So here's the set-up: You play an attractive young girl who is shipped off to live at somebody else's house after the tragic death of her parents. But instead of making it to the new home, she (and her dog) gets stuck in a giant spooky boarding school run by the kids from Lord of the Flies. Apparently the kids have the whole school wrapped around their little finger, so it's up to you to avoid the grown-ups and do what the Aristocrats of the Red Crayon want. While the kids may be good at running the school, they aren't up to the task of keeping the electricity on ... so you will be fumbling around in the dark for much of the game. The rest of the game takes place in this large spooky building that is run by kids and deranged adults. This certainly sounds like a set-up for a great horror game, right? Well it's not; because Rule of Rose has no scares, not even one little one. This game is completely scare-free.

It's not for a lack of trying; the game tries its hardest to give you the creeps. Instead of fighting the children, most of the enemies are midget-like creatures with masks on. From time to time you will run into enemies with large goat heads on, or a chicken head, or whatever creepy farm animal they could think of. But none of this is very scary; in fact, I found myself laughing throughout most of the game. If it wasn't for the long, boring fetch quests that the game insists you go on, I would recommend this as one of the campiest games of all time. But it's just not good; it's a boring game with no scares whatsoever. If you like the idea of constantly backtracking through one boring corridor after another then Rule of Rose may be for you, but if you actually want to play something that's scary, then perhaps you should check out Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle instead.

There's a common misconception when it comes to horror video games (or really horror in general). Some people seem to think that just as long as you have copious amounts of blood and gore in your game that automatically makes it a scary horror game. But that's just not true. If that were true then Time Killers would be the scariest game of all time (followed closely by 50 Cent: Bulletproof). The truth is that to be scary you don't need any gore at all, just look at how effective movies like Psycho and The Exorcist were with minimal blood and guts (but tons of pea soup). The same is true for video games, I personally felt that the story and effects in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a lot scarier than Mortal Kombat or Dead Rising.

Splatterhouse may be that game that convinces everybody that I'm not just whistling Dixie when it comes this theory about what is and isn't scary. Now here's a game that has buckets full of blood, guts, slime, puss and everything else, but none of it is scary. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is one of the least scary games of all time (hey, I actually DID say it's one of the least scary games of all time, that's why it's on this list). Instead of getting genuine scares, we get wet maggots and blind guys with shotguns. No offense, but there's nothing scary about a blind guy with a shotgun. A blind guy driving you around ... now THAT'S scary! To compensate for the complete lack of scares, Namco decided to fill the game with more blood than you can dump on a football field full of Carrie impersonators. I hate to tell you this, but blood by itself isn't scary. It's how you get the blood that is scary.

To be fair, Zombies Ate My Neighbors wasn't trying to be scary so much as campy. In truth the game is a parody of all of those silly drive-in monster movies that came out in the 1950s and 60s. As an homage to those classic midnight movies Zombies Ate My Neighbors does an excellent job, it's easily one of the best games on this list (and a must-play 16-bit game that still holds up remarkably well). But the game itself is never scary, even though it features flesh eating zombies and 3D glasses. I don't think I'm asking too much to expect a few scares out of my parody horror game, it seems like that would be par for the course. The closest example I can think of would be something like the Scream movies, which were clearly influenced by the glut of silly horror movies from the 1980s and 90s. But even though Scream was a silly parody of the genre, it also had a few real scares in it. Why Konami couldn't do that with Zombies Ate My Neighbors is beyond me, and that's why we feel it deserves to be included in this list of un-scary scary games.

To Konami's credit the midnight movies from the 1950s and 60s weren't exactly full of real scares, most of the time they were nothing more than low-budget films with B-grade actors and a silly monster. So while I have your attention, perhaps we should try and figure out just why these old school drive-in monster movies weren't very scary. You would think that something like The Blob would generate some tension; after all, we're talking about a giant slime creature that grows bigger with each person it devours. And what about Attack of the 50 Foot Woman? You would think that a woman that large would have an entire theater scared senseless. Heck, I'm afraid of a five foot woman, let alone fifty feet. And who could forget Plan 9 From Outer Space? The only thing scary about that was Ed Wood's fetish for wearing women's clothing. These are all solid concepts that were marred by a complete lack of scares. What the heck was wrong with the movie makers of the 1950s? Why couldn't they make scary movies? And more importantly, why am I spending this much time talking about movies when this is a Top 10 List dealing with video games? Let's move on and pretend that this never happened.

I'm sure some might argue that Bullet Witch isn't really supposed to be a "horror" game, but it has the word "witch" right in the title and as far as I'm concerned the witch costume is the penultimate Halloween costume (for what it's worth it's just below the slutty witch, which just happens to be scary and sexy all at the same time). I don't care what anybody says, if it has a witch in it then it has to be a horror ... that's just how it works. Take The Wizard of Oz as an example, I don't think there's a person the planet that will say that this isn't one of the best scary movies of all time. The whole thing is full of creepy characters, including a talking machine, a lion that walks on its hind legs, and Dorothy the Witch Slayer! Talk about a scary movie, if you're not already freaked out by all of those little people then the flying monkeys are going to send you right over the edge. Forget The Exorcist, The Wizard of Oz is the greatest horror movie of all time.

But I digress, Bullet Witch is more than just a terrible action game ... it's a terrible action game that is rooted in the horror genre. On one hand it has a slutty witch going around with tight fitting clothes (which is a plus), but she's stuck shooting up legions of zombie characters that all look exactly the same. Worse yet, from time to time she's actually shooting up flying brains, which is neither scary nor sexy. Even when the game lays it on thick it's hard to take the game seriously as a scary game. Take for example a scene about half way through where the "good witch" is standing on the top of a moving airplane taking on two flying monsters. How can I possibly take that seriously when you and I both know that she would get blown right off of the airplane if she actually tried that? The only thing scary about this game is the fact that somebody actually thought it was a good idea to release this ugly pile of garbage.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies is scary for a number of reasons, the least of which is because this terrible action game was the first game Rare released on the Xbox after being bought up by Microsoft. The scariest part of this game is that not one, but two different companies expected people to pay full price for this game. What's worse, the game actually controls a lot like Geometry Wars ... only without all the charm and excitement. You play an incredibly stupid looking kid who is dating a girlfriend that is way out of his league. That's not scary, it's downright unbelievable. I'm used to my games lying to me, but expecting this snot-nosed little kid to have a girlfriend (let alone THAT girlfriend) is asking too much. Next you'll be telling me that eating mushrooms will make me grow big and reading porno magazines will help me regain my lost stamina.

But as preposterous as Grabbed by the Ghoulies is, it's nowhere near as stupid as that name. Grabbed by the Ghoulies? It's impossible to be scared by something called a "ghoulie." Just look at those four terrible Ghoulies movies, there's not one scare in those toilet loving muppets. And don't even get me started on the Groovie Goolies, not the 1970s cartoon or the punk band. Ghoulies just aren't scary, so I'm not worried about being grabbed by one. If Rare really wanted to make this game scary they would have called it Grabbed by a Catholic Priest, but I suppose that kind of topical humor is forbidden when you're making your first game on a new platform. You know you're game is in trouble when the Transylvania level in Duck Tales is scarier than your horror game, and that's why we feel that Grabbed by the Ghoulies deserves to be at the top (or is it bottom?) of our list of the least scary games of all time.