Kotaku 
Enter your username and password.
Denver, 12:22 AM
Fri Dec 18
66 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip us:
Editor-In-Chief:
Brian Crecente
| AIM | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Stephen Totilo
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Editor:
Michael McWhertor
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Weekends:
Owen Good
| AIM | Twitter
Correspondent, San Francisco:
AJ Glasser
| AIM | Twitter
Columnist:
Leigh Alexander
Columnist:
Tim Rogers
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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