Things in games that terrify you irrationally

[Max Ernst]

Sometimes games are meant to be scary. Sometimes, they aren't, but you are terrified anyway. This thread is for those games that put you in a situation that make you terrified, even though there is little chance that the developer intended them to.

 

I'll rattle off a few of mine:

 

Whenever I am swimming in water and I can't see clearly. Remember in Half Life 2, and you were on the coast, and you went to swim out far and the little jibblet fishies ate your face if you swam out too far? Awful and horrifying. Also, the rad fish with cool-guy shades in Super Mario 64? Horrible and scary.

Whenever the game breaks and I clip around the map. This just feels so disconcertingly wrong. I played GTA IV recently, and I climbed through a window and fell through the map. It was awful. Awful, awful awful. Whenever a character model starts flipping out, I feel like I am watching a David Lynch film and it's not Dune.
This gross video is a good example of it (1:53)

Whenever I am running from something and I am running toward the camera. It isn't fun but also it can be very scary even though the context could be as innocent as a pie chasing a young boy who is trying to stay healthy. That was a bad example, and probably a worse game if it were ever developed, but I don't like doing this. I yell progressively louder the closer the chaser gets.

Birds are meant to be silly enemies but they are real scary. I guess developers use birds as an entry-level enemy, because what bad-boy protagonist is killed off by a beak? They aren't meant to be scary, just annoying. However, a flock of birds swarm at my character's muscle-head, and I am on the floor wimpering. If you are a developer and you ever thought "woah, if we had a flock of birds attack the player they would think "this is easy because I have a gun and they are dumb animals". What player progression. Also, lets make them shriek because loud noises are charting well at our focus groups", then you are a bad person. Doesn't matter what kind of bird either.

The titular character from the Sega Dreamcast game Seaman.

When the human race dies out and is finally judged by God for the sum of its actions, this will be our downfall.

[Thrik]

When something can actually follow me up ladders or through vents.

[toblix]

I had this thing with playing against bots, where I would totally freak out if I found out I was playing, say Half-Life 2, against a bot rather than a human. It seems weird now, and I don't think I'd react at all today, but I remember being stuck by this crippling fear og being hunted, similar to what I experienced when I tried Amnesia very briefly.

[Roderick]

Being hunted is indeed terrifying. I generally tense up enormously when playing Zelda bits where things are chasing you, like giant hands and stuff. Twilight Princess has a brutal scene in that regard, where you need to do some serious platforming while being inexorably chased by a slow moving hand.

 

Walking in shallow water without seeing what's below is also a weird experience.

[Ben X]

When something can actually follow me up ladders or through vents.

 

When I played Far Cry and the mutant things first showed up, there was a square staircase I had to go down but one of the monsters was coming up. I sat patiently with my reticule over the first bit of stairs he would walk up where I could shoot it... and then it saw me and jumped UP AND ACROSS THE STAIRWELL AT ME. I absolutely shat myself, I wasn't used to enemies doing stuff like that.

[I_smell]

I hate swimming and not knowing which way is up and down. Cos that's a thing that happens in real life, and it's just like "WELP- GUESS I'LL JUST WAIT FOR DEATH NOW!"

 

This is an obvious point, but things that jump out and scream at you get me every time. I am the fat boy that freaks out and backflips off the chair in shock-reaction videos. I played Alan Wake, and it's mostly a great game, but there's a couple points in the game where it flashes the whole screen and goes WAAARRRRGGGH!!!!!

So that leads me to playing the rest of the game at like 10% volume every time and mostly be really annoyed.

 

Also something about bad, old animation freaks me out. I had this game in black & white when I was a kid and it was the most unsettling thing. The endless roads of bad sound effects are more scary than the actual context of the game.

Old games like this also carry the sensation of being lost in a maze, which is horrible.

[tegan]

Timed sequences.

 

 

Also, if we want to extend this out to "scary moments in non-scary games;" Dead Hand, about half of Earthbound, and that fucking piano from Super Mario 64.

[Zeusthecat]

Also, the rad fish with cool-guy shades in Super Mario 64? Horrible and scary.

 

Yes, terrifying.

 

Also:

The first invisible elites with swords in Halo CE

The whole haunted house level in Mario 64

The giant metal guy in Pilot Wings 64 that throws shit at you in the mini US level

Grenades in Call of Duty on Veteran

Giga Gaia boss in Chrono Trigger

The Dracula level in Conker's Bad Fur Day

All of the original Ninja Gaiden

Hammer guys from original Super Mario Bros

Rakghouls from KOTOR

The sewer level from Shadows of the Empire

The vicious poodle from Beavis and Butthead for Sega Genesis

The water level from Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Soda Popinski

The robots that zap you in TMNT The Arcade Game

Spiky blue shells from Mario Kart

[Ucantalas]

The music as Sonic starts to drown. Every ounce of pain, desperation, and fear that appear when Sonic gasps for his final breath are concentrated and bottled in pure musical form.

I really don't like the idea that people are looking for me... until I have a good hiding spot and know they (most likely) won't find me. So, say... Metal Gear Solid, I get spotted by a guard. Ohshitohshitohshit... Aaaand I'm in a locker. Still super nervous, scared I'm going to die. Then the guard looks around the area, goes "Huh, I guess no one's here." And he goes to patroling the area as the alarm timer thing counts down. And as I see him patroling, looking for me, not finding me at all but not really looking hard, I get this insane glee from knowing that I'm just feet away from him and he will never know... It's quite a rollercoaster ride of emotions for me.

Oh, and not really "terrify", but a kind of fear: I will never use really good items because I'm afraid I will need it later. One of the most recent manifestations was in The Cave, where I went to extremes to keep a hot dog with me just in case. (It turned out to be useful, so, hey.)

[SecretAsianMan]

I never played it which is why I can laugh about it, but I think creepy Watson would have freaked me out if I actually experienced it first hand

 

 

All of the original Ninja Gaiden

 

Do you mean the arcade version, because that game over screen gave me nightmares as a kid.

[Argobot]

I am legitimately horrified by the matryoshka dolls in the Double Fine game Stacking. Dolls in general kind of give me the heebie jeebies, but something about the Russian-style nesting dolls moving around on screen is extra terrifying to me.

[Zeusthecat]

Do you mean the arcade version, because that game over screen gave me nightmares as a kid.

 

The original one on the NES. Specifically, that giant Samurai boss that I could never get past. But the whole rest of the game too because death was lurking around every corner.

[Thrik]

I never played it which is why I can laugh about it, but I think creepy Watson would have freaked me out if I actually experienced it first hand

 

 

 

Do you mean the arcade version, because that game over screen gave me nightmares as a kid.

 

Wow that video is pretty horrifying. It reminds me of something I encountered in Dishonored. There's a mission where you have to sneak into a big manor that's hosting a party, and the place is teeming with guests and guards. Your goal is to assassinate the host of the party. After I talked to a certain guest called 'Miss White' for some reason she started following me, but only after I've been out of her immediate proximity for quite some time. So in other words I'd be doing things like sneaking around the empty upper regions of the building or luring my victim into the basement to kill them, only to turn around and find this following me but always stopping just around the corner:

 

 

I shit myself twice, and after that I was constantly on edge because I knew she was likely going to stalk me but I never knew where I'd bump into her.

[elmuerte]

There's only one thing that scares me, and that's a corrupt savegame in a game that only allows 1 savegame.

[Zeusthecat]

There's only one thing that scares me, and that's a corrupt savegame in a game that only allows 1 savegame.

 

Which reminds me:

 

The save system in Dead Rising

[Ucantalas]

There's only one thing that scares me, and that's a corrupt savegame in a game that only allows 1 savegame.

Soul Calibur 3.

That game could have been great if people could keep an uncorrupted save file for more than a couple of months.

[Lu]

I once terrified Toblix by walking out of a closet in Resident Evil 6.

[toblix]

That was the best emergent horror I've ever experienced.

[Sno]

When something can actually follow me up ladders or through vents.

Holy shit, yeah. This is a good one.

I'm always so surprised when something can follow me up a ladder, or scramble up a wall to chase me, or whatever.

Basically when the AI is able to follow you places that years of gaming tells you they should not.

[jmbossy]

I fucking hate mirrors. I know its a weird thing to say, but even in real life I hate having the possibility to see something that isn't actually there.
There's one scene in bioshock where you see a splicers shadow from around a corner and then when you turn the corner he's gone. I wanted to ball up in the corner and never move ever again.

 

Also stealth sequences!!!

[Badfinger]

Whenever I am swimming in water and I can't see clearly. Remember in Half Life 2, and you were on the coast, and you went to swim out far and the little jibblet fishies ate your face if you swam out too far? Awful and horrifying. Also, the rad fish with cool-guy shades in Super Mario 64? Horrible and scary.

 

That is a completely rational fear, because 100% of the time this is the thing hiding in that water.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Hr5KHNZ.png

[SecretAsianMan]

Being in water in a game creeps me out too.  The sections in Metroid Prime where you're under water made me nervous for no good reason.  Also, in Ocarina of Time, the laboratory near the lake has a small tank of water you can get a piece of heart from if you dive down and touch the bottom.  At the bottom of the tank is a cage with something in it.  The first time I saw that it scared the crap out of me.

[miffy495]

That was the best emergent horror I've ever experienced.

 

I see what you did there.

[I_smell]

Oh I used to be afraid of Bowser's laugh in Super Mario 64, but that's when I was like 8.

 

I fucking hate mirrors. I know its a weird thing to say, but even in real life I hate having the possibility to see something that isn't actually there.
There's one scene in bioshock where you see a splicers shadow from around a corner and then when you turn the corner he's gone. I wanted to ball up in the corner and never move ever again.

 

Also stealth sequences!!!

 

Yeah I definately used to feel that way about mirrors. It's like they were saying on Idle Thumbs last week: Imagine someone made a horror game where the Kinect would show an image of you in your room with A GUY STANDING AROUND NEAR YOU!!! That would be horrifying.
 

It would be DF Happy Action Theatre used for the powers of evil.

[jmbossy]

It's like they were saying on Idle Thumbs last week: Imagine someone made a horror game where the Kinect would show an image of you in your room with A GUY STANDING AROUND NEAR YOU!!! That would be horrifying.

 Agreed. Though technically impressive, I would have to vow to never buy a game from that dev ever again... just in case...