Technically, Return to Castle Wolfenstein doesn’t have a lot of blood and gore in it. (Something to do with getting a lower rating…you can have Nazis getting shot, but as long as they don’t bleed or loose limbs… :rolleyes:) Anyway, it’s damned scary, when you’re in the bowels of the castle itself. And I’m not talking “there might be a sniper around the next corner” scary. I’m talking “fever dream after watching a slasher flick” scary.
That sounds a lot like Amber: Journeys Beyond. It’s a fairly old CD-ROM game, Myst-style, and thoroughly creepy. It’s best to play with the lights off, and if you’re dedicated you can solve it in an evening.
I had forgotten about that.
Never have the words “They’re coming out of the Damn walls!” been so appropriate.
Thank you, everybody! Now I have this huge list of games that I have to try. I think I’m going to get System Shock 2 and Clive Barker’s Undying (lukaspriest’s description sounds exactly like what I want, and since tons of people agree on the System Shock game, sounds good to me).
How is talking about abandonware or freeware downloads against rules? The copyrights have been abandoned, there’s no chance of violating any laws. Or am I wrong on this?
I am definitely going to try to get Amber again. I’ve never forgotten that game.
I second Dark Eye and Gabriel Knight I: Sins of the Fathers. The first isn’t so much a game as a multimedia version of Poe’s stories, but it’s genuinely creepy. Flickering images, voices on the edge of hearing…and I agree that the “Berniece” episode is especially frightening, and probably more so because it’s one of Poe’s lesser-known stories so it’s not as immediately obvious what’s going on.
I hated that darn cellar in “The Cask of Amontillado”, though. It was impossible to navigate. You just had to click around almost at random until you got to the right place. And there was a minor bug in my game that sometimes prevented the cops from showing up in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, so I just had to wander around the apartment wondering if there was some way to turn myself in!
I don’t want to spoil any of the plot to Gabriel Knight I, because it’s a good mystery story of novel quality, but things do get pretty creepy near the end. The early part of the game is fairly light with lots of humor, but as our hero gets closer to uncovering the truth things…start happening. To his informants, his business, and his friends. ::shivers::
Sanitarium is good and scary, as is Clive Barker’s Undying. The former is an adventure, the latter an FPS.
Half Life on the PC – it’s got a healthy dose of action but it still a very chilling, frightening story of science run amok.
On the Playstation2, Fatal Frame II creeped me out like few games have. If you’ve seen “The Grudge” “Ju-On” you know what to expect.
EZ
I fourth, or fifth, or whatever, Sanitarium. Maybe not to play on Halloween specifically, as it’s not a “scary” scary game, but definitely play it at night, by yourself. It’s abandonware, and as such you can download it in full from the-underdogs.org *
- I hope this isn’t verboten. My understanding is that Underdogs doesn’t put a game up for full download unless it’s lawful to do so, but I could be wrong.
I recommend Doom 3.
I mean, the processor power and graphics hardware you’re going to have to buy just to be able to play that game are pretty damn scary!
Here’s a vote for AvP and Resident Evil. There’s a remake of the original RE out for Gamecube with much better graphics ie more realism ie more scaritude. I was spooked out of my socks even though I remembered the original RE well enough to anticipate a lot of what was going to happen.
I thought that might have been the game too, but if it gets creepy, I gave up on it too soon. I’m hopeless at that sort of game without a walk-through. Maybe I’ll see if I can find the walk-through again and give it another try.
Most of the software programs called “abandonware” have current copyrights and are still illegal to distribute. It’s a term commonly used by those people who seem to think that anything not currently on the market in stores right now is perfectly fine to copy and distribute. That’s not how copyright laws work at all.
Occasionally some companies do specifically release older games for free distribution (while still holding onto the copyright, as that entails other things as well). It has to be an actual clear cut public decision on their part or else it doesn’t count.
As far as scary games go, The Undying dave me motion sickness something fierce, and I’m stuck right after picking up the dragon gun, but other than that it was cool so far. Alone in the Dark is a well-deserved classic. The Dark Eye should have just been one long video or something, because all it is as far as a game goes is “click in random nonsensical places everywhere until the next segment gets tripped.”
If its not too late, I’d like to reccomend Dark Fall. I should note that I tend to be easily scared, but it was creepy! I usually played it at night, used headphones because the sound on my laptop can be hinky (and some of the sounds are so quiet, then boom!), and my siberian husky, Misha, would sleep under the bed. If you can find a dog to nap under your bed and suddenly wake up, forget where he is and bang his head on the bed, thus making the whole bed shake it really adds to the experience. The little stinker always did it at the scariest parts of the game, as if he knew.
I hope you enjoy your Halloweenie gaming experience! I’m going to play the sequel: Dark Fall: Lights Out.
Thief isn’t scary in a horror sense, but played late at night with the lights off and the sound up is pretty damn creepy. It’s probably the most atmospheric game I’ve ever played. No other stealth game has ever come close to this original.
You can get Sanitarium for $10 at your local Target store.