What games terrified you when you were young and why? Did you overcome your fears? Maybe you're still afraid of something?
I think the first game that legit scared me was Resident Evil series. I was about 5-6 years old when I saw my brother playing it and this is the first time I saw concept of zombies, those living dead were too much for me because they could appear suddenly out of nowhere only to eat you and make you turn into zombie. It lead to that only funny nightmare I remember where I was out for a walk with my brother only for a horde of zombies to kill us, and one of the zombies literally ripping my head off only for me to see my own head laughing while it was rolling on the ground.
Even worse traumatizing experience was of my brother playing Alien Resurrection. I didn't know the concept of Alien so I just saw him wandering around with a gun, I don't exactly remember him shooting Aliens and shit, but the image of facehugger fully occupying that our favorite tiny JVC TV was enough to fucking launch me away from the room. Afterwards I was peeking through the door, afraid of facehugger appearance. Later I learned that you have to extract it's egg from your body in-game, otherwise Alien comes out, that alone amplified my fear of facehuggers up to eleven, and I still didn't get rid of that fear by this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gad1X3U5lcE
A couple of years later I've got my first PC and hence my brother once again introduced me to some of the games. As I was growing up I was getting fond of shooters, Quake 2 being one of my most favorite. But there was one problem - I was too afraid to die. So I had to use cheats for godmode. This habit transferred to many other games - I was also afraid to play GTA without cheats to replenish my health etc. I find this alittle ironic because today I'm afraid of actual death and how it'd be experienced.
Then I played Half-Life, which I found out by accident when friends got me into Counter-Strike. I somehow got around the initial part and boy I was fucking terrified when I caused cascade resonance - but it was a proper reaction, like most people could feel this way the first time, especially when they didn't play alot of games yet. While aftermath felt scary and totally unexpected, I proceeded alright until a fucking headcrab appeared, which seemed like another version of facehugger to me, especially when I saw how it changed people into zombies. After several panic ESC presses and me trying to get back into Half-Life a couple of days later - I felt more and more brave, other monsters didn't seem too bad and I still had my godmode, but even that couldn't save me from barnacles in an office vent section that were so close that I was afraid of them even if they were dead. The way barnacles killed people reminded me of facehuggers again - you are helpless and it starts with your head.
I don't remember how I got further with the Half-Life, but it was the first milestone when things got alittle less scary, until I played DOOM 3.
DOOM 3 was even more bad to me because the whole thing was constantly on fire and there were tons of cheap screamers that worked very well on me. I actually managed to proceed like I did with Half-Life, but stopped around the part when satanic symbolic started to appear and also monsters teleporting in right into my face.
The final game that helped me to overcome most of horror-related tropes was F.E.A.R., demo of which got into a PC Gaming magazine included disc. I read a review of it that showed tons of blood and Alma being behind it, which seemed kinda tame on paper but when it got me into fuckin long ass corridors full of blood, only to get met by a screamer at the end - here was another time for ESCape panic.
Since it was only a demo, it made me afraid of actually trying out the full game, but eventually I got through parts of it, don't remember exactly how.
After I finished F.E.A.R. - most horror games only could cause slight tense (Silent Hill) or just annoy me by with shitty screamer so I twitch.
Apart from fear of facehuggers that I still have, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I'm afraid of Minecraft while fucking pre-school kids are enjoying it. It's somewhat hard for me to understand but I think the main reason is because most of the monsters are crude looking with shitty animations and they have legit creepy sounds. Also I had a couple of moments where I mined a ceiling stone block only for a skeleton to fall down on me, filling the entire screen with his body. And I don't even want to start about spiders, which also remind me of facehuggers (while realistic-looking spiders don't) and seeing them on a top of glass ceiling, climbing walls while not being actually rotated properly also was creepy looking for me.
What about you?
As a kid, Ikana Canyon from Majora's Mask scared me. Mostly because of the Pamela story line and the music.
I wouldn't touch Silent Hill for years because I watched my cousin play the otherworld hospital section and it scared me so much that I didn't actually play it until maybe 5 years ago.
Now, only Fatal Frame kind of creeps me out if I'm playing with headphones, the sound design in that game is just amazing.
Half-Life's Ichthyosaur. There's just something about how it looks with its eyes and sharp teeth, and the sound it makes that always freaks me out. Made me terrified of underwater levels in games ever since, and every time I have to traverse underwater I get really anxious and just hope there's no underwater enemy. There's just something really terrifying about having an adversary being able to come at you in all directions in a murky environment, and 9 times out of 10, most of your weapons are non-functional except for melee, which makes it even scarier. Special mention goes to Tomb Raider II's shark and Clanker the Giant Metal Shark from Banjo Kazooie as well.
The F.E.A.R. demo also made me both impressed and scared of it. It looked like the most graphically advanced game for me at the time, but every time Alma pops up I had to pause the game and ask my parents to accompany me to finish through it.
Any horror game where you're defenseless, or mostly-defenseless, particularly the Clock Tower games and Haunting Ground. Haunting Ground in particular is one of my favorite horror games but I only finished it when I was as a kid thanks to my mom playing through with me. I just can't handle the thought of having a persistent stalker throughout the entire game, and it always puts me at unease. Thankfully once you get Hewie the dog it does becomes more bearable. The music and atmosphere too in general of the game just added to everything.
I never finished any of the Silent Hill games until only a few years ago despite being able to play all mainline entries during their release. A combination of me being a kid who's bad at video games and just being a total pussy.
One memory that always stuck to me that actually made me turn off the console was in Metal Gear Solid 2, with the AI Colonel turning into a skull and telling Raiden/the player to turn off the console and stop playing. At the time I legitimately thought the game was seeing through the screen and was talking to me directly lol
When I was a kid the Zant's Hands section of Twilight Princess terrified me enough that I never actually got past them. Their slow, unstoppable approach really spooked me, especially with the sounds they make when they get near you.
As for today, I mainly avoid horror games in general because I'm an absolute pussy. I'd imagine that dumb stuff like Slender would freak me out despite just being spooky noises and a man who aggressively stands still at you.
everything in luigi's mansion
freelancer made me learn to fear deep, uncharted space filled with foggy-ass nebulas where you can barely see anything around you
especially exploring that shit for the first time, not knowing where the hell i was or what was in there. and then (with discovery mod) i just see a fucking swarm of red things appear on my hud as combat music plays and a fucking swarm of nomad (alien) fighters accompanied by a bigass nomad ship appear through the fog in front of me. shit like that legit gave me mini-heart attacks lol
or flying through foggy nebula in the same scenario and coming out only to see a massive fucking sun right in front of you and you hear DANGER: RADIATION DAMAGE DETECTED as you careen straight forward, flaming particles coming off your ship, the sun quickly getting bigger as you approach before you even know what's going on
while there were no black holes in the game (except for one added in discovery mod that i dont think i ever found out about until i was older), the thought of them possibly existing scared the FUCK out of me
tl;dr space is spooky, especially when it's just you in cold, dark, uncharted depths of who the hell knows where
when all my friends told me if i left my nintendogs unattended for too long they would die
For some reason I remember being really scared of the death scene on the old 007 games, with the blood coming down the screen. Odd one that.
I think the one game I was horrified of was Dead Rising, when I first saw it at my cousins, they were fighting the clown and I was scared as fuck with the intro cutscene. I never really played any horror games on the ps2 so you can imagine when a game like dead rising with its graphics and tone was shown to me, I saw it as an 'adult game'. I solidified that idea when I saw him fall into his chainsaws with blood splattering everywhere while he was laughing and gurgling up blood. To be honest, something about that engine/artstyle is still so off putting to me, and I've never had the same feeling with any other game. It's why it's one of my favorites.
For me its basically the same thing but for when you stay in the water too long in Jak and Daxter.
That heartbeat sound still is with me, though not as something that scared me. More as an annoyance, because I wanted to swim a lot more in that game!
The Ichthyosaur was definitely horrible. Hated being in the water in HL 1 because I didn't want to hear that horrible grinding sound behind me rocketing towards me to tear my head off. Don't like the water much in general, irl, but more due to the water than due to things in it. That's completely untrue as far as HL 1 goes, because fuck the Ichthyosaur.
Fatal Frame still gets me. The ghosts quietly fading in and the general eerie sounds and ambiance of the series is perfect, unmatched in other horror games I've played.
I pretty much accidentally "killed" mine once.
I had tons of hours sunk into the game and I found this cheat device at a Best Buy specifically made for Nintendogs, and I thought "wow cool, I can unlock all the toys and stuff with this!" ............. Without reading the disclaimer that using the device would erase your save file because of instead of using codes to alter the existing save, it just overwrote your save with a save on the device that had everything unlocked and a hacked beagle. I thought it was going to work like any other cheat device.
I cried for days. I felt like a horrible person.
For some reason, I get a little megalophobia in games. Specifically games like Beyond Good and Evil with the giant mantas/whales.
First level of diablo
My fear of height translates too well to FPS games, though it's probably why I liked Xen in the original Half-Life.
Once I get my armor/health to the maximum amount, I fear losing a single bit of it. It has to stay at 100/100. I remember countless times in Half-Life where I'd reload a save just because I got hit.
Welcome to E-Rated games in 1996
Some of these still kind of freak me out to this day. At the same time now that I'm older I can appreciate just how much effort went into animating this whole thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3-4nik6ERY
Duke Nukem 3D's facehuggers forced me to play the game with monsters disabled for years.
In Tomb Raider II there's a bit where you have to swim around tight underwater passages pulling levers to open gates which give you access to more passages. A couple of gates in you let out a giant alligator/crocodile (it's hard to tell with the PS1 graphics) and it chases you the whole rest of the section.
The combination of the cramped environment, the dark blue/green water, the limited time from the breath metre, the intense music, and the alligator who is much faster that you always freaked me out.
This always got me as a kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4djJULQHnR0
The looming black void you see when you noclip out of the map still gives me the creeps sometimes
Sound glitches that blow up your ears when wearing headphones.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/the-evil-within/images/7/7c/The_evil_within-RE-Bone_Laura-07.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141026080518
This bitch from The Evil Within
I can't deal with 2 things, something staring directly into the player's view, and when you hear a noise directly behind you, whether it gets closer or not is terrifying all the same.
Having to backtrack to creepy places, like when you forgot something in a Metroid Prime game and have to take a long route to get back to the room.
There is a reason I have not bought Subnautica yet
I was playing Aporia and the main monster in that is just a really shitty particle effect that makes your fps drom from 60 to 1 instantly
Yeah I played the AvP2 demo, and at the bit where you take the lift down into the alien hive I got got by a facehugger and shat myself while screaming like a girl, it came out of fucking nowhere. For the longest time since then, I'd waste inordinate amounts of ammo on anything vaguely similar. I remember playing System Shock 2 for the first time, when I got to Hydroponics and saw the annelid eggs, man I had a hard time getting through that level.
https://youtu.be/aA4avcxmiHw
https://youtu.be/vU21AG8HWhk
FUCK. THIS. SHIT.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
