Why do you find Dead Space scary?

[solemnwar]

Dead Space is scary when you think about it.

It's a virus/something that affects everyone, and it turns your own dead against you by using organic tissue to make horrifying... THINGS. Resulting in more people dead. Making it even bigger. To kill more of people. To make it even bigger. Pretty much the only way to destroy it is to set it on fire and completely destroy the organic tissue it is using to make itself.

Just because you've left that necromorph dead on the floor, doesn't mean it's permanently down for the count. Necromorphs you see further in the game? They could very well be necromorphs you've already killed and have come back. The hacking the limbs off is really, probably only a stop-gap measure, if you think about it.

And this virus/something was able to knock out an entire goddamn station in a very short amount of time. It didn't take all that long to overcome the colony planet or the Ishimura either.

THIS IS FUCKING TERRIFYING.



I'm also really, really chicken and I don't like horror and everything's all dark and ohjesuspleasedon'tbethebabythingspleasedon'tbethebabythingspleaseohgodwhy.

I have to play the game with my sister in the room :'D

Dead Space 2 was the better game for me, tho, because Isaac actually had a voice and personality so I cared about the poor fucker more. I'm actually minorly unhappy about Dead Space 3 because for fuck's sake poor Isaac deserves his goddamn happy ending at this point XD

 

[Cid Silverwing]

It's JUMP scary, not "scary".

If you want scary, play Amnesia The Dark Descent. There is literally no better horror game than that (barring Silent Hill 2 apparently).

 

[Blackdoom]

I never really found them to be that scary, the atmosphere in the first one was nice with a rather creepy feel to it but fell short when it came to the spookyness.

 

[cambamuniverse]

Haven't played much of either game, so I don't know if this changes later on, but:

In DS 1, action music only played once you SAW the enemy coming at you. So there were a few tense moments where you would hear noises behind you and you'd turn around and HOLY SHIT you were about to get eaten. Also, some of the vent stuff could be scary. Other than that, idk, like I said I haven't played too much of it, but it's no Penumbra or anything.

 

[Mrkillhappy]

Dead Space has never been scary for me it can have startling moments but I don't view that as a true scare. What I classify as a true scare is the sense of dread that something might be right behind you and you only have a small amount of ammo and health with no ability to replenish your supply at a shop but instead only being able to use what you find.

 

[RJ 17]

I think the games could have their moments, like the room with the disjointed "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and the more subtle "Make us whole" bits, but a persistent tension didn't really last for me. Partly because Isaac's a walking arsenal before too long, and partly because the jump out of vent attacks really only startled me the first few times.

I'd say this about sums things up. Dead Space is just doing what all Survival-Horror games try to do: build up atmosphere. Being alone in the dark corridors of a spaceship or space station, seeing various walls covered in blood, hearing various strange ambient sounds, etc. It's all trying to give you that "hair standing on the back of your neck" feel that SOMETHING'S about to happen. This is meant to be the set-up for the "pop out of the vents" jump-scare that every monster in those games uses.

The problem is, once you've played the game for 30 minutes and you realize that the monsters will ALWAYS come out of the vents (or be just laying on the ground in such a way that just screams "yeah, they're not really dead"), the jump scare doesn't work no matter how much atmosphere and setup they put into it. You walk into a new room, see like 5 of those special vent covers and just face-palm, thinking "Well this room is about to get messy." You take a couple steps in and sure enough your prediction comes true.

The point of a jump-scare is that the target doesn't see it coming. If you use the same jump-scare device (in this case the vents) then the jump-scares won't be nearly as startling to the target since they'll be fully expecting it.

That said, I still enjoyed both the games, prefering to use absolutely nothing but the standard-issue plasma cutter since all the other weapons make the games way too easy. I thought going through the Scientology Unitology church in DS2 was pretty creepy what with all the people laying around dead with bags over their heads, showing that they all performed some cult ritualistic mass-suicide. All in all I'd say they were decent games, but I wouldn't really call them scary.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Why did I find DeadSpace scary?

1. The Atmosphere (use of lighting, smoke effects, and colors).
2. The use of noise and the lack of noise in space
3. Well done set pieces
4. Challenging enemies on the harder difficulties

I understand peoples' complaints about the DeadSpace formula though. The stronger your character gets in the game and the more you become acquainted with the level design, the game starts to lose some of its edge. Once that settles in, you have a solid action game with an engrossing setting.

 

[Silvanus]

It's all about the sound with Dead Space. They're pretty good at atmospheric stuff, IMO, particularly in DS1 and the sections in the residential areas of the Sprawl in DS2 (plus the revisiting the Ishimura as someone mentioned).

It's also a little unnerving to get Isaac to violently stomp on a corpse, no matter how much sense it makes.

 

[TrevHead]

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I found DS1 scary or atleast in the first part of the game when enemies were spaced out and few in number. When the game started piling the enemies on it lost the effect and I played it like any other game.

I think it has to do with my playstyle as when as game has good atmosphere I stop rushing to the finishline, slow down and take it all in.

Call me a wuss but I even felt slightly scared playing Doom 3 and Quake 4 (PC) at times, (especially in Quake 4 where you first encounter the female strog)

 

[drummond13]

I don't.

It's startling? There are lots of moments that startle me?

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Well the first hour of the first game had me literally had me screaming like a little kid. The rest was scary and some of the death scenes... Just ugh.

The second one had a couple scary bits, it was fucking icky though... More spooky than Scary the second one...

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Because I'm a real lightweight when it comes to getting scared, but at least that means I'm getting the fun out of the scary stuff.
Especially when I crank up the difficulty because everything gets a lot scarier when anything can kill you in two hits.

 

[Beautiful End]

Well, at first glance, yes. when I first played Dead Space 2, I was confused with the controllers and I couldn't read what the game was trying to make me do as I was running down that stupid hallway at the beginning of the game (I also had a SDTV at the time). When I got to a dark room and I heard noises coming from somewhere, I said "Fuck that shit" and I quit the game.

Then again, I'm sort of a wuss. But maybe if I had played it a bit longer, I might have got used to it. We'll never know, I guess.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

No, Dead Space was never scary for me. Though in actuality I never finished the first one and never played the second one. I tried to find it scary, but there was nothing even remotely frightening in it. Actually, I take that back: there is a sequence in the beginning of the game where you are being chased by a necromorph down a corridor with no weapons and your only course of action is to run the hell away. That was scary, it made me feel helpless in a hostile environment. After that though, the game became predictable to the point that I thought I was psychic. Enemy placement was so painfully obvious that I had always had my sights trained on the location where they would pop out. Jump scares can be scary, but predictable jump-scares are just boring.

 

[Terminate421]

I found Dead Space 1 scary due to it's PERFECT atmosphere and my lack of playing horror games. Also I played it on the hardest difficulty.

Dead Space 2 wasn't really scary but it's action still made it work.

 

[Tropicaz]

It was just jump scares. In one it also felt like any time the dramatic music came on something was going to jump out. It just didnt impress me that much.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Slightly off topic, but I don't think any games have been actually scary since like, the original Silent Hill and Tomb Raider (no seriously, I actually find Tomb Raider to be one of the scariest, most atmospherically haunting games ever). And I'm not exactly one for much horror myself. Always makes me laugh when friends get me to play like, Fear or Stalker, games they found scary, and then watch as they expect me to be creeped out and terrified of them, only for me to wander through without batting an eye.

Though admittedly I have only played a tiny bit of Dead Space, most I remember was a room with a giant spinning ball in it that was basically a rip off of the engine room from Event Horizon, and some place where a bunch of screaming corpses suddenly appeared out of nowhere for a few seconds before vanishing again. My reaction was the same as the characters, blank stoicism.

All those supposed-scary games suffer from a small problem:

You can't be afraid if you are a walking death machine. You simply can't. If I can hide behind a fuck-off gun and my character is wearing a suit of armor that'll put knights to shame then there is nothing scary.

Though I never thought of STALKER as scary. It has certainly atmosphere and there were parts where I got tense due to what happened around me and the previous lack of enemies that went beyond physical attacks.

Yeah, that was kinda my feelings as well with all of them, any game where the primary gameplay mechanic is shooting things dead with a vast array of weapons really can't be scary. Even less so if those weapons are upgradable, or if your character can also be upgraded to turn them into a walking death machine. How can I be afriad of a vast horde of deamonic monsters when I have 4 weapons I can quick change between at any point, all of which can eviscerate my enemies in numerous ways?

Fear was even worse, my friend was watching me play through it, shitting himself every time ghosts and shit appeared, and there I am slowing down time and blasting things with a shotgun like it's the Matrix or something. And then I got into a giant mech, became invincible and mowed down hundreds of mooks before getting bored. How are you supposed to be terrified when you're a walking tank?

 

[Nieroshai]

I wouldn't say it was scary, the atmosphere was good and suspenseful though.

 

[sir neillios]

Scary..... I'm really not sure if I found it scary or not, I'm not going to brag that I wasn't scared at times. Let's be honest, it uses elements that do add to a tense atmosphere. Tense discordant music, enemies that can render you helpless in very short order, and the knowledge that there is a narrow margin of error in combat, if you miss a shot you'll pay for it.

Since then I've played amnesia, totally different game. I enjoyed playing dead space 2, amnesia I had to force myself to finish, it cannot be stated enough how comforting the ability to fight back is.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I though the first game had a good atmosphere of creepy shit happening, at least initially. Eventually it goes off the rails and turns into an action game on the last level. The second game was an action game all the way and not scary except in a couple of sections designed as such.