Creepiest Moments You've Had... in Non-Horror Games

[wolvik92]

I've had one uniquely personal creepy moment while playing Oblivion. In dungeons I kept hearing a sort of chinking sound that I was sure wasn't a part of the soundtrack. One day my friend was with me while I played and when it happened, I asked him whether he'd heard it and he said he didn't... I had to take a break from the game after that.

Another game that creeped me out a bit was Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP. I found the game's atmosphere a bit weird from the beginning, though not in an unpleasant way, but then the Gogolithic Mass happened.



The Neverhood could be quite unsettling at times as well. Walking through an empty world with the only sounds being your footsteps and the howling of the wind. The creepiest stuff in my opinion was the Weasel warning and this:

Hm, literally falling off the world seemed way creepier when I was a child.

 

[shadyh8er]

Because I'm afraid of heights, the Blades of Hades level from the first God of War and the mountain climbing level from Uncharted 2. Yes. The level in Uncharted 2 that's more platforming/puzzle solving than usual was the scariest for me.

Then there's the Chicago chapter from Resistance 2. First you have to jump across Fury infested waters (enemies that kill you in one hit). Then you have to navigate a dark apartment filled with zombie-like Grims while a radio talk show guy whimpers in the background. And lastly, you step right into a battlefield against hordes of Chimera and Stalkers. The part that truly taught me that war is hell.

And finally, both instances in Heavy Rain where you have to escape from a locked car. I don't remember the last time I panicked like how I did while playing a video game.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Fawkes racing up to me like he's on steroids in Old Olney. It made me jump.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

It was in Mass Effect 2. I spent about 40 minutes laboriously creating my character exactly the way I wanted it...

...and then I saw it in-game.

 

[karma9308]

Spoiler

Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you

Essentially all of Majora's mask. The...obvious is easy, but what really gets me is the final part here:

Spoiler

It was just SO unsettling and the dialogue with all the kids there is blatantly designed to get under your skin and it does it so well for me. Also Sander Cohen from Bioshock.

 

[karma9308]

the last level in the ps1 Spiderman game with monster ock. HOLY SHIT that scared the crap out of me as a kid.

This too. I think I had to have someone with me in the room in order to beat that level.

 

[Trig0n]

IIn Far Cry 3, during one of the hunting missions, this one was for crocodiles.

I never saw one in the game before, so I didn't know what to expect. I was searching around this dock area for I'd say around five minutes, when I decided to jump in the water to look for them. Then the camera did a jarring-as-hell forced snap backwards and HOLY FUCK TEETH, BITING, THING! GAH, MASH!

It was waiting for me. I just know it.

Not to mention afterword, I got jumped again, but this time it was by approaching one that was just floating frozen in place. I don't know anything about crocodiles and how they act, so I thought it was glitched stuck or something.

It wasn't.

Pause>cancel mission

I had something similar to this, except I was hunting panthers or some such thing and I was nearly dead and getting chased by like three so I dove into a river to escape, relaxed for half a second then the camera did the jarring snap you mentioned and bam, getting death rolled by a crocodile.

 

[Gabanuka]

It was in Mass Effect 2. I spent about 40 minutes laboriously creating my character exactly the way I wanted it...

...and then I saw it in-game.

Oh God. I still remember my first characters nose.

 

[SayHelloToMrBullet]

I have only one thing to say. Anyone who's played Fallout 3 will know what I'm referencing.

"Gaaaaryyy...."

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I managed to glitch through one of the walls in World of Warcraft and found myself in a crypt. It's was actually pretty cool to explore a locked off part of the game. Then when I got far enough...

Spoiler: WHAT IN THE NAME OF CRUCIFYING FUCKCHRIST IS THIS?!

Seriously Blizzard, what the fuck?!?!?!

Ah, yes, The Upside-Down Sinners. So messed up. Especially in a T-rated game.

 

[likalaruku]

I dunno.... The first time I saw this in the sky, maybe.

 

[jhoroz]

The entire finale of ICO had this Kafkaesque feel to it...

Spoiler

The room where you find Yorda turned into a statue is all full with the shadows of all the previous horned children that were sacrificed. They're all surrounding her, almost as if they're worshiping her, until they see you that is...At first it seems like they are all attacking you, but if you stop swinging your sword for a second, they're just huddling and retreating around you, continuously until you kill them all. Seeing the girl you've escorted and protected throughout the entire game in such a horrible state and the fate of all the other horned children just sent shivers down my spine, and for some reason makes me want to cry, not for sentimental reasons, just the entire thing induces a surge of fear into me. And then comes the queen.....You enter her throne room, which is completely empty. You look around for a while and when you decide to leave she just suddenly appears. No music que, no dramatic sound effect...Just her haunting, cold voice, telling you that attempting to save Yorda is hopeless...

 

[Yojimzo]

Let's see, first, my input on a few of the ones mentioned so far,
FO3: Never got to the dunwich building, guessing i should be thankful.
Spiderman: Still have that game, the monster ock model still scares me.

Anyways, for mine, I'd have to say Malik's base from the first LoK Blood omen game, due to some of the background info on him and his subordinates, though i wont go into it unless someone asks.

 

[cerebreturns]

DMC 1, it seemed campy horror, not really a horror game, just a action game with scooby doo type spookyness to it.


...except the shadow dogs.
they were so creepy they seemed out of place to me.


super mario 64 ghost level, I guess it was supposed to be creepy but man did it seem out of place and excelled in what it tried to do

Some of the places in FF12 felt very very nervous/creepy to me, where you would have more and more monsters just seemingly adding into the battle in the dark when you can't even see all of them.

 

[Dfskelleton]

*Lovely Sweet Dream (AKA LSD Dream Emulator) had so many freaky parts.
*Spec Ops: The Line's hallucination sequences and loading screen- Oh, sorry... you wanted non-horror games.
*Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is horrifying in the sense that someone could create such an atrocity.
*The original Quake had it's moments.

 

[pure.Wasted]

snip
Dishonored is normally unsettling enough that I don't think it should qualify for this thread, except...

Spoiler

If you've been paying attention to all the little background stuff like guards' chatter and the propaganda posters, you should already have a sneaking suspicion that there be zombies in Dishonored. This really seems like the place you're going to meet them. And then NOTHING happens. The house is just an eerie house, but there are no encounters with anyone past a few guards at the entrance.

But you're forgetting, there are zombies in Dishonored. They're called "weepers" but for all intents and purposes they are zombies.

Way to spoilertag. Of course there are, my point was that I was expecting them to appear in this mansion, and they never did. The house turned out to just be creepy for the sake of being creepy.

 

[Limecake]

The last time I was scared by a non-horror game was probably the 'don't look down' puzzle in anti-chamber there were several parts of that game that were unsettling, it doesn't help that half the time you turn around the room changes. The sound was also eerie, whether it's the whisperings of the shadow cube thing or the ominous tick-tock of the clock it's just creepy.

 

[loc978]

Oddly enough, in Fallout 3 the Dunwich building was never that bad for me. By the time I found it I was a plasma spewing, walking death-machine... and the most dangerous things in there were a couple of glowing ones. Grade A atmosphere and a cool "descent into hell" section, but nothing lasted more than two shots from my rifle. All but two died in one shot. Triple the number of ghouls in each encounter room and it might have felt a little more tense.

On the other hand... on my first playthrough, the second location I actually investigated was Vault 106. I was armed with a baseball bat, 10mm pistol with under 50 rounds of ammo and an armored vault suit. That place was creepy, the drug-induced hallucinations were all in the right places to disorient me... and I hadn't really gotten the hang of reading the local map in the Pipboy, so I was convinced the corridors were changing on me, trapping me underground. Also, I assumed the game was sophisticated enough to have hallucinogens building up in my system until I lost it and became one of the Vault's insane denizens. I was wrong, of course... but the feeling was there.

Also, I spent my last round and broke my baseball bat on the crazies down there. When I emerged I was armed with a looted combat knife. Still had plenty of stimpacks, though... so it's not like I was ever in any danger of dying. So glad Wanderer's edition changes that dynamic...