x-com scared the hell out of me when i was younger.
after playing i'd have to ride my bike home from my friends' house through a heavily wooded dirt road. FAST.
Condemned: Criminal Origins, made me terribly uncomfortable all the way through. There were definitely parts that made me jump, but more memorable was the anxiety and dread that the game produced with its environments and sound effects.
Deadspace had the environment and sound down, but it had less of an impact on me because most of your enemies were dispatched at range with a futuristic weapon, rather than at arms length with a pipe.
@DubSkins: The original Silent Hill was scarier than the second IMO, if only because you didn't know what to expect unless you read previews and reviews.
I hadn't even heard of the game. A friend of mine had me over to play, handed me the controller and left the room. Locked the door. And also turned down the thermostat.
The more a movie/videogame can allow your imagination to fill in the blanks usually the more terrifying it will become.
With videogames in particular, giving the gamer the option to do something is also very powerful. In a world now filled with cinematics, it is much more powerful of a feeling to know that your own actions could lead to demise, rather than just sitting back and watching what stupid mistake your character makes next.
You are in a dark blood covered locker room, and you know that there is something scratching away inside one of the lockers, making it rock violently. Your imagination is already going wild trying to figure out what could be in there and usually comes up with something personally frightening to yourself. Do you open it? Or do you flee? Do you have a choice?
By directly involving you in the experience it allows you to concoct your own horrible nightmare.
I played my roommate's copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for GameCube a few years ago and that was one of the most tense and psychological gaming experiences I have ever had. The concept is ingenious. For those who don't know the game, when your sanity meter got low your character would start to hallucinate (See enemies that weren't there, blood ooze out of walls, hearing laughs and whispers, hallways became more oblique, disorienting camera angles), BUT the game would also mess with the gamer (it would say controller was out of port, MUTE would appear in the lower part of the screen and the sound would disappear as if someone had accidently hit the remote, the game would tell you all data had been corrupted and was erased, the screen would go black as if the input on the tv had been changed but you could still hear your character getting attacked). I think if this concept were reused with next gen graphics and controls (especially anything motion sensitive) that some REALLY creative things could be thought up to put the player at unease. Not only was your character going crazy, but it made you question if you were going slightly crazy therefore you begin to doubt some of your own senses.
i'm not sure how seriously i can take an article with this title that discusses how level design and atmosphere make games scary without even a casual mention of system shock or system shock 2. both of the titles mentioned where either directly inspired by the system shock series or inspired by a game that was itself inspired by the system shock series, i gurantee it.
Look at you, hacker; a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
OK. This comes up whenever I have a conversation about "scary" games, and I have to throw one in that most people have never played but I'm sure some here on Kotaku have. By far, and there is no contest and no debating this with me, the scariest game I ever played was Vampire: Bloodlines. That haunted house in Santa Monica scared me more than any game, movie, TV show, anything I ever saw in my life. I was covered in sweat and had to keep stopping to take a breather, to the point that I almost didn't want to go on because I was so much on edge of what might happen next.
I think the scariest moments happen when the unexpected happens.
Playing Left 4 Dead gave me one really good scare once. That was when I was not expecting to turn around and see a Tanks head in the darkness only to stare at it for a few seconds and scream. I play Left 4 Dead with brightness down a lot. It really helps me enjoy the game more. I do this with Dead Space as well. I can't see crap with out my flashlight in it now.
Most players would probably turn their brightness up all the way for these games, but not me. I love me some darkness. It plays with my mind knowing that there are things I am not able to see in the dark. There are some games where it doesn't work though. RE5 for example, it defiantly does not work.
@PanicDriver: I calibrate my TV/monitor to the game whenever possible and it does make a difference in darker scene where your not suppose to see something.
Everyone I know does the brightness and contrast up so they still can see in the dark and it ruins the experience IMO.
Not just horror games but also every type of games, especially FPS in a dark hallways or ally and your hiding in the dark but people still see you because they raised the brightness and contrast.
Granted I know a lot of TV and monitors don't have the advance option to calibrate colors and brightness/darkness since I use to own couple of them in the past but that made me realize that I'm not getting the best possible experience in anything that I watch and play so I saved up my money and got a better tv.
i'm pretty well convinced that the smartest thing any creative type can do is to present the consumer with an idea, then let us run with it. our imagination is always going to be more vivid than anything not tailormade for us. i tend to avoid horror movies simply because they get to me, and stick in my mind. gore i can handle, mindfucks i cannot. still, they're fascinating...
with that in mind, the first creepy game experience i can recall is playing through Myst, which was largely due to excellent music and sound design. there weren't any scare tactics, just wandering and gradually reconstructing the terrible deeds committed. fearing that the boat in Stoneship would get flooded was all me, though.
playing Resident Evil: Code Veronica -- confusing because of the environment i was playing it in (best friend's elder brother's friends' apartment AND they were smoking pot O_O) and also because i'd never played that kind of game before and OMG the graveyard and zombies. i didn't make it past that graveyard for various reasons, but mainly because i was so unnerved that zombies kept killing me, i decided to turn it off.
putting off studying by playing Silent Hill in the dark on a friend's import system; he was off studying or socializing and not being freaked out by demon dogs at three in the damn morning. (man, he was a nice guy. wonder how he's doing..) just the opening that leads to a dead-end alleyway... shudder. i still refer to the static as "the sound of evil." never stopped making me paranoid, though.
Parasite Eve.
Bioshock and Dead Space were excellent when they relied on atmosphere -- fulfilling the sense of tension and dread -- and annoying when the cheap scares popped up. just broke the immersion for me, and i was only watching Dead Space -- it was really that affective without the 'gotcha' moments. Arkham Asylum had great potential with the Scarecrow sequences, but as a couple others have said, it was a little too arcadey to be creepy -- to be fair, i don't know how they could have done it better. the lead-ins to those scenes were amazing, though.
I loved Dead Space, it was a masterpiece, so fucking scary and perfectly done, we all were scared when the giant tentacles popped out of nowhere and you suddenly said OMFG!
It never happened to me, but I saw a video with the deaths in dead spacce that included the one when the Hive Mind kind of eats you, man the screams Isaac makes...that made me scarred more than anything in the game.
@HELLSRIDER is doing stuff: I reeeaaally have to play this game now. I blew it off as another RE4 clone but I think I may have pre-judged it a bit harshly.
I have had this discussion with people before, with people scoffing at the mere mention of video games being able to scare you or make you jump. I actually think that video games are more effective at building up mood and really messing with your brain goo than any other medium right now. Movies have been sucking at the horror genre for ages, last movie to really have me on edge was The Strangers, aside from that? The Shining...
Ever since Resident Evil made me scream like a girl the first time the dogs jumped through the windows in the mansion corridor, games have had a real ability to scare. Dead Space builds tension and scares from start to finish with excellent pacing and keeping you just under powered enough to make it interesting. F.E.A.R 2 had incredible flash in where things become distorted and Alma got "all up in yo bizniz". Condemned(2), I couldn't play that thing in a dark room, seriously! Batman:AA's dissent into madness scene were not scary but set an eerie mood that was unsettling and amazing to witness.
Some folks on here have bemoned "Yeah that bit was scary, but not really on the second play through" No way, really? The thing you knew was coming jumped out and didn't scare you? Wooowwww...
Anywho, one stand out for me is Silent Hill 2. Yes the whole game oooozes scares, the fog, the static, the nurses, Pyramid head... Which brings me to what is still scariest moment I have experience in a video game so far. You are in one of the buildings, the school I think and you radio begins to emit faint static as you walk along a corridor, the static increases you have no choice but to face it head on. You prepare your weapon as you walk you the darkness, static screaming from your radio and you reach, a dead end... Metal bars are blocking the way, static still rife, then as you go to turn away, puzzled by the lack of an enemy, your flash light catches something, you turn back and zoom the camera in a touch... What is that?... OH SHEET!!! IT"S PYRAMID HEAD!!! I admit, I ran, I was caught so off guard. I don't even know if this was an intentional in-game scare but, damn...
Oh and also, game are more effective in my opinion because "you" are involved you have the controller, your actions determined events and you respond to them. When games get it right, it's frightening!! Long post over...
I wish I could've played through F.E.A.R. back when it came out. I tend to get that odd motion sickness from playing old FPS games. From what I saw before I had to quit was great though. Creepy.
The first Quake & Return to Castle Wolfenstein had some genuine creep out scare you moments for me back in the day. Dead Space is a good one. BioShock is atmospheric, but does get real eerie when a big daddy lumbers near by.
Mass Effect, when I found a body of someone that was supposedly been dead for a long, long time, but when I looked closer, they... they were still blinking! Okay, that's more likely a glitch, but was still just a little unsettling.
For me atmosphere is what makes things scary. The two moments I can pull from memory are from Bioshock. While I wasn't jumping out of my pants I was still very tensed up when I walked into a room, and all the lights went out except for a spotlight on me, and I started to hear metal scratching against the ground all around me. It was the fact that I knew I was going to be attacked, but I didn't know from where. Also, every time I see a shadow on the wall, and then it just disappears.
Another thing that works for me is being able to attack me while I'm not expecting it. If I'm playing a horror game I expect the dead bodies to come to life, so that's not scary. It's in moments like Resident Evil when I first walked by a boarded up window, and then arms came out of nowhere, and grabbed me. Also when the Titan would just bust through a wall, when I was try to be very cautious.
@Swirlbeard: Bioshock... dentist's office with the steam venting in. Every so often, it would build up to the point where you couldn't see. 1st time... freaky, but nothing attacked you when it would be a perfect chance. I was expecting the obvious BOO moment there. 2nd time, nothing... until you turn around and that Splicer says: "Im gonna open you up!" and starts in with the melee. Jezuz... that even freaked out the wife who was playing Wii next to me. #horror
@Fluorine: Haha nice. That moment went a little differently for me. I have a loose trigger, so I tend to shoot on accident if I'm not paying attention, so when I turned, and saw that guy standing their I jumped a little, and I accidentally shot him in the head. Very anti-climactic, but I thought it was funny. #horror
10/14/09
after playing i'd have to ride my bike home from my friends' house through a heavily wooded dirt road. FAST.
10/14/09
Deadspace had the environment and sound down, but it had less of an impact on me because most of your enemies were dispatched at range with a futuristic weapon, rather than at arms length with a pipe.
10/13/09
1. Dead Space
2. Silent Hill 2
3. Half Life 2
10/13/09
10/14/09
I hadn't even heard of the game. A friend of mine had me over to play, handed me the controller and left the room. Locked the door. And also turned down the thermostat.
I'll never forget it.
10/13/09
The more a movie/videogame can allow your imagination to fill in the blanks usually the more terrifying it will become.
With videogames in particular, giving the gamer the option to do something is also very powerful. In a world now filled with cinematics, it is much more powerful of a feeling to know that your own actions could lead to demise, rather than just sitting back and watching what stupid mistake your character makes next.
You are in a dark blood covered locker room, and you know that there is something scratching away inside one of the lockers, making it rock violently. Your imagination is already going wild trying to figure out what could be in there and usually comes up with something personally frightening to yourself. Do you open it? Or do you flee? Do you have a choice?
By directly involving you in the experience it allows you to concoct your own horrible nightmare.
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
Playing Left 4 Dead gave me one really good scare once. That was when I was not expecting to turn around and see a Tanks head in the darkness only to stare at it for a few seconds and scream. I play Left 4 Dead with brightness down a lot. It really helps me enjoy the game more. I do this with Dead Space as well. I can't see crap with out my flashlight in it now.
Most players would probably turn their brightness up all the way for these games, but not me. I love me some darkness. It plays with my mind knowing that there are things I am not able to see in the dark. There are some games where it doesn't work though. RE5 for example, it defiantly does not work.
Try it sometime. It could leave a mark.
10/13/09
Everyone I know does the brightness and contrast up so they still can see in the dark and it ruins the experience IMO.
Not just horror games but also every type of games, especially FPS in a dark hallways or ally and your hiding in the dark but people still see you because they raised the brightness and contrast.
Granted I know a lot of TV and monitors don't have the advance option to calibrate colors and brightness/darkness since I use to own couple of them in the past but that made me realize that I'm not getting the best possible experience in anything that I watch and play so I saved up my money and got a better tv.
10/12/09
with that in mind, the first creepy game experience i can recall is playing through Myst, which was largely due to excellent music and sound design. there weren't any scare tactics, just wandering and gradually reconstructing the terrible deeds committed. fearing that the boat in Stoneship would get flooded was all me, though.
playing Resident Evil: Code Veronica -- confusing because of the environment i was playing it in (best friend's elder brother's friends' apartment AND they were smoking pot O_O) and also because i'd never played that kind of game before and OMG the graveyard and zombies. i didn't make it past that graveyard for various reasons, but mainly because i was so unnerved that zombies kept killing me, i decided to turn it off.
putting off studying by playing Silent Hill in the dark on a friend's import system; he was off studying or socializing and not being freaked out by demon dogs at three in the damn morning. (man, he was a nice guy. wonder how he's doing..) just the opening that leads to a dead-end alleyway... shudder. i still refer to the static as "the sound of evil." never stopped making me paranoid, though.
Parasite Eve.
Bioshock and Dead Space were excellent when they relied on atmosphere -- fulfilling the sense of tension and dread -- and annoying when the cheap scares popped up. just broke the immersion for me, and i was only watching Dead Space -- it was really that affective without the 'gotcha' moments. Arkham Asylum had great potential with the Scarecrow sequences, but as a couple others have said, it was a little too arcadey to be creepy -- to be fair, i don't know how they could have done it better. the lead-ins to those scenes were amazing, though.
10/12/09
It never happened to me, but I saw a video with the deaths in dead spacce that included the one when the Hive Mind kind of eats you, man the screams Isaac makes...that made me scarred more than anything in the game.
10/12/09
10/12/09
Ever since Resident Evil made me scream like a girl the first time the dogs jumped through the windows in the mansion corridor, games have had a real ability to scare. Dead Space builds tension and scares from start to finish with excellent pacing and keeping you just under powered enough to make it interesting. F.E.A.R 2 had incredible flash in where things become distorted and Alma got "all up in yo bizniz". Condemned(2), I couldn't play that thing in a dark room, seriously! Batman:AA's dissent into madness scene were not scary but set an eerie mood that was unsettling and amazing to witness.
Some folks on here have bemoned "Yeah that bit was scary, but not really on the second play through" No way, really? The thing you knew was coming jumped out and didn't scare you? Wooowwww...
Anywho, one stand out for me is Silent Hill 2. Yes the whole game oooozes scares, the fog, the static, the nurses, Pyramid head... Which brings me to what is still scariest moment I have experience in a video game so far. You are in one of the buildings, the school I think and you radio begins to emit faint static as you walk along a corridor, the static increases you have no choice but to face it head on. You prepare your weapon as you walk you the darkness, static screaming from your radio and you reach, a dead end... Metal bars are blocking the way, static still rife, then as you go to turn away, puzzled by the lack of an enemy, your flash light catches something, you turn back and zoom the camera in a touch... What is that?... OH SHEET!!! IT"S PYRAMID HEAD!!! I admit, I ran, I was caught so off guard. I don't even know if this was an intentional in-game scare but, damn...
Oh and also, game are more effective in my opinion because "you" are involved you have the controller, your actions determined events and you respond to them. When games get it right, it's frightening!! Long post over...
10/12/09
I wish I could've played through F.E.A.R. back when it came out. I tend to get that odd motion sickness from playing old FPS games. From what I saw before I had to quit was great though. Creepy.
10/12/09
Mass Effect, when I found a body of someone that was supposedly been dead for a long, long time, but when I looked closer, they... they were still blinking! Okay, that's more likely a glitch, but was still just a little unsettling.
10/12/09
10/12/09
Another thing that works for me is being able to attack me while I'm not expecting it. If I'm playing a horror game I expect the dead bodies to come to life, so that's not scary. It's in moments like Resident Evil when I first walked by a boarded up window, and then arms came out of nowhere, and grabbed me. Also when the Titan would just bust through a wall, when I was try to be very cautious.
10/17/09
10/17/09