What game made you afraid?

[Toom]

Bullshit Acronym Squad does look gorgeous with all the settings ramped up, but it's very samey and shallow. Plus, because all that wicked-looking masonry dust is a purely cosmetic effect, the AI can see right through it - so they can use it as cover (because your puny hu-man eyes can't penetrate all those floating decals) but if you try the same trick they'll cut you to pieces. It's not a major issue but it's kind of annoying when you can't see shit and there's a room full of baddies going "why is he just hiding behind that box, come on lads let's go kick his head in."

[Mandrake42]

*Sigh* This is one of those situations where we are going to have to disagree, you hate it, I don't think its so bad. There is no right or wrong here, it is simply a matter of taste. I like it, you do not. Yes it didn't make me afraid in the way that other, better games have made me afraid, but that doesn't make it a bad game. I can see you disliked this game very much, but that does not mean everyone feels the same. Nor does it mean that people disagree and enjoy the game make your opinion wrong. On the flip side that doesn't make us who enjoy it wrong. So we like it *Shrugs* Each to his own. You hate it for your own reasons, I enjoyed it for my own reasons.

[Toom]

Actually I haven't said, at any point, that I hated the game, or even disliked it! That is not what I said.

In fact, I enjoyed the balls off it when I first played it through. Solid gunplay, excellent enemy AI, completely satisfying weapon selection, Actual Genuine Decent Use Of Slow-Motion, pretty as all get-out on a machine that can handle it. But I was not frightened! I was shocked a few times by shadowy monskers popping up and going "BOOGABOOGABOOGA" in my face, but I do not mistake "surprise" for "fear." I say it's samey because it is; you fight the same five enemies in the same three environments over and over again, with the odd segue into Shadowy Hallucination Realm, where you fight the same one enemy in the same one environment over and over again, except with a Gaussian blur applied to everything. And when I played it on a slightly-less-good PC and had to turn a lot of the graphical settings down, I had significantly less fun, unlike, say, Half-Life, which just looks nicer on better rigs and doesn't need to use envronmental effects and reflection mapping to distract you from cookie-cutter level design. IT IS NOT A BAD GAME AND I DO NOT HATE IT. It's just not a great game, and one I found roughly as frightening as Serious Sam.

(I call it Bullshit Acronym Squad because c'mon, First Encounter Assault Recon? Seriously? Who exactly are you people trying to kid here?)

[Mandrake42]

Hehe! We definately agree that the acronym is awful Even first play through that was my reaction.

Oh and I apoligise, it's just that you hadn't previously said a positive thing about the game, and even when I said it wasn't scary but had some memorable set pieces you responded negatively. It had gotten to the point where it seemed I could say nothing about the game you didn't disagree with

[Toom]

I just didn't really want to get drawn into discussing F.E.A.R. alone in an All-Purpose Scary Games thread, but I suppose that ship has sailed.

ON WHICH NOTE. Parts of Trilby's Notes, and pretty much all of the end of Six Days a Sacrifice genuinely freaked me the freak out! I am unaccustomed to these sensations emanating from a fairly crude adventure games! What are you doing, Ben Crowshaw. You have unmanned me.

[Mandrake42]

Yeah those were cool games. That a fairly primitive looking game in a genre that conventional wisdom (I.e mainstream game reviewers) would have us believe is dead, can be so creep inducing shows that atmosphere goes far beyond graphics.

As for scary ships having sailed, I still wonder what happened with the Mary Celeste. 

[KingAl]

...

The 'hallunication' monsters were the epitome of shit, most certainly. I really don't understand how people could be genuinely scared by anything in the game, and they made the horrible assumption that simply ramping up the hitpoints of an enemy makes it more interesting and formidable. No. Huge metal bastards just feel like crap design.
Incidentally, I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes the cake on the 'crap acronym' front - largely because nobody knows what it stands for. Where the hell did this "acronym=awesomelol" mentality come from?

[nuker311]

Hands down, and I think anyone on here who has played this game before, it would have to be System Shock 2.

I was scared to go to the bathroom at night in between saves. Of course playing that game in the dark with my headphones on alone didn't help.

Also one of the greatest and funnest games with one of the best storylines ever, also listed on many sites as one of the best games ever created for the PC.  I've beaten it twice, and I almost never play a game after completing it once.  Try to pick up a copy sometime for a special treat of a game.

[Toom]

SS2's come up a few times in this thread, and rightly so. It's a great example of a game that relies on atmosphere and tension to build itself up, only springing its "ewww grosssss" moments on you in the climax (going swimming inside a giant alien's colon whilst psychic projections assail you from all sides, you say? Just let me change me trousers, I'll be right along). I don't remember anything in particular jumping out and going "BOO!", but I do remember quite a few occasions when I've been creeping carefully along a corridor (alliteration yuessss) and turned around to see some heinous space devil staring me down. And the sound design! Making you rely so heavily on directional sound to get your bearings is an excellent idea; it forces the player to concentrate more on the gameworld, which leads to increased investment and immersion, which of course lends the scares an extra punch.

(Apparently there's a FEAR sequel in the works, but Monolith don't have the rights to the name, so it'll be called something else. My guess is Special Command for Attacking Renegade Yugoslavians.)

[Mandrake42]

Some of my scariest SS2 moments were sound based. The aforementioned Midwives when you know they are around but cant find them ("I must protect the children") The protocol droids who explode when they get close, when you manage to hide from them ("Im sorry, I did not see where you went"). Even just the mutants who methodicaly move in place ("The many sings to us" "We are, we are, we are"). Sound was intergal to the game, it was a bench mark for sound use to creep the player.

*Spoiler*












When you think you are being guided by a female commander, someone you think is the only survivor left on the ship, and after many hardships you arrive at her offices only to find her corpse slumped over her terminal and Shodan explains to you that you have just been a pawn. The hairs on my neck stood up far more than any "Boo" monsters could have provided fear wise.

[Passive Fist]

This is going to sound totally weak but ...

When I was 8 I got Zelda 1 for the NES.  In the first level on the first quest there's a room just south of the first Aquamentas boss that looks empty when you first arrive, except for a key. Going inside you find there are scary ghosty attack hands in the walls that come out and try and grab you!  These Wall Masters are easy to beat but they scared the crap out of me. After that, any time I went in an empty room I started to get scared, like the screen south of Level 5 that just has some rocks and nothing else. I was too afraid to go through there and explore so I didn't finish the game until I ran out of other options 

[Mandrake42]

"Look at you, pathetic hacker, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors, nothing can compare to the perfect immortal machine" - Shodan

[shinygerbil]

Has anyone mentioned Uplink yet? I forget. That was, if not actually scary, pretty damn tense. I seem to remember it came pretty high up on PCGamer's (British mag) top 100 scariest moments.

[Passive Fist]

Oh totally, Uplink makes me so tense and not-really-scared-but-kinda in a way that no other game can. It's just a hacking sim but it makes you feel like you really got away with something bad when you destroy somebody's life or get them arrested by hacking government files.

[JamLamb]

I played Dementium: the Ward on NDS with headphones by myself. I could not get passed the 2nd chapter without getting a heart attack! I turned it off and returned it to my friend. Never again... I could not walk home alone that night!  Maybe it's scary because you hear the heart beat and when you turn off the flash light you cannot see 2 ft in front. (Also, i wonder why the main character only has 1 hand!) If i had to choose between defending with nightstick or seeing with flashlight i would see with flashlight and kill zombie with flashlight too.

If anyone beats it let me know the ending.