[necro]There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.

[Stephenls]

Creepy bits in video games, please. Not creepy games, or creepy entire scenes, but specifically tiny bits.

I'm opening with three bits from Silent Hill.

1) As stated in the subject, the nonsensical phrase "There was a HOLE here. It's gone now." Painted on the inside of a newspaper-ed over bar window. What does it mean? Who put it there? Does "hole" just refer to a hole in the glass, or something else?

2) The bit going down the first alley where the camera swings up over Harry's head during the L-turn. Creeped me out something fierce. "That's not supposed to do that!"

3) The hospital gourney in the later alley.

(Incidentally, seriously, what's with that "There was a HOLE here" thing?)

[J Arcane]

Well, assuming the developers were forward thinking enough, it could be a reference to SH 4.

[Valandil]

Never played the game, but...

Maybe it's an inside joke. Perhaps there was a glitch in the map that someone finally fixed and put that texture on it.

[J Arcane]

In SH 4, your character is stuck in his apartment, but he transports himself into the bizarre hell-like universe, the same that took over SH, through big, round holes.

Which is, you know, FUCKING WIERD.

[Jordan]

Eternal Darkness
- the first time the paintings start to bleed.
- realizing that what you thought was a temporary insanity effect was actually showing the character's future
- footsteps following through an empty house
(probably lots of others, since I'm only partway through this game)

Fatal Frame 2
The well that makes you think of Samara

[Kryyst]

Fatal Frame every waking minute of the game. But because you want specifics

In the room with the candles you just know there is going to be a child ghost that comes for you but when it does the way it crawls across the flor creeps me out almost every time.

Also Fatal Frame when you are watching through the mask at the Spike cerimony that was damn freaky.

Silent Hill 4 seeing the serial killer in his final resting place done up like he's crucified was creepy enough. But the real creep comes in when you realize you have to walk within range of it and not know if it's going to attack you or not.

[Killfalcon]

The first time you use a healing spell in Eternal Darkness. That's worrying as hell.

[Thomas T]

Two bits of silent hill (the original). The shaking locker in the school. It's banging like there's something inside. You know something's going to happen - it'll be a monster, or maybe best case scenario a cat. But as the tension builds and your character opens up the locker tentatively, it's empty.

Secondly (and this is maybe the creepiest bit of any videogame I've ever played) the lift in the hospital. Once you've explored the three floors and go back in the lift unsure what to do next, there's now a button for a fourth floor. But you doubt, you wonder if you just missed it, but.... Man that freaked me out. Naturally, the fourth floor is nasty fucked up world.

[Phantom Grunweasel]

A bit in Midnight Nowhere, in one of the doctors' rooms. The curtains are closed and it's very dark and cramped. There's an eerie sound-track, with every now and then some kind of faint grunt or howl. The doctor is slumped across the desk, dead. Taking a closer look at the paintings on his wall, it takes you a moment or two to realise what's wrong; they're pictures of his graduation, and his family and friends, but every face's features are grotesquely altered, and they're all grinning.

[s/LaSH]

Undying. Many quick, creepy scenes that are just there. In the opening courtyard when you first cast Scry and see the dead man... in Kaisinger's closet when you find the dead maid, dripping blood onto the ceiling (she's on the floor)... using your Scrying ability on your friend's staid family portrait only to see the elegant socialites transform into hideous monstrosities with your friend's decapitated corpse still sitting in the middle (go to http://www.eagames.com/official/undying/undying/us/main_frame.jsp to see what I mean)... overhearing Ambrose's argument with his father... using Raise Dead on a still-living target and hating yourself for it afterwards... and, of course, Aaron's little appearance in the hallway when you suddenly can't move and he's got spiked chains and seems a little put out at his lack of skin.

[Topher]

The bit in the first SH when Harry examines a toy phone in the school. It's disconnected. And, well, a kid's toy. Harry starts to leave the room...and the phone rings. He picks it up. "Daddy, help me."

*SHIVERS*

The bit later, in the mall, when the TV blazes into life to show a static-obscured Cheryl, again begging for help, also made me freak a bit.

RE: holes in SH2, remember that James' progress through the game is sometimes represented by his "leaps of faith" into seemingly bottomless pits, mostly in the prison area. He keeps leaping into holes, falling deeper and deeper and deeper underground - symbolizing his journey into the deeper levels of his psyche - and, at the end of the area, walks out a door and out of the building, at ground level. Without having climbed up any stairs.

Topher

[Balthazor]

I read somewhere what the meaning of "There was a HOLE here" actually was. It had something to do with the holes that James finds and jumps into later on in the game, in and around the prison area. I forget what the relevance was, though.

My creepiest moment in the same game is when you come into the room where Maria, who you've already seen die by the hand of a Pyramid Head, is sitting inside what appears to be a jail cell. It plays this chilling cut scene of Maria behind the bars, speaking as if nothing unusual has happened. It's the first real indication that Maria is NOT what she appears, and it sent a chill up my spine.

Oh, another scene in SH2 is when James goes into the apartment with the TV, then returns to the same room later to find the TV on, a chair pushed in front of it, and someone obviously sitting in the chair. I did not want to investigate that scene too closely!

Oh, oh, one more...when James finds the flashlight in the room with all the manniquin parts. How I managed not to have a heart attack is beyond me.

[William S. Hillard]

Creepy bits in video games, please. Not creepy games, or creepy entire scenes, but specifically tiny bits.

I'm opening with three bits from Silent Hill.

1) As stated in the subject, the nonsensical phrase "There was a HOLE here. It's gone now." Painted on the inside of a newspaper-ed over bar window. What does it mean? Who put it there? Does "hole" just refer to a hole in the glass, or something else?




Are you talking about the one bar where you get an updated map in SH2? I thought that was making reference to the hole in the well you have break through to get to the prison. Or, perhaps, the holes you have to fall down in the prison.

One of the creepiest parts of that game, I thought, was having to jump into your own grave to move forward with the game.

[Topher]

Secondly (and this is maybe the creepiest bit of any videogame I've ever played) the lift in the hospital. Once you've explored the three floors and go back in the lift unsure what to do next, there's now a button for a fourth floor. But you doubt, you wonder if you just missed it, but.... Man that freaked me out. Naturally, the fourth floor is nasty fucked up world.

It's even creepier for the Japanese target audience, given that "the fourth floor" in Japanese culture has the same sort of reputation that "the thirteenth floor" does in the US. Four is an unlucky number because, while most people nowadays represent it with the character "YON", it can also be represented with the character "SHI" - which also means "death."

Topher

[Odie]

Silent Hill 3. You get into the basement of the hospital, and this eerie creak, creak, creak, creeeeak, creeeeeeaaaaak, creeeee.... sound fills the room, slowing to a halt. Round the corner, and it's an overturned wheelchair, one wheel still spinning aimlessly in the air. Then you get closer, and when the camera turns, you see the seat is covered in blood, and it's smeared all down the hallway and around the corner. Worse yet is when you round the corner, and the trail leads into the elevator -- which is open just the tiniest bit. I swear I heard a growl, but it might have been my imagination.

-B

[Simulacrum]

The first time you meet the aliens in AvP 2 scared the bejesus out of me, I had the sound cranked way up, and that damn tracker was beeping like mad.

Then the first alien bursts from the grate right in front of you and you manage to kill it with only losing a little bit of life, but while you are killing the first one, his buddy comes up from the side and rips you a new orifice

[iTim]

The bit in Silent Hill where you hear a massive crash of glass in another room. It happens completely without provocation, and you never see any sign of it. Very creepy. Something about that sound is so jarring.

[Pixie Chaser]

using Raise Dead on a still-living target and hating yourself for it afterwards...

Motivate me to play Undying for longer than an hour- What effect does this have? Please tell me.

[Random Nerd]

I liked the thing with the phone call (you know what I mean if you've played it, else I'll not spoil it) in SH 1. Also, the thing with the elevator that's already been mentioned, and when the Hellworld first showed up.

[Epoch]

It's even creepier for the Japanese target audience, given that "the fourth floor" in Japanese culture has the same sort of reputation that "the thirteenth floor" does in the US. Four is an unlucky number because, while most people nowadays represent it with the character "YON", it can also be represented with the character "SHI" - which also means "death."

Assuming I'm remembering my fast-receding Japanese education correctly, and I think I am, this isn't true.

The kanji for the number 4 is always the same -- it looks like a square with slightly different squiggels in the interior upper corners -- and isn't the same character as the one for death. And kanji are rarely used for numbers anymore, people usually just use arabic numerals.

One of the <i>pronunciations</i> of the character for 4 is "shi," and one of the pronunciations of the character for death is "shi." The closest English analogy would be that they're homophones -- like "there" and "their." Spelled differently, pronounced the same.

Yes, most/lots of people say "yon" for 4 instead of "shi." That doesn't affect the character used.

If I recall correctly, I could be wrong, etc.

[Professor Phobos]

Having finished System Shock 2 just a moment ago...I'll say the whole game, but individual bits...

On Recreation, when you enter the bar w/ the piano, a ghost appears. No screaming, no yellilng, yes the piano music and a woman sitting at a bar drinking a beer.

The log that reveals that someone *created* the Midwives. This comes soon after you start facing them. Creepy monsters in and of themselves- but then you find out they're former crew forcibly turned into cybernetic caretakers through uncessary surgery.

And then you see the ghostly reenactment of the first procedure.

Ugh. Just ugh..."No please I won't tell I promise...", "Shh...shh..."

Most of the ghost events, actually. The suicide, the radiation sickness guy, Bronson's mass execution in the cafeteria...

Just after I got out of the Many's corpse, SHODAN starts bragging about how she's manipulating reality. And I thought: "Oh hell, the crazy AI who thinks it's a god just became a god. This can't be good."

Damn that was an atmospheric game.

I'd really like to have played Silent Hill, but I got motion sickness playing the first or second one. Whichever one started you off outside the town, on a bridge next to your car w/ the map. Couldn't get past the first zombie, just because of nausea. Never happened to me before or since; just with Silent Hill.

Doom 3 was too cheap and repetitive to have many creepy moments, but the first vision you get in the Bathroom I thought was fairly effective.

Eternal Darkness- when you enter the bathroom and find your own dead body, slit at the wrists. ED was a little too pulpy and filled with flashy magic to really qualify as truly creepy, for most of the game, though.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein wasn't remotely scary through most of the game- but the part where you first reach the archaelogical dig, and you overhear a furious gun battle between the nazis and the zombies. That was pretty creepy.

[DSPaul]

Silent Hill 2.

Angela's "papa."

GAH.

[Haecceity]

What, no Siren yet?


Allright.. Any mission. Using Sightjack to peer through an enemies eyes. Looking around and then finding one of the creatures to peer through. It's walking up behind someone. You wonder "Who's that?" And then ".. Oh fuck. Thats me." Then trying to get back to your own body before the zombie rips your face off.. That was fun.

Man, I regret that I only 2 hours alone with that game.

[Mankey]

The Suffering.

All of the visions are pretty damn scary. But the one that really comes to mind is the first one you receive when you first escape from your cell and enter the bathroom. Everything appears relatively normal, until you open the only closed stall...

The camera then goes into slow-mo and you see Torque's murdered son standing there, making accusations while monsters hang about, suspended in time. On top of that, you also get a flashback of you son's murder (possibly by Torque), as you see his body lying on the ground after he'd been thrown out of a window.

Then the vision ends, and... the stall is empty. The bathroom is empty. It's as if nothing happened.

Also the entire stage with the abandoned insane asylum creeped me out, especially Dr. Killjoy - the combination of his detached yet deranged speeches combined with the "1930's era film projector" effect of his materialized form was a major freak-out - whoever did his voice was bloody brilliant. And then throughout the house, you get visions of the victims of his sick experiments on the asylum's patients.

In fact, I'm only describing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to scary shit in "The Suffering". That game made me lose sleep for days.

[iTim]

Heihachi's tournament costume from Tekken 4.

NO!!!

[Beri]

Having finished System Shock 2 just a moment ago...I'll say the whole game, but individual bits...


The scariest part of SS2 for me was the whole weapon decay thing. In any other game, it'd be annoying - there, it's awesome.
Zombies closing in -
BKAM! BKAM! BKAM! click
Damn! Whip out my backup pistol.
BKAM! click
Which leaves me, barely ducking and weaving from a giant pipe as I try to repair one of the guns in my toolkit, just needing one more good shot...

You were always in danger in that game. Thinking you cleared out a deck was always just an illusion.

[Beri]

I just remembered a moment that was damn scary for me - early in Unreal (the first one).

You have to go through this long hallway to get some item. As you're going back through the hallway, the ambient sounds fade away, and the lights start shutting off loudly, one by one, starting from behind you - KCHUNK. KCHUNK. KCHUNK. You run back to the entrance, but it's locked. You back up into a corner, guns at the ready, watching as the darkness comes closer and closer...KCHUNK. KCHUNK. KCHUNK. Maybe you throw out some flares, a tiny light in the total darkness.
Then the wall behind you opens and a Skaarj starts ripping your head off. It's a great moment. If you react like I did, you fire wildly into the air, the gunshots illuminating muscles and claws as they dive for you, the bullets striking only the walls as your health drops at a frightening pace.
Finally, you put the thing down. Maybe you take a moment to throw down a flare, stare at the thing, and ask 'What the hell was that?' It's the first time you see a Skaarj in the game, and it's one hell of an introduction.

[Max]

"Join us... JOIN US!" *shudder*

[s/LaSH]

Motivate me to play Undying for longer than an hour- What effect does this have? Please tell me.

It doesn't work on demonic targets, but if you use it on a human target, they stop attacking you, wrestle with themselves a bit, and suicide. It's almost amusing when this gun-wielding maniac starts wrestling with himself as he raises the gun slowly to his temple and pulls the trigger...

The primary use of the spell, of course, is to raise the dead to fight for you; the secondary use is to dispel the walking dead. This is just the last use.

How far did you get? The game starts slow, but picks up and is generally quite good...

[Max]

The protocol droids in SS2.

"I am sorry, I did not see where you went."
"DIE!" *gun clicks, empty*
"Oh, there you are."

[Olof Jönsson]

I always loved the scene in the original Alone in the Dark where you enter a room with a closed floor hatch, and something BIG is thumping against it. You pull out the shotgun, and wait for it to burst through...but nothing happens. Then the door behind you swing open and lets in two zombies...

Also, the scene in the ballroom. An entire ballroom full of spectral ghosts (and remember, this was rendered in really primitive 3d), dancing slowly to ghostly music. You have to pass them without touching them and leave before the music ends. I tried finding out what happens if you stay for too long once. The music stopped, and every single ghost in the room stopped dead (pardon the pun) in their tracks and...STARE at you for a moment before they kill you.

[Max]

The pale, thin guy in a suit with a briefcase in Half-Life. Y'know - the one you just keep bumping into, only there's always a bulletproof window or something between you two and he just turns and walks away, and it makes you wanna throttle him...

[Kevin J Chase]

The latest <strong>Hitman</strong>, in &ldquo;Traditions of the Trade&rdquo;, the mission in the ritzy hotel.

One wing of the hotel is, for lack of a better word, haunted. As you approach the area blocked by the yellow police tape (&ldquo;Nothing to see here, Sir. Just a nasty accident.&rdquo; ), the color begins to fade to a cold grey. The plants in that hallway are dead or dying, dried leaves on the floor. And the drapes blow in the breeze from the open windows.

Follow the trail to the murder/suicide. Look in the mirror.

[Coyraven]

Clock Tower

The scene with the rocking chair.

Or the stairway appearance in the same house- which is the only time a game actually signifigantly scared me.

CR

[Pixie Chaser]

How far did you get? The game starts slow, but picks up and is generally quite good...

AND THEN, THE PICTURE BECOMES... REALITY! HUHUHUHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

... IOW, not very far at all. Around the fifth time I died to Howlers (who seemed to be undeterred by my bullets, and ALWAYS got a shot in...) on Normal, I decided that between the moderately cheesy voice-acting and the 2X4-to-the-head style of "horror" the game wasn't for me.

If you say it gets better not too far in, I'll give it another shot. Mabye if I get connectivity issues in CoH again...

[Pointycat]

Something that really got me in SS2, in a weird queasy way: IIRC, it's a little over halfway through the game. You've been following the trail of the handful of survivors on the ship, finding their logs and messages, just missing them by moments -- and now they're boarding the last shuttle out, planning to escape this hellhole. You run for the docking bay, hearing the countdown, the engines roaring to life... And the shuttle takes off, leaving you behind, and you can watch it vanish into the depths of space.

It was the most lonely, heartbreaking thing I've ever felt playing a game: this feeling that those might be the last humans I'd ever see, flying away in the last opportunity for escape I'd ever have... And now I'm stuck back here, in the ship, with the monsters. Because I was fifteen seconds too slow.

[Snakefeather]

AND THEN, THE PICTURE BECOMES... REALITY! HUHUHUHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

... IOW, not very far at all. Around the fifth time I died to Howlers (who seemed to be undeterred by my bullets, and ALWAYS got a shot in...) on Normal, I decided that between the moderately cheesy voice-acting and the 2X4-to-the-head style of "horror" the game wasn't for me.

If you say it gets better not too far in, I'll give it another shot. Mabye if I get connectivity issues in CoH again...


You gotta be careful when you're shooting at them. They move so fast it's difficult to get an accurate shot in. One to the head does it if you're fast or you can get them when they're a bit closer. And they hate ectoplasm.

Seriously, it's a great pulp horror game. It really is a blast later on.

[s/LaSH]

You gotta be careful when you're shooting at them. They move so fast it's difficult to get an accurate shot in. One to the head does it if you're fast or you can get them when they're a bit closer. And they hate ectoplasm.

Seriously, it's a great pulp horror game. It really is a blast later on.

It doesn't help that taking damage in Undying is really unforgiving, as your view swings wildly around like you've just been hit in the head by a demonic hellbeast. The solution tends to be don't get hit if at all possible. Crouching might also help get a bead on the Howlers, as iirc they spend most of their time really low to the ground and thus there's perspective issues.

Ectoplasm is useful. If you upgrade it enough, I think it starts going through walls.

[J Arcane]

So, I'm playing Half-Life.

I walk out over this ledge thingy, above some of those infected scientist things.

And I hear a noise, coming from their direction, so I stop and listen for a second.

And I realize, they're fucking trying to talk. I can distinctly make out a very alien, raspy attempt at "Hello".

Fuck that was wierd.

[Skinner's Pigeon]

Silent Hill 3. You get into the basement of the hospital, and this eerie creak, creak, creak, creeeeak, creeeeeeaaaaak, creeeee.... sound fills the room, slowing to a halt. Round the corner, and it's an overturned wheelchair, one wheel still spinning aimlessly in the air. Then you get closer, and when the camera turns, you see the seat is covered in blood, and it's smeared all down the hallway and around the corner. Worse yet is when you round the corner, and the trail leads into the elevator -- which is open just the tiniest bit. I swear I heard a growl, but it might have been my imagination. Definitely not your imagination--whatever is in that elevator wants dessert. Thankfully, you never meet it.

The really weird part about that scene for me was the submachine gun. It made me want to have met the heavily armed, monster-hunting handicapped person that got munched.

[Kaiju]

http://www.2and2.net/Uploads/Images/pyramidsub1.jpeg



The Suffering
The scene at the begining where you see a prisoner in an electric chair. You're behind a plate glass window and theres a swich in front of you that turns on the chair for a few seconds. I press it a few times, but they guy on the other side just won't die, he just keeps screaming in agony. After pressing it a few times, a voice in your head tells you to stop. So I go around the corner and back walk back to the room with the intention of puting him out of his misery by shooting him. When I get back, the room is empty. There's no one there.

Silent Hill 3
The mirror room. Nuff said.

Eternal Darkness
GAME OVER: TO CONTINUE THE GAME BUY ETERNAL DARKNESS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Wasn't creepy or anything, but I thought it was real for a second.

[YerMum]

Something that really got me in SS2, in a weird queasy way: IIRC, it's a little over halfway through the game. You've been following the trail of the handful of survivors on the ship, finding their logs and messages, just missing them by moments -- and now they're boarding the last shuttle out, planning to escape this hellhole. You run for the docking bay, hearing the countdown, the engines roaring to life... And the shuttle takes off, leaving you behind, and you can watch it vanish into the depths of space.

It was the most lonely, heartbreaking thing I've ever felt playing a game: this feeling that those might be the last humans I'd ever see, flying away in the last opportunity for escape I'd ever have... And now I'm stuck back here, in the ship, with the monsters. Because I was fifteen seconds too slow.


Although later on you're pretty glad you *didn't* get on the shuttle with the lovebirds ;)

[Wizdoc]

Two bits of silent hill (the original). The shaking locker in the school. It's banging like there's something inside. You know something's going to happen - it'll be a monster, or maybe best case scenario a cat. But as the tension builds and your character opens up the locker tentatively, it's empty.

I fucking dropped my controller in that scene. I was absolutely certain something would jump out of that locker, I was prepared for it. I approach it slowly, weapon ready, totally psyched and ready not to jump when whatever comes out of it. Of course, the locker was empty. I calmed down, thought it was "just a little creepy bit I guess" and started walking out of the room.

WHAM! Then the game gives that jolt. After you've thought the scary part was over and let your guard down. Goddamn that scene freaked me out.

[Pixie Chaser]

Although later on you're pretty glad you *didn't* get on the shuttle with the lovebirds ;)

Why...? What happens?

Moreover, can you still GET SS2? Everything I hear about this game turns me on so...

[Professor Phobos]

Why...? What happens?

Moreover, can you still GET SS2? Everything I hear about this game turns me on so...


You can still get it from Home of the Underdogs, though I'm not sure if that's actually piracy.
Do you want to be spoiled on the ending? If you do..



SPOILERS....



SPOILERS....




Rebecca is taken over by SHODAN- and somehow physically transformed- in the last cutscene, as they're turning back to return to the Von Braun. SHODAN, physically incarnate, probably gets up to some kind of mischief in the hypothetical System Shock 3. The most likely explanation for *how* SHODAN does this is that she managed to use what was left of her divinity to jump into Rebecca in the moments before Goggles takes her down.

[Praetorian]

Is the Suffering worth it? I am noticing a few notes in this thread about the game... and was worried because it looked a bit over-the-top.

As for my moment- in Eternal Darkness when the volume goes up and down. I remember looking around trying to figure out how the remote got under me. Then i realized it wasn't anywhere nearby... and it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. Nice creepy moment for me.

[DivineCoffeeBinge]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Manhunt just yet.

The entire set of levels in the mental hospital, for example.

[LeumasWhite]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Manhunt just yet.

The entire set of levels in the mental hospital, for example.

Bah, that wasn't scary. Run and hide, bat to the brain. Run and hide, bat to the brain. Rinse and repeat.

Now the Piggsy level on Hardcore, that was scary. ;)

[Drastic]

Painkiller has a terrific asylum level. You start outside in a nice little thunderstorm, move into the creepy asylum, ascend to the very top. It's dead peaceful aside from the storm outside.

Then pretty much all hell breaks loose, you get mutant inmates crawling along the ceiling, electrocuting-exploding-electroshock-therapied-demons-in-straitjackets lurching murderously at you from every doorway, and you don't get to rest until you break out the front door again.

Great level among many.

[Thornhammer]

Because it has to be said...

Shalebridge Crade. Thief 3.

That's all.

-Thornhammer

[Elemental]

It doesn't help that taking damage in Undying is really unforgiving, as your view swings wildly around like you've just been hit in the head by a demonic hellbeast. The solution tends to be don't get hit if at all possible. Crouching might also help get a bead on the Howlers, as iirc they spend most of their time really low to the ground and thus there's perspective issues.

Ectoplasm is useful. If you upgrade it enough, I think it starts going through walls.

To beat the Howlers, never ever fight them in an enclosed space--I died in the mausoleum about five times before I realised that. Circle them, which will largely stop them from charging you, and will make their leap attacks miss. They're still hellishly hard to hit, but it's only a matter of time. The Stone + Ectoplasm is a good combo, as the Stone can knock back any who manage a leap attack, and boosts your magic.

[Elemental]

I just remembered a moment that was damn scary for me - early in Unreal (the first one).


It's repeated much later, when you meet the Berserker. I bounced six grenades round the corner....and was surprised when it charged me. Six flak blasts and a crazy chase round the lab, later I was panicking--it just wouldn't die!

System Shock 2--I could nominate the whole game, but the log that begins with "I found these schematics on Doctor Miller's desk...." especially makes me shudder. Another moment was in the cargo bay, when I clicked the button for a lift. Nothing. I clicked it again. A little report came up. "This lift is inoperational. A maintenance droid has been called." And of course, all the droids have been subverted, and attack you on sight.

[Pixie Chaser]

Circle them, which will largely stop them from charging you, and will make their leap attacks miss.

Actually, i circle them, which causes them to LEAP UP AND HIT ME ANAYAY. Which causes me to stagger. So they LEAP UP AND HIT ME AGAIN. By the time I've killed one, i've lost 40 life. And if you aren't supposed to fight them in an enclosed space, why do they always make you face them in enclosed...?

Forget it. I'm not going to turn this into an Undying bitching thread. You people enjoyed the game, and that's great. I didn't.

[Mankey]

Is the Suffering worth it? I am noticing a few notes in this thread about the game... and was worried because it looked a bit over-the-top.



It's more action-oriented than other horror games like Silent Hill, but it managed to be so without losing the horror factor. Now matter how badass Torque (the character) is, the sordid history of the prison and the rest of the island is truly frightening, and this comes out especially strongly in the visions.

For example, one moment that stands out in particular is a boss fight, where you "fight" the ghost of Horace Gage, a prisoner sentenced to the electric chair for murdering his wife during a conjugal visit. The fight itself is relatively easy, but what stands out is that Horace gives you a highly graphic description of his motives behind the murder, while at the same time begging for release. While you're fighting.

There's also an interesting mystery behind Torque's origins that keeps you occupied between the relentless action. So, in short... I highly recommend you get The Suffering.

Besides, any horror game that has both references to Tool AND Johnny Cash is worth getting in my opinion. :cool:

[Snakefeather]

Actually, i circle them, which causes them to LEAP UP AND HIT ME ANAYAY. Which causes me to stagger. So they LEAP UP AND HIT ME AGAIN. By the time I've killed one, i've lost 40 life. And if you aren't supposed to fight them in an enclosed space, why do they always make you face them in enclosed...?

Forget it. I'm not going to turn this into an Undying bitching thread. You people enjoyed the game, and that's great. I didn't.


If moving doesn't work, try staying still. Wait until they pounce, then shoot them out of the air. It's risky but it works if you're sharp. Plus it's fun :)

[Spook]

I'm best at knocking out Howlers with the War Canon+ectoplasm

rapid fire and a bigbang!

[Max]

I'm best at knocking out Howlers with the War Canon+ectoplasm

rapid fire and a bigbang!
What usually works best for me is stepping aside or backing away calmly, and drawing one deadly last-minute head-shot just as they're about to bounce on me. Quick, effective, and as a bonus, you get to feel like a really badass gunslinger. :D

OR the Stone and Ectoplasm, if I'm low on ammo. Use the Stone just as they jump, knocking them back, while you just keep blasting away with the 'plasm 'till they drop.

Use the Stone, Luke!

[TShultz]

(Incidentally, seriously, what's with that "There was a HOLE here" thing?)

Hard to say, but my thought has been that the graffiti in Neely's Bar is making reference to the first Silent Hill game. Recall that a large chunk of the town of Silent Hill was nothing more than a huge pit in the earth. Of course the maps don't match up, Silent Hill is in many aspects a completely different town between SH and SH2/RD, but I have always thought that the graffiti was pointing backwards to SH1 - after all, there WAS a hole there in the first, but, well, 'it's gone now...'

Or maybe they just get a kick out of putting weird garbage like that in so people like us will spend ridiculous amounts of time coming up with all manner of "reasoning" for it... ;)

Best,
TS

[s/LaSH]

What usually works best for me is stepping aside or backing away calmly, and drawing one deadly last-minute head-shot just as they're about to bounce on me. Quick, effective, and as a bonus, you get to feel like a really badass gunslinger. :D

OR the Stone and Ectoplasm, if I'm low on ammo. Use the Stone just as they jump, knocking them back, while you just keep blasting away with the 'plasm 'till they drop.

Use the Stone, Luke!

Of course, the Stone has limited range in what it knocks back, and fires relatively slowly, so if there are two Howlers coming up the stairs in single file you're in trouble. And I can't think of anything beyond the first 30 minutes of the game when you face a single Howler. That didn't stop me using the Stone and plasm technique quite a bit myself, of course. (Or, later, throwing dynamite down flights of stairs, or seeing them coming in the distance and muttering the Skull Storm, or tagging them with the hungry scythe - free health if you're good enough at dodging. But ectoplasm was my favourite.)

Undying's not quite as bad as Instagib in UT, but it's a good idea to learn how Not To Get Hit. Running backsideways spouting glowing ectoplasm at everything in sight is quite the panicky tactic, but it works.

(I'm sure this isn't quite off-topic, as it's encouraging people to give Undying another try and thus get freaked out in their own time.)

[Topher]

Of course the maps don't match up, Silent Hill is in many aspects a completely different town between SH and SH2/RD,

That's because they take place in different parts of town. The SH2 areas are (with the exception of the hotel) south of Toluca Lake, and the SH1 areas are north of the lake. The hotel is just west of the amusement park that Harry visits in SH1 (and that Heather revisits in SH3).

Topher

[Drastic]

One particularly unsettling creepy minor bit in the Sims 2:

The neighborhood has lots all over, various houses, landscaping, trees, etc. in the neighborhood view. But when you actually start the business of playing whatever poor bastard you're running the life of and look around, their house exists in the middle of a featureless plain, extending to the horizon all round, nary a hill, tree, traffic, or other houses.

Legitimately unsettling design choice.

[Semah]

Oh, another scene in SH2 is when James goes into the apartment with the TV, then returns to the same room later to find the TV on, a chair pushed in front of it, and someone obviously sitting in the chair. I did not want to investigate that scene too closely!



I had to turn the game off for the rest of the night after that one.


In the original SH, the ghost children that set off your radio but are not a thread right away gave me the freezing willies. Their voices...

[Lizard Brain]

I know it's silly, but as a child, there was that scene in Monkey Island 2 that freaked me out: where you fall unconscious and you dream about your parents singing to you.. and then you wake up and their song is written down on a piece of paper!

I have wanted to play System Shock 2 for a long time, but it seems some eeeevil god hates me. I started downloading it from the Home of the Underdogs, but after about 60% it won't let me resume the download. Sigh.

The bit about the zombie scientists in Half Life trying to talk is too creepy to believe it.

[Snakefeather]

I had to turn the game off for the rest of the night after that one.


In the original SH, the ghost children that set off your radio but are not a thread right away gave me the freezing willies. Their voices...


I never saw this because my copy was imported, but the censors forced the designers to remove the children from the UK version of the game.

They apparently replaced them with carnivorous, walking vaginae.

[kaisemic]

The bit in SH2 when one is simply walking down a long, sloping hallway in the prison, with a faint rumbling and bellowing--almost like a moo--getting louder the farther one went. Normally it would be dull, walking down a hallway

The Sanitarium and general atmosphere in Zork Nemesis was nice, too.

[entropy402]

Silent Hill 3 - Memory of Alessa battle.

Silent Hill 2 - The stair of fire scene with Angela really creeped me out.

[Andy K]

Shalebridge Crade. Thief 3.

It did. But specifically:
*POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND. POUND POUND POUND*

And the first time you see a "living" thing on that level.

I have to throw a few out from a new survival horror game from Japan (will be out in the US in October) called KUON ( http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/243794.asp ): Imagine Resident Evil but with ghosts instead of zombies, and instead of police you're female Taoist wizards. And it's set in the Heian period of Japan, some 1,000+ years ago.

There's two "sides" to the game, Yin and Yang, corresponding to the two main playable female characters (a third later appears).

* On the Yang side, you're journeying with a few other young taoist sorcerers. At one point, you go down some stairs, and a younger boy taoist stayed behind to "watch your back". Then, right as you're about to return up the stairs, he comes running down: "ARHHHHHHH!!!! It's after me! It's after me!!!!!" The good news, he runs right up to you, evading his follower. The bad news, his follower catches up to him (right in front of you) about 5 seconds later. Freaked me out.

* On the Yin side, you go through a room with horribly mutilated dead bodies: On spikes, hanging from the air, etc. As you examine them, the description states that "You realize that you start to feel hungry", "You don't know why, but this meat looks delicious", etc.

In both scenarios, there's a lot of stuff jumping out to surprise you. The creepiest, for me, is that the entire game you use save points by "Channeling all your bad thoughts, sins, and the like into a fetish origami boat, and you set it adrift on a river, to be carried away". Kinda like saying prayers to get rid of all your evil, all the evil going into the boat. This saves your game.

Later in the game, you see what happens to all the boats you've been sending... and where all that evil and sin ends up. Creepy.

-Andy

[shodan]

It did. But specifically:
*POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND. POUND POUND POUND*

And the first time you see a "living" thing on that level.


Man. It took me forever to work up the nerve to go into the attic.

And how 'bout that apple? There was something extremely unsettling about it, they way it rolls when you drop it. And it keeps rolling... and keeps rolling.... very slowly making its way down a hallway.

That's produce with a purpose, right there. I think I ended up chucking it into a corner and piling stuff on top of it.

[Thomas T]

In both scenarios, there's a lot of stuff jumping out to surprise you. The creepiest, for me, is that the entire game you use save points by "Channeling all your bad thoughts, sins, and the like into a fetish origami boat, and you set it adrift on a river, to be carried away". Kinda like saying prayers to get rid of all your evil, all the evil going into the boat. This saves your game.

Later in the game, you see what happens to all the boats you've been sending... and where all that evil and sin ends up. Creepy.

That sounds so cool. I don't think I've ever heard of or seen an in-game explanation for game saves before that didn't suck. Unless you count metal gear solid's glorious ignorance of the fact that game characters shouldn't know what game saving is.

But yeah, that sounds cool. What system is this on? PS2 I'd imagine, but I'm hoping you'll say xbox...

[Epoch]

That sounds so cool. I don't think I've ever heard of or seen an in-game explanation for game saves before that didn't suck. Unless you count metal gear solid's glorious ignorance of the fact that game characters shouldn't know what game saving is.

Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time had a pretty decent save-point system.

[Andy K]

But yeah, that sounds cool. What system is this on? PS2 I'd imagine, but I'm hoping you'll say xbox...

Ahh, yeah. PS2. However, it's by the same studio that did Tenchu, and since they've released X-Box only titles before (Otogi), maybe they'll do a conversion?

Buy a PS2. You owe yourself a treat. :)

-Andy

[Bigwood]

Just wanted to share that I finally found a used XBox copy and started playing on Saturday. Jesus, this game is creepy. I think I started to understand how different SH2 is from most 'horror' games when I started hearing things in the bushes as I was walking to town. After a couple of times frantically looking around, I figured nothing was going to attack me, as I didn't have a weapon, so the sounds must be just 'creepy color' as it were. So I decided to ignore the inevitable next one. And when the next noise started, I didn't bother looking towards it, figuring it would just play the sound and then stop, as background.

But it didn't stop. Not until I looked towards it.

THAT creeped me out.

[Thomas T]

Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time had a pretty decent save-point system.

Ah yes - that it did.

[AliasiSudonomo]

That sounds so cool. I don't think I've ever heard of or seen an in-game explanation for game saves before that didn't suck. Unless you count metal gear solid's glorious ignorance of the fact that game characters shouldn't know what game saving is.

But yeah, that sounds cool. What system is this on? PS2 I'd imagine, but I'm hoping you'll say xbox...

Xenogears and Chrono Cross both had a "population uses them kind of like confession booths, when in reality they're used to mind-control you" thing going on.

Not as cool as origami boats, I grant you.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I thought a lot of stuff in Doom 3 was creepy.

The first bit that really creeped the hell out of me was opening the door (I forget the level. It's when you find the guy who leads you through the engineering type bit in the dark, who then gets killed by an Imp) and seeing spider webs and bodies dangling from the ceiling everywhere for the first time (I'm arachnophobic, and didn't like the thought of meeting what made those webs). Took me several days to pluck up the courage to even enter the room. I had to read the walkthrough to know what to expect and then go into the room where you first see the spiders on god mode to actually get through it.

The next part that got me was when you reach the spiderqueen thingie's lair (at the end of one of the later levels). When you look out from the higher floor and you see the marines leaving through the bay doors and letting off a BFG shot. And then you notice that the dangling bodies wrapped in spiderweb hanging from the ceiling are wriggling frantically... and as you watch, they stop after a minute or so and don't move again. Brrr.

And then listening to the audio log that you find in hell was rather chilling.

[darkhunterjag]

Thread Necromancy:

Condemned Criminal Origins

The whole scene where you are walking down the abandoned school hallway and hear a sound at the locker. You open it and there is a body inside it that appears dead. The body reaches out to grab you..... then the scene where you see the chase.

And the whole level of the farmhouse

[EOT]

Old thread is old. And now the forums have been seperated i think this should be moved.

Oh and that bit is creepy as fuck. Made me jump.

[Agamemnon2]

I still remember my first meeting with the Fast Zombies in Ravenholm. By they I'd already seen regular ones and the black headcrab-tossing shambling hulks, and was feeling pretty confident of myself. Then there's this horrible scream and these... things start leaping at you from a distance, bounding over walls and rooftops.

On the other hand, splatting them in midair with the shotgun was immensely satisfying. On the other, other hand, it didnt seem there was ever enough ammo.

[Eric E.]

In Left 4 Dead, when you have a shotgun and flashlight going, then you need to reload. Your flashlight is pointing at the ceiling while you shove shells into the gun. You just know that when the gun drops down to firing position, there will be a zombie there.

[grimjack]

Is the Suffering worth it? I am noticing a few notes in this thread about the game... and was worried because it looked a bit over-the-top.

Essentially, hell's broken loose on Carnage Island, so everything's over the top. (Fav quote, "Didn't they ever read Mary Shelly? That shit never works out!") I second the poster about Dr. Killjoy...just the right amount of pompous almost Vincent Price-style ghoulishness, and probably inspired by the good gentleman.

My bits:

SH2 -- the highly personalized radio game show in the elevator.
SH2 -- in the "Born From A Wish" scenario -- the end, where the door opens...and the realization of some of the nature of Silent Hill.
SH3 -- The phone call Heather receives -- from an unconnected pay phone in the bottom of a locker...
SH3 -- The mannnequin that gets beheaded.
SH3 --The sudden surprise ending to the Haunted Mansion in Lakeside Amusement Park

[Killfalcon]

Old thread is old. And now the forums have been seperated i think this should be moved.

Whoops. I added the [necro], but sompletely missed that it was in OGO not VGO. >.<

[Royal Heart]

Are we making a distinction between bits that startled us ("oh noes! it jumped out at you!") and genuinely creepy bits (SH2 - the "Abstract Daddy" monster)?

[m111]

System Shock 1. When you meet up with the other survivors.

[weasel fierce]

A few scenes in Silent Hill 2:

The scene where Maria is on the other side of the jail cell bars, and touches James saying "see James, Im real"
That was weird and the second time you play the game, its really fucking creepy

When you talk to Angela (is that her name?) in the hotel, and she finds her closure. The walls are on fire now, and as your character remarks, she says (paraphrasing) "you see it too? For me, its always like this"

Lastly, the end game where you are running down the long corridor, while listening to your wife talk.


Man, that game is art

[yalborap]

Going through a subway tunnel in Fallout 3 always freaks me out, because I KNOW there will be Feral Ghouls, which are basically zombies without the undeadness or infectious nature, but all the clawing at you and nomming you. Oh, and they can run at least as fast as you.

I always have to sneak through with a heavy-duty gun out and my light off so they don't spot me. Which makes it WORSE. :(

[Gaming Geek]

So, I'm playing Half-Life.

I walk out over this ledge thingy, above some of those infected scientist things.

And I hear a noise, coming from their direction, so I stop and listen for a second.

And I realize, they're fucking trying to talk. I can distinctly make out a very alien, raspy attempt at "Hello".

Fuck that was wierd.

Um....It's worse than you think.


Check out youtube. When you play the zombie noises backwards...and speed them up slightly...


"Oh god....oh god help me.....get it off me....please, someone help me"



The zombies...are still aware.

(and damn, look at how long back I comented on. Opps)

[lunaticvermin]

Oddly enough, Alpha Centauri.

The gradual realisation that, well, you know those weird fanatics? The luddites? The hysterical fear-mongers? The bigots?

They have a point.

Difficult to explain, that one, unless you played the game.






Also all the secret project movies that were to do with Psychic warfare from that game.

[Tanka]

Um....It's worse than you think.


Check out youtube. When you play the zombie noises backwards...and speed them up slightly...


"Oh god....oh god help me.....get it off me....please, someone help me"



The zombies...are still aware.

(and damn, look at how long back I comented on. Opps)
Oh fucking HELL that is creepy.

[Noirceuil]

In Silent Hill 2, the "mini" game included starring Maria:

Talking to the guy and the girl in the house through the door. Entering the room and discovering they are empty. Freaked me out.

Getting out of said house and when you leave the patio, the camera angle changes and you can see, writen on the wall behind you in big, red letters: "Beware the haunted house". Nearly gave me a heart attack.

[Bignose]

In Fatal Frame whilst walking past an alcove I noticed a tiny window. Due to the restricted third person view of the game I couldn't see through the window until I had the idea of using the camera that you are equipped with to enter a first person view. "Smart thinking" I thought as I moved into position and raised the camera, only to jump out of my skin as the ghostly face of a child filled the screen, staring at me inches away from the other side of the window.

Curiosity didn't kill the cat but it did force a change of underwear.

[sigma7]

Fable 2. The Bloodstone Demon Door. Basically pocket dimension that contains a wintery scene, with a winding road, snow, and a cozy cottage up ahead. Very nice... until you enter the cottage and *BAM* the cottage drops its veil. The cozy cottage you once saw is a ruined husk.

Spooky.

The really OH FUCK moment for me, though, was the Wraithmarsh Demon Door. Cozy cottage, idyllic scenery, etc. Go into the house, looks quiet and peaceful. Go upstairs... and there's a room full of terra cotta statues surrounding someone's deathbed. Something's flickering.

And then the diary. ("They watch me. They watch me. They watch me...")

[The Fallen]

Some people had mentioned Thief 3 and I agree that the craddle is both awesome and creepy, but like Stephen said, that's a whole level. Still the Thief series had their share of creepy bits or moments, like the undead warriors ('Join us, join us now'), or in Metal Age, they way the masked servants silently cry for help and then thank you when you hit them with the blackjack....

Another unerving moment on Metal Age was on the final level, every time Karras started talking...in the worse moments. I knew he wasn't there, I knew he was just a sound entity or whatever the programers call those things, still I couldn't help to scurry like a rat looking for the nearest spot of shadow any time he ranted, just in case he noticed me.

And of course, there was his voice. That fucking, grating, stuttering...

[Argent]

Dead Space.

Where you arrive in the mass-execution (suicide?) chamber, where all the dead cult members lie around, white masks over their heads and the blood seemingly spreading through the white fabric.

Candles everywhere, the dim light barely illuminating all the occult script.

And that goddamn broken voice singing twinkle twinkle little star over the sound system...

... and nothing happens. Nothing but that.

Goddamnit.

[Gaming Geek]

Oddly enough, Alpha Centauri.

The gradual realisation that, well, you know those weird fanatics? The luddites? The hysterical fear-mongers? The bigots?

They have a point.

Difficult to explain, that one, unless you played the game.


Heh, it's why you should never have either Science or Religion without each other.

Alpha Centauri shows off the extreme effects of both points.

And the Church stand-in is the lest crazy (from our current view) of the religious factions. Shame she's a fuck-nut....but at least she's a human fuck-nut.

[Gaming Geek]

Oh fucking HELL that is creepy.

Zombines are just as bad.

They're still sending in reports....backward and in slow motion.


"Zenos engaged.....Unit overrun.....help me"


Can you just picture what the other Combine troops would be thinking if they still had personalities? Listening to their friends convert?

[Dorchadas]

Also all the secret project movies that were to do with Psychic warfare from that game.

"mary had a little lamb
little lamb little lamb
mary had a little lamb
its fleece was white as snow."
-Assassin's Redoubt, final transmission.

That kind of stuff gave me a new perspective on the Gaians.

[Scoundrel]

Fatal Frame 3. The fucking LEGS. :eek: If you've played it, you'll know what I mean.

[Bookislovakia]

When I first started playing Oblivion, I was wandering in the first area by myself. I hear skitterings. I don't see anything. BAM! A huge rat attacks my screen! I screamed. I admit it. Not exactly intended to be scary, I think, but it managed.

All of Fatal Frame was scary, if you ask me.

[Dorchadas]

All of Fatal Frame was scary, if you ask me.

The first time Gaming_Butterfly and I played Fatal Frame, we did it in the dark, at night, with all the lights except the TV off and the sound cranked up. That was a mistake.

The first time the controller vibrated, I nearly threw it across the room. :o

[Jolinar]

Zombines are just as bad.

They're still sending in reports....backward and in slow motion.


"Zenos engaged.....Unit overrun.....help me"


Can you just picture what the other Combine troops would be thinking if they still had personalities? Listening to their friends convert?

Zombine Radio Chatter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhLdYAjRCG4&feature=related)

Zombie Sounds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFdpOMiCzs&feature=related)

Scary stuff, no?

[Bookislovakia]

The first time Gaming_Butterfly and I played Fatal Frame, we did it in the dark, at night, with all the lights except the TV off and the sound cranked up. That was a mistake.

The first time the controller vibrated, I nearly threw it across the room. :o

Hehe.

Oh man! I can't believe no one mentioned the original Resident Evil! Playing that at night, in a garage slumber party, was some scary shit. Especially if you were stupid like me and tried to go out the front door and had a dog try and eat your face.

Or when dogs would come through the windows.

Or when crows would come through the windows.

Lots of that going around, for some reason.

[Royal Heart]

Silent Hill 3

When Vincent remarks, "Monsters? They look like monsters to you?"

Heather, the protagonist, looks like she's going to vomit after realizing that all the monsters she's been shooting, hacking and beating to death may have been real people, and she's just on a bad trip.

[hobbit_breath]

Isn't the suffering free now? Air force offering it or something?

http://www.gamershell.com/news_60914.html Sweet it is.

[Monkey King]

Super Paper Mario has a particularly creepy boss encounter. Which is made all the worse because Super Paper Mario is the last place you expect to run into something like this. In Chapter 2 or 3, when you finally expose the angry little girl that's been pestering you the whole way as the level boss, she undergoes her boss transformation.

Said transformation involves her tilting her head to the side, followed by a loud *CRACK* and her eyes going wide and glassy as she breaks her neck. Then the head shudders and continues rotating until its upside-down. There's some more nasty crunching sounds as 8 very tall spider legs come out of the top and lift her up. Then she comes after you, with the little girl body hanging limply beneath the head-turned-spider-body.

Oh yeah, and initially you can't hurt her at all, so as soon as she turns into a spider you have to run like hell through a maze of doors, and she very much chases you all the way through.

This is all in the same bright, primary color palette you always see in the Mario games which just makes it all the more unsettling. I don't know if this was deliberate or a horror parody that was accidentally scary for reals, but brrrr.

[Doctor,Wildstorm]

[QUOTE=s/LaSH;2935892]Undying. /QUOTE]

There's an let's play here on rpg.net

In arc the lad twilight of the spirits, this isn't quite like the others but ....
You are running to catch up to your commander and hear a wolfman say that your mentor figure just killed his wife and child. He is right next to their corpses.
He then gets cut down before your eyes.

[Mr. Horrible]

Psychonauts.

Lighthearted but highly entertaining game about a summer camp for psychics.

In an early level, you're projecting into the mind of one of your trainers, as she's teaching you the ropes. Her psyche is a huge place, a brightly lit dance-party disco, with swirling lights, bouncing balls, and people everywhere having a groovy time.

It's very easy to miss the one tiny side room, halfway through the level. Dark, full of flames and shadowy figures crying for help. As you're thinking "WTF?", you get a vision of your trainer's early life as a nanny, and her screaming in horror as a house burns down with all her charges inside. Meanwhile, her voice is calling to you from a distance "Darling, don't go in there, come back out and join the party!"

And there's nothing else to do except go back out to the party and bounce through the rest of the level.

Jarringly creepy.

[shodan]

Yet another reason for me to snag a copy of Psychonauts.

[Frank Sronce]

Psychonauts.

And there's nothing else to do except go back out to the party and bounce through the rest of the level.

Jarringly creepy.

Yeah, the well-hidden "buried pain" bits were great.

Psychonauts also had one of my favorite "Hey, that wasn't creepy after all!" surprises in the endgame.

The main character spends most of the game fearing that his dad will show up and collect him. His dad is depicted as a brutal taskmaster who hates psychics and makes the main character jump through hoops and such. Eventually, though, his real dad's psychic projection enters into the mindscape and is like, "Is that me? Is that really how you see me? I never realized!" and turns out to be a great guy. The protagonist's anxieties about his dad were vastly worse than the real person, who's just there to help.

[woodsmoke]

The really OH FUCK moment for me, though, was the Wraithmarsh Demon Door. Cozy cottage, idyllic scenery, etc. Go into the house, looks quiet and peaceful. Go upstairs... and there's a room full of terra cotta statues surrounding someone's deathbed. Something's flickering.

And then the diary. ("They watch me. They watch me. They watch me...")

Gods, I remember that one. IIRC, there was a creepy whispering sound in Terry's room, too. I was sure when I picked up his diary they were going to come to life and attack me. But they didn't. They just stood there.

So I went out back and found the cave. Having to go all the way to the back of the army, I was certain they were going to animate and attack me as soon as I opened the treasure chest. But they didn't. They just stood there.

So I started back out again.

Then my dog started growling.

I immediately cast Raise Dead, followed by a fully-charged Inferno. And they just stood there.

Fable II wasn't exactly much for the psychological moments, but that damn demon door creeped me right the hell out.

[Ugly Man]

Bioshock. Occasionally, the darkness would allow things to jump out at you. It never really got you terrified though. There were two sections, however, that had some actual creep to them.

In one of the earlier rooms, you find the local Dentist's office. The walls, like most places, have some blood smeared on them, everything aside from the chair in the middle is broken or knocked down, and there is a gas leaking from the roof for some reason. Stepping through the gas obscures the screen for a couple of seconds. You hear some quick footsteps, a snicker, and then silence. When you can see again, there is a descicated corpse in the chair. Then you go outside and you're attacked by a half-dozen splicers with those round shiny doctor headband things on, but it starts off creepy.

The second is much later in the game. You enter an apartment, and lining both sides of the hallway are white, ceramic statues of spider splicers. They do exactly what you'd expect from the name, crawling around the roof and cutting your scalp off with hook hands. The statues, however, do nothing. They are just in various weird poses. So you walk past them, and head into the basement. It's dark in there, with knee high water, but there is a weapon upgrade thingy in the corner. After you've used it, you turn around, and you're face to face with one of the statues. But it still isn't moving. It's just there. It attacks you when you finally get over your shock and start climbing the stairs. Also, the other eleven statues are gone.

[Menchi]

Gods, I remember that one. IIRC, there was a creepy whispering sound in Terry's room, too. I was sure when I picked up his diary they were going to come to life and attack me. But they didn't. They just stood there.

So I went out back and found the cave. Having to go all the way to the back of the army, I was certain they were going to animate and attack me as soon as I opened the treasure chest. But they didn't. They just stood there.

So I started back out again.

Then my dog started growling.

I immediately cast Raise Dead, followed by a fully-charged Inferno. And they just stood there.

Fable II wasn't exactly much for the psychological moments, but that damn demon door creeped me right the hell out.

I found a couple of creepy moments in Fable II when you go through demon doors - one place had this idyllic cottage in spring, but the minute you cross the threshold of the front door, there is this loud noise and the entire cottage is a ruin in the middle of winter - the second you pass through the door. It made me jump when that happened.

The creepiest Fable II moment though was the Demon Door near an early bandit camp. It's a weird Kafkaesque world, and their is creepy music playing, then you walk past a house and there are people standing there - all crammed into the cottage and not moving. I go take a closer look, and they are crammed in with bits of people - arms, legs, all like a storage space for humans. It was very creepy.

Siren Blood Curse is just all creepy - whenever I see one of those corpse people, it freaks the hell out of me! :D

All of SH was pretty creepy.

Conan

[Zemi]

Bioshock. Occasionally, the darkness would allow things to jump out at you. It never really got you terrified though. There were two sections, however, that had some actual creep to them.

In one of the earlier rooms, you find the local Dentist's office. The walls, like most places, have some blood smeared on them, everything aside from the chair in the middle is broken or knocked down, and there is a gas leaking from the roof for some reason. Stepping through the gas obscures the screen for a couple of seconds. You hear some quick footsteps, a snicker, and then silence. When you can see again, there is a descicated corpse in the chair. Then you go outside and you're attacked by a half-dozen splicers with those round shiny doctor headband things on, but it starts off creepy.


On the same note, the very obvious trap involving the Shotgun. You see the shotgun. It is shiny and new and can deliver double-ought death, and your tommygun is likely pretty empty and your pistol is crap. However, it is in the middle of the floor, just lying there, in a spotlight. This, you know, will end badly.

The second you pick it up, the lights cut out, and you hear voices. Everywhere. All over the place, voices. Talking to themselves. Talking to each other. Angry voices. Then, your vision blurs, pain shooting through your body. Impact. You turn to face it, and nothing's there. Maybe you see a foot disappear into the darkness, but it's hard to make out. Another impact. Another. Then, they're all over you. I don't freak out much in FPS games, but that had me panicked and throwing lightning everywhere.

Also, your first introduction to a Houdini Splicer is...jarring, to say the least. "Hello, gorgeous." If I didn't love them as much as I do, I would have been sincerely upset there.

[shodan]

On the same note, the very obvious trap involving the Shotgun. You see the shotgun. It is shiny and new and can deliver double-ought death, and your tommygun is likely pretty empty and your pistol is crap. However, it is in the middle of the floor, just lying there, in a spotlight. This, you know, will end badly.

The second you pick it up, the lights cut out, and you hear voices. Everywhere. All over the place, voices. Talking to themselves. Talking to each other. Angry voices. Then, your vision blurs, pain shooting through your body. Impact. You turn to face it, and nothing's there. Maybe you see a foot disappear into the darkness, but it's hard to make out. Another impact. Another. Then, they're all over you. I don't freak out much in FPS games, but that had me panicked and throwing lightning everywhere.

Also, your first introduction to a Houdini Splicer is...jarring, to say the least. "Hello, gorgeous." If I didn't love them as much as I do, I would have been sincerely upset there.

Heh. There's a similar instance later on, except it's a grenade launcher instead of a shotgun, and it's even more obviously a trap. It's sitting there on a table, framed in a spotlight's beam....

...and as you get near it, you hear whispers from the shadows. "Heheh.. Little closer..." "Go on, pick it up...." "He'll never know what hit 'im..."

I never picked it up. :)

[woodsmoke]

I found a couple of creepy moments in Fable II when you go through demon doors - one place had this idyllic cottage in spring, but the minute you cross the threshold of the front door, there is this loud noise and the entire cottage is a ruin in the middle of winter - the second you pass through the door. It made me jump when that happened.

The creepiest Fable II moment though was the Demon Door near an early bandit camp. It's a weird Kafkaesque world, and their is creepy music playing, then you walk past a house and there are people standing there - all crammed into the cottage and not moving. I go take a closer look, and they are crammed in with bits of people - arms, legs, all like a storage space for humans. It was very creepy.

I remember both doors. The Bloodstone Door (idyllic winter cottage) made me jump the first time I went through it. I was actually kinda' disappointed; had hoped to turn that into yet another cozy little travel home along with Thag's Cabin and Brightwood Tower.

I never noticed the bits of people in the Rookridge Door, though. I'll have to check that out--and see if there's any reason one can examine the door to the cottage and any possible way to open it while I'm at it.

[Will]

The stuff right at the climax of Fable II has some seriously creeped out shit.

The Brightwood Tower adventures after the storyline is over are also some pretty creepy stuff -- I hope everyone realizes there's some cool stuff to do after the story is 'over.'

[Kohou]

I found the basement in Fable 1 creepy. I forget the name of the zone, but it was like this old house, and I think it had some gravestones in the back. Anyway, that creeped me out. Mainly the being snuck up on by the ghost. (old lady? it's been a while)

Also, Oblivion, when you're down in a cave (or just roaming through the woods) and suddenly the battle music would come on. And you're looking all around for something, and the music's still playing, and it goes on for 2 or 3 minutes, and then WHAM! you'd get hit from behind. The worst was in the cave near Lleyawind with the 3 trolls.

And RE4 had its share of terrifying crap, but I the first time one of the villagers has his head pop off and INSIDE IS SOMETHING THAT CAN KILL YOU! And like, 1 shot you, too, by slicing off your head. I found that at like midnight, and shut off the game and huddled up on my bed with the light on the rest of the night.

[Monkey King]

In one of the earlier rooms, you find the local Dentist's office. The walls, like most places, have some blood smeared on them, everything aside from the chair in the middle is broken or knocked down, and there is a gas leaking from the roof for some reason. Stepping through the gas obscures the screen for a couple of seconds. You hear some quick footsteps, a snicker, and then silence. When you can see again, there is a descicated corpse in the chair. Then you go outside and you're attacked by a half-dozen splicers with those round shiny doctor headband things on, but it starts off creepy.
Don't forget in the same room, there's a shelf at the back with a big shiny gene tonic that's begging you to pick it up. If you go up and grab it the room goes all foggy for a second. That's when you turn around and there's one of those doctor guys standing RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

I eventually got used to the spooky stuff the game pulls on you, once I'd built up my arsenal and learned how to deal with some of the freakier enemies in the game. The part that still bugs me, though, was also down in the horror hospital level. You're going down into a flooded operating room, with the usual poor lighting and dead bodies on tables and such. Then as you get to the back, there's a shadow of a man doing something against the wall, which flickers out for a moment. When you finally get in there, the room is empty.

Why did this bug me? The expected ambush never came. Oh, he's probably on the ceiling, says I. Nope, nothing there. Maybe he pops out of the cabinets on the side? Just wall textures. The ambush will come as I'm leaving, then. Nothing. The situation just gets more and more tense because I know that guy didn't just up and vanish, and he's around here somewhere. Never found him, but boy that had me on edge for the longest time.

[dread_sigil]

I was playing WoW - in the Western Plaguelands I think - and suddenly I heard this woman's voice saying "Help me" every now and then - and there was knocking too. Freaked me the fuck out, because the volume level was such that it sounded exactly like it was coming from outside my window.

It literally took me a couple of minutes to realise that it was coming from the game - more specifically it was the muffled voice of a ghost of a woman who was in the house that I was standing near. :)

[MadDogMike]

I was playing WoW - in the Western Plaguelands I think - and suddenly I heard this woman's voice saying "Help me" every now and then - and there was knocking too. Freaked me the fuck out, because the volume level was such that it sounded exactly like it was coming from outside my window.

It literally took me a couple of minutes to realise that it was coming from the game - more specifically it was the muffled voice of a ghost of a woman who was in the house that I was standing near. :)

Along those lines, the terrible screams in Naxx are kinda disturbing to listen to.

[lunaticvermin]

That fucking hotel from Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

[Morticutor UK]

Although the Bloodlines hotel has been mentioned, I'm going to throw in the hospital downtown. It's set up to make you think that something very horrible is going to try eat you, but what you come across is a very erudite and well learned vampire, with whom you can do deals for stuff.

It elevates the whole encounter into something else by setting you and the monster on a par by subtly pointing out she, in a way, is you.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has some creepy parts. The dead girl, who keep on turning up in the sewers (is she a ghost, or is your insanity setting in?), being chased by the fishmen, and the guy being experimented on in the prelude (his body parts are all scattered in different tanks but he's still alive...)

[Bira]

F.E.A.R has tons of those moments, of course, but one that particularly scared me was when you walk through a deserted city street (I think it was in the second expansion). You can see the devastation your enemies have spread, but they've moved on, so the place is relatively safe. You find a short alley to one side, with a couple civilian corpses and a useful item at the end. You walk there and grab the item. And when you turn around, THE MANGLED GHOST OF YOUR DEAD TEAMMATE WARNS YOU TO RUN AWAY!!!

The game does this lots and lots of times, but this one was completely out of the blue, in a place you would nor normally expect it, and without any of the advance warnings you usually get when you're about to enter a creepy place. I actually jumped out my my chair. My wife thought it was funny.

[Mapache]

I just finished Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (GameCube title from 2002), and it's pretty neat how the game messes with you on a meta level. When your sanity bar is low due to exposure to unearthly horrors, you start hallucinating. At first, it's just voices and ringing telephones, quickly proceeding into crooked camera angles, and on into outright hallucinatory scenes that revert after a few seconds, like your character shrinking down to nothing, or your limbs suddenly falling off one by one.

Then, it starts messing with your idea of what a game is. It'll claim the controller is unplugged even if it's not, it'll act like an old CRT television blinking out, it'll pretend that you somehow selected a nonexistent "Delete All Save Games" menu option and show a deletion progress bar before reverting your UI. Near the end, it'll even cut to a splash screen, thank you for playing, and claim the game is continued in a sequel.

[Rikimaru]

Then, it starts messing with your idea of what a game is. It'll claim the controller is unplugged even if it's not, it'll act like an old CRT television blinking out, it'll pretend that you somehow selected a nonexistent "Delete All Save Games" menu option and show a deletion progress bar before reverting your UI. Near the end, it'll even cut to a splash screen, thank you for playing, and claim the game is continued in a sequel.

Though they way they mess with you in Eternal Darkness is pretty clever, for me the breaking of the 4th wall wrecked my immersion and made the game less scary and more amusing than anything else.

[Mapache]

Though they way they mess with you in Eternal Darkness is pretty clever, for me the breaking of the 4th wall wrecked my immersion and made the game less scary and more amusing than anything else.

I'd agree to some extent. The game as a whole isn't particularly scary, apart from the one part where you go up to random bathtub, get prompted to examine it, do so, and the camera suddenly zooms in on your character lying dead in a tub full of blood (and then nothing happens). That was what-the-hell scary.

[Lurkerson]

I'll admit that I just got this impression from a Let's Play rather then my own experience, but this scene (http://www.dailymotion.com/egomaniacalfreak/video/x3j7cl_tomoko-maeda-day-two-0632-movie_videogames) from Siren has got to be one of the creepiest things ever put in a video game.

[Rikimaru]

I'd agree to some extent. The game as a whole isn't particularly scary, apart from the one part where you go up to random bathtub, get prompted to examine it, do so, and the camera suddenly zooms in on your character lying dead in a tub full of blood (and then nothing happens). That was what-the-hell scary.

The bathtub would have been scary, definitely, if I hadn't seen it coming for some reason. Don't know why - the game did it perfectly, but for some reason I just knew I'd see a body in the tub and spoiled the game's best scare for myself really. :(

[Spook]

Although the Bloodlines hotel has been mentioned, I'm going to throw in the hospital downtown. It's set up to make you think that something very horrible is going to try eat you, but what you come across is a very erudite and well learned Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, with whom you can do deals for stuff.



fixed that for you.

[Morticutor UK]

fixed that for you.

To be fair, I suspect that she doesn't eat people's bits like Pisha does.