Scary games

[funguy2121]

Now, every now and then, people love a good fright, so what are the scariest games you folks have come across?

I'm gonna start the ball rolling with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I just got it and the intro message from Frictional message creeped me out so much I'm having to pluck up courage just to actually start the game...

I'm about 6 hours into Dead Space Uno right now and I absolutely love it. It is unfathomable to me how after decades of ripping off the space marine aspects of Aliens and making bad Aliens franchise games, the gaming industry has still never made a creature-horror game of any significance in space. The setting is perfect, and they take full advantage of it. Stasis is creepy but it saves your ass. Innocuous machines can kill you in more gruesome, horrifying ways than some of the monsters. Monsters constantly jump out in front of you and then run off, so you know that they are in the room you're about to enter but you don't know where. They come at you quite literally in the dark - not out of the dark. And your means of discovering that, say, a very big, scary, kill-you-where-you-stand monster can only be harmed from the rear comes in the form of a radio transmission as the sonuvabitch is charging. The music is better than RE4's, and that's saying a lot. It's more moody, more strange, and more atmospheric than Resident Evil's best entry, yet it's not afraid of some swelling strings or piercing, discordant winds.

Put it to you this way: I play this game less than Mass Effect because I refuse to play it during the day.

 

[NoDamnNames]

The thing about scary games is they don't age well. Most "Scary classics" are about as menacing as an onslaught of spooky leggo nowadays.

the Fatal Frame series is one I personally found creepy.

In my opinion the only true realm fear that games manage to pull off well is vertigo, and mostly in platformers ironically enough.

 

[Yoshemo]

Silent Hill 3! So scary

 

[liquidsolid]

Most people heave already stated my choices (Amnesia and Silent Hill) but I actually think that Hitman: Contracts has a pretty unsettling setting. Every level, it's raining. It's pretty dark at times and it can be disturbing.

 

[cthulhlu]

silent hill 2. it was bad enough when i saw the monsters only as gross, meaty things, when i came back years later and actualy figured out what they ARE...

 

[Thundero13]

You want a scary game? Look up LSD Dream Emulator, now that is a scary game, go play it actually, it's a really obscure PS1 game that only came out in Japan so I don't really think people would argue with you if you emulated it...
Anyway a description, it's a nightmare drug trip (hence the name) no story or anything, just, you have dreams every day and as they go on they get scarier and scarier, more messed up, etc.

 

[estoria-etnia]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Silent Hill 1-4 (Homecoming is okay too, Origins is MEHHHHHHH)
Fatal Frame series
Resident Evil REmake for the GameCube

 

[noobium]

Well I would have to go with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. because thats the only game that made me feel like I need to stay inside a camp with a bunch of NPC at night

 

[Wayneguard]

Resident Evil 2 on the N64. Or the RE1 remake for Gamecube. They tie for the scariest game I own.

These are my two scariest as well. I bought amnesia but couldn't get into it. One of these days I will tho. Silent hill 2 had some cool indoor sections but for me, the spencer mansion is the scariest place on earth!

 

[DAPLR]

TRY THIS!!

KING KONG! I have no problem with bugs in real life, but for some reason, Radscorpions, Giant ants etc. always freak me out, really SCARE me.
But King Kong....1000 times worse...

 

[k-ossuburb]

Finally, someone who actually appreciates SH4. *high five*

The murder scenes made it great as well, remember Cynthia at the beginning? When the music swelled up and she was saying "it's just a dream, right?" along with Henry's reaction, it looked like he actually cared about her, I think he gave off a bit of a vibe that he was kinder to women than to men, kind of a "white knight" in a way, because he didn't really care all that much for the guy who died in the Prison level, or Jasper in the Orphanage, but was seriously panicking when he found Eileen in the apartment level.

Not to mention all the little interactions he had with Eileen in the game, I can't remember them all but when he found her in the hospital and she was hysterical you could tell he really wanted to help her. Unlike Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames, who only really cared about himself

Spoiler: and the thing he did

and trying to cover his tracks to prevent anyone from discovering that he killed his wife with a pillow, he only gave a crap about Maria because she looked like Mary

.

The inventory system wasn't as bad as some people made out, I did like that you could switch weapons without pausing the game to keep you in that state of panic, I also liked that you had limited space because it put more of the "survival" element into the "survival horror". I didn't like the breakable weapons since most of them broke way too quickly so they felt like they were all made of matchsticks and chewing gum, but the enemies were threatening, the atmosphere was spot-on and the dream-like way you went from level to level by navigating a seemingly endless staircase surrounded by horrors reflective of the level you're about to enter and then crawl through a hole into nothingness was just the right amount of weird the series needed.

SH4 is pretty badly overlooked in the series, mostly because it wasn't supposed to be a Silent Hill game in the first place and because it didn't have much to do with the tried-and-tested formula that 1,2 and 3 had, but looking past all that, it's one of the best in the series in my opinion.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Most people heave already stated my choices (Amnesia and Silent Hill) but I actually think that Hitman: Contracts has a pretty unsettling setting. Every level, it's raining. It's pretty dark at times and it can be disturbing.

Actually, there are good reasons for that. People keep their heads down and hurry to wherever they're going rather than sitting outside, watching the others pass by, there are fewer people around and visibility's worse, especially through glasses, windows, windscreens and so on, so while it's raining is a better time for it. Of course, a crowd can provide cover if it's dense enough, but it can also make getting away difficult and there's the risk of a stampede.

Hi. My name's Shuqoyqa and I know some scary things.

silent hill 2. it was bad enough when i saw the monsters only as gross, meaty things, when i came back years later and actualy figured out what they ARE...

Your username, your avatar and that post make for an interesting combination.

 

[CRRPGMykael]

Yup,you started with the best one of 'em,Amnesia:The Dark Descent.When you're done with that,try Penumbra:Overture,and the sequel,Penumbra:Black Plague(along with its DLC 'Requiem').They're made by the same people,the sick fucks at Frictional Games and it's basically the same game with just a few different elements,like "oh in Amnesia:The Dark Descent you have a lantern and in the Penumbra games you have a flashlight".

 

[Aiden_the-Joker1]

I would say condemned criminal origins. There were some really scary moments in it.

 

[liquidsolid]

Most people heave already stated my choices (Amnesia and Silent Hill) but I actually think that Hitman: Contracts has a pretty unsettling setting. Every level, it's raining. It's pretty dark at times and it can be disturbing.

Actually, there are good reasons for that. People keep their heads down and hurry to wherever they're going rather than sitting outside, watching the others pass by, there are fewer people around and visibility's worse, especially through glasses, windows, windscreens and so on, so while it's raining is a better time for it. Of course, a crowd can provide cover if it's dense enough, but it can also make getting away difficult and there's the risk of a stampede.

Hi. My name's Shuqoyqa and I know some scary things.

silent hill 2. it was bad enough when i saw the monsters only as gross, meaty things, when i came back years later and actualy figured out what they ARE...

Your username, your avatar and that post make for an interesting combination.

Well most of the levels in Hitman contracts are remakes of Hitman and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin levels. The way the story is set up is that Agent 47 has been shot and is in kind of a feverish state of mind that causes him to have flashbacks to his earlier missions. These missions appear in a nightmarish state where it is always raining despite not raining in the original games.

I do agree with you that a contract killing would be easier in the rain though.

 

[robinkom]

When I was younger, Friday the 13th on the NES used to freak me out... 8-bit graphics and sound can be unnerving when they're trying to be scary and you're playing the game all alone with no one around you. Really, it was the 3rd person house roaming parts when you got to a house that Jason was in... that feeling that "Son of a *****, he's right THERE... to my left or right... and I'm gonna turn... and there he'll be."

A little later on, Splatterhouse 3 freaked me out a good bit, mostly from the digitized cut scenes of the real actors. Same deal, 16-bit graphics and sound are creepy as hell when they're trying to be scary... so it worked. Also the level 3 boss when you go to rescue your son... look it up. *shudders*

The stupidest "makes you jump out of your seat" moment I had with a game was in the Star Trek: The Next Generation game on Sega Genesis/SNES. The Red Alert would set itself off every time I was settling in to do something... didn't help it tended to be louder than any other sound effect in the game and I'd usually be playing when the house was totally silent. Would startle the shit outta me.

I can't say if any more modern games have scared me that much... it's usually all cheap sudden reaction scares which just get annoying. I love horror movies too much to be scared anymore, it certainly won't bother me in a game. When it came to something like Resident Evil, I was too aggravated with the controls to be freaked out by anything.

 

[TheKramers]

Silent Hill two always was and always will be one of the best horror games ever created. However, I must say Amnesia: The Dark Descent is looking pretty good. I only wish my computer was good enough to run it.

 

[MajWound]

Page three and nobody has mentioned "The Suffering" (the first one). Maybe this is because I was younger and more of a pussy, but I was scared shitless by this game. Now I just love how creative the creatures were. They were all incarnations of different horrific deaths that happened on the island. Let me share some:

For the decapitated and dismembered, pale bodies with no arms or legs past the elbows and knees, but instead long, sharp blades that allow them to crawl on ceilings and walls like spiders. Their heads are held into place a few inches above their necks with some kind of steel cage.

For the lethal injection, a creature that looks like Smeagol with glowing green syringes sticking out of its back and eyesockets. It spawns in pools of standing liquid like water, blood, and piss, then tries to inject you.

For the buried alive, straight-jacket-wearing burrowers that whip you with the chains wrapped around their bodies.

For the firing squad, a giant lumbering freak that looks like the tank from Left 4 Dead with a rifle battery growing out of its back.

 

[cthulhlu]

silent hill 2. it was bad enough when i saw the monsters only as gross, meaty things, when i came back years later and actualy figured out what they ARE...

Your username, your avatar and that post make for an interesting combination.

Dinky aint scared of nuffin

 

[silvermorning624]

The first time I played through Ravenholm in Half Life 2 on the ps3 Orange Box I was waring my new headset. My god, what a bad idea.