Probably Omni-tone (I think that's what it's called) voices, when a person or thing is speaking, and it sounds like there is more than one, I don't know what it is about it, but it makes my skin crawl.
What Scares *You* In Games?
- Thread starter Starbird
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It's usually atmospheric sound in general.
Example: Amnesia. Even when there's nothing there the sound just preps my heart to explode. The footsteps in particular sound incredibly real and the dust that falls from the floorboards just tops it off. Then there's the wind whistling through the broken windows and holes in the walls, things howling in the distance or the up-close scraping or snarling of something that might not even be there.
It's a game I like but I can't play for too long at any one time because after a solid day of playing it I think it'd probably give me a permanent sense of paranoia.
Example: Amnesia. Even when there's nothing there the sound just preps my heart to explode. The footsteps in particular sound incredibly real and the dust that falls from the floorboards just tops it off. Then there's the wind whistling through the broken windows and holes in the walls, things howling in the distance or the up-close scraping or snarling of something that might not even be there.
It's a game I like but I can't play for too long at any one time because after a solid day of playing it I think it'd probably give me a permanent sense of paranoia.
Common Sense?Starbird said:
I don't know, I've spent my entire life freaked out by deep water (seriously man, FUCK the sea!), darkness, silence and any other form of isolation and I always thought of it as perfectly natural because that's when you're at your weakest.
the regenerators from RE4 those fuckers still creep me the hell out to this day and I beat that game on pro
The one thing that really scares me in games is when I know I have no way to defend myself. That's all it takes, really. Give me nothing to defend myself with and the objective to stay alive, and I'll gladly wet my pants at anything that moves. That's literally all it takes, because once you give me a gun to wield I know I can kill the bastards and the danger is all gone.
I remember an example from Half-Life 2, that part where you're walking on the underside of that bridge. I was absolutely terrified of falling off, and that was before the alien helicopter thing showed up. Basically, any time in a game when there is a very good chance that I will fall to my death is scary to me. But it's more scary in a "I'm on the top of this roller coaster, things are about to really fast" kinda way. That said, I love the adrenaline rush I get from actually falling off, so long as it's not in Minecraft, where I usually end up in a pit of lava and lose all my diamonds. And I loved the part in Half-Life 2 where the alien did show up, because I had to push past my fears and be a badass.
Having your game crash without giving you the chance to save it. Those terrify me to no end.
Oh, we're talking about monsters? Any monster you have to face without a weapon is scary. You feel defenseless and at the mercy of whatever is hunting you. You can't even defend yourself.
It's funny how a single plank of wood, despite being absolutely useless manages to assuage a lot of fears isn't it?
Whether it's being hunted by a monster or stuck in the middle of a dark pool of water with god knows what underneath, we take comfort in even the smallest things.
EDIT: The only time I was afraid in Skyrim, was when I was swimming in the sea of ghosts. I always sort of expected a huge sea monster to jump at me. Unfortunately there is none. Maybe I should download a mod to add some.
Oh, we're talking about monsters? Any monster you have to face without a weapon is scary. You feel defenseless and at the mercy of whatever is hunting you. You can't even defend yourself.
Hmm I've spent time in the sea and I haven't been ever that afraid of deep water. Then again, I was in a nice boat. Had I been just swimming , things might have been completely different.irishmanwithagun said:
It's funny how a single plank of wood, despite being absolutely useless manages to assuage a lot of fears isn't it?
Whether it's being hunted by a monster or stuck in the middle of a dark pool of water with god knows what underneath, we take comfort in even the smallest things.
EDIT: The only time I was afraid in Skyrim, was when I was swimming in the sea of ghosts. I always sort of expected a huge sea monster to jump at me. Unfortunately there is none. Maybe I should download a mod to add some.
I second Bloodsuckers, its the sound they make that freeks me out, i also hate snorks because they aways jump out of those dark places in tunnels.Mordekaien said:
I'm a pretty big horror fan IRL and honestly I can say that most games, especially nowadays, can't do much besides seem mildly creepy, and even that tends to be more or less by the numbers. Things that would be scary IRL lose a lot of their ooomph when conveyed via book, film, or video game... however as the real masters of horror have shown you can still achieve the desired effect, it just takes a level of extremity that defies reality but seems real.
The thing is that most horror games today are aimed at a casual audience, as opposed to being aimed at the hardcore horror fan who is arguably going to be the core audience for games like this. As a result, pretty much anything they do is kind of trite.
The problem is that horror by it's nature requires tapping into negative parts of the audience's psyche, and freaking them out. Real horror is something people tend to only wind up fully appreciating after the fact, and of course something many people just don't appreciate at all. Something directed at jaded horror fans is by definition going to be so offensive to a general audience that most producers are simply afraid to go there, and as a result most horror games come accross as being the equivilent of a haunted house (and not nessicarly a well done one). I think horror video games kind of died around the time of "Silent Hill 2". Basically, people (by that non-horror fans) complained about the skinless murdering children from SIlent Hill 1 and how they appeared in the SH2 demo, as a result SH2 was edited to remove them. I refused to buy the game due to the censorship, and only bought it many years later used (so Konami wouldn't directly get any money from me for engaging in censorship). To be honest I think the success of SH2 after that censorship sort of sent a message to the industry that to be successful one shouldn't push the envelop, and as a result everything pretty much stayed on that level. In reality when they started getting complaints about the killer kiddies, they should have realized that if this was getting a reaction out of people this was probably the right direction to go in, because that's the entire point of the games.
To be honest, horror should leave you wide eyed and wanting to take a shower, thinking that you can't believe you saw or read something, but then realizing that as F@cked up as it was you kind of enjoyed something being able to push your buttons that way.
I guess in my case saying I've never been scared by a video game isn't so much a he-man thing, so much as books and movies have been so far ahead of video games (despite all the potential of the medium) that horror games have so far largely seemed to be very "by the numbers" affairs.
That said I'm enough of a genere fan where I still enjoy horror games as works of modern fantasy, even if they generally fail to actually be horror.
I think the next step for the genere is going to be someone taking a look at the cult classic "Deadly Premonition" and realizing that it managed to do what games like "Alan Wake" initially promised but couldn't deliver.... a sandboxy horror enviroment. Granted Deadly Premonition was a huge failure on a number of levels (graphics quality, voice acting, clunky controls... eerrr yeah) but also shined in it's innovation and what it did right. See half the problem with Horror Games is that it's like a haunted house, you follow a very set path/level, like in Silent Hill you go through a bunch of streets with only one place to go, then navigate through a hotel or hospital, to hit another set of streets, before you inevitably enter the next building. The same applied to Deadly Premonition as well (heading to specific mission/chapter locations) but the way how it had an open world showed some potential for a game to possibly exist that wasn't linear in the way you reacted to it. Having some freedom to move, decide which order to pursue things (any story will require some degree of scripting), freeform and "side" goals and events and similar things could ultimatly help the genere a bit. Playing Silent Hill in many cases seems like playing an old adventure game (now that I'm used to it) where I'm looking for the correct path, or the item to use in the right place, something occasionally popping out and going "Booga, Booga" doesn't impress me much, especially if it's the same monster I saw in the other 10 games just with a new coat of digital paint. Those creepy nurses for example ceased to be really scary once I got to expect them in every game, and could go "hey, it's the hospital" and could pretty much greet them with old friends as they came shambling up into line with my melee weapon of choice (or I dodged past them sequentially checking doors, death simply being an annoyance in the way of me elimitating doors and options until I found the right one).
The thing is that most horror games today are aimed at a casual audience, as opposed to being aimed at the hardcore horror fan who is arguably going to be the core audience for games like this. As a result, pretty much anything they do is kind of trite.
The problem is that horror by it's nature requires tapping into negative parts of the audience's psyche, and freaking them out. Real horror is something people tend to only wind up fully appreciating after the fact, and of course something many people just don't appreciate at all. Something directed at jaded horror fans is by definition going to be so offensive to a general audience that most producers are simply afraid to go there, and as a result most horror games come accross as being the equivilent of a haunted house (and not nessicarly a well done one). I think horror video games kind of died around the time of "Silent Hill 2". Basically, people (by that non-horror fans) complained about the skinless murdering children from SIlent Hill 1 and how they appeared in the SH2 demo, as a result SH2 was edited to remove them. I refused to buy the game due to the censorship, and only bought it many years later used (so Konami wouldn't directly get any money from me for engaging in censorship). To be honest I think the success of SH2 after that censorship sort of sent a message to the industry that to be successful one shouldn't push the envelop, and as a result everything pretty much stayed on that level. In reality when they started getting complaints about the killer kiddies, they should have realized that if this was getting a reaction out of people this was probably the right direction to go in, because that's the entire point of the games.
To be honest, horror should leave you wide eyed and wanting to take a shower, thinking that you can't believe you saw or read something, but then realizing that as F@cked up as it was you kind of enjoyed something being able to push your buttons that way.
I guess in my case saying I've never been scared by a video game isn't so much a he-man thing, so much as books and movies have been so far ahead of video games (despite all the potential of the medium) that horror games have so far largely seemed to be very "by the numbers" affairs.
That said I'm enough of a genere fan where I still enjoy horror games as works of modern fantasy, even if they generally fail to actually be horror.
I think the next step for the genere is going to be someone taking a look at the cult classic "Deadly Premonition" and realizing that it managed to do what games like "Alan Wake" initially promised but couldn't deliver.... a sandboxy horror enviroment. Granted Deadly Premonition was a huge failure on a number of levels (graphics quality, voice acting, clunky controls... eerrr yeah) but also shined in it's innovation and what it did right. See half the problem with Horror Games is that it's like a haunted house, you follow a very set path/level, like in Silent Hill you go through a bunch of streets with only one place to go, then navigate through a hotel or hospital, to hit another set of streets, before you inevitably enter the next building. The same applied to Deadly Premonition as well (heading to specific mission/chapter locations) but the way how it had an open world showed some potential for a game to possibly exist that wasn't linear in the way you reacted to it. Having some freedom to move, decide which order to pursue things (any story will require some degree of scripting), freeform and "side" goals and events and similar things could ultimatly help the genere a bit. Playing Silent Hill in many cases seems like playing an old adventure game (now that I'm used to it) where I'm looking for the correct path, or the item to use in the right place, something occasionally popping out and going "Booga, Booga" doesn't impress me much, especially if it's the same monster I saw in the other 10 games just with a new coat of digital paint. Those creepy nurses for example ceased to be really scary once I got to expect them in every game, and could go "hey, it's the hospital" and could pretty much greet them with old friends as they came shambling up into line with my melee weapon of choice (or I dodged past them sequentially checking doors, death simply being an annoyance in the way of me elimitating doors and options until I found the right one).
My brother and I call that The God Voice. since so many characters that use it have that "A God Am I" moment.The Elephant of Lies said:
The scariest thing for me in games is the abandoned mall in Condemned: Criminal Origins.
Deep water or sludge or something. The tentacle monster in Ratchet and Clank 2 where you never see the rest of it's body, unnerves me. I am also afraid of things that cannot die and chase you. I've had this dream a couple times where I'm myself on a sunken cruise ship. And I have to run through bulkheads and close doors behind me because there's a Big Daddy with red eyes chasing me.
Weirdly, I'm scared of wide open spaces.
I think it's the 'If something appears, who know how long you'll have to run for?' Aspect that does it it for me.
I think it's the 'If something appears, who know how long you'll have to run for?' Aspect that does it it for me.
Bugs, CTDs, DRM, always on-line crap and multiplayer. I like singleplayer games!
I get scared of long games, because of the investment you put into them and I always get worried with backlog and that I won't have time to finish the game while other new games are being released.
Also Ravenholm!
I get scared of long games, because of the investment you put into them and I always get worried with backlog and that I won't have time to finish the game while other new games are being released.
Also Ravenholm!
spiders. though i dont know if id even call it fear. like if im playing resident evil and something scares me that improves the experience and makes the game more fun for me. with spiders, just seeing them in a game not only doesnt improve the experience, it flat out destroys any fun i was having. i mean i think we can all agree that torchlight and torchlight 2 are not designed to be scary games, but just watching gameplay videos where people are fighting giant spiders is too much for me to handle.