Games that scare the piss out of you

[Ribbons]

So, any game come to mind? For me it's the Left 4 Dead series. That game, no matter how many times I play, turns me into a little jumpy girl.

[radamanthys]

I used to live in what was known as the most haunted house in Buffalo. It was an old mansion in one of the nicer areas. It was in the process of being remodeled, so nobody else was living there at the time. Got a good deal on it.

It was that summer that I built my new computer, and so I downloaded F.E.A.R. Under normal circumstances, it woulda been fine. But in the dark, in a haunted mansion, all alone... yea, it was a little intense.

[Cephalopod]

The Thing (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/thing/index.html) was pretty good, and most of the Silent Hill games also. I'm more into survival horror than FPS, so L4D was never really my thing.

[Ryvicke]

The Silent Hill series is number one in my mind. I once did a lot of research on it for a college paper and read a lot about the psychology of the creators designing a game in which the only "difficult" aspect was keeping your shit together when confronted with all these fucked up images.

I can remember though when I was a kid freaking out like nuts when I convinced my Mom to buy me the PC game 7th Guest. I thought it was like the scariest shit of all time. Anyone else play this?

[TheLastShamurai]

When I was a kid, and first played Parasite Eve, that game freaked me out. I was always out of ammo because I would shoot the piss out of anything that moved, and would subsequently make me more scared since I didn't have any more ammo to shoot the piss out of something.

[Buckwheet]

Silent Hill and when I was younger playing Alone in the Dark at like midnight when the parents where sleeping was rough.

[Malvadere]

I never really like scary movies or games. However i, like everyone else I'm sure, loved the original Doom, so I got the the Doom 3 or 4 one. Updated graphics make a big big difference.

[TheEschaton]

Eco the Dolphin scared the shit out of me. I mean, HOW COULD HE JUMP THAT HIGH?!?

[Rinualdo]

Oregon Trail. I kept getting diseased or eaten.

[Lumi]

The Silent Hill series is number one in my mind. I once did a lot of research on it for a college paper and read a lot about the psychology of the creators designing a game in which the only "difficult" aspect was keeping your shit together when confronted with all these fucked up images.

I can remember though when I was a kid freaking out like nuts when I convinced my Mom to buy me the PC game 7th Guest. I thought it was like the scariest shit of all time. Anyone else play this?

Haha, I remember 7th Guest. Yeah, when we were much younger playing that, it had some pretty spooky parts.


I never really like scary movies or games. However i, like everyone else I'm sure, loved the original Doom, so I got the the Doom 3 or 4 one. Updated graphics make a big big difference.

They really do. I laughed at the original Doom the first time I saw it. Then I got a job working on the Xbox port of Doom 3, and had to admit there were a few parts that made me jump. It was more of a "shock value" kinda fear, rather than a "this is twisted shit" fear, but it did get my heart going.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, a Lovecraft-inspired game for the Gamecube (!?), had a few parts that were truly twisted. The GCN's crappy graphics actually reduced the spook factor, but there were still a number of parts that made my skin crawl.

[Doughboy]

There was a scene in the first Bioshock that freaked me the hell out. Some dude comes leaping out of a cadaver closet, or whatever the hell it's called. Stupid zombie things...

[TheEschaton]

Yeah, same thing for the very first Half-Life, stuff in that game scared me.

[Stanley Burrell]

Some of the stuff in RE:2 scared me. When Mr. X would just suddenly explode out of fucking walls, that sucked.

Then some of the stuff in Dead Space was a little frightening, but after that tentacle shit grabbed me and I kept dying, especially that bullshit where you walk away from the hole it came out of as if everything's O.K., and then it pulls you back in -- I became so fucking pissed after the 9209380923th time, that nothing in that game scared me any more.

Condemned was freaky.

Then there's that one part in Hell in "The Darkness" where those undead World War 1 helmut-wearing German zombies suddenly flash in front of your eyes for no reason whatsoever. I don't like that though, because if you're walking around like the Master Chief and being a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of aliens, then it's like, "I'm just dashing through this shit. Fuck y'all gremlin-ass nigguz. Eat Chronoscepter, puny velociraptor, what? Yeah, I called the Nintendo Power hotline and got the all weapons and infinite ammo + God mode cheats in this bitch. The fuck y'all gremlin-ass nigguz gonna do? Y'all look like fluffy Gizmo-ass gremligguz that haven't been fed past midnight to me. Fuck y'all: I'm straight up racist against gremlins..." Then it's dumb, and stuff.

But when it's like, "I just went through a deserted spaceship, filled with undead Nazis, but they were just an illusion -- And then I finally realized which box wasn't a Mimic and found the Leviathan Cube, which I managed to unlock under 5 nanoseconds (so that I wouldn't set off the nuke) to get my first weapon ... THE HOLY BUTTERKNIFE!" -- And then three trillion Wallmasters from Zelda start flying around in zero gravity while the TV screen starts to bleed and tells me that I can't win (addressing me by my RL name) and I realize I'm still playing Pterodactyl Nightmare at the local video arcade's virtual reality machine, 15 years ago ... Then yeah, that's kinda spooky I guess.

But all in all, the levels in the first Super Mario where I had my TV turned up really loud, and then Bullet Bills would be all like *BOOM* and fly at you without even seeing a cannon to shoot out of, while I was still a fetus was, in fact, the scariest.

[hectomaner]

i remember the night i bought resident evil. 4 of us at a friends house tripping balls all night playing the game. bascially was like watching a super scary horror movie and we were all fucked up.

was a fucking blast

[Kuyuk]

FEAR was pretty scary. They did a good job with the paranormal effects to make it tense at times, and then anything would scare you.. (me).

Little freaky kids are scary. Especially in paranormal games.

[Methais]

Bioshock was pretty creepy.

Pretty sure everyone jumped when the dog jumped through the window down the first hallway in Resident Evil 1 too. Had my friend play it not long after I got it and watched him just before it happened, he about shit himself and was all like JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111


Eco the Dolphin scared the shit out of me. I mean, HOW COULD HE JUMP THAT HIGH?!?

When I first came upon the blue whale I was like HOLY FUCK!!!!, Tourettes Guy style.

[Lumi]

Pretty sure everyone jumped when the dog jumped through the window down the first hallway in Resident Evil 1 too. Had my friend play it not long after I got it and watched him just before it happened, he about shit himself and was all like JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

Bwahahaha, yes. I can't believe I didn't mention that dog. That is the quintessential "game made you crap yourself!" video game moment, imo. It was definitely the first time I ever felt genuinely scared by a game.

[Hips]

Pretty sure everyone jumped when the dog jumped through the window down the first hallway in Resident Evil 1 too.

I did! I just stopped playing at that point and made one of my guy friends do it, I just watched instead.

Back before I got my own PS1 (1997ish) I used to watch one of my friends play some horror game for it that scared the shit out of us. I forget what it was named but it was something about being trapped in an old mansion with people trying to kill you and you had the avoid the traps they set for you or something odd like that. I guess when I was 12, almost anything in a "horror" game was scary.

[AnticorRifling]

Phantasmagoria...go go 8th grade.

[Lumi]

Phantasmagoria...go go 8th grade.

Holy shit this thread is so full of nostalgia :D

[Methais]

Anyone remember GHOST MANOR for Atari 2600? The one that was the dual cartridge with Spike's Peak on the other side?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/Ghost_Manor_Title.png

Was kinda scary...for an Atari game being played by a 7-year-old at the time.
http://retromedia.ign.com/retro/image/article/905/905895/xonox_1219877277.jpg

[Fallen]

Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4. Dead Space was good for keeping you tense if you set the difficulty to max. Even if you knew where/when the creatures were going to come from, it takes so little to kill you that it still keeps you on your toes.

[AestheticLife]

the Clock Tower series. For serious.

[Fallen]

the Clock Tower series. For serious.

I heard good things about those games. It was like Silent Hill, but your character was a HUGE wuss, and couldn't really do anything BUT run.

[Sylvan Dreams]

Silent Hill and Dead Space were creepy.

When I was little, my dad had a working Colecovision/Atari combo that I used to play video games on. Mousetrap used to scare me when the cat was coming for you, and Smurfs would scare me in the dungeons.

[LMingrone]

I'll also say Bioshock. It's the only game that made me jump back, and I was like 25 when I played it. Lights off, surround sound blasting, that game is a mindfuck.

[Back]

Fallout 3... crawling through an abandon building in the dark, hearing “swoosh swoosh swoosh BLARGZGG!!!” and turning around to see a screaming ghoul.

[Ribbons]

F.E.A.R was pretty bad, I couldn't play it with at least one light source one.

Fallout 3...eh, kinda. Hearing a ghoul scream and not knowing where it came from was pretty startling.

Resident Evil was more like 'Well shit, wasn't expecting THAT'.

Silent Hill was fucked up.

[Drew]

Aliens Vs Predator on the Atari Jaguar (yes I owned one) was the first game to scare me. A really novel concept at the time.

The aliens took 3 shotgun rounds to kill so you were always backpedaling trying not to get destroyed.

[DCSL]

Silent Hill 2 was the only game I had to turn off every once in a while 'cause I was getting too jittery and was losing my shit at every little thing.

The only thing I remember about 7th Guest was that I really loved the music.

[Farn]

Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 was pretty creepy. I haven't played any of the scary-to-be-scary games or zombie survival games or anything, so it was all new to me. I remember the first time I saw that headcrab on the guy in the radioactive-sludge area earlier. Yikes. Never played the first Half-Life, so headcrabs were new to me. What a creepy concept.

The biggest scare I got from a game was back when I was a kid playing Quest for Glory I (enhanced version), walking around at night so there wasn't any music, just some cricket noises. I stumbled upon the graveyard that apparently is full of ghosts at night, and some really loud "scary" (I think I recall pipe organs) music suddenly started blasting out the speakers. I ran out of the room.

[Fallen]

Fallout 3... crawling through an abandon building in the dark, hearing “swoosh swoosh swoosh BLARGZGG!!!” and turning around to see a screaming ghoul.

The problem I had with Fallout is that after a certain point the game was too easy. There was little risk of death, even at the highest level of difficulty. That's why 90% of the mods for the game (that weren't making everyone naked) were to make the game harder. Ghouls were creepy..they also were some of the weakest enemies in the game.

Luckily, Obsidian has said they plan to tweak the difficulty quite a bit for the new one.

[raith]

the doctors mansion in suffering is my favorite creeped me out game memory.
i remember playing it back when it was first out with a friend and we would sit there lights out and get intense into the game then the apartment buzzer that was loud enough to wake the dead would go off and we would both be on the cealing holding our chests

[iJin]

Oh god Silent Hill. I have to play with someone in the room and the light on, but of course I don't cause I like being scared.