Has a game ever scared you to the point that you couldn't play?

[Grey Day for Elcia]

It's not really possible to be scared by a video game if you look at it logically. Pixels and bit sounds can't hurt you.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

First time I ran through this section of the game I was so panicked that I couldn't operate my controller well enough to do save my ass.

Spoiler

Heey, I've played that game and remember that part. Had completely forgotten about it. It was exciting and well scripted.

I generally dislike horror movies/games and so on. Scary things can be implemented and they might improve the whole, but I lose interest if something is scary just for the sake of being scary; horror movies.

I remember Call of Cthulu! Only game where I can remember finding ammo and no means to fire it -.-

I'd like to say Dead Space 2 but I managed to get over that with a Javelin gun and a surprise Necromorph in that cathedral area, shot the damn thing across the room.

I tend to wuss out a lot in games and just go trigger happy but worst was always Silent Hill 2. Konami needs to step up if they want to re-capture that kinda scare.

 

[Gecko clown]

We Don't Go to Ravenholme.

I could make do with the slow shuffling zombies easily enough but as soon as the skeletal, skinless fast ones showed up I stopped playing and couldn't play again for a week.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

It's not really possible to be scared by a video game if you look at it logically. Pixels and bit sounds can't hurt you.

Are you serious?
I agree with the latter half of your post, but the first half is ****.

I know people that think like this. They generally have a problem with games/movies/books, because they aren't even trying to immerse into the story. They aren't experiencing adventures. No, they are just sitting in front of a screen/book.

I love video games, trust me. Have spent most of my life playing any I can get my hands on. But why be scared of pixels? Same reason horror as a movie genre doesn't scare me. I love watching them out of morbid curiosity, lol. But they aren't scary.

 

[Gabanuka]

It's not really possible to be scared by a video game if you look at it logically. Pixels and bit sounds can't hurt you.

Really? Dude are you a cylon? I check because I'm worried for you/

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

It's not really possible to be scared by a video game if you look at it logically. Pixels and bit sounds can't hurt you.

Really? Dude are you a cylon? I check because I'm worried for you/

[robotic voice]I have no idea what you are talking about huma- friend.[/robotic voice]

 

[Haagrum]

Three games: "Aliens" for the Commodore 64, "Space Hulk" for PC, and the original AvP. Yes, I know, I'm old.

It probably didn't help that I have an over-active imagination and was 9 or 10 at the time of playing the first game (and not as thoroughly desensitised as I am now). Space Hulk... man, that game didn't take prisoners, and the Genestealers didn't mess around. In both cases, you've got a squad to control, and they're berks without you helping them... except you needed covering fire from the whole squad, and the enemy could come from anywhere, any time.

As for AvP, it may have had something to do with the immersive play-style: lights off, as Marines, with surround speakers at full volume, no music, and the slow beeping of your motion detector as the only real indicator that anything was coming for you.

I tried to get through Doom 3 properly once. Properly meaning headset on, at a time past midnight and with no lights on. All I remember is that pounding door, throwing the headset off, mashing the lamp switch and looking around the room.

Amen to that. Everyone's brave while the lights are on and you might have to hit the pause button when real life intrudes.

 

[Whoracle]

System Shock 2.

I can watch LPs of it, no problem. I can coop the game, no problem. But I can't play it alone. It stops at the medical subsection entrance. I don't even know why, I just can't.

And, for a while, The Orphanage (yes, it warrants capital letters) in Thief 3.

 

[Zeckt]

Oh, woe is me. This topic makes me very sad at the serious lack of horror games lately. I love being terrified in interactive experiences, Why must you focus on multiplayer dead space 3 WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ....................

 

[Shockolate]

Doom 3. I was 12 years old when I first played it.

Didn't go back until I was 15. Even then I had to take breaks.

 

[Badong]

When I was around 4, I tried playing Doom on my dad's old desktop computer (or at least I think it was Doom). After five minutes into the game I got so scared so shitless that I just switched the AVR off and went back to watching Batman.

What else is there... oh yeah, Morrowind! The reason why I progressed so dick achingly slow is because I simply refused to go anywhere dark. I really don't like dark places.

EDIT: I completely forgot about S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. It took me ten minutes to pussy out of my commitment to play and finish a horror game, even one that has a) other normal humans and b) a shitload of guns. Seriously, the very fist thing to jump me was a Bloodsucker that blindsided me from a dark alley.

 

[prophecy2514]

When I was young and more of a wuss, this happened to me in [i/] Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire [/i] (N64). Specifically, the Boba Fett level. After like fifty tries, I finally managed to beat him up (I wasn't that great at games back then, either), only for him to get in his ship and face me again. His ship, the Slave 1, looked like a giant evil floating elephant head, and I had to fight it with conventional weaponry. Five minutes into my first encounter with it, I had to pause and put down the controller because of just how hard my heart was pounding. Damn thing was hard to kill, okay?

Actually, looking back, the thought of trying to shoot down the Slave 1 with a rocket launcher and a jetpack sounds much more cool than scary.

More recently, I had a moment like this in [i/]Silent Hill 2[/i], which I just finished a few months ago. There's a point where the game lets you open a door, on the other side of which is pure, dead silence, and like three feet of visibility. You listening? Dude turns toward the camera and screams at something = not scary. Dude dropped without warning into silence and uncertainty = scary. I went back inside immediately, to the comparative comfort of groaning zombies. Took me a while to build up the courage to go back out there.

I had the exact same sensation fighting boba fett's ship, especially when the first stage with boba is quite easy to begin with. The boss fight music and Dash's shrieks when he does get shot repeatedly is quite unnerving.

never gotten to the point of quitting though in any gamr. the first dead space I did get quite close after the first giant tentacle attack, but after awhile, the game follows a similar BOO DID I SCARE YOU approach to its scares so nah didnt get me there. Must pick up Amnesia. If only I had a decent computer to use though to play it.

 

[Nyaliva]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

'Nuff said.

Seriously, I played for a while and it eventually got scary enough that i could force my friend to play. He played for a long time until he eventually locked himself in a room with the monster. Turned around and screamed. Neither of us have played it since although my friend tries every now and then, plays for 2 minutes and becomes catatonic. Although watching playthroughs of SCP-Containment Breach, I doubt I could play that for very long.

 

[Roxor]

I have not yet seen any piece of fiction I'd call scary. I don't know if it's even possible.

 

[Mordekaien]

I've got past those pesky buggers from Amnesia quite easily (Near the end of the game I wasn't even scared when they popped up), however, there's a reason why I don't play STALKER anymore. See, I manage to go through the first few zones quite easily and then I hit that

Spoiler

Motherfucking Bloodsucker waiting for you in that dark tunnel

I know he's there, but he still scares me like hell.

Also, spider levels in Dak Messiah of M&M. Fuck those things.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

Oh surprised to see that it hasn't been mentioned yet.

But Silent hill 2, the first time i played it, i think i was about sixteen, i had a replica sword at home, and on the week that i tried to play this game at night (family away on vacation of course), i went to bed gripping that sword rather tightly.

......

considering the phallic nature of the game, i now realize that this was a rather telling answer

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

I love video games, trust me. Have spent most of my life playing any I can get my hands on. But why be scared of pixels? Same reason horror as a movie genre doesn't scare me. I love watching them out of morbid curiosity, lol. But they aren't scary.

Just like I said:
You aren't able to immerse properly. I know someone like you. He doesn't run down a corridor. He presses the "W-Key". He doesn't fight enemies. He clicks the left mouse button...

That's a personal thing. It doesn't apply for others and therefore:
"[...]But they aren't scary."
should be:
"[...]But they aren't scary for me."

I like that rather than consider the idea you may just be scared over nothing, it has to be me not immersing "properly." Which is a pretty funny thing to say to a fairly hardcore roleplayer.

"It is scary, you're just doing it wrong." lol.

 

[Smeatza]

System Shock 2. Admittedly I was a kid, but I had no idea it was going to be a scary game, and it builds up the tension so perfectly during the first few minutes that when that first computer console blows up in an attempt to make you jump I got too scared, turned the game off, and didn't come back to it for a good decade.