Scariest Video Games

[muldoonthief]

@Wiltshire

Equally old, and equally immersive: Thief: The Dark Project, as well as Thief 2. (And probably Thief 3. Haven’t played it yet, but I heard “The Cradle” is known as one of the pants-wettingly scariest game levels ever.) - Exploration of unknown environments. Distant sounds of unknown enemies. Some damn scary “undead levels” there. But it doesn’t matter if it’s a zombie in the bone hoard, a fire elemental in the lost city, or just a guard that might be behind you. You don’t want to fight them, you want to avoid them. Not much action, but always listening, flight reflexes on edge. The whole feeling of this game is like playing around with a loaded mouse trap. In the dark.

Thief 1 & 2 were outstanding and scary. Thief 3 wasn’t nearly as good, except for the Cradle, which is probably the best level in all 3 games.

One time I was playing Thief 2 on my first go-round, it was late at night and I found myself unexpectedly in an undead level. At the time, we had a newborn. My deal with my SAHM wife was that if I’m awake, I’ll get the baby if she starts crying. After I go to bed, my wife becomes the first responder. So I’m in my dark basement office, around 1 AM, playing an undead level that I wasn’t expecting, hiding in a dark corner, trying to remember which type of undead responds to which type of weapon, when an earsplitting screech comes from RIGHT BEHIND ME. I jumped up, shot the chair back, and fell on my ass. It turned out to be my daughter announcing her presence through the baby monitor.

[Pushkin]

@Hi_Neighbor

That’s actually *really *awesome.

Yeah, it surprised me for a bit when it mimicked other TV functions. It’s great when your character snaps out of it and declares that “This… can’t be happening”.

[Yumblie]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

There’s a segment in *Metroid: Prime * which was almost as scary… you walk into a room with this great guy called the Omega Pirate encased in a glass stasis tank. You tiptoe around forever trying to make sure you don’t do whatever it is that will wake him up, nervously glancing over at him the whole time, and then of course as soon as you try to leave the room he wakes up anyway and crushes you like a bug.

An even creepier part of the game is when you first get the thermal visor. You go in this giant room that spirals downward, and along the catwalks that lead down are the eponymous metroids, contained behind glass tanks but will go berserk against the glass when you walk by. When you grab the thermal visor down at the bottom, the power goes out, and it goes completely dark. Fortunately, you just got an item that lets you see in the dark. Unfortunately, now you have to make your way back up to the exit of this room with the force fields containing the metroids no longer functional. At this point in the game I don’t think you have the ice beam yet, which easily dispatches them, so when they break through the glass as you walk by your best option is to run.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

That part was cool, but I didn’t find it scary exactly. Regular-sized Metroids are just too cute to be scary.

[GreedySmurf]

@Nicolas_Bourbaki

Aliens v. Predator 2. 'Nuff said.

Absolutely. Playing the Marine anyway.

I was first playing this at night in a darkened room and the first time your motion tracker goes off and you can’t see squat. I almost hit the ceiling the first time an Alien jumped out and attacked me.

[Chessic_Sense]

My girlfriend refuses to even finish Scratches: Director’s Cut. I could barely make it through myself. Even today, I won’t go through certain rooms if I boot it up again.

We’re permanently scarred from that game. Oh…those pictures…::shudder::