What Makes a Game Scary For You?

[Helmutye]

Tell me, fellow Escapists: what does a game have to do to freak you out? What are some of the games that have succeeded in doing so? What kinds of things will reach right out of the screen and wrap their icy fingers around your hearts?


Some of the scariest games for me were the Thief games--I remember playing them alone in a dark basement and trembling as I heard footsteps approaching while I tried desperately to find a hiding place. I have done Rage Quits from many a game, but to this day Thief: The Dark Project is the only game that has forced me to Terror Quit, during the second level (the Prison level) as I made my way through the mines below...The way those games used sound was absolutely amazing. Every time I played I forgot that there was in fact a screen protecting me!

 

[r3lix]

newbie Zombies? I just think that they can be so bad that they end up being scary.

 

[Vrex360]

When I realise I've been playing video games through my entire teenage years instead of dating and socialising which may technically be the first factor that leads to being a serial killer.

Joking.... I hope.

Okay in reality, pacing and moments where you are waiting for something to attack you. It's so much scarier in games because you are actually involved so whatever is about to attack... is going for YOU.
That scares me, good atmosphere and stillness.

Also, Welcome to the Escapist.

 

[Spudgun Man]

For me its tense moments like in condemned2 when your running around the apartment block and you turn around and stare right at those shop dummys.

or the one that sticks in my mind is Space Hulk:Revenge of the Blood Angels, I would bareley make it past the starting corridor.

 

[Emphraim]

It's very easy to scare me. For some reason, when I'm playing an RPG or any game that's not multiplayer with respawning, I get freaked out by the smallest things. Seeing an enemy turn a corner towards me can make me shake.

 

[Lotet]

for me, it takes a misleading event

walking down the Hall, a locker is opening and slamming shut again and again, ready to fire I walk up and... it's a medi pack

then a blood crazed dog attacks!

 

[Helmutye]

Another thing I think is terrifying is a sense of helplessness. That's one of the things that I think turns me off of a lot of the newer horror games coming out. Almost every game gives the player a weapon very early on, and once you have a nice big fully-loaded gun in hand it's hard to feel too threatened by anything, especially once you get good at the game and can dart about picking off baddies like a Delta Force sniper.

I played this game a while back called Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth, and there were a lot of really cool ideas in that game. Your character was a pretty normal guy, and so when the situation got crazy HE would get crazy. If something exploded next to you you would get knocked down, the screen would black out and the sound would get all garbled and quiet except for your heartbeat in your ears, so you couldn't tell what was going on and had to rely on instinct and approximation. If you were getting shot at your character would start hyperventilating and his vision would start pulsing with the heartbeat, and the controls would get super-sensitive to the point where just walking across a room was difficult. Later in the game you would see things that would injure your sanity, and so you would start hearing voices whispering to you, and you would hallucinate and see things for a moment that weren't really there. I thought it was a really neat way to handle action and combat without giving you a gun to shoot back with.

 

[Insanum]

Suspense [/B]

I think Fallout 3's vault with the hallucinogenics in the air supply scared me witless, Just because i didn't know what was round the corner.

 

[Rathy]

For me, its playing with the pacing that gets to me. Going from a high action environment to a slow one leaves me very on edge, where I am just waiting for something to happen, even for quite a while past the change of mood.

 

[coakroach]

Spiders.

 

[mrhockey220]

when i shit my pants

 

[MetalMantheRevenge]

Being in a dark area, running low on ammo and health with a monster around every corner ready to bite your head off at the slightest mistake.

 

[ThePirateMan]

1: Darkness
2: Scary sounds from monsters you currently can't see
3: Low ammount of health and ammo/mana

 

[Griloch]

This may be odd, but open, WIDE, un-blinking eyes. It scared the crap outta me in System Shock 1 (The Servbots, whose sensors LOOKED like eyes), and startled me in GoldenEye when an enemy turned the corner and was staring me in the face riddling my torso with bullets whilst my brain tried to restart.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Scary sounds ( footsteps in the dark) and matching music.
Hell, the right music can make a non-scary (eg. fallout 3) game into constant terror. It's fun.

 

[Christemo]

all the fatal frame games. look them up, they are the shit when it comes to scares.

 

[AvsJoe]

The lengthy, ominous periods of silence before the pants-shittingly scary creature jumps through a wall or something. The calm before the storm; the eye of the hurricane; the incredible tension... that's what scares me.

 

[Citrus]

I played the Chicken Run game when I was little (it was pretty much a stealth game, for those who have not played it, which is most of you) and I was scared stiff. I didn't want to move from my hiding spots because I didn't want to get caught. I remember spending five straight minutes leaning against a wall, watching a patrol dog and summoning the courage to move. For some reason, the notion of stealth and avoiding being seen in that game really frightened me.

But I haven't been scared of any game since that one. I breezed through Doom 3 without hesitation, got through FEAR and FEAR 2 no problem, yawned through Dead Space and Condemned, and wasn't phased by any of the Resident Evil, Silent Hill or Fatal Frame games.

The only game that's been able to scare me has been an E-rated one based off of a children's movie.