The Top Five Scariest Spiders in Gaming

Written by: Adam "ManKorn" Korenman, CC2K Video Games Editor

I hate spiders. I don’t mean that in the way people “hate” brussel sprouts, or the way Bill Nye “hates” magic*. I hate spiders the way Kratos hates gods: A passionate, burning blood debt that is usually reserved for families in frontier America, or the cast of Justified.

Spiders, or arachnids to you pretentious types, have been a staple of storytelling since humanity learned to speak. From the ancient god Anansi to that sonofabitch hanging around L’l Miss Muffet, our eight-legged enemies dance across the pages of history and nito our nightmares. True, there is a modern movement on the interwebs to relabel these pests as “spiderbros,” a moniker I find both naive and downright dangerous. Know this: A spider would kill your entire family for fun if it weren’t too busy dying underneath my boot.

In video games, spiders represent both standard enemies and boss characters. Some are small and used for grinding, while others are massive abominations of stone and flame. These octopedal wretches make great bad guys because, like aliens and zombies and Nazis, they have no soul. There was once a Wii game where you actually played as a spider, but every known copy of that title was buried in a deep pit and set on fire.

As part of my ongoing war for your attention (and at the urging of my therapist) I will now venture deep into the psychologically tramuatizing world of video game spiders.