One of these days I want to run through the first three Silent Hill games again, because it's been so long since I've played them. I only (finally) played through The Room in the past year or so, and while I think it's under rated - or at least underappreciated - I'm in no hurry to take another journey into that iteration of madness. Those burping nurses and that otherworld apartment building...*shudders*. Don't even get me started on the ghosts in the subway chasing you with that high pitched static hum and thumping bass backbeat. I get chills just recalling it.
Unsettling Moments in Video games.
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Ha! But it's true! I posted this at work and from there on was constantly thinking about wether to continue with the stuff I'm playing at the moment or replay Bloodlines. This game is just so good. I espacially appreciated how well the Pen&Paper lore (which I've played a few times) was implemented without being overbearing. the writes sure knew their stuff.Blitsie said:I was about to post exactly those two moments! It's crazy how that game could have you go through standard vampire gothic stuff, lulling you into this false sense of security only to throw you into some truly fucked up situation which has you shutting the game down after thinking "what the hell did I just experience?"Xerosch said:
Welp, and can't have a Bloodlines post without this pic, as I'm definitely that person right now (I still have to finish my malkavian playthrough!):
Silent Hills 1-4 are some of the scariest games out there. They really get subtle scares as well as the big gore fest stuff. There was an art studio that I worked at years ago that had a big screen tv. It was around 2 in the afternoon and one of the inkers and myself were playing some Silent Hill 2. We were exploring the Hotel where the happy couple had their honey moon when out of nowhere, an unintelligible whisper crept out of the surround sound. Me and the other fella were instantly turned into a couple of Dandy's lol. That moment really stood out as a testament to the games creep factor because not only was I not alone, it was broad daylight and I still had the shit scared out of me. Great series.hanselthecaretaker said:
He's a dick to you because...SlumlordThanatos said:
He used to be able to create save states by himself. But when you came in, he lost that power. In fact, the Flowey's tale I wrote about is a backstory that involves how he used that power in the past. I think it's ingenious to make save states part of the game lore. Too bad you didn't like it. IMO, it's pretty fun to see which parts of the dialogs change.
The 'Abstract Daddy' in Silent Hill 2. Dead Hand in Ocarina of Time (particularly the freaky twitching it does on the ground when it's dead, which I only recently noticed). The reveal of Alma's past in F.E.A.R.. The torture devices in Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
The burning staircase scene's conclusion from "Silent Hill 2" was both unsettling and depressing. The thought of somebody being willing to do that bothers me, but the fact the game gives you the choice to watch or not watch it makes it all the more effective.
Pretty much all of Fatal Frame.
In Psychonauts:
In Parasite Eve II:
In Psychonauts:
Milla's Secret
Basically she worked in an orphanage where there was a fire and a lot of kids died. She couldn't get to them to save them, but, being a psychic, she could hear them begging for help in her mind. The memories of that are locked away in her subconscious for you (as Raz) to find.
The rest of the game is, even given the whole stealing brains thing, light and comedic, yet Milla's Secret is about as dark and, if you think about it, as horrific as it gets. But in-game it still works somehow.
I guess The Meat Circus also gets a bit out there, though I don't recall it being a particularly difficult level despite its apparent reputation for being so. Either way, personally I didn't find it disturbing in the way discovering Milla's Secret was
Basically she worked in an orphanage where there was a fire and a lot of kids died. She couldn't get to them to save them, but, being a psychic, she could hear them begging for help in her mind. The memories of that are locked away in her subconscious for you (as Raz) to find.
The rest of the game is, even given the whole stealing brains thing, light and comedic, yet Milla's Secret is about as dark and, if you think about it, as horrific as it gets. But in-game it still works somehow.
I guess The Meat Circus also gets a bit out there, though I don't recall it being a particularly difficult level despite its apparent reputation for being so. Either way, personally I didn't find it disturbing in the way discovering Milla's Secret was
In Parasite Eve II:
The Golems always creeped me out for some reason.
Especially the invisi ones. Even after I'd played through a half dozen times and knew where every last one of them would pop up, that cut scene always caused a bit of dread and got my heart racing.
Especially the invisi ones. Even after I'd played through a half dozen times and knew where every last one of them would pop up, that cut scene always caused a bit of dread and got my heart racing.
I've always found the concept behind Dead Space to be unnerving. While I don't consider the games frightening (being able to blow a monster apart kind of kills that for me), the idea of what is happening, or happened, has always freaked me out a bit.
There's a virus/mind control wave that you can't defend against, that gets into your head and makes you slowly lose your grip on reality. Worse, you know it's out there and you know what it does, because you've seen what happens to other people, but you're still toast. Your only options are to either kill yourself, or wait until one of your former friends kills you in a fit of madness.
I think, much to my disbelief, that Dead Space: Extraction captured this the best. The idea of watching this peaceful colony fall apart at the seems in the matter of a few days is horrifying.
To know you're going crazy, but not being able to do a thing about it...
Bonus mention to the poor miner guy and his wife/girlfriend, who managed to survive all that time on the Ishi, only for Isaac to arrive just in time for him to be murdered by the last remaining human on the ship. How sad to have made it so far, only to die at the hands of someone who, while crazy, clearly hasn't gone full Marker yet.
There's a virus/mind control wave that you can't defend against, that gets into your head and makes you slowly lose your grip on reality. Worse, you know it's out there and you know what it does, because you've seen what happens to other people, but you're still toast. Your only options are to either kill yourself, or wait until one of your former friends kills you in a fit of madness.
I think, much to my disbelief, that Dead Space: Extraction captured this the best. The idea of watching this peaceful colony fall apart at the seems in the matter of a few days is horrifying.
To know you're going crazy, but not being able to do a thing about it...
Bonus mention to the poor miner guy and his wife/girlfriend, who managed to survive all that time on the Ishi, only for Isaac to arrive just in time for him to be murdered by the last remaining human on the ship. How sad to have made it so far, only to die at the hands of someone who, while crazy, clearly hasn't gone full Marker yet.
The Soulsborne series has some incredibly effective areas, and I wish future iterations (most likely a sequel to Bloodborne) would emphasise that aspect even further. The whole series is just a masterclass of building atmosphere without interrupting gameplay in any fashion. Off the top of my head some examples are:
- Tower of Latria in Demon's Souls. Gently tingling bells have never sounded so terrifying. The descent to the bottom of the second stage is just a nightmare, as you're without warning thrust into a low-visibility swamp with no sense of direction, enemies straight out of a nightmare, and a lack of understanding for what you're even walking amidst.
- If one has played Blighttown already, Valley of Defilement is just a more annoying version of it... until you get to Astraea, and make the mistake of stepping into the swamp in the boss room. Bloody, deformed babies rise from the blood and tear you apart in literally seconds. Yyyyeeeccchhhhh.
- Tomb of the Giants in Dark Souls. The lack of explanation for any of it is what makes it. Yeah, it's Nito's light devouring domain of death, you'd expect to see skeletons, yet... why are there house sized coffins all over the place? Who or what were they made for? Who or what were the giant skeletons we fight? Most unnerving are the skeleton "dogs". They're clearly humanoid, but not quite human in the way they move. Were they human once? What degraded them to this position? And let's not even mention the literally endless horde of baby skeletons rising from the water to attack you, while above you see adult skeletons kneeling in prayer en masse. A cult worshipping a god of death sacrificing babies to him.
- The worms in the Duke's Archives, more specifically the ones that drop the Soothing and Bountiful Sunlight miracles. The whole game you've been conditioned to attack anything that doesn't make a "talk" prompt appear, and you charge into a room full of enemies. And in the corner there are two left. Only something's wrong, They don't attack you or move at all, just kind of shiver in place. When you get closer you can hear clearly human sobbing. When you hit them they just try to escape. And there's nothing you can do to help them, only put them out of their misery.
- Bloodborne has too many of these to count, but to name a few: The Research Hall in the Old Hunters DLC, the first hallway when you enter the cathedral in Upper Cathedral Ward (when the horror violins slowly fade in), the walls in the Hypogean Gaol after you've defeated Rom (straight up holocaust imagery), the shade of Queen Yharnam before the Mergo's Wet Nurse boss fight, the final fate of the prostitute you tell to go to Cathedral Ward, the solution of the little girl sideplot in the early game. I also love how the Lovecraftian themes are implemented even to the gameplay: the more insight you consume, the weirder the world around you gets, the more bizarre things you start to see, and your Frenzy resistance goes ever lower. A fantastically simple implementation of the themes of facing something beyond human understanding.
- Tower of Latria in Demon's Souls. Gently tingling bells have never sounded so terrifying. The descent to the bottom of the second stage is just a nightmare, as you're without warning thrust into a low-visibility swamp with no sense of direction, enemies straight out of a nightmare, and a lack of understanding for what you're even walking amidst.
- If one has played Blighttown already, Valley of Defilement is just a more annoying version of it... until you get to Astraea, and make the mistake of stepping into the swamp in the boss room. Bloody, deformed babies rise from the blood and tear you apart in literally seconds. Yyyyeeeccchhhhh.
- Tomb of the Giants in Dark Souls. The lack of explanation for any of it is what makes it. Yeah, it's Nito's light devouring domain of death, you'd expect to see skeletons, yet... why are there house sized coffins all over the place? Who or what were they made for? Who or what were the giant skeletons we fight? Most unnerving are the skeleton "dogs". They're clearly humanoid, but not quite human in the way they move. Were they human once? What degraded them to this position? And let's not even mention the literally endless horde of baby skeletons rising from the water to attack you, while above you see adult skeletons kneeling in prayer en masse. A cult worshipping a god of death sacrificing babies to him.
- The worms in the Duke's Archives, more specifically the ones that drop the Soothing and Bountiful Sunlight miracles. The whole game you've been conditioned to attack anything that doesn't make a "talk" prompt appear, and you charge into a room full of enemies. And in the corner there are two left. Only something's wrong, They don't attack you or move at all, just kind of shiver in place. When you get closer you can hear clearly human sobbing. When you hit them they just try to escape. And there's nothing you can do to help them, only put them out of their misery.
- Bloodborne has too many of these to count, but to name a few: The Research Hall in the Old Hunters DLC, the first hallway when you enter the cathedral in Upper Cathedral Ward (when the horror violins slowly fade in), the walls in the Hypogean Gaol after you've defeated Rom (straight up holocaust imagery), the shade of Queen Yharnam before the Mergo's Wet Nurse boss fight, the final fate of the prostitute you tell to go to Cathedral Ward, the solution of the little girl sideplot in the early game. I also love how the Lovecraftian themes are implemented even to the gameplay: the more insight you consume, the weirder the world around you gets, the more bizarre things you start to see, and your Frenzy resistance goes ever lower. A fantastically simple implementation of the themes of facing something beyond human understanding.
Have you ever played/hear of Animal Crossing? That series has something that reminds and berates at you for quitting without saving, even worse it tallies the times it happened and actually punishes you.SlumlordThanatos said:
Eh, I took that as more just the kids looking up to Tayama as this 'cool guy' who sells himself as the saviour of humanity. Plenty of gross-out in the Reverse Hills already without THAT going on.inu-kun said:
And yes, it came out of the 20th of this month. Currently engaged in something of a race to see if I can reach the end before a certain extremely active Let's Player, but to my shock I'm finding it actually rather easy compared to the murderous original game. I've died like four times total and I'm already at Level 60.
That's not even close to the same thing.Igor-Rowan said:
One game is giving a commentary on player choice, and using the ability to save and reload just to see what happens if you do a thing.
The other game is simply trying to make you feel guilty for not playing it.
The Oceanside Hotel in Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines. That's the most unsettled and uneasy I've felt playing through a level where there is very little actual threat to my character. Never made it far into the game because of bugs, but that level was amazingly well done for me.
It's implied his eyes were ripped out or exploded as there's a brief image of the first jump scare that involves him. This did not make the situation any less creepy, because you never find out where Janowski's body is.GTMippey said:
Resident Evil 2. The abandon police station, the underground Umbrella lab, and the city itself creeped me out as a kid. I couldn't sleep for a whole week, and spent the next week looking out my bedroom window. It was the first time I was introduced to zombies in something scary, other than cartoons or House of the Dead. The only thing more messed up than the Licker's first introduction was Brian Irons. He is one of the most screwed up human beings ever, and he's not even a BOW.
Eve from Parasite Eve. Whenever you heard her theme, you knew there would be only trouble.
Oh, and seeing the game over screen from the Ninja Gaiden arcade game at age four was not the best idea at all.
thebobmaster said:
Yeah actually the whole vibe of that game was pretty...wrong. Also what made it into the unforgettable masterpiece that it is, even if you can't remember the details you know certain crazy parts because it left such an impact. Even with it's dated graphics and technology it was capable of creating this atmosphere. Hard to believe how well it stands up, without looking overly cheesy, even among the horror genres that have been overplayed to death in modern media (while including zombies, ghosts, golems, werewolves and nosferatus)Xerosch said:
Actually, the whole side mission which you're referring to (Xerosch) with the snuff tapes, Tzimisce demons and even the filming studio just goes from bad to worse to downright ugly, until that mansion part. One of the best twisted story arcs in any game, ever.
Many I can mention once again, but I will said a recent one:
From the game INSIDE from the creator of Limbo:
From the game INSIDE from the creator of Limbo:
Near the end when you get to meet the giant Meatball. By saying Meatball I mean literally a giant Mutated Human Mass with multiple Human Limbs. The things get really more unsettling when you get pull inside this abomination only to get to control it....
SOMA has many unsettling moments. The general gameplay brings a lot of horror through the schlock scares of creepy noises and being powerless in front of the monsters. But the real unsettling content are the themes of humanity and existence, especially...
all the moments you deactivate robots who believe they're humans -- and then the various points where you start copying your own personality into different machines... and then deciding if you should kill your other self. The way thy handled that in the ending was very creepy too.