Scary Games

[Rad Bromance]

[beema]

And, now that I think of it, the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth game is terrifying. You literally go insane if you look at the monsters too much.

I'm with you on this game. It's a shame it is so terribly bugged though. Even with fan-made patches it's barely playable.

That first level though, where you have to escape the hotel in the middle of the night. Holy crap. Probably the most terrifying sequence I've ever experienced in a game. It kind of lost its edge when you had to play it over and over after dying, and the rest of the game sort of petered out, but just for that it's on the top of my list.

I think the only other recent memory of such a frightful adrenaline rush with a game is with the Heavy Rain DLC "The Taxidermist." Pretty good escape sequence there (although there is a very similar sequence in the main game).

anyone play penumbra?

after that one, in all honesty, i couldn't find dead space or silent hill or pretty much any horror game to be even close to the level of scariness that penumbra makes you endure.

there aren't so many holy-god-where'd-that-monster-come-from moments so much as there's just constant and horrifyingly suspenseful tension that makes you see a shadow and nearly go into cardiac arrest.

you're in a seemingly abandoned and pitch-black mine shaft, your flashlight is good for all of two seconds, and they don't even give you a gun.

I've heard lots of great stuff about Penumbra. Definitely one of the games I feel I NEED to play. I bought a pack on Amazon (was supposed to have all three episodes) but it only came with Black Plague so I returned it.

A bunch of folk have talked about Penumbra which was scary, and SH obviously, but this game:

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

Scared the living bat out of me. In fact, I never finished it.

Hehe, even if you wanted to you might not be able to finish it -- it's so broken. I got to the very end and there is a huge glitch which prevents you from progressing.

Games like FEAR never truly scare me. You are a beefed up super soldier with an arsenal rivaling that of a small failed state. Plus, most of the enemies are clone soldiers or mechs who are not scary at all. There were a few cheap pop-in-your face scary moments, but stuff like that is fleeting. It's the games that really penetrate you with a overwhelming atmosphere of helplessness or loneliness that get to me.

Having said that, the Ravenholm sequence in HL2 freaked me out quite a bit, even inside the HEV suit

A marvelous game is Condemned: Criminal Origins. I think it did a way better job than its sequel. Amazing atmosphere, primarily melee weapons. Highlights being the abandoned department store and the old farmhouse.

I've always accepted that Silent Hill set the bar, but tbh I've never played a single Silent Hill game. Well, technically I played SH for like 2 hours way back in the day with a friend, but it freaked us out so much we put it down and never picked it back up, so that doesn't count. I think I'm actually a bit scared to play it ever since then.

Eternal Darkness definitely creeped me out a bit, but it's not high on the list. The enemies were kind of goofy. I think the most disturbing thing about it was the soundtrack.

hmm... what else?

Dead Space was scary as crap for about the first third of the game. After that, your character becomes pretty powerful, and you start getting used to the scares, and expecting them. It relies mostly on monster pop-outs, which become pretty predictable after a while. I found that a major problem with modern "scary" games is the use of dynamic music. You know, the music that only plays when enemies are around. Well as soon as that music fades off, you know there isn't any danger and you can relax. Similarly, the minute it starts up, you know there's a monster lurking. Kind of breaks the tension. I think it's much more effective to have a constant ambient soundtrack that doesn't change at all relative to enemies. Then you are really surprised.

I was pretty freaked out by RE2 when I first played it way back when. After a while, all the RE games started losing their effect on me. The remake for GameCube was good, and RE4 definitely had it's moments (those Iron Maiden monsters scared the crap outta me with the noises they made), but RE5 pretty much lost it completely.

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl had some pretty terrifying moments. The first time I ran in to a Bloodsucker in an abandoned building during a rainstorm being very memorable. The STALKER series as a whole does a fantastic job with atmosphere, but there weren't really any scares in Clear Sky (haven't played Call of Pripyat yet).

The Escapist had a pretty good feature on this a few months back. Although several of the contributors mentioned Bioshock, which I didn't find scary in the least bit.

[escobert]

Final Fantasy X. Once I heard Tidus talk I couldn't sleep for weeks.

[Logie]

I had an Alone in the Dark demo when I was younger. It scared me so much that I forced my mum to play it while giving me a running commentary (as I took refuge in another room LOL).

[Levian]

I...I'm not alone anymore! <3

[razorrozar7]

I had an Alone in the Dark demo when I was younger. It scared me so much that I forced my mum to play it while giving me a running commentary (as I took refuge in another room LOL).

that's a cthulhu-mythos game? all those are prtty scary i like dark corners of the earth