Scariest Moment In A Game

[Condorbeta]

One of mine was when I first started playing Resident Evil 4. Hoo boy. I can clearly remember the first sight of the village. As you see the residents doing their daily chores, you look around for a way to sneak away from them. I was around the back of one of the houses, when I saw a nice looking crate next to a Ganados with her back to me. Stupidly, I knife it only to have the eerie music start and have a slur of spanish quotes yelled at me. I turn around and see the ***** with a friggin kitchen knife! Unloading some of the clip to kill her, I turn around only to see more of them, coming through the back window!

Without knowing that there was a timer, I was running scared around the whole village looking for herbs and ammo to fend them off.

Now that I've beaten the game, I wonder why I was so scared ;0
But then, there were those Regenerators and Iron Maidens. It's a bad moment to be out of rifle ammo when there's an Iron Maiden around the corner *shudder*.

 

[PurpleRain]

two words: the thing.

Two more words: not scary.

John Carpenters movie = Scary as all hell.
but the games just sucked. It didn't mesh the whole survival and horror themes togther very well.

I remember Cold Fear was a little bit fun at the start of the game before it got boring and repedative. First going on the boat and the first zombie flashes across the window. Gold.

 

[MPD51]

I know Resident Evil 4 wasn't that scary, but when I first encountered the Iron Maidens with very, very, very little ammo (pistol ammo no less), I was terrified. I'm just walking in the dark and all I hear is that creepy little cackle/choking noise of theirs, I was bloody paranoid!

 

[King Phar]

-Half Life 2: The zombie level in the dead town.

dear god i just got out of that i kept on running out of ammo it was scary but now i'm good at using the crowbar.

 

[PurpleRain]

-Half Life 2: The zombie level in the dead town.

dear god i just got out of that i kept on running out of ammo it was scary but now i'm good at using the crowbar.

I only used my gravity gun and shotgun. That was until I got to the part were the waves of zombies pour out from every direction. That's when all the explosives and wit came into it.


Does anyone know of some good horror games on the 360 besides FEAR and Condemned that are out at the moment? RE5, SH5, Condemned 2 and AitD all seem to far off.

 

[greygelgoog]

The only games that EVER scared me in the slightest was the Silent Hill games. I learned the hard way that I can't play those games at night with the lights out. They did a very good job of creating a lingering sense of dread and I once paused the game for about 3 minutes while I tried to ascertain where a sound had come from (game or real world). After a decent block of Silent Hill 3 I had to play Resident Evil 4 to lighten the mood.

 

[Duck Sandwich]

So I was playing Halo in the Library level, and I was going through one of those ridiculously small corridors. Anywho, as I reached the end, I saw an upward slope and 2 poles ahead. Not knowing any better, I go in between the poles as I'm coming out of the corridor, then I make a right turn. Only to find an exploding flood. Right in my face. I immediately back away. Not that that does any good either, because there's another one of those fat blobs hiding behind the other pole. I know that he's there not because I turned around (I didn't) but because the overhead camera that you see through when you die shows his exploded remains.

Now whenever I play that level, and I'm coming up to some place where I can't see what's around the corner/ behind the pole, I chuck a grenade to make sure one of those bastards doesn't go all Solid Snake on my ass.

Also, the first encounter with the flood made me jump occasionally when I was on the second floor in the level. They would try to jump up, but couldn't quite make it. Sometimes, their tentacle arms would go through the floor I was on.

 

[MechJaz]

RE1 remake was damn scary, I slept with the lights on for three nights after I started playing that. RE4 was good but never really scary, though the spike monsters (the ones you need the thermal scope for) were rather creepy.

BioShock had its fair share of creeps and chills, best among them was one most people, it seems, haven't seen or heard of. In Fort Frolic, there's a room (I can't remember exactly where - maybe near the tobacco shop, but don't hold me to it) with maybe 18 inches of standing water on the floor. There aren't any lights in the room, the illumination all comes from the ambient glow of Rapture outside the massive windows. There are pillars throughout the room, and tailor's mannequins sprinkled throughout. Also, there are some spider slicer statues... you think. I'd walk around the room, looking for ammo and whatnot in the water, and hear - barely - the shuffling of a splicer on the ceiling then a splash, right as I was about to turn around and light up the splicer. There wasn't anything there but a statue, but one that definitely hadn't been there before. Needless to say, I hauled ass back out of that room and sought the safe comfort of hacking a vending machine.

 

[Satki]

Resident evil 4: Scary until after the first fight in village (basically until you get the shotgun, which makes the sort of zombies considerably less worrisome) and the ape like things you find later on in the game.
HL2:Ep1: The pitch black sections with the zombies jumping out at you.
Silent hill 4: When the body comes out of the wall at the beggining... made me jump
Scariest moment for me though has to be when you have to rescue your squad member in AvP2, going into the alien hive is really scary... especially with those damn one-hit kill facehuggers.

Has anyone else noticed though that most 'horror' games/sections stop being scary as soon as you get a powerful weapon in game? It just stops being scary when you can kill anything in a few shots.

One thing that isnt really scary but really makes me jump when it happens is in CS:S when your walking along and you havent seen anyone in ages and someone shoots/jumps out in front of you... I always end up flinching and shooting at the ceiling :S

 

[-Javelin-]

the only time i've really been scared of a game so bad i cant play it was the very first resident evil.
I was quite young and the scariest thing was the damned camera angles!!
Walk down a semmingly safe corridor only to reach the end and the camera snaps around the corner and then theres a zombie chewing on your neck.

Needless to say i never managed to complete it.

 

[-Javelin-]

the only time i've really been scared of a game so bad i cant play it was the very first resident evil.
I was quite young and the scariest thing was the damned camera angles!!
Walk down a seemingly safe corridor only to reach the end and the camera snaps around the corner and then theres a zombie chewing on your neck.

Needless to say i never managed to complete it.

 

[sathie]

Of all time it has to be the F.E.A.R demo. Not the actual game, but the condensed demo. I had to stop playing at least once cause I'm a scaredy cat and Alma (?) was scaring the crap out of me!

Second would probably be Resident Evil 2 and the licker coming through the interview room window in the police station.

And the latest one would be a point-and-click adventure game that I was playing. I was looking for a person that might be hidden in this darkened room when all of a sudden my monitor went CLICK really loudly for no reason. I jumped so badly

 

[John Galt]

Being a seven year old with my brother's copy of Resident Evil was probably the scariest thing I can remember in gaming. The polygonal zombies were perhaps the most horrible thing I remember from my childhood, that and in the first scene where the zombie looks up at you from it's 'meal'.

Beyond that nothing has really scared me in gaming, but a few moments in Bioshock before I discovered the "24/7-Immortality-Machines" that made me jump.

 

[SilentHunter7]

I never really played any horror games, save Dooms I, II, and III, and Doom I and Doom II weren't really aimed at scaring the player, save for the odd monster jumping out at you from a door that just opened behind you, and Doom 3's concept of scary was have the player fight off 100 bad guys he cant see. (Though I did get a little anxious when I had to push the teleporter button for the first time, thinking I was going to get sent to hell)

So, that said, I'm going to throw out the level 343 Guilty Spark in the original Halo. First time I played that, it was 3 in the morning, with all the lights off, and I was 12 at the time. You have hundreds of dead bodies, blood smeared all over the walls, aliens scared crapless, a human who's gone totally insane, and one of the best cutscenes in the game. And this is all before any actual fighting happens. You just get the feeling that something you REALLY do NOT want to meet is running amok. In my opinion, except for the Maw, it's best level by far in the entire series.

Also there was this one flash "game" I played about a month after assembling my (then) new computer, where about 10 seconds into the loading screen, the screen turns into a DOS prompt, and it makes you think the program is wiping your C drive. Never been so scared in my life

 

[BattleSnake]

Well, I freak out very easily, so there are a heck of a lot scary gaming moments for me.

Condemnded had many of them, too many if you ask me. The woman popping out of the locker ant the teacher in the school are by far the worst ones in the game. For those who haven´t played the game, watch this. But be warned, that might spoil most of the fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07y0kwM01SI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih6kuflcKKY.
And don´t forget the mannequins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbhIIicW2MI&feature=related

Then the infamous scene with the dog and the window in RE1. Made me pause the game immediately.

But the most scary thing was IMO in Banjo-Kazooie. Laugh if you want, but that invisible shark in the level with the ship was horror for me back then. I was 5 years old, and that shark made avoid that level when ever possible. Because of this game actually, I am terrified of Water in games, I always live in fear that any fish could attack me anytime. And yes, I am even scared of the Dopefish xD


Oh, and Eternal Darkness freaked me out, too.

 

[robfoughtrome]

1. ok you might laugh but those zombies in legend of zelda: ocarina of time shrieking in your face had me a little on edge back in the day.

2. another old one which would probably make me smirk rather than poo myself these days but was scary at the time nevertheless was the first boss in diablo 1, the butcher - when you wandered up to him with your feeble level 4 character and see bodies strung up in his lair to suddenly see him and hear his cry of 'mmmm FRESH MEAT'.

3. the new york apartment level in shadowman, where that crazy serial killer with the chairs made out of human skin would pop out of the ceiling to nailgun you and generally be a dick before zippping off again. it was made creepy particularly by the way he was packing some mean night vision goggles and you had a bloody torch to get through on.

4. silent hill 1. the whole of it. shit.

actually thought of this thread today when playing the orange box. im going through half life 2 for the 2nd time, and when i did ravenholm originally about 3 years ago i didnt find it scary at all. but this time around im doing it on hard, and was aiming to get the achievement for using only the gravity gun on ravenholm. as a result i must admit that the bit where you are waiting for father whatshisface to send that cart over from the churchyard to your rooftop to the sound of clambering on the drainpipes next to you was a bit unnerving.

basically im wondering if the harder you make a scary game, the scarier it becomes. perhaps why i found bioshock about as scary as a small fat child with piles. its made me want to play condemned on hard when i FINALLY pick up a copy (ive been meaning to for a while)

 

[Blobking]

lol, oh boy. Some of you guys brought back some bad memories for me =p

I can't beleive no one has mentioned demento/haunting ground so far. That game was so damn intense! The first time I had to run from the hulking debilitas and hid in the closet I thought I was safe, just to have him enter the room and rip the door open and kill me! that and the horrible sounds that followed my death made me terrified to die again! That whole game was filled with scary moments, and my wife will never forget the old man who viciously crawls along the floor after you! GAH! so scary!

The resident evil series was the scariest shit I played for years, like most people have mentioned here, I was really young when the PS came out and that was the first game we got for it in my house, taht and battle arena toshinden. Not only was the whole 3d awesomeness new to me, but that a game could scare me that deeply really made it an all time classic! they have steadily gotten less scary, but lets hope RE5 brings back some of that intensity.

The Project Zero/Fatal Frame series is downright intense as well. The first and third are absolute gold, but the second one wasn't very scary at all, one of the only parts that made me jump was at the end when I was looking for secret screenshots of the developers and such, in the girls room there is nothing around, but as soon as you raise your camera up to look for stuff the hanging woman spawns right in your face! I shit my pants on that one, and I got a cold shock i'll never forget.

Silent Hill needs no explanation, they were just built to torment you till your playing with every light in the house on! Anyone else freaked out with that elevator scene in #3? where your walking down the hospital corridor and there is blood streaked along walls leading to an elevator door thats torn open and a crumpled up wheelchair... such a let down that I spent all that time terrfied to go near it =P

and with that I think i'm gonna go out and pick up condemned! you guys have really sold me on it, I wanna experience that kinda fear this holiday season =D

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

The first time a game scared me was while playing Resident Evil 2. I was still in the police station, and had just solved some puzzle, but had to backtrack through one of the long hallways full of boarded up windows. As I had already cleared the area of zombies I wasn't being particularly wary, but when I ran past the windows zombie arms shoot through the gaps in the boards, trying to grab me. I must have jumped a foot off the ground.

Slightly more recently was a moment in FEAR. I was walking through one of the many cubicle areas in the office building, and a phone rang in a dark cubicle. Throughout the game there are messages on people's answering machines so I turned to see if I could answer the phone, and saw Alma scuttling like a spider towards me. I loudly proclaimed, "Holy shit," and jumped back with enough force to make my chair roll a few feet from the computer desk.

Pretty much all of Penumbra: Overture gives me the creeps because I keep waiting for something horrible to happen.

It sounds like I need to play further into Condemned. I wasn't impressed, but it seems I didn't get to the good parts.

 

[leningrad]

haha I remeber when my friend was playing condemned he had to stop because a big guy in what looked like a fireman's jacket jump out and nailed him with a sledge hammer... haha I don't think he has played the game since. And I'm pretty sure that was like 4 levels in lol.

Mine I'd have to say was recently, while dicking around in STALKER doing some mission killing stray dogs in this like.. run down collection of buildings and some train tracks. anyway I was doing my usual, killing the dogs when a dog or two ran past me and scrounging up guns that are strewn all over the place. Thats when I noticed a kind of odd outline of a creature, these creatures are called bloodsuckers and they creep the tits out of me. Basically, if you haven't played the game, they are like the brown imps from the old doom games, except they aren't pixelated and have lovely little tentacles coming off their face in which they love to lick you with. Naturally they have the ability to cloak themselves, but its video game cloaking as such if you're actually paying attention you can spot them. So when I noticed that it was starting to move I decided to be a man and introduce it to my AK that I was carrying at the time. So while in a quest to prove that I have testicles I failed to notice that the game had pulled a Typical stalker move and had spawned one of the little bastards for the three times I had entered and exited the area recently. In other words, I ran headlong into three of them, and when they attack, their cloaking comes off of course. So anyway it was like... GAHHH I KILL YOU...gaah manly.... "LOL THREE OF THEM" So what ended up happening is me getting scared yelling "cockwaffler" (when I get scared I yell messed up things), once I had randomly discharged my gun's magazine into the crowd in a sad attempt to lay murder they surrounded me and killed me, then sucked the blood from my dead body..... and sadly one of them knelt down and sucked the area of my aforementioned testicles......

 

[Kenshi_Ryden]

I pretty much agree with everything intplee said. Straight up.


The Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows. Scary as hell. I remember reading the lobby book, looking up and catching a glimpse of one of the Mummies, just as it walked around a corner. I seriously thought it was my imagination- I just about died when I saw one eating a corpse. I was just staring at it saying 'What the f**k is that?! What the f**k is it?!', then when I actually approached it, and it pure came at me, i actually shat my pants.

Hard to believe so few people have actually hit Silent Hill here- easily the deepest, most horrific scares ever in a videogame. I remember in SH2, the school scene, with the Mumblers.

Walk out of the lobby. The white noise on the radio starts. Look one way. Darkness. Look the other. Darkness. Look back. A short figure, horribly disfigured with claws for hands and no head, is stumbling towards me. I examine it and realise its a messed up child. I freak out. Turn the other way to run, and theres another one coming right at me from behind. I jsut about died, no joke. I went into a mad rage, and returned to awareness standing over the second 'Mumbler' beating its bloody mass with a pipe. Now THAT is a f***ed up game.

Condemned was brilliantly scary also, its definately second only to silent hill.

Doom 3 really wasnt that scary, the first half was quite tense, but you got used to it quick. The second half was just a very long shooting gallery. I got so bored of it i couldnt finish it :/

F.E.A.R was much the same story for me, although that demo for the expansion was pretty freaky.

Resi 4 lost a lot of the horrible desolation that the first games got, but still had some horrible moments. Times where you accidentally get totally surrounded by zombies; and there's nowhere to go whatsoever, that was scary. Not to mention the Regenerators. The Goddamn Regenerators...