The only Resident Evil I played was Nemesis, which was scary enough though not really nightmare scary. Just more like “Well, everything is quiet so fa-- AAHH!! Get it off me! Getitoffme!!!” scary. Parasite Eve was much the same, although the slick graphics parts were pretty creepy.
Scariest game though that I ever played was a Commodore game called Project Firestart. You’re on some ship looking for survivors after they lose transmission. Walking down the silent corridors only to suddenly hear the “Weee!! Weee!” music that accompanied the aliens always made me jump and unlike a lot of other games, you barely had any ammunition in your gun so as often as not, your best bet was to run. Added to this was some cut screens where it showed the aliens all around some pod looking thing and later another animation where the pod was burst open and all the aliens slaughtered let you know something big and nasty was after you without sharing what the big nasty thing was. By today’s standards the graphics would be a joke, but at the time it was a damned spooky thing to play.
I also used to like to play Doom with the gamma correction turned down real low and the lights off. Made it lots of fun to have a demon jump out of the dark at you with its trademark roar.
System Shock players: The local Fry’s is selling it for $10, should I get it? Right now I’m playing through Deus Ex, and when you’re trying not to get spotted, hearing the guard-that-you-don’t-know-is-around-the-corner cough is scary enough. Think SS2 matches up? If so, off to Fry’s with me…
Half-Life isn’t scary so much as it’s insanely nerve-wracking (only game that makes me work up a sweat).
The 7th Guest and 11th Hour were pretty freaky (especially the revelation at the end of 11th Hour). However, Phantasmagoria took that creepiness to the next level (first game to come with a Mature rating, IIRC).
However, the ultimately scary game I’ve ever played was Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. It starts off quite tame at the beginning… y’know, exactly how Sierra’s adventure games are… but as you get immersed into it, things start to happen. After day four or five, you’re pretty much wiggin’ out.
Phantasmagoria - the ‘reflections of the past’ that appear throughout the game if you look in the mirrors/windows are particularly disturbing, especially since it was done with ‘live actors’.
System Shock 2 - Walking down a hall, hearing ‘Run, run for your life’ from behind you only to see the mutant warning you clubbing you in the head had me jump on several occasions.
Resident Evil - Not disturbing, but a couple of moments (the dogs in the windows) had me jump and shout.
7th Guest - Part of this was because of the new CD technology and seeing live actors morph and change was very impressive, and a bit frightening.
Ultima IX - How such a bug ridden piece crap laden with braindead AI could be allowed to crown the end of an otherwise excellent 20 year series of games was by far scariest of all.
The death scene flashbacks were pretty creepy all right–but the thing that really scared me was the sheer brainlessness of the heroine. Did she have cue cards that read “Inhale” and “Exhale”?
Thanks for mentioning Gabriel Knight: SOTF, Spoofe. That was the first game that ever took over my life. You gamers know how it is; it’s 4 a.m., you started playing at noon, and you swear to god that you’re going to go to bed if you can just figure out how to keep the f&%$ing snake from killing you!!!
The zombies in the Benin snake mound gave me nightmares. I almost cried when I (finally) got past them, I was so relieved. They kept killing Gabe, my chunkily-animated, Tim-Curry-voiced sweetheart!
<slight hijack>
GK1 is my favorite game ever, but since it’s an old game, I have trouble getting it to run properly anymore. I can play up until day 6 or 7, when a time-based puzzle (sneaking into Mosley’s office while the desk Sgt. is asleep) starts to run too fast for me to finish it. Any suggestions? Anyone? I haven’t seen the end of the game in going on 5 years, and I’m getting desperate.
</hijack>
I’m looking forward to some scary moments from Evil Dead: Hail to the King, which is scheduled to come out on multiple platforms around Halloween. The developers have reputedly remained very faithful to the movie franchise, right down to the SamCam “evil force” shots through the woods.
Oh, I’d Say Silent Hill hands down. The resident evil games were surprising here and there, but not as consistantly and nerve-wrackingly evil.
There was game I played for the PC called Amber: Journeys Beyond that was VERY creepy in parts. I’d never heard of it and my sister bought it off a clearance rack at staples for about $5. It was very good, I reccommend it.
The first time I saw Doom being played, for me it was a whole new experience in gameplay (I’d never seen the Nazi one). And there’s a scene in level 3 or something where you have to go through a very mazelike area.
Turning a corner and spying one of those greeblie mosters suddenly out of nowhere bearing down on me always made me jump.
Since then, most games do a similar job in the scare stakes. If they can make me jump (not just creep me out with gore, which to me isn’t scary, just icky) then they have done their job of immersing me in the game.
KKBattousai Hell YES!!! I will garauntee you that it is the best ten bucks you will ever spend.
Hint: Use invisibility all the time. You never know when a midiwfe will jump out and tear you apart.
The research part of the game rocks. There are annelid(the enemy) organs that you can research, and then put them into your body, wear as armor, use as weapon, etc. The game ROCKS.
Silent Hill traumatized me. I’d never even played a playstation before, and had no idea how advanced video games had become.
I plated the Wheel of Time demo on the PC and that creeped me out, too. It’s a very dark game, and you turn a corner and see a shape doing something to a dead body, and then the shape scuttles off into the darkness. Yikes.
Well, I can’t play Deus Ex, becasue my computer is small and inadequte, but it’s supposed to be a deeper, more polished version of SS2. So, if you liked it, you’ll probably like SS2 as well.
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“You are an extrordinary member of an inferior species.”
I have to go back to the 1980s, playing “Alien” on my Commodore 64. The game was based on the Ridley Scott movie of the same name, with which I’m sure you’re all familiar.
What made it so creepy was the sound effects. As you play, you hear very little, but you do hear the alien moving from room to room, somewhere…you hear it removing grates from the air vents…you hear alarms when it attacks…and you hear the heartbeat of your target character. As the characters get more stressed, get attacked, get left alone, they become more frightened, and their heartbeats get faster and faster…
I’m not really a fan of horror at all, and I don’t get into horror video games much. But I played System Shock 2, and it managed to keep me highly nervous, though not actually scared. But quite often, the sudden appearance of an enemy made me jump, causing me to move the mouse suddenly. Since the mouse controls which way my character was looking, I would be trying to find my enemy, or at least find someplace to run while staring at the ceiling.
I never quite finished the game, because I got nervous just at the idea of starting the game. But I’ll have to finish it one day, becaues I’m determined that the bastards must pay.
