Unexpected moments of Horror in Non-Horror Games

[Starbird]

Half Life 1 had a bunch. One part you see a bullsquid go into a vent, and if you look in it *lunges* out at you. My friends all had a good laugh when I nearly fell out of my chair.

The original Aliens Vs Predator game was nigh unplayable for me. Basically every facehugger and alien fight was a jumpscare waiting to happen, and I couldn't take it.

Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 had a few bits. I recall a gigantic eel that came out of nowhere and attacked you in TR2. Never been able to find it again or any footage of it. The sharks were also eerie as hell.

But if I had to think of one...ugh, I can't even remember it. It was a Half Life 1 engine game with a sort of Turok feel to it. There was this *massive* monster that you never saw clearly but it was white and occasionally dropped down out of the darkness.

Dammit I cannot remember the game!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There is always the broodmothers from Dragon Age. That's some messed up gross out shit right there.

I don't know if BioShock counts? It's not exactly a horror game. The beginning of the game is unsettling, and there're a couple of jumpscares. But for the most part it's not a horror game. That's until you drop by Fort Frolic

Yeah, if Bioshock has one scary moment, it's the first time you walk past one of those plaster dancer sculptures, turn around, and realize it has moved *shudder*

Oh my god, yes. The way they're programmed (I think) is that they "teleport" around as soon as you take your eyes off them. It works so well because it taps in what I think is a pretty common fear in most people, which is that the minute you take your eyes off something creepy it'll move and attack you.

And you're right about those Regenerators too. Those things cause simultaneous creeping horror and actual panic. God, are they well-designed.

Everything about the Regenerators is top notch design choices. The way they move, the sounds they make, the tight spaces, how unpredictably they react to getting shot in what part, the one-hit deaths, the convoluted way in which you have to kill them (after spending a whole game doing fine with headshots), etc. Scary stuff.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Classic example, but the Dunwich Building in Fallout 3 is just all kinds of nope. Even whilst wielding an automatic shotgun and the feral ghouls inside basically being made out of wet paper I still felt freaked out to hell and back.

Also, arguably, the damn Hotel bit from Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Classic haunted house scares, nothing revolutionary, but it still spooked me.

Which is funny because Amnesia: Dark Descent, a proper horror game, has yet to mildly frighten me. But these two got me alright.

Yeah, if Bioshock has one scary moment, it's the first time you walk past one of those plaster dancer sculptures, turn around, and realize it has moved *shudder*

Actually I'd say there's two more in BioShock. When you first find the shotgun all the lights suddenly go out and you (I think) start hearing some maniacal laughter. And then you have to defend yourself while angry Splicers pop up almost next to you. That means you have to react pretty damn quickly, and at that point ammo is relatively scarce.

Also, the first time you encounter the teleporting Splicers in Arcadia. You see signs of someone vanishing and when you go down a random little dead-end hallway with some loot at the end you're pretty much face-to-face with one all of a sudden who then teleports away again. That's a tense little bit because you're not yet sure how powerful these dudes are.

Half Life 1 had a bunch. One part you see a bullsquid go into a vent, and if you look in it *lunges* out at you. My friends all had a good laugh when I nearly fell out of my chair.

HL2 continued that trend, outside of Ravenholm, with the good ol' headcrabs-in-vents bullcrap.

 

[Muspelheim]

In ArmA 2, part of your mission as a peace keeping force, is to collect evidence of various crimes commited by the Chedaki regime.

I really hoped that the mass grave the beaten civilan spoke about wouldn't be there when I went searching for it. That it was a misunderstanding. But it wasn't.

There was a dreadful drone of thousands upon thousands of flies.

So that was rather horrifying.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does atmosphere so well for a game with such shitty visuals, just the underground labs holy fuck.

Just being outside during the night can be terrifying. It gets really, really dark, and I imagine the most dangerous mutants come out to play after sundown.

 

[JCAll]

Have you ever read through the Pokedex?

 

[Varrdy]

That bit in GTA V where Trevor gets off his tits on Barry's "weed" and the creepy clowns show up. Clowns freak me out and if that were not bad enough, the ambience of creepified clown / circus music and child-laughter is thrown in for good measure!

 

[Spectrix]

In Majora's Mask when you have to defend Romani Ranch from Them. I thought after 15 years and playing the game a few times before, it wouldn't scare me when I played it in the 3DS version. I was wrong. I was still terrified.

 

[klaynexas3]

Fucking Ravenholme. I think what makes it scarier is the fact that you don't view it as a scary game, so when you come to this scary part, it's so much more scary due to juxtaposition.

Also, any underwater fight in Shadow of the Colossus.

Boo house in Mario 64 freaked me out a bit.

 

[Just Ebola]

For me it's the town of Andale in Fallout 3. I was just wandering around and came across this town with a giant sign claiming to be the happiest place in Virginia. But the families that lived there were just so happy and contently avoiding the subject of the nuclear winter going on outside. It was just too weird since everywhere else in the game people were struggling to survive. I got the hell out of that town and have avoided it on every play through since.

That's actually only half the story. If just their all-too-friendly demeanor made you feel uneasy, it's probably good that you didn't delve any deeper.

They're all cannibals. They're trying to live like people did before the war by keeping up the friendly neighbor act, and butchering wanderers for sustenance. When they invite you to dinner, they mean it in the sense that you'll be the main course. If you poke around in their shed or basement (which they don't take kindly to) you'll find killing stations, dismembered limbs and freezers filled with human meat.

OT: The beginning of half life two, where for just a split second you're teleported underwater, and a deformed sea serpent lunges at your face. Nothing about conventional horror actually scares me, I actually love it. But anything having to do with open bodies of water, or anything that dwells within is enough to scare me stiff.

 

[ExDeath730]

It was already said in the thread, but the Ocean House Hotel in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines freaked me out. Because it's one thing to make you feel horror when going the easy "indie" route (defenseless character), but nope, there you're a freaking vampire. With superpowers, guns, being able to whitstand a lot of damage, regeneration...But that hotel have such a great atmosphere, that it didn't matter.

Another one, is AvP, the first game, playing as a Marine is insane, you're gonna stay the entire time on your toes, it's one of the cooler horror/action games that i played.

 

[PinkiePyro]

pokemon games can have some pretty scary ass stuff and not just the infamous lavender town
hell yea lavender town was creepy but..

the old chateau was equally creepy with its ghosts and the fan theory about people being murdered via poison due to the antidote in the kitchen trash can
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Old_Chateau

and this place in B/W2 and it's ghost seriously set off my NOPE meter...
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Strange_House

there is some NOPE worthy things in skyrim too

like Frostflow lighthouse
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Frostflow_Lighthouse

 

[Jingle Fett]

Spoiler

Spoiler

The freakin zombie sequence in Conker's Bad Fur Day. The sounds they make, the fact that they cannot be killed without headshots (they'll keep going even with no legs), the fact that your rate of fire is slow and if you miss you just push them back, how they walk slowly and then lunge, the creepy music with children laughing, but most of all...

This is a cutesy colorful game. Sure it was bloody and crass and had lots of foul language...but it was still cartoony and funny and stuff, which makes the sequence somehow more disturbing. And since it's on the N64 and everything is generally low res, it leaves enough space for your imagination to fill in the gaps.

Plus the zombies were oddly detailed compared to most other characters in the game. I mean that female zombie has smeared makeup, half her hair missing, the flopping eyeball, she has boobs (this is a N64 game remember), her dress is ripped, she has only one shoe, that same foot is broken, and her arm is partially decayed. FFS this is the only game I've ever played with eyeball physics.

 

[Dalisclock]

One of the vaults in New Vegas is a great horror experience. The nuclear reactor in the place got fucked up so now there is radiation everywhere and the place is infested with ghouls (the former residents). Basically you have to jack up on Rad-X, where a radsuit and try and get through the place before you die from radiation, while fending off what are effectively zombies. It has such a tense, urgent atmosphere and I absolutely loved it (despite not being much of a horror fan).

I can't remember if it was NV or 3 but there's one vault where you go inside and see really wierd crap, like people just appearing in front of you, vanishing, and running way faster then normal. Later you find out that someone was pumping hallucinogens into the air system to see what happened, but until you find out why it's just really freaky.

 

[PinkiePyro]

Boo house in Mario 64 freaked me out a bit.

I have yet to meet someone who played that and wasn't scared of that level .....
I blame that damn piano

Classic example, but the Dunwich Building in Fallout 3 is just all kinds of nope. Even whilst wielding an automatic shotgun and the feral ghouls inside basically being made out of wet paper I still felt freaked out to hell and back.

the name should've been a big tip off for what was in it.... Dunwich was the name of a town in one of H.P. lovecraft's most famous works ... (eldritch easter egg much?)

 

[Dalisclock]

Comstock House in Bioshock: Infinite. Little ammo, completely deserted and the fucking Boys of Silence.

Not to mention it follows off the whole "Lady Comstock/Siren" sequence, which is also creepy at times.

 

[twistedmic]

Anything dealing with the Falmer and Blackreach from Skyrim freaked me the fuck out. I avoided them as much as possible.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

The first time I entered the nether, I cam out underground so I decided to dig up and see what its like up there. As I dig up I hear Ghasts giggling, they since removed this but when they first released the nether Ghasts would scream as if hurt when they touched the lava, even though it didnt hurt them. So theyd get stuck in places screaming forever. And there were dozens of them. Imagine digging up in the darkness only to hear all those creepy giggles suddenly turn into SCREAMING!

It was freaky.

 

[PinkiePyro]

The first time I entered the nether, I cam out underground so I decided to dig up and see what its like up there. As I dig up I hear Ghasts giggling, they since removed this but when they first released the nether Ghasts would scream as if hurt when they touched the lava, even though it didnt hurt them. So theyd get stuck in places screaming forever. And there were dozens of them. Imagine digging up in the darkness only to hear all those creepy giggles suddenly turn into SCREAMING!

It was freaky.

lol they actually could be killed by the lava the first month or so me and my buddies would camp out in a hut we made near a large pool) and watch them die in it once we stopped being scared of them
(I nearly peed myself during my first encounter with those things, their size combined with their sounds were so unnerving to me)


Edit: I thought of another mario one

when you encounter mimi in super paper mario ... she may seem cute but she is a horrifying nope in disguise

Spoiler

she turns into a invincible giant spider thing in a rather horrifying manner complete with cracking sounds and chases you ...

 

[thxforthelulz]

I don't know if BioShock counts? It's not exactly a horror game. The beginning of the game is unsettling, and there're a couple of jumpscares. But for the most part it's not a horror game. That's until you drop by Fort Frolic, which is to BioShock what Ravenholm is to Half-Life 2. And now that I'm thinking of "that one scary place in otherwise non-scary games", there's the mansion bit in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, which was pretty scary (especially the fight against the reindeer-head man). And of course the regenerators from Resident Evil 4 (which despite being technically a "horror game", doesn't have any horror going but those guys). I mean, you're near the end, zombies are rushing and shooting, the stupidity of the plot has solidified and you've already unlocked and upgraded every weapon in the game. Very few horror games keep up the tension during the home stretch. But these fuckers come by, and I swear they're scary no matter how many times you play the damn game.

Omg, the splicer statues covered in plaster coming to life and silently hunting you down in the mall had my testes retreating into my body cavity. Everytime you heard the roof crumble you knew that a plaster spider splicer was headed your way but OH JESUS FUCK, WHICH DIRECTION IS IT ASFGDAS?!