The Cradle in Thief Deadly Shadows. Scariest level I've ever played.
Game of Death: Terrifying Video Game Experiences Recounted by Giant Bomb's Editors [UPDATED: Now With 100% More Ryan Davis!]
X-Com is definitely up there, but the scariest game I've ever played was probably Stalker: SoC. While exploring a very dark and creepy underground facility I ran into a Controller for the first time and his attack was so sudden and disorienting I actually screamed while clutching the mouse, which caused my character to spin around and empty a full clip on the ceiling like a character in Aliens before dying.
I actually just finished playing Nanashi no Game (The Nameless Game) for the DS. It was released only in Japan by Square Enix. It's a first person survival horror game about a cursed game that spreads wirelessly through this universe's version of the NDS. After you play the game you die after seven days. It may have been a total rip off of The Ring and a lot of the scares were cheap, but damn if I wasn't creeped the hell out the first time I was being chased by ghosts that you have no way of fighting.
Plus the cursed game itself was in the style of a overhead 8-bit RPG with some really haunting music which was pretty cool.
There's definitely some creepy atmosphere in the recent Fallout games.
I was completely freaked out by the invisible Nightkins in the basement of the REPCONN test site in Fallout New Vegas. No other game or film has made me jump like that out of shock.
System Shock 2 is my vote. Bought it on a whim when I was at... A target? Same one I bought Omikron at(Another game I would buy instantly if it were released again)... Anyway, great game. I've always tried to reinstall it on my more current computers, but all it would ever do is crash constantly. Would definitely buy it if it came out again.
Amnesia is easily the most difficult to play, I can't make the decision to keep my headphones on or off, because the sound design often creeps me out to the point that I quit the game. Another game worthy of a mention, but no where near Amnesia on the scare meter, is Echo Night: Beyond, similar in style as it is just pure exploration except take the grizzly looking castle/monsters and replace them with an abandoned space station and ghosts.
@TimmyChaw said:
Fatal Frame...
I remember this one part where you're walking up some stairs and see a guy's shadow through a window playing piano or something and then he vanishes (or something like that, its been a long time) I literally could not go past that part, and never finished that game.
Agreed with Alex. Amnesia is to date the only horror game to honest-to-Jeebus scare me beyond jumps and startles (although Frictional's other game, Penumbra, gave me a HUGE unscripted startle once).
Best part is, unlike most horror, even after you get a good look at the creature, he's still terrifying. Hell, he's even unnerving when you have the commentary mode on.
Patrick- Windows are able to be closed.
Kessler- Keep on pimping Fear Gauntlet!
Rorie- And then there's the probing...
Mine is Eternal Darkness, favorite game ever made and freaked me out as a child, also RE on the PS, my brother made me play it when I was 7 and scared the shit out of me, both are classic games in my book
Generally I don't get scared by games (the fact that I have control over what is happening greatly detracts from any sort of fear that would be fomented). However, I still always got the creeps when I had to go into the caves in Oblivion (especially the one just before fighting the King of Worms). The only actual time I was ever legitimately scared by a game, though, was in Arkham Asylum. There's a part where an inmate jumps out of the ceiling, screaming at you, and I didn't have my detective vision on at the time. Made me jump straight out of my chair.
I am a voice in their choir.
@RecSpec said:
Resident Evil 2. Mr X, aka the Tyrant, getting up after your first encounter. Emptying almost every bullet I had into him, only for him to get back up as soon as I left!? Fuck that.
His freakest appearance had to be with Leon in the hallway behind Chief Irons' office. Leaving the back room, going around the corner then HOLY SHIT he's right there.
And then when you think you've taken him down in the room where you get the clock gear, then go out into the hallway and BAM HOLY SHIT he busts through the wall.
Ooh Reformation Day, in retrospect as a Roman Catholic that's kind of spooky.
I think my scariest game would have to be... Ocarina of Time. I remember reading in the instruction manual that the music would change when something was about to attack you. I, being six years old and inexperienced with the tropes the video game, was instantly jumping at any even subtle change in music.
Oh yeah, I guess Bioshock, Ravenholm, and Penumbra: Overture had their moments, but nothing's come close to the childhood fear I had from Ocarina.
I remember I picked up the second Condemned with a vague notion of what the first game was about. Kinda like a dark detective game right? And you like punch dudes? Well these games were well recieved, and it was super cheap so I got it.
So I go in with these basic expectations and man was I caught off guard. The intensity of the violence and atmosphere were a gut punch. I know a lot of people mock the oil dream sequences but they legitimately spooked me. I loved the game and ended up going back to the first one, but I stopped on the mannequin stage..... i'll say it's because I lost interest, but man.....
I remember picking up D when it came out on Sega Saturn. I was young, and that game freaked me the fuck out. I haven't played it since, which I think says a lot about the effect that game had on me.
There was also Tecmo's Deception (which I'm proud to say I claimed as my page a long time ago). My brother and I would have marathon sessions on that game in the wee hours of the after-midnight variety of darkness, and I'll be goddamned if the atmosphere in that game didn't give us a nasty feeling of dread at nearly every chance possible.
I also remember the atmosphere of Condemned, Doom 3 and Dead Space being very thick in my first playthroughs, especially since I played both under very strict conditions: only in pitch black darkness with no one in the same building as me. I wanted that full effect for those games, and holy fucking shit...they all delivered en masse.
Demon souls and Dark souls. Which parts? The shrine of storms and The Catacombs because they are dark as hell and when anything can easily kill you. Those damn Grim Reapers!
Other than Amnesia, Penumbra: Black Plague and Silent Hill 2, no other game has ever really scared me other than the occasional cheap jump scare. So yeah, it's those 3 for me :)
It's not easy to scare me, but the first game to truly scare the shit out of me was the first RE for PSX, when the dogs jump through the window.
Oddly enough i have been a horror movie fanatic since i was 9, i have yet to find a movie to make me jump or scare me but games? games are different, i cannot play scary games.
Some good comments here. I'm echoing some sentiments here, but:
Favorite Jump Scares:
-RE1 Dogs, RE2 Lickers, Eternal Darkness Bathtub
Favorite Fuck With My Head Games:
-Silverload, Silent Hill 4, Amnesia, Call of Cthuhlu, and of course, my favorite: System Shock 2.
@SuperMeatToy said:
There's definitely some creepy atmosphere in the recent Fallout games.
I was completely freaked out by the invisible Nightkins in the basement of the REPCONN test site in Fallout New Vegas. No other game or film has made me jump like that out of shock.
I agree with that too. The first time I saw a deathclaw was a horrifying "What the fuck is that thing!" moment.
@TeenageJesusSuperstar said:
The opening village and Dr. Salvador chase in Resident Evil 4.
This. I could not play the game past that point. I've watched countless horror movies, read even more horror novels, but for some reason, neither affects me on the level of a good horror game.
Tomb Raider's crocodiles. Holy shit, I was afraid to swim in deep places for years. Remember that level where you begin by falling in water? *shudder*
And then Tomb Raider 2 had 40 Fathoms, where you start underwater surrounded by fucking sharks. Oh man.
Oh, and Deadly Premonition.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I have to say that Resident Evil 2 gave me the biggest fright of my life and while many games have terrified me over the years(That one part in Dead Space 2, amirite?), none could match the 5 minutes I spent with Resident Evil when it had first been released.
I was 7 at the time and had owned a Playstation since it's release in Europe. I was far from masterful in my play-style, but I could handle myself in Crash and was fine with most other games. That was, until I purchased the latest demo from the Official Playstation Magazine U.K and made the biggest mistake of my young life. Breaking the seal, shrouded in naïveté much like Pandora, I chose the first game on the list - Resident Evil 2. As luck would have it, I left the room in time for the scary openings and came back just in time for the "Press start" option to put up. Paying no heed to what I had unleashed, nor the scary man's rendition of "Resident Evil" I jumped in.
Seconds later I was swimming in some of the nicest polygons I could imagine(I was 7, everything looked PHENOMENAL) as the flames from the burning bus blared in the background. Unbeknownst to my young self you could interact with the obviously placed door and instead played around with the ultra-friendly tank controls. While I helplessly meandered back and forth in an effort to escape the converging zombies, my heart began to pulsate further and further, to the point where more oxygen was leaving my body than was entering. Then came the biting, as my past shook the controller in a fervour to no avail.
Eventually Leon collapsed to the ground, I was shaking and the T.V was blaring. What happened next was truly terrifying to my 7 year old self as I watched my protagonist beset upon a dozen zombies as "GAME OVER" scrawled it's way onto the screen. I used to escape to a fantastical dreamworld each night in bed. Not that night. Most nights return a black abyss with no recollection of the events that took place over the course of my sleep since then. In fact I can count on my hands the number of good dreams I've had over the past 13 years.
In closing, fuck Resident Evil 2, that shit stole my dreams. My precious, precious dreams.
I literally couldn't play Amnesia after like an hour, so there's that. And I can see where Rorie is coming from, certainly. X-COM is an extremely tense game because of the way that any one of your dudes could be one-shotted by an unseen adversary, especially if you were dumb enough to do any of the missions at night.
I kind of already shared this in my blog Halloween 2011 Game: Undying
Most actually scary games do tend to scare me (which is funny because movies don't scare me at all). I think the oldest scare I can think of is probably Resident Evil 2. When the damn dog jumps through the interrogation room window. I was playing it with my high school best friend and it scared us so bad I'm pretty sure we both freaked out.
Oh, good times.
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