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Nightmare Doom

The most chilling/disturbing/scariest game or moment?

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What do you consider the most disturbing/scariest game you ever you played or simply a moment?

I remember when I was young playing Final Doom on the PSX where there is this one level called "geryon" where the ambient soundtrack used to disturb the hell out of me which made me turn the music volume down due to the high pitched screaming. I think this is the music I'm talking about here:

http://www.doom2.net/~doomdepot/music/psx%20final%20doom/level%2007%20(geryon).mp3

Another game I have to mention was some of the levels in Redneck Rampage where there was this Mortuary level which often I heard a woman screaming in the background inside the Funeral home which actually still scares the crap out of me till this day (I actually had to noclip past that part just to get away from it or simply turned the sound down). There was also the Asylum/Nuthouse stage where you start off in a padded cell with this creepy music playing in the background which gave me chills.

The Robed alien from the Marathon trilogy just chills/scares the crap out of me especially in claustrophobic spaces ala the first level from Marathon 1 is a perfect example.

In Abuse (a side scroller game which was made by Bungie) there was this one level (or simply an enemy?) where one in the rooms you hear this "WOOoWOOo" sound which actually scared shit out of me when I was young but not so much anymore eversince I downloaded the game recently because it's currently freeware now.

The Choking hands from Blood and also the smaller enemies from Blood 2 used to scare me simply because I didn't know how to get them off from my face at the time I was younger (well except for the earlier versions of Blood where it's almost nigh impossible to get the choking hands off from you). Also the Choking Hands screaming "I'll swallow your soul" just makes me jump.

The Playroom level from Shadowman disturbs me till this day mainly because this creepy child like music looping in the background which I remember lowering down the music volume when I was younger which is how disturbing it was and not to mention the level itself (especially the cell rooms containing alot of disturbing shit and one of them is a nursery room since nursery rooms are just...creepy) . Another level from Shadowman that scared the crap out of me was Avery Marx's hotel/apartment complex due it's dark claustrophobic atmosphere and Marx popping out of nowhere while screaming "come to mommy" before the 'combat' music actually starts.

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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.

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Hum...it wasnt the scariest nor the most disturbing nor the most chilling moment...but something happened to me...2 days ago.There was a snowstorm in my city.I was enjoying Doom then suddenly i lost electricity...i was like...*sigh* will need to restart =/ but the scary thing was...it was like in an horror movie.the flashing light,the sound of wind...and the dead silence...i was kinda...scared.A while after i hear knocking at my door...i open it and.....there was nobody.I come back to sit in my chair and i hear key noise.It wasnt mine because my key were on the desk behind me. =_= it was somewhat scary...personally thats what i think.

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Well, when I was four, I was playing Wolfenstein for the first time. I died and was horrified by the bloody mugshot. It was sorta similar to now when looking at some photo from rotton. But this was ages ago.

Probably the most recent game that scared me was Doom 3. And I don't mean "surpise! surprise!" kinda scary, I mean like "omfgsht" scary. Of course I'm just a puss when it comes to that stuff. Hell, the Atari game Adventure has moments where I'm in my seat bouncing up and down while being chased by a dragon.

AMMENDMENT: SYSTEM SHOCK 2 AND THIEF

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The main one that's burned into my head is the scripted scene in Resident Evil 2 where zombies break through some boarded windows and try and grab you. Even though I know it's going to happen, it's always made me jump because the sound effect of the boards cracking is at least three times louder than anything else in the game. I usually mute the TV for a few seconds, until I've passed that window.

Jello said:

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.


Hell yes! I'm totally stoked for Bloodshot in five days.

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FPSs used to scare the crap out of me. I used to just watch people play them instead of playing them myself. I don't think I started playing them until about 1995. Even then I was still scared of some stuff, like demons in Doom and dogs in Wolfenstein. Quake even scared me when it came out. Heh.

Also, there was this MicroProse adventure game called Return of the Phantom which was really cool and kind of creepy, and there's this part in it where the Phantom of the Opera jumps out of nowhere (from a place you've walked past at least a dozen times before in the game) and pushes you off a catwalk. I fucking jumped when I saw that.

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American McGee's Alice had its moments, but it was marred by bugs, cheap enemies and balancing issues. The final fight with the Red Queen is almost worth the price of admission, though. If you like trippy visuals and cynicism I can recommend it.

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The only moments I can remember as of right now are the valkyr-induced dreams in Max Payne, and quite a few places in Tormentor's City of the Damned: Apacolypse map, mainly places where unexpected screaming and dialogue(like one of the zombies with the butcher's knife saying "join us").
The level in the HL2 demo "We don't go to Ravenholm" is pretty damn creepy in some places too.

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Funny, but when I was little, what almost always made me jump out of my skin was getting zapped by a medusa or don medusa in Adventures of Lolo.

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Disregarding the occasional suspenseful moments, the only thing I can remember ever making me jump and panic was in Jedi Knight. At the end of level 4 or 5, you pass from these tall gray rocky cliffs into this large round tank that's built in circular sections. You pass from the outermost circle to the innermost by changing water levels or something, so you can swim through the passages in the wall separating each circle, and at the center is this tall tubular tower, so you swim down into this door to get inside it, and I went in and look up and :O THERE'S A GIANT SQUID THING THE SIZE OF THE ENTIRE TOWER COMING DOWN FROM ABOVE, have a heart attack and get killed.

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LO_ot said:

Disregarding the occasional suspenseful moments, the only thing I can remember ever making me jump and panic was in Jedi Knight. At the end of level 4 or 5, you pass from these tall gray rocky cliffs into this large round tank that's built in circular sections. You pass from the outermost circle to the innermost by changing water levels or something, so you can swim through the passages in the wall separating each circle, and at the center is this tall tubular tower, so you swim down into this door to get inside it, and I went in and look up and :O THERE'S A GIANT SQUID THING THE SIZE OF THE ENTIRE TOWER COMING DOWN FROM ABOVE, have a heart attack and get killed.

Ah yeah, I remember that. I'm pretty sure that's level 4, right after the one where you encounter the tuskens.

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While I know I'm setting myself up for instant fail, I'm gonna attempt it. One of the most incredibly disturbing moments in a game was in the original Halo when you find out exactly what happened to Captain Keys; in addition to the flood level itself. I didn't care for Halo in total, but those sections were my favorites.

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I used to get chills playing doom upstairs alone at night before I was 10yrs, and also similar games like quake, hexen. The music of MAP30 in Doom 2 EVIL scary! Also Doom64 when it came out was a real 'oh-shit' game to me.

Nowadays I really don't get scared of any games (guess thats what happens when you've seen shock sites/ogrish-type stuff) but notable moments include Ghoul's Forest 2&3 and the first time you encounter Pennywise in circus666.wad

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Not many games freak me out but I found parts of Thief Gold freaked me out due to the fact that you had to sneak and conserve ammo n stuff.

I remember being in some ruined building, when I heard a weird clicking and skittering noise. I looked into a big hole in the wooden floor that revealed a dark, musty basement where I saw a strange creature that resembled a walking insect, but it was hard to see clearly. I dropped a mine into the hole and the thing set it off, but kept on moving. It went off into the darkness and I heard it no more. I certainly didn't want to go down there so I went on my way. Later on I discovered an underground passage where I black jacked some Burricks and went deep into the underground. Eventually I entered a room that had a hole in the ceiling..... and realized I was in the room the creature was in before. It was nowhere to be seen... it freaked me out. So I got the hell out of there asap.

In this other part of Thief I was in some prison area of a castle and I spotted a guard go up some steps... so I started to sneak by a jail cell on my way past where the guard went through. That's when a giant spider in the cell starts freaking out. It was up against the bars of the closed cell door, all legs flailing as it tries to come after me. I start to get ready to put an arrow in the damned spider when the guard suddenly attacks me from the side, which made me jump. I'm fending off the guard when I see the spider 'pop' through the bars and leap. I lose view of the spider because it jumped over our heads. That damned spider freaked me out. The guard and the spider killed me and I had to replay that part....bastards. :p

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Oh man the Thief series has so many tense moments, even when fighting normal guards. There have been so many times I've caught the notice of a guard, then quickly hid just a few feet away from them in a small shadow, praying they don't see me as they look in my direction. I'm disappointed the series didn't survive. :(

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I think the game that had some of the freakiest moments was Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. some of the things that happen to you as the effects of insanity take hold really catch you off guard. There is a list of some of them in the linked article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness:_Sanity's_Requiem

::edit:: copy and paste the link. the apostrophe in the url is fuckin up the parsing.

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Oh shit, I forgot about Thief. The second level with the underpassages full of zombies, or the crypt part later on. Both of those scared the crap out of me. I've never liked undead in games, though. That's probably why I've never quested in the Plaguelands in WoW.

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marine campaign in avp2, system shock 2, and the first silent hill top my list.
i'd like to add, as a huge lovecraft nuthugger, that call of cthulhu: dark corners... is a really awesome game.
there are some really tense moments in that game that i'm sure even non-lovecraft fans could appreciate.
i hope a sequel one day surfaces.

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Original Resident Evil. You walk down an unassuming hallway that has all these cupboards containing "Creepy stuff." Then out of nowhere zombie dogs just burst through the windows and mercilessly attack you. Even after the 10th time venturing through that area completely expecting it, it was still scary.

Coopersville said:

The main one that's burned into my head is the scripted scene in Resident Evil 2 where zombies break through some boarded windows and try and grab you. Even though I know it's going to happen, it's always made me jump because the sound effect of the boards cracking is at least three times louder than anything else in the game. I usually mute the TV for a few seconds, until I've passed that window.

That one scared me as well.

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Hmm I can admit that when I was younger. I was scared of playing level 20, Breakdown, in Doom64. It wasnt because of the game itself. It was just because of the music in that level when playing at midnight and alone. It used to send shivers down my spine and Id constantly have to quit playing the game by the time I got to that level.

I normally dont get scared of games but I do jump when theres a sudden very loud noise, like in RE2 with the zombies busting through the boarded windows. Though thats mostly because of having surround sound on.

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I remember it specifically. In Silent Hill, when Lisa is pounding on the door near the very end of the game. Nothing ever fucked with me like that. I was 16 and living alone in the middle of a pasture, and for some reason it got to me so much that I turned the game off without saving and immediately went to the nearest well-lit, populated area (which happened to be Denny's).

I looked it up and the scene is on youtube. It's not in the video, but I think what really drove me mad is how she keeps knocking after you regain control of the character. I felt guilty for not going back in but I was too scared of what I might find if I did. Games aren't art my aching ass.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tm2w4aSpiqs

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Doom Dude said:

Not many games freak me out but I found parts of Thief Gold freaked me out due to the fact that you had to sneak and conserve ammo n stuff.

I remember being in some ruined building, when I heard a weird clicking and skittering noise. I looked into a big hole in the wooden floor that revealed a dark, musty basement where I saw a strange creature that resembled a walking insect, but it was hard to see clearly. I dropped a mine into the hole and the thing set it off, but kept on moving. It went off into the darkness and I heard it no more. I certainly didn't want to go down there so I went on my way. Later on I discovered an underground passage where I black jacked some Burricks and went deep into the underground. Eventually I entered a room that had a hole in the ceiling..... and realized I was in the room the creature was in before. It was nowhere to be seen... it freaked me out. So I got the hell out of there asap.

Oh man I loved that level. And yes, that was probably the creepiest part out of the whole level. Only difference being that I ran into the bugger not long after realizing where I was. Now THAT was a jumpy moment.

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Aliens vs Predator. Playing as a marine was a total shit yourself every three seconds experience.

Of course, they fucked that up by adding a save function so dying wasn't actually a big deal.

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I forgot about Thief as well. Extremely tense, creepy game. Lights off, volume up, creeping through a cave in the dark and thinking you see something move, getting a bit closer and realizing it's a giant spider that hasn't seen you yet. The whole game just reeks of stress.

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darknation said:

Aliens vs Predator. Playing as a marine was a total shit yourself every three seconds experience.

Yeah, the creepiest part of it was that you had to choose between being able to see in the dark and being able to know something is coming for you. The worst times is when your scanner is picking up something coming for you and it's right on top of you and you can't see it. Just like in the movie. O_O

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I have really not been scared by a game since the very first time I played Doom. I was 7, and had seen nothing like it in my life.

Although I remember that even before that, Return to Zork used to creep me out too for some reason.

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