Games you HAD to stop playing... - Page 2

If you wanna start talking that game, the lead-up to the plastic surgeon boss, especially the diaries and the reveal of the two failed experiments crucified on the ceiling, freaked me right the hell out.

Lots of good stuff in here, but also lots of stuff mentioned that I have sitting around and have yet to really spend time with, like the Fatal Frame games. One of the early cut scenes in the second one freaked me out pretty good. The two sisters are walking together, the only characters there, one sister walks past the other and a hand impossibly comes to rest on the shoulder of the other sister.

Another one that got me with the atmosphere alone was D2 on the Dreamcast. Sure, it may not be a perfect game and it almost makes no sense in the end, but there are parts where the atmosphere is palpable. It's a deserted snowscape, there are empty cabins, and there were times I wondered if sounds I heard were in the game or in the real world. It was enough to make me uncomfortable at times. I figured it would be worth a mention since there probably aren't too many folks around here who've experienced it.

I'm still incredibly shit scared of the big, black spider things in Half Life 2. The ones that knock your health down to 1 with one hit.

The way they jump at you from about 50 foot away was awful, and they make a creepy rattling noise as well that still makes me all sweaty and bothered.

I must have played through that game about 10 times now and I know exactly where they are but I still throw about 6 grenades at them from as far away as possible....

God, I'm so lame

System Shock 2's monkeys and midwives got to me more than anything else.

Splatterhouse 2 on Genesis. Most of the game is just grossout gore scares, which I was certainly prepared for having played the TG-16 version, but the third boss puts you and your chainsaw up against 4 aborted, vomiting fetuses hanging by the necks from the ceiling.

That specific combination was enough to force me to call it a night.

This actually accounted for a hilarious memory for me. I was watching my friend play the game. Very early on, if I recall correctly, the game does a pretty great job of building up some tension. I see my friend literally sitting on the edge of the couch, leaning forward. He rounds a corner, and something jumps out, and I guess makes the controller rumble, which he was NOT expecting. He jumps three feet, yells "FUCK THAT!", throws the controller down, and walks out of the room, game still on the screen. Glorious.

I literally screamed out loud in Eternal Darkness when the screen quickly pans to that corpse in the bathtub. Great game.

You do not know fear until you've played The Cradle -level in Thief 3,
It's piss-your-pants terrifying.

The Suffering and Ties That Bind were underappreciated games.

You're not lame. I just got done playing The Orange Box and despite putting around 20 hours into it (between H-L2, Ep1 and Ep2), every time I ran into a freaking black headcrab it gave me the willies and I would shudder. And don't even get me started on the freaky guy that's got them all over his back! But I have a thing for spiders, so those things freaking me out was a given.

More Silent Hill:

SH3: Walking into a room full of mannequin parts, passing by a torso with head attached. Go to the next room, hear a distant woman's scream and a splat. Walk back in the mannequin room, torso's head evaporated. Blood everywhere.

SH4: The ape things that walked on massive arms and whose head was comprised of two crying baby faces. In an abandoned orphanage. I must have killed hundreds of those things, and it still got me every time.

Condemned. The department store killed me.

Did that mannequin just turn its head?

Oh man, why did you have to remind me of the guy that is covered in them! Creeps me the fuck out. I've got a hatred of spiders as well.

Overall I think Half Life 2 is a very scary game. Its got a very grim atmosphere. I think a lot of it is down to the sound design, which is hands down, the best I've ever experienced in a video game.

For instance the screams from the zombies if you set them on fire are just so, so wrong, really gets under my skin that game.

I just remember this occassion: I might be the only person to be scared by a display.

I was at E3 about 3 years ago and they had a little area for Silent Hill 3, I believe, and it looked like a kitchen/living room that was blood splatterd and rusty and there was a door in one corner that was barricaded with large plastic chains next to me.

I was watching my friend play the game when some other E3 attendee, out of my peripheral view, gave the chains a good tug making the door appear like it was being pulled open.

Needless to say I jumped about 3 feet back. The dude apologized for pulling on the chains but we had a good laugh. One of my favorite E3 memories. But it just goes to show how these fucking games get in our head so bad even in a giant convention hall with lights and sounds.

Man, I forgot all about that part. It was, indeed, scary as hell.

I'll also nominate the 'haunted hotel' level of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

And Condemned did some absolutely great work with surround sound design. Can't wait for the sequel this month...

I think Fatal Frame was called Project Zero in the UK.

Scariest game ever.

It's like the death rattle from a mutoid post-op Mortal Kombat 3 Sheeva. Yeah. It's disturbing. And I can't tell you how many times I would run into Mr. Black Head Crab without expecting it and would wince and almost drop my controller. Okay, let's stop talking about him!

I've never had to stop playing a game, but I live for the kind of moments this thread is talking about.

One bit that I've not seen mentioned yet is the haunted house sequence in the oft-ignored Silent Hill 3. It's so perfect.

Also, nice to see D2, Clock Tower, and the incredibly atmospheric Shadow Man get mentions (best and most playable version of which was on Dreamcast... love that one, easily one of the all time top underrated horror games).

Just wanna show some love for the Resident Evil remake on Gamecube... Key moments include the first time a regular zombie that you've already dealt with STOPS BEING DEAD and springs up as a Crimsonhead, and when you start hearing Lisa dragging herself around in the other rooms (in the buildup to fighting her)

What's amazing is that the descriptions you guys are giving are probably much more frightening than whatever these games can throw at us. Upon replaying the originally-terrifying Undying a year or two ago I just found all the scares had gone, and just giggled while playing. But then, I torture animals on weekends.

But System Shock 2 still works. I remember creeping backwards down a corridor, guns broken, whimpering at the approaching zombies to leave me alone. Only game I needed a breather for.

Shit, Jacob. I was just coming in here to mention the Hotel in Vampire:Bloodlines. I'm a fucking vampire! It shouldn't be this creepy!

And those black head crabs in HL2 are like the Aliens in Aliens games. I pretty much empty entire clips into them, reload, and go again, just to make sure those fuckers are dead.

Realms of the Haunting, yeah. Graphics are shit today (tried to replay it once) but back in the day it was awesome.

I even got scared by a text adventure once. Hexuma. You were locked in a scary house and some creature was on the outside, trying to come in. It always ate me.

Looking through this thread, it's amazing how many of the games noted borrow liberally from the original Alone in the Dark, yet that hasn't received a mention yet.

Clock Tower 3 for the PS2. I just remember hiding behind a shower curtain while a masked man wielding a sledgehammer called my name.

"ALYSSA... ALYSSA!"

Great stuff.

Well, AitD4 got a shout-out, but yeah, I was gonna mention it myself. Resident Evil always gets the nod for the dogs-through-the-window but, but Alone did it (and many other things) first.

Polygonal terror FTW!

Yeah, that hotel was totally unexpected - I actually wanna reinstall it now!

Fatal Frame is what I was going to say, and I might even be thinking of the same part.

I had been playing with a friend, in the dark, late at night (because really, how else would one play this game?), and reached some kind of shrine. I kept walking in circles around the room, trying to figure out what to do when suddenly that telltale pulse started coming through the controller, and I knew something was up.

But I *still* could not find a damn thing. I just kept getting more and more frustrated and creeped out because I knew something had to be in the room, but I didn't see it. So I pulled out the trust camera and started peering around...but still, nothing was there. After a few minutes though, I realized the one place I hadn't looked, gazed up, and it was RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

I turned off the goddamn TV and never played it again. Too fucking creepy.

Agreed on Half-Life 2 and the fucking headcrab family. I'll fight everything else with a "devil may care" attitude, but when those little shits come out to play, I get the knee-jerk "oh shit, oh fuck, I'm gonna die" feeling.

And at the end of the first level in Bioshock, where Andrew Ryan is talking to you on that screen, then the power goes out and the splicers start breaking that window. Oh man, the first time I played the game, I ran like a Jesse Owens to the exit. The soundtrack MADE that moment.

As for earlier games, Clive Barker's Undying definitely had its moments. Also, the retarded shadow babies that knock you out in that dead end alleyway in the first Silent Hill kept me from playing for a day or two.

I just played the hotel segment in Masquerade after talking about it here.

It's still incredibly scary, it's mostly down to sound work - but the Half Life 2 engine really allows for some funky physics for the ghosts in that place.

Highly recommended, even if the game is a broken lovechild of Deus Ex and HL2.

I'm reading alot of good stuff here about Fatal Frame. I've never played any of these games, so I think I'm going to try to hunt these games down.

Only game I've ever played that I had to stop before I shit my pants was Condemned. It kinda lost it towards the end, but those first few hours were really balls testing.

I'm gonna go with a pair of examples that I experienced recently because I'm drunk:

That part in the dentist's office in Bioshock. You know what I'm talking about. I screamed and then headed out to get a drink. Then I talked about how upsetting that was for the rest of the night.

And 90% of Condemned. Basically, everything until the last chapter. Highlights include: the department store, as someone already mentioned, which contained crazed junkies posing as mannequins until you walk by; the middle school, which was amazingly fucked up, particularly for me because parts of it, like the gym, looked exactly like my middle school; and that house where you first encounter one of those ghost guys.

I have one more that I just thought of. The level in Dark Forces where you have to go through the sewers. Those dianoga that would pop out of the goo into your face really freaked me out. Of course, I was pretty young when I played that, so I don't know if that's actually scary.

I had a brief (and not very serious, but still..) nervous breakdown a couple of years ago. It started off with moodswings, then a couple of hyperventilation & anxiety attacks. I'm pretty sure that playing Silent Hill 2 at the time tipped me over the edge.. it got physical by the time I reached the underground prison, and I got nausea attacks everytime I loaded up that fucker.
Never finished it. I'm much better now though, & played through Manhunt, Fatal Frame (the 1st) and Resident Evil 4 without any problems. Maybe it's time to get back to that infernal place...

Dude. YES.

Great thread. I totally agree with the love Fatal Frame and Silent Hill are getting. Pyramid Head is really the stuff of a warped, perverted nightmare.
The first game to really scare me, surprisingly, was Tomb Raider 2. Despite the overall shittiness of the game the level where a T-Rex comes running at you out of the darkness freaked me out. That and the Yetis in the winter levels. You heard them stomping around but couldn't see shit! Great scare for a game you really don't expect it from.

Right now I am majorly stalled in Fall Out 3. The game world and options for play are too immense for me. Whenever I have played an RPG before, I always play it this way:


Make a save point before EVERY battle or encounter or decision I have to make in the game world. Only proceed forward once I have completed battle well with minimal damage or ammo used. Only proceed forward after a decision by playing through each and every permutation possible from that decision, then seeing which option lined up best with my own real world morality as I see it in the games situation. (This has actually lead me to be suprisingly selfish so far in FO3. Given the games end of the world setting, I feel more compelled to put my needs above conventional pre war morality)


This can be VERY time intensive. I am sort of OCD like that though so I am not having fun if I feel that I am playing while possibly missing a better way of doing things. For example, I cannot NOT search every single desk and trashcan in the game. Combined with a generally poor ability to orientate and navigate in 3D, searching a single unexplored vault a few weeks ago took me 7.5 hrs. Now you might be able to understnad why FO3 is testing my abilities and patience.

I played through Mass Effect, Deus Ex 1 and 2, and other games all this way using my exacting RPG method.

Fall Out 3 though is so huge in scope, so difficult, and complicated, and confusing, that I am feeling deeply frustrated by it.

I have played for almost 1000 hours at this point, but have only 75 hrs of game progress (that is, thats how far I am in terms of progress I've saved from after playing). The scale of whats left to do, not to mention the DLC leaves me paralyzed.

Tonight I am just cruising around the river systems of Bowa Seko in Far Cry 2 while listening to sitar music I downloaded to my HDD from a Ravi Shankar CD.

It is less stressful.

Someday I will have to finish FO3, I cannot see myself NEVER finishing it. For now though I am at an impass.

EDIT: Also had a few nightmares about nuclear war after some all night fall out sessions, which makes me think spending 1000 hours of my life in a bombed out horror scape of a game might not be the healthiest thing either.

The Sewers on Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, fucking suck. Almost quit playing (the game's combat isn't it's strong point)

And Dark Seed, way back on my Amiga. It's an point and click adventure game based on H. R. Giger's artwork, very unforgiving and messed up. Need to go to my happy place after playing that.

Discovering the blind nurse and her...."lover" in "Dead Space".
All sorts of wrong and horrifying.

No wonder I cant wait for "Dante's Inferno".

what happened in deadspace with the nurse? i love the concept for that game but am realistic and know it would be too scary for me to ever play through.

If I remember right, at the medical wing you encounter an insane, blind nurse talking to headless, limbless torse as if he was her lover.

Its actually featured here:

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-best...4201016085/p-2

Oh yikes. See I find that very scary and a cool concept, but it took all my fortitude to get through BioShock, I think deadspace would be too much for me (For example, I had to have a friend beat the shadow temple for me in LOZ:OOT as it was too scary and the final boss, bongo bongo, was way way too scary)

Hearing the Witch in Left 4 Dead got me to stop playing a few times. I agree with those in this thread who said Valve have the best sound design in games.

The F.E.A.R. games got to me a few times when I was playing alone at night and I was wasted.

I'm glad the original Alone in the Dark got a mention, the first two games are some of my all time favorites. Altough I never did get scared playing them.

Reading through this thread makes me wish Fatal Frame and the Silent Hill series were available on Xbox Live, I never played any of them.

I reinstalled Bloodlines over the summer. The werewolf that chases you around the Planetarium still gives me an OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT feeling.

The Seventh Guest, of all things, might be the only game that really creeped me out. I think it had to do with the technical limitations. It really forced you to move at it's own slow pace, and as such, it kind of drew you into it's unpleasantness, if you were willing to go with it.

The original Myst also kind of creeped me, although mostly because it made me feel truly isolated from the real world. It was alternately kind of boring.

Alien Trilogy. Amp the volume up to max and be unnerved by the constant beep beep of your scanner. The sudden shock when a facehugger gets to you? Priceless.
Also, the Marine campaigns of AVP one and two.

Doom 3 once had me. I was walking down a lone corridor when I suddenly sensed a movement to the left, one of those giant motherfuckers. Well, scared and nearly out of health, I went backwards, to the right, shooting - only to notice that I was actually looking at a reflecting window, thus directly walking backwards in the arms of said beast.

Half-Life 2.

Those fucking bastards that throw the spiders at you. Coming around the corner in an abandoned house and having those spiders drop down from the ceiling (I once looked up a noclip cheat so I could simply bypass this part even though I knew it was coming).

Also, the moaning sound the zombie scientists make as they shuffle towards you, and the scream when you start burning them alive.

Overblood. Kind of the Dead Space of it's time. I remeber it having a very creepy atmosphere and being very tense.... up until the main character's "pet" robot Pipo died(if robots can actually die) and they did a pull away on him as he screamed "Piiiiiiiiiiiiiipppppooooooo!!!!" like his whole family had been murdered, which made me laugh for hours and can still make me laugh to this day.

I'd also say the first D was pretty freaky. "Lauuuuura.... LauUUUra... LAUUUURRAAA!!!"

Back in the day I had trouble getting through the Alone in the Dark games.

Sacred 2. Tons of people told me to get it, I did, it was the worst shit ever.