Scariest thing that you've encountered in a videogame, recently.

[laggyteabag]

So I decided to pick up EA's Star Wars Battlefront on the PC. A lapse in judgement? Possibly, but I own it now, so I might as well sink some time into it.

I was playing for the Rebels on the Endor, and I was atop of one of those tree-line bridges that the Ewoks made, firing down at the unlucky Stormtroopers below. Then, I noticed something to my right - a brief flash of black and red; It was Darth Vader. I jumped in my seat as Vader slowly walked across the bridge towards me, ready to slice me in two. I fired a quick volley at him, only for him to deflect all of my own lasers back at me, so I threw a thermal detonator at him, as well as a thermal imploder that I had picked up, and was saving for a moment like this.

It didnt slow him down.

I ran.

I sprinted across the bridge, knowing that my end was nigh. At any moment, Vader could suffocate me, or throw his lightsaber through my chest, but, to my surprise, he didn't. Was he playing with me? It didn't matter; I was getting out of there as fast as I could. I ran into a group of fellow rebels, who all almost instantly switched their focus from whatever was below, to the dark lord of the sith that was approaching them. Volleys of red laser fire jutted out from this allied position, towards the dark jedi behind me. All I could hear was his telltale laboured breathing, and the swinging of his boiling blade. I could see on my minimap that he was no further than a meter or two behind me, and I had no intention of stopping to help my teammates, as I would have been cut down before I could even line up a shot. I was screaming in my seat for him not to catch me.

I heard the slaughter behind me, as my teammates screamed, and their guns silenced, but I was long gone. My heart drumming in my chest. I was the rebel that escaped Darth Vader.

So yeah, thats my very dramatic story of something random that happened in a game that shouldn't have been that scary in the first place. Safe to say that I now know exactly how those rebels felt during that scene in Rogue One. Anybody else been scared recently in a game?

 

[CaitSeith]

I recently played the ME3 Citadel DLC for the first time, and the premise starts with something that scares me because it happened to me in real life.

Spoiler

No, I'm not referring to the shooting inside the restaurant. I'm talking about identity theft.

...yeah, it sounds a little underwhelming, doesn't it? Maybe I should come back after replaying Amnesia: The Dark Descent or something.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Not exactly recent, but certainly the most memorable scary moment I experienced with a video game was when my friend and I were playing Condemned 2: Bloodshot. We?re both admitted cowards, so we played it together, trading the controller back and forth, but we did our best to set ourselves up for maximum terror: we only played at night, lights out and the 5.1 surround sound cranked up to 11. Well, it was my turn to play, so my friend took the opportunity to run across the parking lot to his apartment complex?s laundry facility to get his clothes; I agreed to play on without him. We?d just reached the doll factory area and I came across the cut scene where I was on the rafters and I witnessed a baby doll walk up to an NPC below, plop down and promptly explode. At that exact moment, the living room window, not 4 feet to my right, smashed on the ground? when I finished screaming and checking on my friend?s controller which I?d thrown across the room, I ran to the front door to cuss my friend out because I thought he?d tried to scare me by beating on the window, but he wasn?t there. I paused the game, turned on every light in his apartment, lit a cigarette and sat on his couch contemplating what I was doing with my life. A couple of minutes later, my friend opened the front door, saw all the lights on and got a shit-eating grin on his face until he then saw the broken glass everywhere. ?What the hell happened?!?? he says. Still shaking and getting ashes everywhere I recounted the events, and after he finished laughing his nuts off, he concluded that the subwoofer had likely vibrated the window pane out of place when the doll exploded in the game. However many years ago that was, you can still remind my ?friend? of that night, and he?ll laugh for an hour straight, fucking asshole?

 

[Sonmi]

Went through a tall playthrough in CK2 as Khitan Khotan.

The Mongols weren't too nice to me.

 

[jademunky]

The eye in Sunless Sea. Oh dear god THE EYE! And when you encounter it underwater..... ugh.

 

[Saelune]

Not exactly recent, but certainly the most memorable scary moment I experienced with a video game was when my friend and I were playing Condemned 2: Bloodshot. We?re both admitted cowards, so we played it together, trading the controller back and forth, but we did our best to set ourselves up for maximum terror: we only played at night, lights out and the 5.1 surround sound cranked up to 11. Well, it was my turn to play, so my friend took the opportunity to run across the parking lot to his apartment complex?s laundry facility to get his clothes; I agreed to play on without him. We?d just reached the doll factory area and I came across the cut scene where I was on the rafters and I witnessed a baby doll walk up to an NPC below, plop down and promptly explode. At that exact moment, the living room window, not 4 feet to my right, smashed on the ground? when I finished screaming and checking on my friend?s controller which I?d thrown across the room, I ran to the front door to cuss my friend out because I thought he?d tried to scare me by beating on the window, but he wasn?t there. I paused the game, turned on every light in his apartment, lit a cigarette and sat on his couch contemplating what I was doing with my life. A couple of minutes later, my friend opened the front door, saw all the lights on and got a shit-eating grin on his face until he then saw the broken glass everywhere. ?What the hell happened?!?? he says. Still shaking and getting ashes everywhere I recounted the events, and after he finished laughing his nuts off, he concluded that the subwoofer had likely vibrated the window pane out of place when the doll exploded in the game. However many years ago that was, you can still remind my ?friend? of that night, and he?ll laugh for an hour straight, fucking asshole?

Anyways...

OT: Not really a scary scare, but been paying Viva Pinata alot lately. Some of the creatures snore like my brother, so I keep thinking he is in the room, and it freaks me out.

 

[Rip Van Rabbit]

I played (And finished. Absolutely fantastic game.) Resident Evil 4: Ultimate HD Edition for the first time about a week ago.

The premise was just goofy enough to alleviate the sheer fucked up nature of the enemies you'll encounter.
So I was a fair amount into the game, the foreshadowing of something weird laying on an operating table in a sealed room was apparent. Enter adjacent room, fetch a keycard and --- BAM!

The Regenerador

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to come off like a tough guy or anything. It's really difficult for horror games to make me feel unsettled, let alone make me hesitate to react in a combat scenario. But I did not expect this thing to act the way it did.

First off, this thing moves like it has no bones. It's a snarling, ever-smiling, slow-walking monstrosity that actually made me hesitate to pull the trigger. Now, I've played Dead Space before, I'll just knee-cap 'em and take off the head for good measure.
That should do it. Now, I'll just sidestep the body and run away to preserve ammo -- OH GOD! How did it regenerate enough to leap onto me and proceed to chomp on my neck!?!

T_T

 

[shrekfan246]

Bloodborne.

I mean, just the entirety of it, really. Especially when you consider that most of the non-Great One enemies had been relatively "normal" at one point in time.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I'm playing the betas for Hello Neighbor and I freak out whenever he finds me and chases me. How does that even work? He's a "normal" person, not Pyramid Head or an Enderman, I guess the music helps, but still

 

[Faaip]

Its not often that I encounter enemies in games that I actually find scary.. but playing through Dark Souls 3 recently, these guys legitimately scared me for some reason.

Spoiler

 

[Catfood220]

I was playing Rise of the Tomb Raider and there is a jump scare quite early on in the game. I genuinely jumped because I wasn't expecting it, even though it shouldn't have been a jump scare as Lara should have seen it before her glow stick died.

I think that is as spoiler-ish as I can go without actual spoilers. I think that was the last time a game scared me. I would have said The Witcher 3, but that is more creepy than actually scary. Some of the missions are quite creepy until you actually get to whatever it is that you are supposed to kill and it stops being creepy. And then you hack it into bits.

 

[The Madman]

I've been playing STALKER: Call of Chernobyl recently and while I wouldn't necessarily call it scary, I will say it's often intense as all hell and has lead to more than a few moments of me being hunched forward to stare intently at the screen only to literally jump when some bloodsucker bastard or monolith scumbag takes a shot at me outta nowhere.

Probably my most intense moment recently was a gunfight with a pair of monolith soldiers inside this abandoned building in Pripyat. I'm playing on the highest difficulty so even one shot can kill, so every bullet whizzing past my head or every ricochet off the walls had me flinching all while I'm struggling to see and hear properly over the flashing lightning strikes and roar of the nearly supernatural storm going on outside.

It's unscripted moments like that which make the STALKER series so unique and memorable.

 

[pookie101]

playing a modded call of pripyat where there are psychic storms that kill you if you are caught out in the open. the mod added a warning siren that gives you maybe 30 seconds to find cover..

anyway. the siren goes off.. im in the open with no cover to be found, spotted a hole and jumped in, which turned out to be the next of some mutants.. so im stuck in the middle of an underground maze with a pile of critters around every corner.. nerve wracking to say the least

a side effect of it all is that for the next week every time i heard a siren anywhere i almost had a panic attack and looked for cover.. awesome stuff

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I downloaded a demo for what I thought may have been a game, didn't read the description. Forgot about it, then when I noticed it at a later date, thought it best to see at least what it was like. It then became apparent it was less a game and more a dress-up-dubious-aged-girls-and-watch-them-dance sort of...experience? With UK surveillance as it now is, I thought "shiiiiit nooooo!" And promptly deleted it before they could triangulate my nefarious actions and take me away to a special place. Scary stuff.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Bloodborne.

I mean, just the entirety of it, really. Especially when you consider that most of the non-Great One enemies had been relatively "normal" at one point in time.

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

 

[Faaip]

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

The Blood Starved Beast was the most problematic boss for me in that game. On subsequent play throughs I was able to get most of them in one try, but I still haven't done that with the BSB. The one in the chalice dungeons was brutal as well

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

The Blood Starved Beast was the most problematic boss for me in that game. On subsequent play throughs I was able to get most of them in one try, but I still haven't done that with the BSB. The one in the chalice dungeons was brutal as well

How do you beat it? I've looked up videos and the behavior in the videos is wildly different than the one I fight. I get that you're supposed to throw old rotten blood to distract it, but in video its distracted waaaayyy longer than what I face. And fire paper/torch/Molotov cocktails seems to do no damage at all.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

The Blood Starved Beast was the most problematic boss for me in that game. On subsequent play throughs I was able to get most of them in one try, but I still haven't done that with the BSB. The one in the chalice dungeons was brutal as well

How do you beat it? I've looked up videos and the behavior in the videos is wildly different than the one I fight. I get that you're supposed to throw old rotten blood to distract it, but in video its distracted waaaayyy longer than what I face. And fire paper/torch/Molotov cocktails seems to do no damage at all.

I'm still only on the first Dark Souls, but I recall having a similar complaint about the Gaping Dragon. His behavior in YouTube videos was completely different from what I was encountering. Come to find (and you probably know this) it was the distance I was keeping between us that elicited his attack patterns. I'd watch the videos again and not only pay attention to what the player is doing, but also where they are in relation to the AI.

 

[Faaip]

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

The Blood Starved Beast was the most problematic boss for me in that game. On subsequent play throughs I was able to get most of them in one try, but I still haven't done that with the BSB. The one in the chalice dungeons was brutal as well

How do you beat it? I've looked up videos and the behavior in the videos is wildly different than the one I fight. I get that you're supposed to throw old rotten blood to distract it, but in video its distracted waaaayyy longer than what I face. And fire paper/torch/Molotov cocktails seems to do no damage at all.

I could never get that method to work either.. For me it really just came down to dodging and getting hits in when I could while using fire papers. He can also be parried which makes the fight a bit easier. The best (but riskiest) time to parry is when he stands up to do the grab attack if I remember correctly.

I was surprised to see how many people on youtube thought it was one of the easier bosses. His speed and poison attacks just made it super difficult for me. Good luck!

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I'm actually playing through that one. Stuck in Old Yhadwhatever, with the Blood Starved Beast. But the weird screechy deathshroud monsters littered throughout the level unnerve me. Those loud screechy barks and red eyes. They're like a dickish version of the Ghost of Christmas Future

The Blood Starved Beast was the most problematic boss for me in that game. On subsequent play throughs I was able to get most of them in one try, but I still haven't done that with the BSB. The one in the chalice dungeons was brutal as well

How do you beat it? I've looked up videos and the behavior in the videos is wildly different than the one I fight. I get that you're supposed to throw old rotten blood to distract it, but in video its distracted waaaayyy longer than what I face. And fire paper/torch/Molotov cocktails seems to do no damage at all.

I just summoned the NPC friend outside the area by the stairs to help distract the thing. It seems to aggro towards them a lot more. Threw a couple of molotovs, although it gets quicker the more damage it takes so in the late stages It's easy to miss. Also used a couple of fire papers, but unless the beast is in its' last transformation, the most economical method to regaining lost health is attacking right back before dodging the fuck outta there and letting it focus on your NPC buddy, the minor stagger can allow for multiple quick attacks if careful. The final transformation is where you don't want to get close to it for any longer than you need for a jab or two as that poison builds up quick, yet again NPC buddy can be good for distracting it if antidote is needed or whatever else.
It was my biggest annoyance first time with the game. Coming back to it after a year or so break though was far less of an annoyance than expected. Perhaps it did teach a few improvements to my style.