willard3 said:
This,
followed by Doom
followed by Aliens vs Predator (!!!)
followed by FEAR
What made AvP stand head and shoulders above others in pure panicky terror:
In many areas, aliens would spawn randomly, so you would always die unless you got out of the area fast enough. And of course there was no explicit indication of entering or exiting those areas. The implications are many-fold. Too careful inching forward risked getting stuck in a spawning area for too long, and getting overrun. Neither could you learn the incoming enemies entirely by heart. This promoted a wonderful terror-filled, urgent athmosphere where even the clock is your enemy. Kind of like having Nightmare mode as the default.
There was
no mid-level save. Yes, failing to hear the chattering noise of a facehugger and insta-dying six minutes into a seven-minute level meant having to start all the way from the beginning. The feeling of dread just got worse and worse the deeper you got into the level, because you stood to actually lose something (your progress).
You had to constantly alternate between the night vision and flares or die. The NV's graininess, and lack of motion tracking while in NV mode, made it hard to spot aliens far enough. With flares, you saw accurately, but had to throw a flare everywhere you might *potentially* need to see. Except, only a few would burn at any one time, so you'd often have unnerving gaps in your vision. Thus, NV tended to be better for navigating and rapid assault, except when there was a decent amount of environmental light which would flood the NV to near useless state. Flares and motion tracker would be better for careful advance and for fighting in small areas.
Here's Level 2, albeit in bad image quality. Should you choose to check it out, crank volume up, fullscreen, dark room, you know the drill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi18Rl3cBl0