Video Game Scares

[Robsturgh]

Probably a bit of a misleading title (EDIT: Because its uncontrollable not incontrollable you fucking idiot Rob), this is not a news item or a research project. Just a bit o' discussion.

I find myself in a weird situation where I love horror games, but I get scared pretty easily. This is to the point where games that realistically shouldn't be all that scary cause me to have a bit of a wee sometimes. And genuinely scary games (Silent Hill 2 I'm staring straight into your evil eyes.) cause the shit to just absail out of my ass. This is just an ode to those gaming experiances that we have in games that are both scary and games that ....quite honestly aren't that have caused terror in our hearts. Lets swap stories! Yay!

I remember when I was pretty young, about 11 or 12, and I was playing the first Silent Hill. Now before this game I wasn't much of a fan of horror, but I just wanted to test my psyche to see if I could take it, and plus I heard it was a pretty decent game. I remember near the end of the game, I think I was in the school. Anyway, I was in this blood soaked room, and I wouldnt leave, because I was fucking terrified. I would move so slowly through the game because I'm pretty sure it had already done a number on me. But the main reason I wouldn't move is the music. The fucking music. The music would occasionally stop every now and then, and every now and then there would be the sound of a window smashing, and then absolute silence for what seemed like forever. This would happen in EVERY room I went in, and I knew it was the music, I knew it was everytime, but I still wouldn't move for actual minutes. Then, I enter this one room with a body in, now I was a weapon and ammo whore back in my day so I ran straight for it, picked something up. Another window smash. By this point I was convinced nothing was there so I left the room.

Fucking. Right. There. A bunch of bastards had surrounded me when I left the room. And that was as far in the game as I got. I turned it off right there and then. Haven't played it since.

I've got a bunch of games that have shit me up in one capacity or another, FEAR (I dont like ladders) was a bad one, as was Fallout 3, which was kinda unexpected.

So basically, what games have shit you up beyond compare?

Edited March 27, 2009 by Sterrob

[zero]

Fallout 3 definitely had some recent scares for me. There was one where I'm walking around some rundown building, dark as fuck and I'm trying to sneak through, I turn around and there's a Super Mutant staring right at me... scared the piss out of me.

[alldaws1]

Fallout 3 has its moments in the dark abandoned buildings and such. I definitely agree with F.E.A.R. though. I'm playing through it now and have just finished Interval 8 (of 12). So many bits that make you jump and sometimes you feel the desire to just pause it to calm down a little bit. Just in case anyone else is playing it or plans to I'll put some of the scarier bits in spoilers here:

Spoiler: Click here to view

I think the worst bit so far was when I was walking through the offices with the poor flickering lighting, cautiously progressing as I don't want to run into a bunch of clone soldiers and suddenly the window to my left smashes and a dead body flies out of it. A similar incident happens later in the game yet it still caught me off guard, walking through a warehouse and then the big window breaks and in jump two of those invisible ninja things.

The numerous Alma and Fettel sightings are also worth a mention. Especially the one where you're just making your way along, begin to climb down a ladder and as your head levels up after looking down Alma's suddenly standing above you giggling. Then you get down that ladder, turn around and Fettel is right in front of you. I've wasted ammo on these images way too many times.

Oh, and we can't forget the hallway of blood, that's just surreal.

[Toe]

Any time I am playing MLB 09: The Show and the game is close, with A-Rod or Pujols coming up to bat. Unless you have your ace out there, slightly screwing up one pitch seems to always allow them to launch the ball out of the park.

[Johnny Latino Heat]

I cannot stress my love for the Silent Hill games enough. I just love the games, and the first one I played was Silent Hill 2. I remember I was crossing a bridge, a pretty long one too, making way through the fog, running in fact, confident in the radio to give out static when something got near me. All of a sudden the radio goes haywire and a fucking creature, those that look like they only have legs and a torso, kinda like they're in straitjackets or something, is right on top of me.

The music in the SH games can be downright creepy as hell and really makes for scary games.

Also, one from my youth: Realms of the Haunting. Never did manage to finish the game. Scary as fuck. Does anyone know this one? It's pretty old.

[probablyoliver]

In Mario when the ghosts chase you if you're looking away from them. Fuck that noise.

[Captain Kirk]

The bomb siren from Silent Hill when the world was about to change used to freak me out.

[Your Mom]

Everything. Resident Evil 5 is still in the packaging and I dont know if it will ever come out

[Plubby]

Not really a "scare", more of an eerie spooked thing...the closing "cinematic" of the Teuton Campaign in Age of Empires 2

[DMN in the House]

Manhunt, in the prison or asylum or whatever it was. I'm moving pretty quickly, I think I had a machete or a gun or something solid, wasn't worried. No one was around, then, BAM, one of the body bags on the gurney's sat up on me. FUCKIN' A'. Manhunt did that to me twice. Towards the end, I have a gun, I'm moving through the apartment building, bang bang bang, I come out of a room, turn around, and there's like... five motherfuckers in camo and face paint coming down on me. I played that game at my friends house, he lived across the apartment building we lived in from me, and the whole time back to my house, walking down the hallways, I had my head on a swivel watching out for motherfuckers to attack me.

[Scott McFly]

System Shock 2 is probably the scariest game I've played. For those who haven't played it, it's designed by Ken Levine who did Bioshock waaaay before he did that (and about 2 game studios previously) and is kinda like an RPG, first person version of Dead Space except more psychologically, creepy scary. You're on a space station (or giant spaceship) and it's so desolate and lonely except for creepy-ass mutated things wandering aimlessly saying "join us!" in a weird, high pitched voice, sometimes they whisper it too. Ammo is pretty scarce so you have to make it count. Scariest part (or certainly the most memorable part) is where you finally meet the person who's been chatting to you over the intercom. I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't played but I recommend you track it down and play it for yourself. The game as a whole only has a few jump out your seat "oh shit!" instant scares, but all the way through it's playing on your mind and you're constantly fearing what's around the next corner. Not played it in a while and I think it was around 1999 so the graphics have aged a bit, but that only adds to the feel of the game.

[Whisper]

I think you can just include the whole of Silent Hill 2 here. It's creepy and disturbing to the point where you actually don't want to carry on. I love the series as a whole but none of the others can match up to it in terms of the atmosphere it creates. Any time I have to go to that fucking hospital I have to prepare myself for a thoroughly uncomfortable time.

[DMN in the House]

Thanks, Scott, since I'm probably never going to play that game I now have to go to Wiki and see if the swerve is on there. If I have nightmares, I'm blaming you.

>_>

[Scott McFly]

It's not so much a swerve as it is just creepy as hell. Now I want to play the game again even although I know I'll be scared shitless for half of it. And thinking as well, the final section of the game where...

Spoiler: Click here to view

you're basically wandering through the mushy insides of a giant alien

is pretty gross. And checking Wiki, it does mention the bit I'm talking about but doesn't go into detail about what exactly happens that makes you want to not go to sleep afterwards.

[VerbalPuke]

I don't know about moments, but any game were my character falls from an extremely high area (Tenpenny Tower in Fallout 3 for example, or a large building in GTA) and it's an accident, it just gives me this weird feeling in the pit of stomach. It's as if I'm falling. So naturally I do it again and the shock wears off.

[Cactus Drags]

I used to get that on Crackdown and one of the Spiderman games.

The standout one for me has to be one of the Max Payne games, where you're walking on those thin trails of blood and just hear a baby screaming over and over. It's not SUPRISEBOOISCAREDYOU kind of scary, but it creeped me the fuck out, I just wanted to get the hell out of that area, and every time I failed and had to start it again, there was this horrible sense of dread.

TimeSplitters fucked me and a mate up, shouldn't even have been scary or anything, but there was a challenge where you had to run around the chef's kitchen shooting reanimated cow corpses, and they made this weird shrieking mooing noise, which freaked us out when we got to like the 10th stage and there's forty of the fuckers charging you and making this horrific racket.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Which Spiderman game?

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Condemned 2 I got about fifteen minutes in when you're chasing some geezer through a TV store or something and you have to go downstairs with TVs crackling n stuff and yeah, the game did a number on me - the whole premise and everything and I was playing it alone at 2am and screw that. That went right off never to be played again (fortunately I'd just borrowed it from work).

Also, I dunno if anyone else has ever played Siren on PS2.....But if you really like all the weird black tears, Japanese girls with long hair and creeping dread through weird freaky posessed folk - that's a game for you. Sadly that kinda stuff weirds me out so I couldn't play it much even though I own 1 and 2 pretty much for collection purposes.

I agree with Silent Hill with the wheelchair spinning happily away and the crackling radio - ugh.

Max Payne with the trail of blood and the baby does a good job of putting me on edge.....

So yeah I'm like Srar and get freaked out by EVERYTHING. I also take ages to walk ANYWHERE cos even though it's just a game I end up acting like I would in real life, checking EVERY corner.

[Cactus Drags]

Which Spiderman game?

Not sure, think it was PS2, but I distinctly remember having to jump off the Empire State Building for some reason, maybe to collect something. That was horrible.

[Robsturgh]

So yeah I'm like Srar and get freaked out by EVERYTHING. I also take ages to walk ANYWHERE cos even though it's just a game I end up acting like I would in real life, checking EVERY corner.

Pretty much my issue too, its why Silent Hill took me SO long, and I still didn't complete it.

Yeah Silent Hill 2 was just mindbendingly scary. Didn't even nearly complete that.

Oh yeah, I forgot one from a few years ago, I'm sure one or two of you have heard of the locker scare from Condemned? Yeah, well I fucking hadn't. Thanks for warning me that I would lose 2 stone of shit because of that you bastards.

I've always wanted to try both Eternal Darkness and the Fatal Frame series. Would anyone like to talk me out of it?