before you get into your own rhythm.

The fear that was built up from the atmosphere melts quicker than ice cream in the summer, and it's tougher to rebuild after it's gone, especially since this game overstayed its welcome for a good chunk of players expecting something shorter. You'll get to a point where you hear the footsteps or see a dot pop up on your motion tracker, you'll want to just groan more than anything else, because you know that you're going to be set back instead of progressing forward, and even when you progress, the gameplay just gets repetitive.

On the cool side, the Xenomorph is learning as you're losing, so you can see more of the genuinely impressive A.I. in action as it's hunting you down across the Anesidora. One could argue that the game's length and gameplay work together to add to the suspension, but it's hard to argue that to yourself when you're on your third attempt at the Corridor of Death, and you're definitely going to have to try it again.

Then again, the game's writer even thinks the game itself is too long, so maybe time just wasn't considered in development.

3 Bloodborne

Well, It's a Souls Game

Souls games are notorious for being hard just for the sake of being hard, infamously frustrating players around the world with death screen after death screen and no hope of ever finally beating that boss. Bloodborne, unfortunately, is another one of those games that will kick you while you're down, then spit once it's done.

Even if you were to spam certain Chalice Dungeons for Blood Echoes, you're going to not just be riding the struggle bus, but driving it yourself, with every single aspect of the game actively working against you. The enemies are a given, but the same applies to even some of the notes that are left around the environment — players will troll other, newer players, and it makes the desire to even play the game harder to keep hold of, especially since developers actually don't intervene and take the inaccurate ones down.

Not to mention, the world itself is rich with lore, giving players all the incentive to run around and explore ... just to be killed by some nonsense and lose literally all their hard work up until this point. It's a nightmare to even succeed in playing through it once, much less if you're trying to get a platinum, and I wish genuine luck to anyone who even thought about trying to get the trophy.

Unless you're my fiancé, then have fun getting your next platinum.

2 Resident Evil (2002)

What the Dog Doin'?

The Resident Evil games are survival horror icons, notorious for defining the entire genre with the undead ... and with lots and lots of backtracking. Seriously, the sheer amount of backtracking in these games is insane on its own, but if you look at the older titles — specifically, the 2002 Gamecube remake of the first Resident Evil — you'll see that the backtracking is simply meant to waste your time.

Here's an actual example: when you first enter the Spencer Mansion, you are limited on where you can go until you can unlock more doors with various keys. One of these keys can be found upstairs in a room full of knight statues, but if you take the key, these statues activate, trap you, then slowly roll over and kill you.

10 Horror Games Inspired by Stephen King

The Master of Horror himself may not have many games directly based on his work, but there are plenty of games directly inspired by his work instead.

In order to get the key, you have to find the Imitation Key to replace it and trick the trap — which, a little odd, but sure — and this fake key can be found on the other side of the mansion, outside, condensed and hidden in a dog collar (which you can't even get until you find the dog whistle, which is in the small library on the opposite side of the mansion). I am dying to learn who the architect was for the Spencer Mansion, because the leaps of logic to solving these puzzles and finding the different knightly-themed keys are outright fascinating.

This kind of nonsense isn't exclusive to the first game, nor even the classic titles — it's in the modern games and remakes. Sure, the remakes try to provide a little continuity to explain why things are so oddly designed (such as RPD being a museum prior to being a police station), but that honestly doesn't make anything less weird.

1 Silent Hill 2

It Was Right Behind Me, Wasn't it?

Listen, I have made my love for the Silent Hill games painfully clear time and time again, but I will be the first to tell you that these games will full-on disrespect your time. Silent Hill 2 (and, of course, this extends to the Silent Hill 2 Remake) comes to mind in particular, with all kinds of ... quirks ... that will eat away at your time.

In the original, people tend to think of the clunky gameplay (such as with the Abstract Daddy and Eddie boss fights), but in the remake, what I remember clear as day is the Otherworld version of Brookhaven Hospital. In this area, you have a box that resides in the center of the room, locked in three different ways — you have to find the means to unlock them (ie a key or a code) in different areas of the hospital.

However, when you finally get everything, come back to the box, and open it, you'll see that there's actually nothing inside. The face that James Sunderland made in that cutscene was one-to-one with the face I made when I first realized all the running around and dying that I had been doing was for nothing. Even better, there's cloth that's draped all along the walls, and the one behind James falls down, revealing the very thing we needed to progress ... sitting there the entire time.

On the bright side, the noise-work and soundtrack are the best in horror gaming, so no matter how much time you wasted, the sound design slapped the entire time.