I remember one of the scariest games I played at the time being Shadowman for the Dreamcast. I still want to grab a cheap used copy, because I really played it off like "haha this game sucks hah..hah..its so sucky I wont even keep playing...he...heh..." but in reality the whole thing just creeped the hell out of me.
I was like 14 (and a huge wuss, which I still am) and my video game enjoyment at that time came mostly from arcadey titles like Power Stone, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, ect... I liked Resident Evil, but that plot is very B-Movie, so I knew what I was getting into and knew I'd be scared.
But I remember getting ShadowMan and not expecting in the slightest how messed up it would be. I vivdly remember getting to the 1st serial killer, finally beating him, and the combo of really not knowing what I was doing, and just being totally creeped out by the game made me stop. The voodoo aspects, the murder talk, and especially the babies crying in the shadow world all just really got to me.
More recently though, Dead Space, which has been discussed to death scared the hell out of me.
But now I'm going to make my case for Alan Wake. I know I'm a pussy, but man Alan Wake scared the fuck out of me, but in a much more non-conventional way. The narration Alan would give REALLY heightened things, and the fact that most of the time it was just me and a flashlight in the woods really, really creeped me out. The overwhelming feeling of "this is all just NOT RIGHT" never left me, and even though the enemies and monsters never became too DIFFICULT, I always was pretty on edge.
It does an absolutely phenominal job - one I really don't think Ive felt anywhere else - of gradually getting you more and more uneasy, and then making you run on pure adrenaline. If you ever stopped and really looked at how little danger you were in sometimes, it broke that insane immersion, but that didn't happen with me until the second playthrough.
The most tense, "scary" (in the sense that I was just all about escape, fearing for my life. Not the horrified sense) and awesome thing Ive ever done in video games happened in Alan Wake.
Near the end, when Jagger is basicially throwing everything from the lake at you, I have never felt that "scramble to stay alive" feeling ever before. It was so, so intense. I had headphones on, it was pitch black, and that sound of the swirling winds, the metal creaking and then a fucking BOAT landing an inch away from me was just so insane. That, coupled with the actual use of the DODGE, just created this incredibly immersive feeling of trying to get up that hill, and boats, cars, planes all being hurled at me, and me scrabling to avoid getting crushed.
It really was just so perfectly done. I realized on my second playthrough how you can kind of just walk through it all - but in that moment, the first time it happened, and my instincts told me to RUN, having to dodge and hear everything just going to hell was so amazing.
mxmarks on
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I don't know if I'd consider "flying lizard monster" and "jumping monkey man" more weird and random than "double-legged mannequin" or "walking intercourse bed".
SH 2 was the first one I played, and when I went back to play the first one, I actually thought it was quite mundane overall.
SH1 was scary mostly because of when it was released. It was, at the time, the best looking "creepy" survival horror game out.
For a long time, I couldn't handle scary games. The chase scene at the end of Parasite Eve terrified me when I was 13, and I was only watching a friend playing it. I've since watched it again and I laugh at my younger self.
Dead Space and RE4 helped me overcome some of these anxiety problems. It crystallized the concept in my mind that, as the gamer, you are normally orders of magnitude smarter than the enemies, and with a little practice you're usually much more dangerous to them than they are to you. After a couple of playthroughs, you suddenly realize that you are Rorschach: You are not stranded on the Ishimura with the necromorphs; the necromorphs are stranded on the Ishimura with you.
Silent Hill 1's success is just firstly, the music, which i don't believe was topped in either of the sequels. The Atmosphere and environmental effects, which while got more impressive as the sequels went on, there's just something about the crappy fog effects and rust world of the original that beats the cleaner graphics of the newer versions. The monsters were just better in Silent Hill 1, because they were so damn weird and random, giant lizard one minute, moth monster the next. Bizarre.
The opening music; "Hometown". Even now after years of not having played SH1, I get full body goosebumps from it. There's something so horrible in its overall tone that insists on dread. And again, knowing the full story of the town and then hearing it once more... particularly with lyrics.
Edit: CORRECTION! Hometown is actually SH3 - but it uses a small bit of Akira Yamaoka's composition from the start as a lead-in before the lyrical section. SH1 opening is purely instrumental... but still amazing.
MrVyngaard on
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
I think while in the end I will agree that the Silent Hill series has done the most to scare me ever, my first real experienced with being scared in a game would have to be, as much as a smirk when I admit it, Hexen.
The game itself is not all that scary. I was young though, and I have vivid memories of my friend and I playing it in the pitch dark at like 1 or 2 in the morning. The game had atmosphere, and it seemed enemies would just appear out of no where. I remember one point specifically, though I cannot remember if it was from Heretic (the prequel) or Hexen, in which some dark spellcaster made mention of our souls belonging to him. It hit just at the right moment - it was dark in the room, and we were both silent already, both engrossed in what we were playing. When that voice came on we both jumped, and kind of looked at each other wide-eyed.
I know it isn't the scariest thing ever, but I think scary is a subjective term. Would I jump now? No. I have the memory though, and that is something great.
Resident Evil 2. Played it straight from afternoon throughout the entire night when I was a lot younger. Holy shit those one way mirrors were trouble, and the fixed camera did NOT help.
Also, Dead Space. I had 2 girls watching me play it with the lights off and their screaming and jumping added a lot of tension and made it a really awesome experience
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
No 3d PS1 game has aged well. Just some have aged better than others.
Apart from the voice acting, I think SH 1 has aged pretty well. I still think the *gameplay* is probably the best in the series, even if I'm not huge a fan of the story. But it actually has an enjoyable sense of progression, sort of like the early Resident Evils. The atmosphere holds up well, despite (and in some cases because of) the really grimy graphics.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Resident Evil 2. Played it straight from afternoon throughout the entire night when I was a lot younger. Holy shit those one way mirrors were trouble, and the fixed camera did NOT help.
Also, Dead Space. I had 2 girls watching me play it with the lights off and their screaming and jumping added a lot of tension and made it a really awesome experience
The game as a whole was not scary, I remember playing the opening and being quite creeped out, but it faded as I made my way into the police station, BUT that licker two way mirror sequence damn near killed me.
Clive Barkers : Undying creeped me out in a big way.
The opening 20 minutes made me jump a few times.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
I really don't consider Dead Space a scary game. Yes it made me poop my pants a lot for the first hour or so, but the scares got really repetitive. Oh look a necromorph corpse lying in a corridor that I have to walk down, I wonder if it's going to jump up at me with a loud noise when I get close.
I haven't read the whole thread, so I dunno if anyone else has mentioned it, but I'd definitely say any good roguelike. For me, its been tiled stone soup.
You're just trotting around on a character you've spent hours and hours on... and you fall down a pit, or get zapped to the abyss, or anything like this. All the sudden, you're freaking out, using everything you saved up to use on a rainy day, praying you can get somewhere safer before something rounds a corner and one shots you.
"Just three more steps, and I'm out of the abyss. Ohh god don't kill me. Two more..."
Maybe my brain is weird though, because I never found amnesia/silent hill/RE/etc games scary at all.
In REmake, I had to run all the way from the mansion to the cabin back to the mansion and had one herb and no ink ribbons. It was absolutely fucking terrifying.
I really don't consider Dead Space a scary game. Yes it made me poop my pants a lot for the first hour or so, but the scares got really repetitive. Oh look a necromorph corpse lying in a corridor that I have to walk down, I wonder if it's going to jump up at me with a loud noise when I get close.
yeah, the jump scares lose their punch about halfway into the game and don't have any effect at all on replays
dead space is a fun game, but it sort of falls flat as far as horror is concerned
everything is so loud
"BLAH BLOOGAH BLAH" goes every monster, as shrieking violins and smashing metal noises play in the background over the general mechanical noises of the ship
Don't really play many horror games but I played until the first corner of amnesia and ran away
What really got me in the demo was the way the game wrestles control from you sometimes. The first time I tripped I knew this game was beyond my horror limit.
I really don't consider Dead Space a scary game. Yes it made me poop my pants a lot for the first hour or so, but the scares got really repetitive. Oh look a necromorph corpse lying in a corridor that I have to walk down, I wonder if it's going to jump up at me with a loud noise when I get close.
yeah, the jump scares lose their punch about halfway into the game and don't have any effect at all on replays
dead space is a fun game, but it sort of falls flat as far as horror is concerned
everything is so loud
"BLAH BLOOGAH BLAH" goes every monster, as shrieking violins and smashing metal noises play in the background over the general mechanical noises of the ship
Dead Space's atmosphere is what remains once you get past the inherent freakiness of the game. I was really struggling to press forward for the first 1/3 of the game or so on my first playthrough. It was a pretty big test of my horror-gaming mettle, but once I learned I was the worst thing that ever happened to the necromorphs I still enjoyed the sound and environment design for how well executed they were.
Never played the Silent Hill games past the school of SH1. I was maybe only 15 or so at the time, and creeping around in the dark was just too much for me then.
I may be able to handle it now, but games that base most of their scariness around omnipresent darkness are still the biggest challenge for me.
I really don't consider Dead Space a scary game. Yes it made me poop my pants a lot for the first hour or so, but the scares got really repetitive. Oh look a necromorph corpse lying in a corridor that I have to walk down, I wonder if it's going to jump up at me with a loud noise when I get close.
yeah, the jump scares lose their punch about halfway into the game and don't have any effect at all on replays
dead space is a fun game, but it sort of falls flat as far as horror is concerned
everything is so loud
"BLAH BLOOGAH BLAH" goes every monster, as shrieking violins and smashing metal noises play in the background over the general mechanical noises of the ship
Dead Space's atmosphere is what remains once you get past the inherent freakiness of the game. I was really struggling to press forward for the first 1/3 of the game or so on my first playthrough. It was a pretty big test of my horror-gaming mettle, but once I learned I was the worst thing that ever happened to the necromorphs I still enjoyed the sound and environment design for how well executed they were.
Never played the Silent Hill games past the school of SH1. I was maybe only 15 or so at the time, and creeping around in the dark was just too much for me then.
I may be able to handle it now, but games that base most of their scariness around omnipresent darkness are still the biggest challenge for me.
the atmosphere doesn't amount to much when the settings are nearly all sterile metal corridors which are mostly safe as can be aside from the all-too-occasional shrieking abomination
and when you do run across something freaky, it's usually so over the top that it doesn't leave much of an impression
i'd recommend giving SH2 a spin if you can, since that's probably the grand champion of oppressive environmental design (though for some reason it's always SH4 that's consistently given me night terrors)
Also another SS2 thing, the first invisible spider you encounter nearly gave me a heart attack.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
STALKER, far and away. The only game that has ever made me jump out of my chair in alarm. Two specific instances which STALKER veterans all know full well.
Yeah, I've been playing a fuckton of STALKER this week. Not outright scary most of the time, but a few areas and enemies always give me a brief jump. A poltergiest in lab X16 actually literally made me jump about an inch off my seat just from making a loud metal clang right by me. Surround sound headphones suck.
Stalker has some jumpy moments. But like every other game for me the tense atmosphere fades after playing through it a lot.
The first Controller in the underground was freaky, and the random times when a bloodsucker pops up can sometimes get me. I remember in Call of Pripyat the first time I encountered a Burer was scary. It's in like a train station or something underground like that. You enter the area through door on a balcony above a big open area with some train cars in it and suddenly some shit flies at me. That made me jump, and I'm trying to look for the source in the dark and then this short ugly fucker stops me cold.
I really hope more straight up horror games (good ones) come out like Amnesia.
mrmr on
Practice Round, my blog where I talk (mostly) about comics.
Also, I should note that Stalker pins down atmosphere like absolutely nothing I've ever played before, and in the case of the areas that they want to be fucking scary, they nail it. The background noise is always tense but never overbearing.
Dead Space I am looking at you.
It'd be a stretch to call it flat-out scary, but Cryostasis - at least about the first half of it - nails a frozen, lonely, claustrophobic atmosphere like few games I've ever seen. It did have jump moments and mindfucks, but it really comes back to the ice and isolation; somehow it got to me more than most games usually do. I actually felt cold while playing it.
Then it chucks SMGs at you and bad guys come out of the woodwork. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
The engineer pounding on the glass still got me to jump, however.
I remember playing through Silent Hill for the first time, with a friend of mine, in the middle of the night. We had played the demo and vowed to rent it once it came out. More or less, I became quite engrossed (and fascinated...it's still one of my favorite series to date), and he passed out on the couch.
I'm in the school, in Dark Silent Hill, and he suddenly fucking snores. I must've jumped 4 feet in the air, pissing my pants the whole way up and back down again. Sweet Christ, was that frightening. One of my biggest scares ever.
I was stoked when I heard the guy who designed the Cradle was also the same guy who made Fort Frolic for Bioshock.
I believe he also designed the zombie town level for HALF-LIFE 2.
If this guy has made so much video game awesomeness, why is he typically known only as "The guy who..." instead of behind a household name? Poor bastard.
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I was like 14 (and a huge wuss, which I still am) and my video game enjoyment at that time came mostly from arcadey titles like Power Stone, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, ect... I liked Resident Evil, but that plot is very B-Movie, so I knew what I was getting into and knew I'd be scared.
But I remember getting ShadowMan and not expecting in the slightest how messed up it would be. I vivdly remember getting to the 1st serial killer, finally beating him, and the combo of really not knowing what I was doing, and just being totally creeped out by the game made me stop. The voodoo aspects, the murder talk, and especially the babies crying in the shadow world all just really got to me.
More recently though, Dead Space, which has been discussed to death scared the hell out of me.
But now I'm going to make my case for Alan Wake. I know I'm a pussy, but man Alan Wake scared the fuck out of me, but in a much more non-conventional way. The narration Alan would give REALLY heightened things, and the fact that most of the time it was just me and a flashlight in the woods really, really creeped me out. The overwhelming feeling of "this is all just NOT RIGHT" never left me, and even though the enemies and monsters never became too DIFFICULT, I always was pretty on edge.
It does an absolutely phenominal job - one I really don't think Ive felt anywhere else - of gradually getting you more and more uneasy, and then making you run on pure adrenaline. If you ever stopped and really looked at how little danger you were in sometimes, it broke that insane immersion, but that didn't happen with me until the second playthrough.
The most tense, "scary" (in the sense that I was just all about escape, fearing for my life. Not the horrified sense) and awesome thing Ive ever done in video games happened in Alan Wake.
It really was just so perfectly done. I realized on my second playthrough how you can kind of just walk through it all - but in that moment, the first time it happened, and my instincts told me to RUN, having to dodge and hear everything just going to hell was so amazing.
SH1 was scary mostly because of when it was released. It was, at the time, the best looking "creepy" survival horror game out.
It did not age well.
Dead Space and RE4 helped me overcome some of these anxiety problems. It crystallized the concept in my mind that, as the gamer, you are normally orders of magnitude smarter than the enemies, and with a little practice you're usually much more dangerous to them than they are to you. After a couple of playthroughs, you suddenly realize that you are Rorschach: You are not stranded on the Ishimura with the necromorphs; the necromorphs are stranded on the Ishimura with you.
The opening music; "Hometown". Even now after years of not having played SH1, I get full body goosebumps from it. There's something so horrible in its overall tone that insists on dread. And again, knowing the full story of the town and then hearing it once more... particularly with lyrics.
Edit: CORRECTION! Hometown is actually SH3 - but it uses a small bit of Akira Yamaoka's composition from the start as a lead-in before the lyrical section. SH1 opening is purely instrumental... but still amazing.
I jumped A LOT.
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The game itself is not all that scary. I was young though, and I have vivid memories of my friend and I playing it in the pitch dark at like 1 or 2 in the morning. The game had atmosphere, and it seemed enemies would just appear out of no where. I remember one point specifically, though I cannot remember if it was from Heretic (the prequel) or Hexen, in which some dark spellcaster made mention of our souls belonging to him. It hit just at the right moment - it was dark in the room, and we were both silent already, both engrossed in what we were playing. When that voice came on we both jumped, and kind of looked at each other wide-eyed.
I know it isn't the scariest thing ever, but I think scary is a subjective term. Would I jump now? No. I have the memory though, and that is something great.
You really need to quit this all or nothing fact claim you keep doing.
Also, Dead Space. I had 2 girls watching me play it with the lights off and their screaming and jumping added a lot of tension and made it a really awesome experience
The game as a whole was not scary, I remember playing the opening and being quite creeped out, but it faded as I made my way into the police station, BUT that licker two way mirror sequence damn near killed me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m5m4yoO7uY
2 Minutes 53 into this video, cheaper laugh, cause, yeah, it's a girl.
also, im sure it's been said already, but I don't wanna read the whole thread (SORRY!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxkzCre3XJY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAoDU9pyv7A
Xbox | x Dredgen Yor x |
The opening 20 minutes made me jump a few times.
You're just trotting around on a character you've spent hours and hours on... and you fall down a pit, or get zapped to the abyss, or anything like this. All the sudden, you're freaking out, using everything you saved up to use on a rainy day, praying you can get somewhere safer before something rounds a corner and one shots you.
"Just three more steps, and I'm out of the abyss. Ohh god don't kill me. Two more..."
Maybe my brain is weird though, because I never found amnesia/silent hill/RE/etc games scary at all.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
yeah, the jump scares lose their punch about halfway into the game and don't have any effect at all on replays
dead space is a fun game, but it sort of falls flat as far as horror is concerned
everything is so loud
"BLAH BLOOGAH BLAH" goes every monster, as shrieking violins and smashing metal noises play in the background over the general mechanical noises of the ship
What really got me in the demo was the way the game wrestles control from you sometimes. The first time I tripped I knew this game was beyond my horror limit.
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Dead Space's atmosphere is what remains once you get past the inherent freakiness of the game. I was really struggling to press forward for the first 1/3 of the game or so on my first playthrough. It was a pretty big test of my horror-gaming mettle, but once I learned I was the worst thing that ever happened to the necromorphs I still enjoyed the sound and environment design for how well executed they were.
Never played the Silent Hill games past the school of SH1. I was maybe only 15 or so at the time, and creeping around in the dark was just too much for me then.
I may be able to handle it now, but games that base most of their scariness around omnipresent darkness are still the biggest challenge for me.
the atmosphere doesn't amount to much when the settings are nearly all sterile metal corridors which are mostly safe as can be aside from the all-too-occasional shrieking abomination
and when you do run across something freaky, it's usually so over the top that it doesn't leave much of an impression
i'd recommend giving SH2 a spin if you can, since that's probably the grand champion of oppressive environmental design (though for some reason it's always SH4 that's consistently given me night terrors)
The ReDeads in Ocarina of Time are the scariest things in any video game.
Origin is the exact same as my Steam, in case you're needing a Support or Assault in BF3.
Also another SS2 thing, the first invisible spider you encounter nearly gave me a heart attack.
Origin is the exact same as my Steam, in case you're needing a Support or Assault in BF3.
They catch you off guard.
Like the giant alien shark thing in Half Life. That is terrifying.
I've played Ocarnia of Time, like, 4 times, and I still hate going down into the area with the fuckton of ReDeads to get the one ocarina song.
That said, Amnesia is also terrifying. Everyone should at least try the demo.
it's a real bummer, i liked the penumbra series a lot
The first Controller in the underground was freaky, and the random times when a bloodsucker pops up can sometimes get me. I remember in Call of Pripyat the first time I encountered a Burer was scary. It's in like a train station or something underground like that. You enter the area through door on a balcony above a big open area with some train cars in it and suddenly some shit flies at me. That made me jump, and I'm trying to look for the source in the dark and then this short ugly fucker stops me cold.
I really hope more straight up horror games (good ones) come out like Amnesia.
Dead Space I am looking at you.
Then it chucks SMGs at you and bad guys come out of the woodwork. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
I'm in the school, in Dark Silent Hill, and he suddenly fucking snores. I must've jumped 4 feet in the air, pissing my pants the whole way up and back down again. Sweet Christ, was that frightening. One of my biggest scares ever.
If this guy has made so much video game awesomeness, why is he typically known only as "The guy who..." instead of behind a household name? Poor bastard.
I'd say that Vagrant Story has it beat by a country mile.