What really scares you? (A Survival Horror Genre discussion)

[TheGreatCoolEnergy]

I don't consider the whole "Ghost jumps out of closet and yells BOO" scary. Thats closer to being startled.

As for true horror? Well nothing is scarier than nothing. No matter how scary the monster really is, it pales in comparison to waiting to see it.

After that, being watched, being followed, and being stalked are the scariest things. Especialy if you don't know where your being watched from.

True horror is all about atmosphere and tension.

EDIT: Scariest video series I've ever seen was Marble Hornets. Best atmosphere goes to the Blair Witch Project. As for games, well the pitch-black segments of Half Life 2 Episode 1 gets a honerable mention.

 

[Torque669]

Most shit scares me but most of all, knowing Im about to be pounced on. If I see a large open corridor with the lights flickering, I immediately think "Fuck that".

I wish developers could do the "BOO" moments better. Like on Condemned, where the guys in the locker and you start taking pictures. He chooses the most oppurtunate time when your perfectly zoomed in on his face to jump out and grab you. Made me fall of my chair and seriously smack my head on the wall. Fun but the hospital trip wasnt

 

[Nikajo]

Scariest thing for me for me would easily be tredding water in the sea and you can't see any land for miles around. Suddenly you feel something massive(and I do mean massive) swimming around/towards you. You're totally helpless and don't know what it is. That would scare me to that point that I would either pass out or piss myself, probably both.

Survival horror in gaming died out along time ago in my opinion. There have been some reasonably good games of that genre in the past few years but I think it peaked some time ago. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong but we'll just have to see...

 

[Nythengayle]

The scare is in the atmosphere itself. Doesn't even have to be loneliness. FEAR has quite a number of intelligent human enemies and it was scary as hell.

I'm going to take probably the most frightening moments from FEAR, Condemned and Condemned 2, and explain why atmosphere is the key to all of them.

FEAR - The entire waste water treatment plant. It's dark, it's got tons of corners and awkward industrial buildings, and it's a disaster waiting to happen. You don't know if you're going to run into an enemy ambush around the next corner or a supernatural occurrence. Then there's the creepy sections, like an impaled guy still alive and Alma popping out of nowhere; not to MENTION Janikowski's ghost patrolling the area. The game frightens you by putting you alone, and then "satisfying" that loneliness by putting in people you really don't want to see at that point. You want to go back to being alone.

Condemned - The mansion. Condemned has like 3 really scary levels in it, but I'm going to go with the mansion because it's really creepy. This is similar to the point above, you're in the same house as TWO serial killers (although you know one of them is probably fucked), and you're in this mansion which is otherwise actually quite low in enemies, and the atmosphere is getting to you. This place screams horror and times its presentation very well. This is the more classic example of scary.

Condemned 2 - The motherfucking bear. Similar to the first game, you have a scene where you're in a house that is otherwise abandoned except for a motherfucking, 900 lb rabies infested bear that is out to get you. You can't kill it conventionally, and you're being chased around this house looking for the right way to get rid of this monstrosity. And you see a staircase, and you're thinking, "Oh, bears can't climb up stairs", and you look back, and it's climbing the fucking stairs, breaking them as it goes up. It's an example of a supernatural enemy you can't kill, only run from.

So really, the scariest thing is atmosphere. Everything has to fit.

Yes! This is the kind of thing I'm talking about!!!!!! **Does a little happy dance**

Come on people! Discuss your most terrifying moments in Video gaming history!!!

I'll probably get to more of mine when fatigue isn't clouding my already swiss cheese like memory.

 

[Doclector]

Spiders. I am so freaked out by them, that even the ones in "40 winks" on the PS1 give me the creeps. On the other side of the scale, the ones in resident evil games have been known to reduce me to girly screaming.

On a more advanced side of things, it's definately the anticipation of a scare than the scare itself.

Games like condemned, resident evil, and silent hill do this the best in my opinion.

Spoiler: Webspinners say hi =D

But ya, spiders, and freaking snakes.
The first time I played Resident Evil 4, I was scared shitless, because I was just going around breaking boxes and stuff for ammo and herbs, then all of a sudden I break one and this happens.."Hmm, whats that?..Jesus freaking CHRIST, snake jumping at my face!!!"

I thought there weren't going to be any in RE5, but now...now I have to deal with HD quality spiders, snakes, and uhh...Reapers.

Before I say anything else, I am never, ever, opening that spoiler. Ever.

This reminds me of a co-op run through of Resi 5. After shooting through loads of mojini, we were running through the ruins only for me to come to a complete dead stop when I spotted a completely harmless spider on the wall. I actually refused to keep going until my friend shot it out of paranoia that it was going to jump out at my character.

and those snakes were bad, but worse, I thought if they boxed snakes, what if they boxed spiders as well :G

As for great horror moments, resident evil 1's iconic "dog through window" scare, Spying on pyramid head's "hot date" with a couple of corpses and monsters in silent hill 2, and more recently, the spider chase in limbo. Even if you're not arachnophobic, that was intense.

 

[Keava]

Proper survival horror of our days should clearly involve office work, and abusive boss, and deadlines, and protagonist's laziness rendering him or her unable to get to work, oh and plenty of boring, uninspiring grey co-workers also know as human drones. Yeah. That's scary, dark rooms, flashing lights, and funny noises ain't.

 

[Nythengayle]

...I suddenly wish I hadn't opened that spoiler...**huddles in a corner and cries**

 

[Avida]

The feeling of not being the biggest fish in the chain is a VERY important one for not only survival horror, but just about any game that wants to deliver scares and a sense of danger, anyone who's played action horrors of the new resident evil, dead space, hell; singularity etc etc knows that once you become powerful there is nothing to be afraid of. I like the idea of these huge forces doing their part regardless of us, if we get in their way we're dead, heroics or not, the best we can do is run, hide or hope we can slow them down.

 

[Nedoras]

The scariest thing for me is knowing that something is there in the room with you, but you can't see it and have absolutely no idea what it is. An example would be your first few encounters with the Regenerators in RE4. Just hearing their breathing and not being able to see them had me feeling completely paranoid and freaked out. To make matters worse when you first encountered them they seemed like unstoppable monsters due to their regenerating ability.

 

[esperandote]

There are so many elements that make a horror game. Lonelyness, characters vulnerability, spaced savepoints, amount of supplies, monsters/levels design, sound effects, lighting, story, puzzles, etc.

Fatal Frame takes the stress up by making you aim at the ghosts and take the picture when they are right in your face.

WTF moments like the room in with the mirror in Silent Hill, this is what happend in my head when I enterd that room:
"Alright there's nothing in this room"
"WTF? Shit's about to hit the fan"
"WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!WTF!"

 

[Chamale]

The scariest thing for me is when the game is set up in such a way that you see an area and immediately think "There's gonna be a monster there".

Anticipation is important for horror. Earlier, I was playing Left 4 Dead 2's Last Man on Earth mode, at the Sugar Mill, on Expert. I was running along with 10 wandering witches crying behind me, when I heard a distinct "Huff" in front of me. That's the noise that indicates a tank is waiting ahead of you. Full of dread, I slowly walked up the stairs to meet it. The worst thing was, I've never seen a tank spawn on the 3rd floor before, so I threw my molotov on the 2nd floor and was surprised to see no tank there.

In Left 4 Dead 1, witches were harder to deal with, which made the anticipation of dealing with them even worse. On Expert, if you don't have automatic shotguns or a good Cr0wner, some witch spawns are a clear death sentence. The worst part is the frantic debate over which player should risk their life and get killed.

 

[WillCourt]

Computers crashing scares the hell out of me. Eternal Darkness' insanity bar was crucial to scaring you, as god damn were the fake glitches and controls trippy if you let it degenerate. Fallout 3 also has a memorable area; one of the vaults in which you see through a purple/blue filter and see people and things vanish and reappear randomly. Took me a good hour just to get through that place because I refused to go in unless I looked up online what the hell was happening. XD

Got to say though, computer glitches, or things that shouldn't be there have always freaked me out a bit too much. Scariest game ever, (not conventional but hey hear me out) is Banjo Kazooie.
That beach level with the shark in the water, that would just appear due to the really bad fade in/out system the game had (where buildings would literally just dissapear if you a step in the other direction) caused me to turn the game off. The music would kick in LONG before he even appeared, as to up the tension too.

...Damn shark.

 

[Scorch_Phoenix]

Well, to tell the truth, the scariest games I play are the ones where you play some little girl with pretty no way to defend yourself. like those japanese games where you hunt ghosts with a fkn camera. However, I hate games like that, they get on my nerves. I prefer games where you can actually defend yourself, but you might have a pretty damn hard time doing it (e.g. silent hill 2 where you can't find a decent amount of ammo and your character is a horrible H2H person because of his inner ear infection (Thank you Yahtzee))

 

[Phoenix09215]

Resident Evil 1 Remake is porbably the game what got in my head the most :S Just the sound of your footsteps, the rain and odd thunder, and e sudden groan or footstep of the zombie you can't see :/

It creates tension very well... which is why I love ti so much!

 

[MasterV]

Silent Hill2 was a very good game but far from the best Horror game in my opinion.

What can really scare me are psychological horror and insanity themes. Scariest game i ever played is Eternal Darkness.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Vampire: Bloodlines - Either the Mansion or the Malkavian Primogen's house.

No spoilers. Just play it.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

As long as I can't see the thing making the creepy noises the scariness will ramp up in intensity.

 

[A-D.]

Bloodlines, the Mansion Level. The first Time around i was actually getting pretty scared, not because something was there that you had to fight, but rather that there wasnt, yet the whole Atmosphere of the Place, especially the Cellar Part with those Noises and that Ambient Music..thats damn creepy.

Interestingly i had my biggest Scare in the world's least scary Game: Doom 3. We all know the Game lives from gory Design and the "BOO!" Scares. But that single one got to me, i got through alot of these "IN YOUR FACE"-Scares, was about halfway in or so, i think i had to activate the Uplink or something, basicly the Level was made like a Office, lots of Tables, Servers and so forth. So i was killing my Way through the Level, did whatever i was supposed to and then got lost looking for the other Objective, as in literally i didnt know which way i had to go. So i was backtracking through the Level back and forth a few Times and then it happened.

At one Door, which opens once you get close to it, but you still have to wait for a few seconds, i suddenly heard a god-damn Zombie groan right into my Ear. As in literally right next to me in a tiny dark Corner which was completely pitchblack. I had the BFG equipped at that time and due to the scare i fired it, killed the zombie but also wasted a valuable shot. Afterwards i was sitting in my Chair, terrified, my Heart pounding like crazy because the Zombie groan, while not really scary, sounded as if that Zombie was directly next to myself, as in RL..so yeah, that creeped me out i actually had to take a Break.

Oh and before anyone gets funny, no i never used the Flashlight in that Game, at all.

 

[DocBalance]

Being alone. There is nothing more terrifying than waiting, just waiting, for something to come get you. It's why I find the "Slender-Man" concept so terrifying, it so much about pure anticipation.

 

[Terminate421]

What scares me is when something comes at me from areas I wouldn't expect (Im looking at you Dead Space)

I wouldn't hear the monster until it hit me either. (Fallout 3's Dunwich Building in the dark was fucking scary dude)