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Scariest pc game you played

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Reply 40 of 77, by ripsaw8080

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The Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows, played at night with the room lights turned off. I suppose an essential part of "scary" in games is allowing yourself to be immersed in the atmosphere they create, and The Cradle lays it on thick.

Reply 41 of 77, by badmojo

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DonutKing wrote:

Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines... playing the haunted house level late at night was unnerving.

+1 on this! I'd forgotten all about that level but it sure got me going. F.E.A.R is the other game that comes to mind but I played it recently and apparently I'm too old and tired to scare these days - still a great shooter though.

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Reply 42 of 77, by treeman

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I remember playing alone in the dark when I was like 11, at night and suddenly the scary music comes and the bird or some creature crashes through the window, always made me jump

Reply 43 of 77, by schmatzler

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DonutKing wrote:

Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines... playing the haunted house level late at night was unnerving.

Grout's Mansion is a pretty good level, too.
These creepy audio logs...

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Reply 44 of 77, by clueless1

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It seems like current gaming technology is always the most awe-inspiring and realistic, then quickly becomes corny/cheesy. Case in point: playing Alone in the Dark in 1992 was much scarier than in 1994. Then Doom made it seem cheesy by comparison. I remember Clive Barker's Undying being one of the scariest games I've ever played. I was 31 years old when it came out, so it wasn't a case of being a kid and much more prone to being scared. I recently (as a 48 yr old) took another stab at Undying and did not think it nearly as creepy as I thought when I was 31. That said, my memories of scary/creepy games are snapshots of how I felt when that game was brand new to me. So here's my list:
Wizardry I
Ultima II
Wolfenstein 3D
Alone in the Dark
Ultima VII: The Black Gate
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Doom
System Shock
Ultima VIII
Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within
System Shock 2
Clive Barker's Undying
Doom 3

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Reply 45 of 77, by DracoNihil

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

The Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows, played at night with the room lights turned off. I suppose an essential part of "scary" in games is allowing yourself to be immersed in the atmosphere they create, and The Cradle lays it on thick.

That's my favourite part of Deadly Shadows for the wrong reasons.

I actually would love to live in a environment like that place.

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Reply 46 of 77, by Shponglefan

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DracoNihil wrote:

I don't have the hardware nor the money to afford the hardware. Despite that, I highly doubt that will make much of a difference.

I'm a very broken individual, heh.

Heh, well I think you'd be surprised. I'm pretty desensitized to traditional horror games; watching them on a computer screen just isn't that scary.

But virtual reality is a whole 'nother level of immersion. It makes it feel like you're inside the game. Everything takes on a much greater sense of realism and immersion.

Probably the greatest realization of this compared to a monitor, is that with a monitor you can always look away from the screen. At which point you're reminded your just sitting in a room. But with VR, you can't look away. No matter where you look or go, you're still "in" the game's environment. Short of ripping off the headset, you can't really get away from it.

In fact, I feel that VR horror games are almost too scary at times; they've even made me fear for my personal safety which is something you just don't get playing on a monitor.

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Reply 47 of 77, by DracoNihil

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I am overly desensitized to alot of things beyond games and movies and suffer from some pretty vividly disturbing hallucinations from time to time IRL, so I really doubt VR will illicit much of a response out of me still.

I still wish I could try it, but I live in poverty...

“I am the dragon without a name…”
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Reply 48 of 77, by swaaye

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Yeah I'm probably going to leap into VR at some point. The number of games continues to grow. It might be catching on.

I'd like to see new helmets with even better screens though.

Reply 49 of 77, by sndwv

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When I was younger Creature Shock, BioForge and The 7th Guest really creeped me out.

And a couple of specific bits I remember from other games:

- Half-Life 1, right before you actually see the 3 Tentacles and only hear them banging on the walls. Or 'Fast Zombies' in Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 in general.

- The cyborg on Xenon, in the beginning of Space Quest IV. Always panicked to hit the restore button before it's close-up scene would kick in.

- And does anyone remember the BioDerm deaths in MissionForce: CyberStorm? Yikes!

Reply 50 of 77, by DracoNihil

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Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut and Cry of Fear was supposed to be very scary I guess.

I ended up laughing at a huge chunk of both and doing really dumb things like jumping ontop of the monsters.

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Reply 51 of 77, by oeuvre

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

The Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows, played at night with the room lights turned off. I suppose an essential part of "scary" in games is allowing yourself to be immersed in the atmosphere they create, and The Cradle lays it on thick.

you have the best avatar on the forum

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Reply 52 of 77, by Asaki

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System Shock 2.

The zombie/ghost bits in Thief Gold, even though I thought those missions were pretty annoying.

Uninvited (for the Macintosh Pro) always scared the everloving willies out of me as a kid. Everything is silent, and then "BAM!" that loud Macintosh noise hits you with a grainy image of a corpse/skeleton, or that flashing skull that would pop up unexpectedly to let you know that the curse was killing you.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It's the game that the Penumbra/Amnesia games are based on, and it's also a great love letter to Alone in the Dark (but with far more Lovecraft intact). I had to stop playing that game before bed, because the nightmares it gave me were too disturbing.

schmatzler wrote:

The monkeys in System Shock 2 are one of the creepiest enemies ever, for example.

You mean the midwives =) And the butlers =)

Reply 54 of 77, by jheronimus

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Damn, I do remember Doom, Quake and Starcraft scaring the shit out of me or at least really stressing me out when I was 8 years old in 1998.

Bear in mind, that was the very beginning of "real" gaming for me — before that I would only play Prince of Persia, LHX or Supaplex on my father's laptop. None of those games would prepare me for a sudden Zerg attack or a Doom's Demon creeping up from behind.

I remember actually alternating those games with kid's stuff, e.g.:

- 15 minutes of Doom, the shareware version;
- a couple of hours of Lego: Creator;
- a mission in Starcraft. The one where you need to fend off endless swarms of Zergs for 30 minutes;
- a Lion King game (don't remember the game).

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Reply 56 of 77, by Errius

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Oh yes, I remember playing Vietcong at a LAN many years ago. That was intense. Underrated game! Unfortunately it's hopelessly glitched in Windows 7 so I haven't played it for years.

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Reply 57 of 77, by badmojo

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Errius wrote:

Oh yes, I remember playing Vietcong at a LAN many years ago. That was intense. Underrated game! Unfortunately it's hopelessly glitched in Windows 7 so I haven't played it for years.

I'm coming off a 10 hour "movie" (just a long documentary) on the Vietnam war and thought of this game - I'll have to dig it out of storage and see how it holds up.

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Reply 59 of 77, by Tiger433

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Shadow Man when I first entered the Asylum level. That level is even in demo of that game. And hell level in first Diablo.

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