I ask half in jest, of course. I just loved this game, but I can be a bit of a scaredy-cat when it comes to things jumping out behind you. And they do that a lot in this game. I remember being in the garden, and exploring a place, and then turning around and seeing a nasty old Splicer, grinning at me. I reacted surprisingly well. I shouted, “FUCK YOU, SHITHEAD!” and blew him away with…I think I had the shotgun equipped. But I have screamed before.
I hear they are making a movie. I would probably give my left leg if they would make an RPG type game set in Rapture. The world and the story totally caught my attention. Maybe one that is set more in the times of everything going to shit.
Oh, and I would welcome any suggestions on how to be less scared. Cause I plan to play it either way.
Don’t play at night. Don’t play with a headset on. Don’t have a sneaky SO that will wait until the scariest moment to shake you and scare you into an early grave.
I love going back to it and playing it on hard with no vita chambers, but playing on easy with the vita’s on will make it easy, and impossible for you to die which, for me at least = less scary.
This is good advice. Have some funny music playing in the background. But don’t make the same mistake I did, having “I love you, you love me” being sung in the background while splicers appear around the corners of your screen, is panic inducing.
That last one entails violence. Back when I first watched the Aliens series, well, I found out the hard way that he can imitate the Alien’s hiss almost perfectly. In the dark, in the middle of the night…well a few pummelings later and it got better.
I certainly couldn’t play with a headset on!
I will be all finished with my X-files this weekend, most likely. NINE seasons! Anyway after that I will pick up the game again and play it in the time I watch usually.
As for the Yakety Sax recommendation, I already have the “Jesus Loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” irrevocably connected to this game. I don’t need that song hooked to it, too!
Try turning up the brightness/gamma on the TV/monitor (as appropriate); not only will this make things look not quite as scary, but it’s harder for stuff to hide in the shadows. (Obviously some scares aren’t avoidable in that fashion, but it’s a start.)
I found liberal use of the “flame” power made the game a lot less scary. Sure, I’d still get startled - but setting Splicers aflame and letting them run about until they collapsed provided a great deal of payback.
For me, I have noticed that the anxiety of a game increases as the feeling of vulnerability increases. If my character can die and get hurt, that makes me jump and avoid dangerous things like in real life. However, when I have God mode on, things don’t scare me as much because I’m invincible. You might want to try playing with that on
I had this reaction to the early parts of “Clive Barker’s Undying”. Not so much when the game gets to the funky LSDed-out other dimension, but in the dark, creepy old family manse, when the flayed guy appears to you every once in a while…brrrrrrrr.
Yup, remember playing Undying, creeped me out it did. Reflections in the mirror, evil lurking at every corner. Got through the mansion, out in the garden, got to a set of stairs leading down into a dark basement - heard growels and hideous noises down there. Hit Escape and never loaded the game again
Also, for anybody who has played it - Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - the haunted Hotel early on in the game freaked me out to no end, jeebs… Took two sittings to get through it
Bioshock, not as bad as System Shock back in the day, especially once you power up somewhat, as YogSoth says.
Equip all the Wrench and Sneak Attack plasmids. Charging splicers are a lot less scary when you’re thinking “You fools! You’re falling right into my trap!”
I had to stop playing System Shock 2 because it gave me the deep blue wiggins. But later, I discovered a secret that helped me get through the game without a change of pants – keep the volume low. It was the eerie soundscape and the sudden exclamations of enemies appearing out of nowhere that was freaking me out. At a lower volume, the shouts of suddenly appearing enemies was more data than atmosphere.
Back when Doom was the latest thing, there were a number of custom .wad files floating around - one thing you could do with those is customize the in-game sounds. One of my favorite ones was the MST3K .wad; ambient growls and snarls were replaced with clips from various MST3K episodes. Those pink gorilla-wolf things were less scary when they were wandering around singing “The lunatic is on the grass” in Joel’s voice and saying “Owie. Stingy.” when you shot them. And when you opened a door you got “Movie Siiiign!” with all the buzzers and shouts. Awesome, and totally not scary.
Cause I plan to play it either way.
