My worst nightmare.

I was perusing the "your queue" thingy on steam this afternoon when I came across this.

Unlike you're average Australian (probably), sharks are my not-so-secret greatest fear.

Parts of my childhood that I swam at the beach I lived in paralysing fear, skulking around in the shallows expecting to be eaten at any moment. Some would say my fear is irrational, I say IS IT?, IS IT REALLY?

When I play Farcry 3, and fall in the water, I physically freak the fuck out. The Assassins Creed 4 diving missions were an ORDEAL for me. My greatest fear fighting my completion compulsion. I enjoyed throwing sticks at those fuckers from the hunting boat though.

Any one else got any unreasonable fears that manage to pierce through the illusion in video games? The most likely one I can think of is arachnophobes, since spiders seem to make a regular video game occurrence.

Anyone else struggle through those AC diving missions, or am i completely alone in this..In a swimming pool...how did this shark get in here...where are the ladders for the love of God WHERE IS THE LADDER.

(Also this game looks pretty cool but i will NEVER play it.)

p.s. If a mod wants to decide this is youtube spam for some reason, feel free to take the video out of my post or whatever.

My only real intense fear, that of death, is ironically one of the most common things in gaming, so I rarely have problems there. Heights get to me a bit too in real life, but I feel no hesitation when jumping from a skyscraper in inFamous or anything similar. The one thing I can note is that underwater sections often make me nervous--not from any inherent fear of the water but because those sections are so often built around making the player feel tense at the lack of oxygen.

I do remember a person my guild picked up for a raid WAY back in vanilla WoW who couldn't do one part of Zul'Gurub (a raid instance) because of an intense fear of spiders, even ones found in the game. I've always found that a bit fascinating.

@rowr: Anything underwater utterly terrifies me ever since I played Tomb Raider as a kid, probably wasn't helped with the "sonic is drowning" music on the megadrive growing up either..

Big underwater leviathans are fascinating and terrifying at the same time to me. Some examples.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/anteater/what-lurkes-beneath-the-waves

Although that shark game you posted looks cool, humans seem pretty mobile underwater.

I did one diving mission in AC4 and decided I was done. Deep ocean water almost paralyzes me. Don't know why. It seems like a fairly common phobia though.

@rowr: Yeah I played only the diving missions it made me do in AC4, and then just noped out of all the others. It's not just the fear of sharks, but drowning as well.

@forcen: Fuck ALL the underwater creatures in MH3, once that big monster music starts playing while I'm swimming I usually freak and run to the next area. Big land ones? Don't bother me at all.

Big underwater creatures has always been the thing that freaks me out the most in games. That or dark water where you can't see what's beneath the surface. I hate that shit!

Nope Nope Nope!!

Underwater stuff is the only thing that really terrifies me in games. That damn eel from Mario 64 still haunts me.

(it's not spam, you wrote plenty enough to justify the video)

Fuck sharks right in the face. I hate them and I'm not playing this game ever, either. I honestly don't know how you're still alive in that ridiculous country. Get out, Rowr! Get out while you can!

And take V with you I guess? If you've got room?

I'm not very fond of the ocean in real life, but that has never bothered me in games. My biggest irrational fear is probably of clowns, and that shit gets me in games and other mediums too. I've been told that as a kid I ran away from a friend's birthday party because a clown showed up, so that goes far back.

There's no time! Survival of the fittest!

Feel free to follow that nat geo link i posted and to observe that the last 6 attacks or something are where i live. Most of them involve witnesses watching the shark leave the scene with a freaking body in it's mouth.

Also this thread is mainly to highlight recognised "irrational fears".

I've got no interest in a shark culling/endangered debate here.

This game has had a difficult development history. I remember when it was shown in 2 years ago on a stream, then cancelled, I forget why. I honestly forgot about it until I suddenly started seeing trailers again. I am interested in checking it out, the last time I bought a game based on premise though I ended up with Stomping Land. I will wait until I see it in action in twitch streams or something.

Mine is literally the same as yours. I did the required ACIV underwater mission and then never did one again because OH GOD. I'd physically curl up into a ball in my chair whenever I wound up in deep water in FC3 or Crysis. Open water is already the worst; add sharks and I'm out.

Dark water scares the shit out of me. Fear of the unknown, and all that. There's no amount of money on earth that could make me swim in the ocean at night.

...maybe, like, $500.

I will agree with you that underwater shit is TERRIFYING. Hell, the first time I fell in the water in HL1....nearly crapped my pants.

Whatever. If I was ever attacked by a shark I'd just punch it in the stupid shark face.

Underwater is no place for humans. Dark things rule underwater.

I don't think this was even meant to be unsettling necessarily, and watching this now it's nothing at all, but this scene from Riven really, really freaked me out as a kid.

*spoilers, if anyone cares about this game anymore. ;)

I find it interesting that, in this day and age where we can create virtual monsters as horrific as we can imagine them, there seems to be very few things that generate the visceral response of seeing a shark coming out of dark water. I can't think of another type of animal that invokes curiosity and absolute dread the same way that sharks do.

The ocean is much the same way. It seems like it should be familiar to us, but on the same hand it is completely alien at the same time. Fun fact: more people have walked on the Moon (12), than have been to the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep (3).

And because someone was going to post something from Jaws sooner or later, anyways:

From personal experience can I tell you that nearly drowning sucks hard. The game / drowning simulator in this worth playing, is pretty realistic and goddamn terrifying. I have never had any trouble being underwater in other games though.

If I was an Aussie I'd be more scared of those deadly jellyfish, the numerous poisonous snakes and bugs, saltwater crocodiles, and being disemboweled by emus (my favorite wikipedia article- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War ) then being eaten by a Great White.