Unintentionally scary games?

Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank. Every goddamn time there's water that either tries to flood you or has lurker sharks.

that opening in Another world...jesus.

I was just a boy, dammit...just a boy.

2nding Ecco, Journey and Fez. The whole second half of Journey from the Underwater part and onwards is a real emotional shitstorm for me... Every single time. The bit where you have to stealth past the machines... Eurgh.

And Ecco gave me a fear of open water I've never shaken, and probably never will.

@fallen189: Ya stole mine! I always found Ecco terrifying, even without the alien shit.

More broadly, I find water in videogames to be terrifying. It's weird cause I'm 100% not afraid to go in the ocean or lakes in real-life, but ANY time I have to in videogames, I actually freeze up and freak out a little.

And I guess I'll throw in Earthbound, actually. Yahtzee described it perfectly as "The Cthulhu mythos crossed with Charlie Brown" and the ending is existentially TERRIFYING. When I read "You cannot grasp the true nature of Giygas' attack" all I could think was "He's hurting you and you don't understand how." That is FUCKING MENACING.

Edit: since that Earthbound bit was scary on purpose, I'll actually throw in one pertaining to my fear of videogame water: The dianaga (I think that's what it's called) in Shadow of the Empire. You fight it underwater, and since it's an N64 game, it is CLOUDY water. That thing would come at you from all kinds of angles and not being able to see it actually made it really, really scary. I remember I never beat it, I just used a cheat code to skip the level so I could beat that game.

Dunwich is also a reference to the HP Lovecraft story "The Dunwich Horror" (he's a phenomenal horror writer if you can juuuust get past his racism/sexism), so I think that was some intentional horror in a non-horror game.

@thunderslash: Yeah, no joke. My first time through, I just cheated my way through the whole shipwreck area. To this day, despite beating the game a bunch, I think I only finished those levels once or twice.

Ecco is a great example and was my initial thought but...

There are some parts in Star Wars Shadows of the Empire that really freaked me out as a kid. There's a boss battle with IG-88 and he makes some unnerving sounds and it just felt like fighting a Terminator or something. Then there's the water/sewer level that has this green water that you can fall in and barely see anything, which scares the crap out of me anyway, not to mention the ungodly tentacle monster that lurks within. Oh yea and in the first level on foot you can accidentally let some Wampas out of cages and they come at you with their jagged poly's and shit.

Turok. I know it sounds lame but with all the fog and ambient growling sounds I was terrified to play that game. Never made it very far, now that I think about it. The sequels just got so silly with the gore and the dumb plots that it was hard to get in the mood.

Also the opening to the original Half-Life with all the zombies freaked me out when I was 8 years old. I know it's technically designed that way, to evoke horror movies, but Half-Life isn't a "horror game" necessarily.

The later games leaned in to it hard with Ravenholm and some parts of episode 1, which even though I was much older STILL scared the crap out of me.

The End boss fight in Metal Gear Solid 3 was kind of scary, in that I was terrible at it my first playthrough and was scared of getting randomly shot from nowhere, which startled me every time.

And I know it's probably intentional, but the subways in Fallout 3 could really get scary in the beginning when you didn't have a lot of stuff with you to defend yourself. Also in Fallout 3, the vault in which hallucinogenic gas was pumped in causing visions always freaked me out. It wasn't anything too scary, but just the fact that weird stuff was always happening was enough to make me nope straight out of there.

Riven.
I don't know, i was young and something about wandering around these lonely places scared me, early on i remember there being an fmv man, and there are buildings that look like houses off in the distance so there are clearly people in this world, but where are they? And when are they going to appear in front of you? And the soundtrack was so haunting, i had to get my sister to play it while i watched off to the side, even then the tension grew so much my leg spasmed and i kicked the computer table really hard, we both burst out laughing.

I remember being creeped out at Ecco as a kid so you arn't alone.

I was sleep deprived when I first played Gone Home and when there was the part with the "ghost" and even before that with the creepy message left on the answering machine, I got creeped out to the point of having to quit to desktop and come back later a few times. I don't think I would have been as scared if the game wasn't so atmospheric, so I guess it's a credit to the game's sound and art design.

I'm beginning to think I have thalassophobia, because every time there is a moment in a game where you are in a vast space of water, be it a lake, pool or ocean, my heart starts beating way faster and I get extremely anxious. So yeah, name whatever games have those moments, I'd say those are pretty scary.

So I think I might have a phobia of the human heartbeat? Whenever I hear it it freaks the shit out of me. I remember listening to my dad's heart when I was tiny and being terrified that it would suddenly stop. I also remember not being able to finish Shadow of Rome because you could hear a heartbeat during the stealth sections.

On the note of Ecco the Dolphin, and Defender of the Future in particular - did you know the music in that game was composed by Tim Follin, the man behind Contradiction: Spot the Liar? :D

Rayman gave me the heebie-jeebies when I was very young. Something about the animation and the art style really rubbed me the wrong way, so much so that I didn't want to play it any more. Looking back on it, I have no idea why I was afraid of it.

When MGS2 started yelling at me to turn my console off, I actually did and never returned to the game. It wasn't until Drew started playing it that I finally figured out what the hell was going on in that game, because 8 year old me sure as hell couldn't comprehend it.

The old Tomb Raider games gave me creepy vibes every once in a while. This had a lot to do with the claustrophobic camera angles and very restrictive draw distance. I also remember being disturbed by violent piranha death.

The GTA3 suicide bomber mission (Kingdom Come) creeped me out.

Though it wasn't unintentionally scary, the boss fight in Max Payne where the guy starts howling like a wolf and talks about angel flesh and Satan freaked me the fuck out. Max Payne came out when I was 5 - no idea why I was playing it, or who allowed me to play it. Not to mention the "follow the trail of blood to find your crying dead baby" sequence. Gave me nightmares for a long time. I think I managed to actually finish the game by muting the TV.

Dark Souls: The New Londo Ruins. When I started the game I didn't know were to go, so I went to this place and saw the ghosts. I didn't know you needed an Item to defeat them, so I just attacked and went right through. Even when I came back at level 70, these things still gave me the creeps. They fly through walls, use giant Scythes and move slow, but still fast. Also, everything is dark and almost underwater.

Second up would be the Tomb of the Giants, but thats more annoying then scary

Earthworm Jim 2. The part where he's a blind cave salamander all the sudden... what the hell man.

@fisk0: awesome! I did not. He did a great job.

MegaRace's Lance Boyle giving an intro to the bonus stage "Skyholder."

Imagine being about 5-7 years old, playing 3-6 inches away from your monitor, and then getting a point-blank face-full of these nostrils.

Now imagine playing in the dark, and having the game crash on you, complete with sound loop.

Now think of something else. Anything else.

@substance_d: Yeah Gone Home is maybe the most tense and scary horror game that isn't actually a horror game

Probably Clayfighter. It gets creepier as the series goes on. I've never played it, only seen YouTube footage.

The character designs really creep me out. Something about clay design does that.

I will concur with the assessment that the original Ecco the Dolphin game is some creepy stuff, and that it is totally on purpose. I think the design of the game itself is based around lulling you into a false sense that everything will be okay in this happy dolphin game only to rip it away from you instantly. The music, as mentioned, is some of the best on the hardware (the CD version is also great) and still sounds great to this day.

As for my own example:

In the original Thief for PC was a pretty dark game in general and had some tense moments in it. It really wasn't a scary game, nor did it seem to be trying to be particularly scary. Having said that, one part of it that still gives me the jeebies to this day is the part in which you are in a graveyard and you hear ghosts chanting backwards in latin. It was so out of place at the time and out of nowhere that I genuinely was weirded out by it. Something that very few games outside of the original Silent Hill and a choice few others have been able to accomplish. When I first encountered this section I was actually playing the game with a friend, and both of us were unsure at first where the sounds were coming from. The game managed to spook both of us despite being in a lit room playing together.

Sometimes, while being thoroughly engrossed in Oblivion or Skyrim and creeping through dungeons, I would have that feeling like someone is behind you, or nearby just watching you. Nearing the end of the caves I'd actually move as swiftly as possible to the exit so I could get out and shake the feeling. I've always thought those times were scary.

I can see that, but I can't relate since it's the first game I ever played. I think it's the fog in the night levels that makes that game pretty creepy.

Anyway, my real answer is the big shark that eats you from Jak and Daxter 1.

Oftentimes water in games kinda unnerves me. Like when I was younger playing games like Mario 64 I would get other people to play the water levels.

I remember also being super freaked out by Kings Quest 6. The guy with the glowy eyes really scared me. I think it's just something about the aesthetic of those older DOS games that kinda creeped me out.

The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary. Even as an adult, being sucked into the mouth of an awful baby doll is STILL a nightmare.

"Return to the Cathedral" level was definitely designed to be scary.

My Steam friends were laughing at me when I played it because I guess they didn't find it as scary. I hope Tacoma is spooky, too!

That fucking shark in Banjo-Kazooie.

I think I would not have my fear of deep/murky water if not for all those PS1/N64 games that liked to pull shit like that.

@sunstalker_solaire: Yep! Fuck Lurker Sharks. It was weird replaying the Jak games last year, because I expected that guy to no longer freak me out, what with me being twenty years old. NOPE! Still got heart palpitations when I started hearing that Shark audio cue.

The ravenholme section in half life 2 is really creepy, particularly because of the human-like noises the zombies make- you can tell there is still some elements of the former person being tormented by the headcrab!

I watched the Super Mario Sunshine speedrun yesterday and holy shit, the living apple enemies were terrifying!

This is a timely necro after the Shenmue ER Epilogue today

oh shit yeah

This legit creeped me out as a kid.

Not even joking.

didnt skim through everything to see if its been said already but the souls games usually put me on edge and can be downright freaky and heart-racing. just having multiple somethings silently but relentlessly fight and hunt you down can be a bit much sometimes, coupled with oppressive, uncaring environs. i get a feeling that people on the whole dont find them very scary, if at all (which i dont understand in the slightest but ok!).

I was probably 10 or something when I first played Half-Life, shit fucked me up good. I had nightmares of head crabs for days!

This may sound silly, but Creepers in Minecraft always put me on edge. When I see one in the distance, I stay the F away from that dude. Also the spider noise, really unpleasant.

When I was a kid, I had a sleepover with a friend. For some reason, we decided to rent the SNES Crash Test Dummies game. My friend had to call his mom and ask her to pick him up because he was getting so creeped out by the game. I think it was the fact that your character loses limbs when you take damage until you're just a torso and head bouncing through the level.

I agree with the OP about Ecco the Dolphin. That game freaked me out as a kid too.

Also this:

I know this game is cartoony as hell but something about these weird pulsating robot creatures with dead eyes was unsettling.

It's not a game per-say, but I remember always getting very uncomfortable playing the Playstation 1 demo disc that this Manta Ray Tech Demo was on.

I always thought Final Fantasy games where the random battles occur would sometimes freak me out. Especially when you reach the dungeon of end game bosses and the enemies are a little bit more sinister looking.