What Games Scare you? (Continuation)

[Omniponent]

Special Thanks to everyone who contributed to the "What Games Scare you?" thread. Even if I didn't include a quote from you in the article, I enjoyed reading everyone's stories!
Seems like the winners for scariest games are:
Fatal Frame
Alien Isolation
and F.E.A.R (this one surprised me)

Let me know what you think of the article, any comments or critiques are welcome, preferably leave them on my site and not on the forum. Thanks so much!

http://www.discussking.com/the-spill/why-are-games-scary

PS: Glad someone mentioned the regenerator from RES4. I totally forgot about that guy. (shudders)

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Eh? I can never get immersed into a game enough to find it scary. I'm always aware I can just pause at any point and that there's no real threat or danger.

Some games have creepy ideas sure. FNaF about the murdered ghosts of children possessing robots to murder other people in a fit of bloody vengeance is inherently disturbing.
Silent Hill 3 about a girl trying to get an abortion for her unwanted, possibly incestuous, fetus is fucked up.
A Machine For Pigs about a daemonic living machine turning people in Frankenstein's monster like pigs to feed to other people because it thinks this will stop World War 1 is a really creepy concept.

Its just a shame the medium by which we experience these stories, video games, always lets them down.

 

[Omniponent]

Eh? I can never get immersed into a game enough to find it scary. I'm always aware I can just pause at any point and that there's no real threat or danger.

Some games have creepy ideas sure. FNaF about the murdered ghosts of children possessing robots to murder other people in a fit of bloody vengeance is inherently disturbing.
Silent Hill 3 about a girl trying to get an abortion for her unwanted, possibly incestuous, fetus is fucked up.
A Machine For Pigs about a daemonic living machine turning people in Frankenstein's monster like pigs to feed to other people because it thinks this will stop World War 1 is a really creepy concept.

Its just a shame the medium by which we experience these stories, video games, always lets them down.

Briefly discussed in the article is the fact that some games (Bioshock, System Shock, Hexen, etc) use the environment to invoke horror. It's not violence, or jumpscares or even atmosphere, it's the disturbing nature of the story and background of the world that builds the horror.

While Fallout is often more black-humor than outright horror, it also falls into this in some of the more serious storylines.

Not everyone is scared by games though, for the most part, I'm not, but when it happens, its good fun.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I'm with Silentpony. I'm more of a concept man.

So in that case, the game that still doesn't sit right with me is left for dead.

It's mindless fun. I have 600 plus hours in it. I can do it all like a moving mediation.

But the trailer still hits home for me


That was mind opening to me. Tons of games lead a lot of people to believe they are unstoppable agents of death. But in truth, I have a bad knee. I've never shot a gun. Being placed into a situation like this where I'm not a trained military personnel, clad in battle armor, or a superhuman that can be ressurected because them fates be crazy... Yeah, my death would have been assured if I was one of the "lucky" ones to be immune.

And think about that. Lucky. The rest of your life hunted by ex-humans that never tire, that are endless, and are mutating. If the stench and the decay of masses did not make you sick, your death is almost assured to be needlessly and horrifically violent.

Or. you might be the last one to go, and have to give up hope for a quick solution.

All that came to me when Bill said "We just crossed the street". That's sobering.

 

[Omniponent]

Eh? I can never get immersed into a game enough to find it scary. I'm always aware I can just pause at any point and that there's no real threat or danger.

Some games have creepy ideas sure. FNaF about the murdered ghosts of children possessing robots to murder other people in a fit of bloody vengeance is inherently disturbing.
Silent Hill 3 about a girl trying to get an abortion for her unwanted, possibly incestuous, fetus is fucked up.
A Machine For Pigs about a daemonic living machine turning people in Frankenstein's monster like pigs to feed to other people because it thinks this will stop World War 1 is a really creepy concept.

Its just a shame the medium by which we experience these stories, video games, always lets them down.

Do you find movies scarier? Books?

This reminds me, I should really get to reading another horror novel; preferably at night during a thunderstorm.

 

[09philj]

The Room series. They don't go in for jump scares, or anything outright horrifying. What they do is dread. Creeping, unpleasant dread that has me on constant edge even though I know this isn't a ghost train ride. Everything about the situation and environments is wrong, particularly in the second game. Even though they aren't about Lovecraft stuff, they are firmly entrenched in the tradition of something that is beyond your comprehension but you know you want to get the fuck away from.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Eh? I can never get immersed into a game enough to find it scary. I'm always aware I can just pause at any point and that there's no real threat or danger.

Some games have creepy ideas sure. FNaF about the murdered ghosts of children possessing robots to murder other people in a fit of bloody vengeance is inherently disturbing.
Silent Hill 3 about a girl trying to get an abortion for her unwanted, possibly incestuous, fetus is fucked up.
A Machine For Pigs about a daemonic living machine turning people in Frankenstein's monster like pigs to feed to other people because it thinks this will stop World War 1 is a really creepy concept.

Its just a shame the medium by which we experience these stories, video games, always lets them down.

Do you find movies scarier? Books?

This reminds me, I should really get to reading another horror novel; preferably at night during a thunderstorm.

Movies sometimes. But I have to not know a single actor in it. If there's someone I recognize it just ruins the immersion. I'm sitting there like "Buffy, why are you letting this little bitchy ghost push you around?! Go Slayer on her burping ass!" Or "Harry, how could you forget your wand?! Get your owl to go get it and this woman in black will be done by tea time!"

Book no. Never. Because I usually give people really stupid voices and I just can't take the head cheerleader saying "Billy, this isn't funny" in SLJ'S voice.
Besides something about reading takes the edge off. Like just reading about the ghost going boo! just doesn't scare me. There's no sense of tension for me.

 

[lacktheknack]

I don't subscribe to the idea that "a pause button ruins the tension, there's no real danger". As if that wasn't the same for literally every other medium.

And even with a pause button, the Third Floor of the Other hospital in Silent Hill 3 gets to me. Every. Time.

The walls are flesh. The objects are pulsating and alive. The doors are buried in pulsating, pus-dripping fat. There are two horrible, horrible creatures pressed against the floor, looking for corpses to eat. Your radio won't stop. A stalking figure looks you directly in the eye (if it had eyes) and then yanks a dead woman into one of the walls. And the music... oh the music. It's just angry grinding sounds.

The pause button won't save me from that, because eventually, I'm gonna have to hit resume.

 

[Trunkage]

Special Thanks to everyone who contributed to the "What Games Scare you?" thread. Even if I didn't include a quote from you in the article, I enjoyed reading everyone's stories!
Seems like the winners for scariest games are:
Fatal Frame
Alien Isolation
and F.E.A.R (this one surprised me)

Let me know what you think of the article, any comments or critiques are welcome, preferably leave them on my site and not on the forum. Thanks so much!

http://www.discussking.com/the-spill/why-are-games-scary

PS: Glad someone mentioned the regenerator from RES4. I totally forgot about that guy. (shudders)

I don't usually gets scared with games but some are intense. The Regenerator in Dead Space for example. You had to work hard to get through that.

F.E.A.R. is probably my top pick too. Funnily enough, I don't like being raped.

Just started playing Inside. There is a section where it looks like a gun is going off and if you are in the open, you explode. But its everywhere. Its like a giant blast that only destroys living tissue. Maybe a psionic blast? Seeing a kid being ripped apart is pretty disturbing.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

You know what was a weird game that scared the hell out of me? Dead Space: Extraction. Can't even tell you why - I'd played the first and second Dead Spaces a number of times beforehand with no problems before I got into it, but for some reason when playing Extraction I was waaaay jumpier than usual and ended up staying up two nights in a row because of incredibly vivid nightmares. Maybe first-person necromorphs just fucks with my brain in the right way? It was super weird.

Outside that one oddly specific example, games with a nice solid atmosphere tend to at the very least unnerve me. I think the last game that managed that was Alien: Isolation, but it didn't quite make the 'scare' mark since I could just nail the Alien in the face with a Molotov whenever it was getting to uppity. Plus, all the android sections spoiled the atmosphere somewhat...