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Games and Fear
Happy Halloween, game folks. There are a couple of creepy-themed game articles floating around the web today, and they're all lists ... disturbingly. eToyChest gives us the top five most horrifying moments in games. Next Generation offers a ten-point guide to inspiring fear in games. And finally, GameTrailers.com has an entertaining top ten scariest games list, complete with video. Even if I don't agree with some of their placements within the list, I think their #1 is a pretty accurate pick.
Max Payne, the crying baby hallucination level... scares the crap out of me still.
And the first time I played Quake 1 home, alone, in the dark.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I don't think you hit an alien till about the 3rd level, but it was in a dark hallway and he came out of a hidden spot.
I think I crapped my 256 color, 320 x 240 pants.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
F.E.A.R. is a scary FPS. The horror did sag a bit in the middle by not being there as much. I'm going to finish playing and get the expansion pack.
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Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 3.6).
But a couple of the scariest moments I can think of come from first person shooters. Like the discovery of the Flood in Halo, or in Unreal where you walk down a hallway and all of the lights systematically shut down, leaving you to face a Skaarj in the dark!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Well, one of TFAs is not responding, another requires flash...
But I will say that there is NOTHING scarier than "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Because eventually, if you keep messing around in the dark, it's going to happen... and only your imagination limits how terrible a grue is. This game experience was why I demanded my parents install a nightlight.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
OMG Ponies!!!
The little shadow child in the first Silent Hill, you couldn't kill it, and it didn't hurt you, it just followed you around. Creepy.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
When I was in grade 4, I got addicted to last half of darkness. that game scared the shit out of me, especially with it's PC Speaker sound effects...which were eerie on their own.
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You know, a game doesn't have to make you jump to be scary.
A great example would be Silent Hill. Oh sure, I jumped here and there, but nothing big. It wasn't until hours AFTER the game, that I got creeped out. It affected me for DAYS afterword.
I stopped when I got to that sick and twisted school-house. I kept expecting things to jump out at me. I was convenced that just around the next corner, I would run into a hidious boss that would take all 5 of my bullets and then eat me alive.
I just can't get up the courage to play it again.
On the other hand, I no longer find Doom 3 scary after Silent Hill.
I haven't gamed in a good many years (the occasional hop onto the 'family' PC to play my kids' copy of The Sims doesn't count), so I'm sure I've missed out. However, the only *truly* frightening experience I ever had was while playing the Doom TC Aliens conversion, in the dark, with a good set of headphones. I can't count how many times I jumped while playing that game, or held my breath while I hesitated to turn a certain corner.
So, to anyone who remembers the Doom mod I mentioned above.. do many modern games stack up to that experience?
Method of processing duck feet
Hearing those skinless howler money things come ratling up the drainpipes *still* freaks me out a little.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
So scary!
-
Silent Hill affected me for days too, I was like 12, I played it late at night with the lights off, by myself...I didn't want to go in my room for weeks
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
We don't go there anymore.
Alone. In the dark.
Nuff @#$%ing said.
Scariest moment for me was walking into a room and seeing 8 huge zombies lumbering towards me. It wasn't the zombies that scared me as I found myself completely unable to attack them. I could run around helplessly, but I couldn't fight back. I freaked out thinking my controller had broken and swapped in a matter of seconds. When that one didn't work I became terrified that my first player port was broken. I had iterated through my controllers twice before I finally died.
Flash, "This can't be happening!"
Great, now I have to go play the game again.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
5. 7th Guest
The maze section frayed your nerves like nothing else. The kicker? Unlike the rest of the game, there were no cheap scares. Just you, concrete, and 10 feet of visibility.
4. Last Half of Darkness
Dear lord, there were so many creepy moments and genuinely horrifying images. The little girl in the attic, the "GET OUT OF MY CHAIR!!"... too many to count.
3. From what people tell me, System Shock would be here... if I had actually played it. For now, Silent Hill 2 will suffice.
2. Half Life 2 (Ravenholm)
Not as scary as the other stuff here, but there's an honest kind of dread that occurs when you hear the slither of those poison headhumpers. Damn, I hate those things.
1. Doom (Cyberdemon)
Doom was probably the first game to transport me completely inside it-- and if the plentiful dark hallways and invisible demons weren't enough, you reach the Cyberdemon level where you learn the hard way the meaning of "blink and you're dead".
Since when has the "iD" in "iD Software" been pronounced like the word "it" with a "t".
Picture it: 2am in a thunderstorm after having drank WAYY too much coffee. It's exam routine for finals, and you're playing Metal Gear Solid 2:Sons of Liberty... you're hopelessly addicted to it, and desperately need to finish the damned game so you can get some studying done... you're near the end and... the game starts going all crazy.
Suddenly the screen turns itself off and then on, and then the colonel says "You've been playing the game a long time, haven't you?"
I nearly had a fucking heart attack...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
I'll never forget the "licker" jumping through the one-way mirror in Resident Evil 2. Of course I was playing late at night...thanks for the heartattack at age 16 Capcom :)
Feargames that completely scared the crap out of me: Alone in the Dark 4, PS1 (the PS2 was probably scarier, with better graphics?) Fear Effect 1 & 2, though iirc, the first was more intense. The first Dino Crisis. Resident Evil 2 on the PS1 (it was one of the first 3D games i ever played, back when i was 13-14) --- Horror games that were not ultra-spooky, but still outrank most games out there: Silent Hills (the first one deserves to be in the first category). Cold Fear. The remaining Resident Evils, but especially the 1st, redone for the GCN. --- Doom3 was pretty scary, for about 10 minits. Too bad it became a -rinse-repeat- sorta game. Extermination, one of the launch titles in Europe for the PS2. It had potential for _WAY_ more than that. As far as i can remember, this is it.
Lots of scary games, but I particularly remember playing Alone in the Dark, well... in the dark, and the music and ambiance was excellent despite the old graphics. More recently, doom3 is scary in a different, monster-suddenly-jumps-out-of-the-shadows-when-you -least-expect-it kinda way.
Alien vs. predator also comes to mind.. when the motion sensor starts beeping faster and faster and you can't see a thing and before you know some aliens are kickin' the hell out of you.. just like in the movies (first two I mean.. the good ones).
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
So you were 12 and played a game rated M(17+)? Somebody's parents didn't check the rating.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Circumcision is child abuse.
That's when it chose to jump up and take a swipe at me. I screamed bloody murder and yanked the power cable from the back of my computer, turned on all the lights in the apartment and didn't turn the damn computer back on until the next day. For serious immersion in a game, Thief is amazing. Much, much more interesting than most of your regular first-person games. Like a lot of people here, I am a huge fan of Half-Life 2 and Ravenholm, though.
I could only play at night, when my parents had gone to bed, so that didn't help.
The Downtown level I believe. I climbed that one lone tower about half way back. I got to the top and experienced some acrophobia and a lurch of panic in my chest as I got close to the edge that first time. That's probably the only time I was actually scared in a video game.
Man, that was great!
Carl
Shit better not happen!
I swear, every time you turned your back, a pipe wielding zombie would spawn someplace you JUST LOOKED!
A true classic game and pretty scary at times, when you get into the village for the first time when the locals have killed the cops - that was scary.
As was the bit where you have to kill the zombies who are chasing you and Ashley in the big truck, it's them getting you from behind that get me...
Oh! and when those walking things are suffling along in a really scary way and you can shot them all you want but they just don't seem to want to die...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
It's not iD Software it's id Software and it has always been pronounced just like the word it comes from:
id -noun Psychoanalysis
the part of the psyche, residing in the unconscious, that is the source of instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle and are modified by the ego and the superego before they are given overt expression.
I've yet to find a game (or series) that freaks me out as much as the Project Zero games.
I mean, Silent Hill? Resident Evil? I have WEAPONS! Project Zero... a camera, a bloody old camera with no film.
And that insane ability for them to put dolls everywhere that don't move...
then there's that one that catches your eye, but doesn't move...
until you finally put the camera away and decide it's just another doll.
I've been a gamer for years, and don't find much scary these days, but when I first played the F.E.A.R demo, and that bit when you go down the stairs, when you turn around and theres nothing behind you, and then turn to go down the ladder and that kid is there scared the shit out of me, and then at the bottom of the ladder that guys there.....thats really all that scared me...
If it weren't for Thomas Eddison, we'd all be watching TV in the Dark!
Those old VGA graphics and tinny sounds had more atmosphere than most horror shooters do now. Plus it actually meant something when your Commander was mind controlled like something outta of a horror flick, when you had spent the past week building him up from a rookie...
The first one, in case that isn't obvious...
Thief 1 - One of the last levels inside some house where the interior was all space-disoriented and whatnot. The creatures in that level freaked me out. It's been a while so sorry for the lack of details.
Unreal - All the lights go down and all you (barely) see is this huge creature running towards you. First Skaarj encounter.
Doom 3 - Being able to hear a zombie approach you from behind, coming from only 2 speakers!
Fear - Various parts. When you go down a ladder and see the little girl right in front of you.
Anyone else remember the sounds?
I'm probably the only person who was scared by this, but the first time I went into the Bottom of the Well it scared the hell out of me. False floors, enemies jumping out of nowhere, and some seriously creepy music...
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
that game scared the shit out of me and my brothers and sister. My younger brother would start to cry if we sang the theme that was played when you met the monsters, oh the memories... anyone else play this?
See here for a review: http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/projfire.shtml
another scary and more recent one is System Shock II (haven't played the first one), at some point I even quit playing that game because it was to stressful....
Ok, it wasn't that scary, but there were plenty of chances to jump and get surprised in RTCW.
Aside from San Andreas, probably the last REALLY good single player game I've played.
rhY
Doom 3, halflife 2, the other ones were just "eh".
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
In the first where you have to jump into the tank with the bad mamma-jamma fish. You know its in there somewhere...or in Power Up the first time you encounter a Garg at the underground railway.
Ravenholm in the second (of course) but also Highway 17 and Sandblast, with the antlions erupting out of the ground. Or Anti-Citizen One, the first time you encounter a Strider.
No mention of My Little Pony Runaway Rainbow or Strawberry Shortcake: Summertime Adventure? Inconceivable.
I played SH2 before SH1, so I was freaked out more by it. I was expecting a Resident Evil "jump out and scare you" type game but I got something totally different. There really wasn't a specific scary part, but the audio really helped. The whole freaking game scared me. Even at the start when you are walking down the path in the fog I could swear there were footsteps following me... but when you stop, they stop.
Sometimes while playing I couldn't tell if the controller was rumbling or if I was shaking...
now THAT was creepy, playing the marine, walking around with that hyper-sensitive motionsensor that would bleep everytime a door opened, scared the crap out of me. that, and ravenholm. oh, and xcom.
I started playing this at 2 AM on a Saturday night with the lights off, thinking it wasn't going to be bad. I was busy running around until I heard something yelling "Kill me! NyaaaAAGGH! *whack*". I turn around and nearly jump out of my chair as this crazy hybrid is beating me with a wrench.
After another hour of the game, I was looking over my shoulder in real life every few minutes to ensure no hybrids were after me.
The Ocean House Hotel was one of the creepiest areas I've ever played in a game.
My wife was really into Fatal Frame 2 on the PS2. I usually watched, and I have to say that is one scary game. Hard as hell to find, but a gem if you like scary.
Doom.
Unreal => and the lights go dark... (that was actually the only good gameplay in the whole thing, but it was damn good.)
Aliens vs. Predator -> as the Marine... I was low on ammo, had no armor. Those things I could hear... in the air ducts... in the hallways. Sometimes a door would spontaneously open, but nothing was there. I backed myself into a corner in a large room and waited. I stayed there for half an hour of real time. And I was not bored.
Nobody has mentioned Undying yet. That game scared the crap out of me. The first time I played it my wife made me turn the lights back on because it was scaring her and she wasn't even watching the thing.
... for me personally to find it even remotely scary. I can get creeped out by games in third person, sure (Fatal Frame for example), but I can't get scared to the point I wanna turn the lights on or put the game down unless I'm playing first person, and preferably on a PC (I sit a lot closer to my monitor than I do to my TV, and generally wear headphones).
Games like FEAR and Thief and Arx Fatalis genuinely scare me (Arx Fatalis is a highly under-rated game, and much creepier/downright scary than has been reported), because they are all in first person and presumably because I can much more easily feel like I'm actually there, instead of watching someone else I happen to be controlling. If something happens in the corner of the screen in a third person game, it's more 'off screen' than 'not where you happen to be looking'. If it happens in a first person game, it's 'out of the corner of your eye', and you freak out and spin around to see what it is.
I can get anymore than creeped out while playing a third preson game. There is too much of an obvious "this is just a game" going on. Except of course for the examples like Fatal Frame where you change to first person to take photos. That can get scary, otherwise all they can really do is diturb me.
LucasArts' Rescue on Fractalus - every time the rescued pilot turned out to be an alien and you couldn't see his little green head running towards the ship. A brief silence where you expect the pilot to knock on the door and BAM - he'd jump up in front of your ship's cockpit and scare the bloody life out of you.
Fabulous.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
By far, System Shock 2 was the scariest game I have ever played. It go to the point where I could only play it during the day because at night it was just too scary. The atmosphere in that game was incredible, however, I think it was the sounds that really did it. Walking around the ship and hearing the mutated crewmembers moaning and yelling stuff... that was just creepy. And the monkeys! Those damn psionic monkeys! I remember walking around levels and hearing the little monkey noises off in the distance but not being able to find them until it was too late... Man, that was a scary game.
Treat every day like it's your last; delete your browser cache before going to bed.
Surprised no one's mentioned this yet. When the Colonel at the end turns into a skull face and starts ordering you to turn off the game console, and starts talking gibberish. Then you realize that the main character is simply an allegory for you, the player, and that the designer, Hideo Kojima, has spent the entire game building up to this moment to freak you out of your mind.
At least with "scary games," you're expecting them to be scary. This was a perfectly normal game that suddenly became very different without warning.
FEAR
I played through both doom 3 and fear and I can tell you FEAR freaked me out way more then doom 3 ever did. That damn little girl gave me nightmares...
This is the only game that made me empty a whole magazine into something I knew was dead, just because it scared the crap out of me.
...
Evil story: Years ago, I moved into a sharehouse with a couple of friends. One of them hadn't played HL yet, so I set it up on his machine and left him to it.
A couple of days later, I came home late at night and saw that the door to his room was open.
He was playing one of those freaky bits where you're crawling through badly lit ventilation tunnels, and headcrabs jump out of the dark. He was hunched over the keyboard, right into it, with headphones on, with his back to me...
Naturally, I did what any good friend would do. I sneaked up behind him, grabbed his shoulders and yelled "Hi, Mat!"
He didn't speak to me for a week.
|>
Here be Dragons
While the gameplay is rather boring and scripted, kudos to the audio engineers. The sound is the star of the game.
D
P.S. Oh yes, and looking at yourself in the toilet-mirror next to the marine - HQ.
Maybe for a game like Resident Evil... Have the game recognize a character name you enter. If you could have high-quality voice synthesis, that would be great. Maybe it could use the real name on an online account or something. Otherwise you could at least have a lot of common names pre-recorded. Imagine the game playing 2/3 the way through, then all of a sudden you hear your name whispered softly. So softly you cannot make out what it's saying at first, maybe only during a time when static is playing or something. This goes on about every 5 minutes getting louder until you can probably at least make out your name, then when you look at a monitor with static on it, a grisly face appears and shouts your name...
Here's my own personal list of games that scared me:
:)
Haunted House (Atari 2600)
This one is kind of dumb, but at the time I was really scared of this game. The problem was that you had really limited visibility with your flashlight, and so you were never sure when something would suddenly appear. Today, I'm sure I would laugh if I saw it, but the basic concept still scares me on modern games (Doom 3 particularly).
The Black Cauldron (Apple IIe)
This wasn't a scary game, per se, but there were was one part that never failed to make me jump: In the castle, a guard would appear at random, and this little tune would play. Again, I'm sure I would find it hysterical if I played it now, but for some reason I've always remembered how I hated walking through the halls and never knowing when or where he would appear. Once he was on screen, it wasn't so bad, but the waiting put me on pins and needles.
The 7th Guest
This was the first game that scared me with atmosphere and not jumps. In fact, due to the nature of the game, you knew that you were never in any virtual danger, which I think makes it even more of an accomplishment that it made me so uneasy. I think the best part of this game was the music, which still brings a smile to my face and a shiver to my spine when I hear it. One scene I remember distinctly was the children's play room, but the other one was when you had to go through the maze. The funny thing is that I have often wondered in retrospect what made the maze scary, since thinking about it now it doesn't seem so bad, but someone else mentioned it here in this thread, so I'm not alone!
No One Lives Forever
This is another example of a specific scene, rather than the whole game, but the part where you were underwater and you come upon a large room with limited visibility and see a great white shark swimming around, and then realize you're going to have to go in that room gave me the creeps.
Half Life
Unfortunately, when I replayed this it didn't have the same effect at all, but when I first played this the beginning completely freaked me out. Even though I played it years after it came out it was only the second FPS game I had played, and I guess the fact that I wasn't very good contributed to my fear, but I had to advance an inch at a time, and when the vortigaunts started appearing I didn't know what to do with myself. I guess it was good that I got the genuine Gordon Freeman experience, where I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to deal with all of these monsters that were clearly better at killing me than I was at killing them.
Arx Fatalis
I was really glad to see someone else mention this game, since I think it is one of the scariest games I've ever played, and yet it never gets mentioned. The audio is excellent, and is used to brilliant effect. Many dungeons in fantasy-type games are mildly creepy, but the crypt you have to go into in this game actually made me dread going in, every time, and I was so relieved whenever I left that it took a lot of willpower to go back in. There is this evil temple-type place, with these evil monk people, and it feels perfectly evil, like you are an intruder walking around in a world you're not supposed to know about. I was _so_ glad to finally get out of there, that even though the exit led me to a goblin prison with the screams of tortured prisoners, I felt like I had emerged upon a sunny field.
Doom III
This is the big one. I have never understood why it receives such harsh criticism, but my theory is that there are two reasons I had such a different experience than many: First, I think the average gamer seems to have much more time to play than I, and consequently s/he gets used to it. Secondly, I seem to have the kind of personality where I can really put myself into a situation, and I always forced myself to play this at night with the lights off and the sound up. Whatever the cause, this game scared me more than any game before or since
One of the scariest moments I've had in a video game was also playing Doom I. There was an Aliens mod that replaced the monsters with different aliens from the movies, and replaced a ton of the sounds. Instead of the groan from the guys that threw fire, if the alien that replaced them was near you would hear a couple different sounds. One that would repeat every so often was the motion sensor sound from the Aliens movie. I was running around one of those maze levels in the dark and I couldn't find the guy. I wondered if he didn't get stuck in a wall or was in a hidden room. All of a sudden I decided to turn around and there he was screaming like an alien and attacking me.
One of the earliest games that ever really freaked me out was Myst. I know, that's one game where NOTHING is out to get you. It was just the isolation of walking around and seeing the insanity of Atrus' sons (who you are really helping), the minimalist soundtrack, the decay all around you... I kept thinking that something was just about to get me.
And when you find creepy recordings in some other language? Forget about it.
One of the best horror games, ever. I played it with a friend, and when we went outside I was shivering. It's that good.
It's "just" a text adventure, but it's reach, convincing, creepy, and free. I highl recommend Michael Gentry's Anchorhead . Your husband has just inherited an old family home from a relative he didn't know he had. You've just moved to Anchorhead. Your husband has gotten a position at the local college. You have a simple task: head over to the real estate agent's office and pick up the keys for your house. Unsurprisingly things go downhill as it turns out that your house and the town have a dark past.
For anyone new to interactive fiction, you'll need a free interpreter. I recommend Gargoyle on Windows or Linux and Spatterlight on Mac OS X.
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Old school gamer and no mention of Phantasmagoria.
BTW 7th Guest had a sequal (The 11th Hour).
..Yes, really.
The original Final Fantasy on the NES emulator.
Remember the part when you have to cross the bridge to one of the bosses, (Tiamat I believe) and walking across the bridge you had a 1/64 chance of running into a super-powerful miniboss, Warmech? And the bridge was 64 spaces long.
It's not a horror game, but still a scary moment.
My keyboard took that moment to stick, and I couldn't kill my peLOADING..PLEASE WAIT.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Definitely DOOM. I used to scream so much the first time i played it, that my mom almost threw away my 386. Those damn pink headless bulls ... or whatever they were
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
Played it on my 286, scared the shit out of me.
:( :(
I've actually become more pussy over the years than I used to be.
I played the AVP2 demo and quit on the second level - no monsters for 1 level was long enough for me.
System Shock 2, lasted 5 minutes in the demo and quit - not a chance, scared the shit out of me.
Doom 1, E1M5 - never forget that last room which turned dark.
The suffering, played 5 minutes, quit that one too.
Doom 3, lasted about an hour before using cheats - only way I could reduce the fear factor
Oblivion, some of the dungeons give me the absoloute heebie-geebies, thank god for detect life
I don't recall the particular level, but it involved ghostly voices and bloody footsteps. It perturbed me so much i had to let go the game for the rest of the day, i swear.
Nice to see Fatal Frame 2 on there. That's the one game I never finished because it was just too damn creepy. The constant jolts of adrenaline just wore me down.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
What was up with the spooky white face that every so often would appear in the center of the screen and get larger while screaming at you? That thing scared the hell out of me, especially since it seemed to have no connection to anything going on in the damn game.
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Every other "scary" game relied on shock/BOO! like scares or at most a layer of suspense.
Only the Silent Hill series have been able to make me feel actual fear and dread by playing them. I actually had trouble sleeping after playing them alone at night (I was 15-17 at the time).
You ought to try them (start with 1, maybe 2), but play in the dark, alone and with a good pair of headphones. Preferrably with more than an hour to spare.
Avoid Silent Hill 4 though, it's not scary at all and pretty mediocre.