Jello
Forum Regular
Posts: 672
Registered: 10-01 |
The only game that really scares/unsettles me any more is Afraid of Monsters, it's a mod for half-life. It sort of combines the ambience, and distorted perception/insanity of silent hill, resident evil, and jacob's ladder, and puts it in a faster paced first person shooter. It gets rather intense, running low on flashlight batteries, rounding a corner and hearing the sickening growling hisses of zombies running at you, and trying to decide if you should use your last 7 pistol rounds or run away and try to take them out with a knife. It has a few jump moments, but most of it is just extreme tension and anxiety though. Not knowing what's going to happen, and constantly worrying about if you're going to have enough health and ammo to get through what might happen.
Condemned: Criminal Origins might be a good shot as well, if you have a 360. It's extremely ambient and creepy, but it gets less so once you realize your character is a bad ass who can take quite a bit of damage, and once you get blocking/attacking down it's rather easier, but it's still a very unsettling game.
Then of course the first two resident evils were scary, but they were just jumpy games, and those scares are easy to make, which is why a lot of scary movies rely on them. Get the person at ease, then have something jump out and make a loud noise. The Silent Hills can fall into the category as well, but they seem to be a bit more on the psychological, pervading fear of death than the "jump out and make a loud nice" type fear. I prefer the more psychological terror, it's far more effective.
Also, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a good game, the psychological effects in the game weren't all I was expecting, but they really do enhance gameplay. When you see something really unnatural or disturbing, your vision starts getting blurry, you start talking to yourself, you can kill yourself if you lose enough of your sanity and have a loaded weapon in your hand. If you're walking on a high ledge and look down you start getting vertigo, it makes it harder to walk straight. Get hit in the arm, it's harder to aim, break your leg in a fall and you can only limp. Great game if you're looking for something extremely unsettling.
I would say the most disturbing/scary game moment would have to be all of afraid of monsters and afraid of monsters: directors cut though. Playing through it in the dark, sound up, every little noise you hear gets your blood pumping. The ambiance really drags you in, and the sound effects are amazing, especially considering the whole thing is done in the half-life engine. Spinning around and managing to pump a shotgun round into a zombie's spasming head as he runs full tilt at you from the dark never gets old.
Also, a moment that really stuck with me was in Sanitarium, when a child is pulling around another child's bones in a wagon, after you have dug up said child's bones. That really creeped me out.
|
03-11-08 08:52 
