Scariest sounds in games

[bladax]

Gentlemen Gentlemen. You have clearly not played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

Shoggoth.
Hotel
Sewers

Lets just say that game in it's entirety is quite jarring. Seriously look this game up. It's ridiculous. It'll leave your skin crawling.

By the way I WOULD find Amnesia un-silly but come on your guy can push a 300 POUND BOULDER, and can KNOCK DOWN A WALL WITH A HELMET sorry but he can't use his apparently steroid filled muscles to simply snap them frikken things in two?

 

[witheringsanity]

regenerators breathing from RE4
sirens in silent hill 1-3
nearly everything in fatal frame
hyper zombies from REmake
hunters "click click" walking from resident evil
nemesis's orchestra sting from resident evil 3

and this takes the cake for me:

Spoiler

seriously, first time i heard that i thought the music was a new monster noise (since i could also hear giant spider footsteps)

 

[Teckdeth]

That horrible raspy, coughy chuckle from the regenerators in Resident Evil 4. Man they freaked me out as a kid!

 

[Cpu46]

Hey, come on now! The witch's cry in Left 4 Dead. That sound always got to me.

My sister once watched me play Left 4 Dead, she had to leave the room because the witch cry unsettled her so much. This is the girl that slaughtered zombies in COD WAW with nothing short of barely contained glee.


OT: I find that Creepers in Minecraft are startling but not scary. However several of the ambient cave noises get me every single time. Especially the "banshee". (1:14 on the video)

 

[Mistermixmaster]

Damn, I agree to a LOT of the stuff being posted here!

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet though that I'd like to add (even though it isn't from a horror game or anything) is the sound of an enemy fighter locking a missile on your plane. Doesn't matter if it's in Ace Combat or in H.A.W.X. or any other game, the second that beeping goes into a flat "BEEEEEE-" sound (sometimes combined with a red "WARNING"-sign on the HUD) the adrenaline comes into play. Even worse if you are piloting a bomber/attacker plane with low maneuverability!

 

[Xaio30]

The beeping from a mine in Fallout 3/New Vegas. It scares the living FUCK out of me!

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

"VENGEANCE!"

Cookie for the reference.

Spoiler: For those that do not want a cookie

The call of dead king Lysandus in TES II: Daggerfall.

Damn, I remember that. I shat myself the first time I spent the night in daggerfall city
it still gives me the creeps

oh and the music from the kennels in penumbra: black plauge (scariest area in the game) is also worth a mention

Spoiler: As promised...

Another TES related one is the creaking and groaning of Dwemer ruins in TES III. Not scary as such, but definitely unsettling. Until I took to Dwemer Delving and scoured every ruin I could find. Now, bizarrely enough, I quite like the sounds.

 

[shoreleave]

There's a noise that plays in the first few Silent Hills. Its this machine noise that gets progressively louder as you go. For whatever reason it freaks me out every time and makes me feel like shit is about to go down.

 

[Joshimodo]

The fucking radio sound in silent hill!!! Why has noone mentioned this?!?!

This one.


Why people find the Witch scary in L4D is beyond me...

 

[Sabrestar]

Silly as it may sound, back when I was playing the heck out of Daggerfall, it was often very late at night in a dark dorm room, alone. Most monster sounds were scary in that environment, but nothing worse than the spider. I'm terrified of spiders to begin with, and in that game they were huge. And green. And nasty. Still frightens me.


On a more comedic note, scary in a laughable way: The (lousy) port of Bad Dudes for the NES. The NES was really bad at digitised voices; why they tried in this game, I'll never know. But your character was supposed to shout "I'm bad!" at the end of every level. The voice sample was so scratchy, and so horrible, and so incredibly LOUD, that I jumped out of my chair the first time I heard it (hey, I was 9 at the time!). It's just funny and sad now, but my friends and I used to have to cover our ears when we beat a level to hide from it.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

An oldie, but probably still relevant in this day and age. When I was but a young'un, ReDeads honestly and truly gave me nightmares. Posting a 6 minute video of that...moaning...brought back some truly frightening images from my childhood. Let us not forget as well, the terrifying scream these bastards let forth. The way they move, the manner in which they act, the destroyed Hyrule Castle town in which they first appeared...

Indeed, the stuff of nightmares. When you are under 10 years old, and have weak constitutions such as myself, these things will horrify you.

 

[neilsaccount]

So after playing some of the new AVP, I was quickly reminded of how frightening that little pinging of the motion tracker could be. So I started thinking about other in game sounds that make me jump and/or scream like a little girl. So far I've got:

AVP motion tracker ping
half-life 2 black headcrab screech
the utmost dreaded creeper hissssss from minecraft

Nothing else is coming to mind but I know there are more out there.

What other sounds should go into this list and why?

Gears of War when someone is set on fire. I just cringe when I kill them because it sounds so agonizing.

 

[SHIFTYMACO]

The sound of the hell Knight and Arch vile in Doom 2 scares the crap outta me every time!

The sound at the start of Battle field bad company 2.

Damn those Arch vile's!

 

[Jfswift]

I hate it when I'm playing Fallout 3 or NV and I knock over a metal container or something large and noisy. Especially late at night, those sounds startle me or worse, when I trip land mines I didn't see.

 

[Mangod]

Guten Tag!
- Hans Grosse, Wolfenstein 3D.

 

[Talespinner]

The haunted house sequence in Vampire: Bloodlines. No contest. None at all.

Oh wait, the opening scene in the first Alone in the Dark. The one in the attic when you played it the first time. I screamed like a girl...

 

[breadsammich]

The sound that the Pfhors make in Marathon. It's the goofiest sound out of context, but when you're walking down a dimly lit hall, and you hear that sound...

 

[SaunaKalja]

System Shock 2 has been mentioned many times, and I agree with that. One more creepy aspect of that game is the Xerxes announcements

Spoiler

It was really scary when he did one of those... other announcements for the first time.

 

[Jfswift]

The fucking radio sound in silent hill!!! Why has noone mentioned this?!?!

I forgot about that but yea I always turned off that radio because I found it way too creepy for practical use