Which video game moments had you genuinely scared?

[Independent voter]

What scares me is in WoW sometimes I'll be out wondering around when all of a sudden another player will pop into my field of view. Totally unexpected and it startles me. I guess startled is a better word.

[unfilteredJW]

The first Resident Evil on PS1.
Walked down the blue-ish hallway immediately to the right of where you start, then two dogs jump through the windows.
I made the mistake of playing it at night, so it was dimly lit in my room.
It startled me to the point where I dropped my controller and was dropped to half health before I recovered and killed them.
From that point on, I had a distrust for those games...

This moment is probably shared by countless people.

Never forget the dog hallway.

[GennGreymane]

[Yvaelle]

For quite some time, I would load up System Shock 2 and then quit after seeing the first hybrid. The graphics were basic, but the sounds in that game were fantastic - coupled with the fragility of your character, hiding round a corner with only a wrench to hand. Bioshock was in a similar mould, but your character was tougher and more well resourced, so it ended up feeling more like a shooter than a survival game. And Bioshock's monsters had nothing on the cyber-midwives.

Vampire Masquerades Bloodlines had some scary moments: the early haunted house mission in particular. The sound of something heavy thumping round inside the laundry dryer after reading about the decapitated child. The glimpses of the axe murderer prowling in the basement.

^ Good Man.

The scariest moment in any video game for me was probably the Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines scene in the haunted hotel. The scene on the cargo ship though where the Antediluvian vampire lord wakes up, and the scene when you go up the ski-lift and everything is on fire, and a werewolf is hunting down vampires though are solid entrants too. Otherwise, it's not really a 'horror' game - and yet it nails that atmospheric dread in the spirit of System Shock/2 and Silent Hill.

Beyond atmospheric fear though, I'm not prone to jump scares and gore because I started playing Doom and later Quake when I was about 6. Invisible demons and pink clouds of giblets are nostalgic reminders of my childhood

System Shock and Silent Hill are both obvious classics - the scariest thing in Silent Hill though that other zombie games just didn't get, was that the scariest thing you can do in a zombie game is not have zombies. When you have something charging at you and roaring, yea ok - clear and present threat - you have a gun and limited ammo - make your shots count: that's adrenaline, not fear. Fear comes from the unknown, it's when you walk through blizzardy town and hear zombies in the distance, when you go inside a building and turn around to find new footprints appeared in the snowy street.

Fear isn't a spooky ghost, fear is the moment before - when you hear what you can't see, and the moment after - when you hear and see nothing of a threat you know is present.

We fear what we know we don't know.

Edit: OH! And another VTM scene how could I possibly forget! The Twice Damned lady in the abandoned hospital, where what she even is isn't clear. "They call you damned because you must drink the blood of the living to survive, but what if you had to not only drink their blood, but consume their flesh - what would you be then? Twice damned?" - she's some sort of thing that feeds off vampires and humans alike - but she doesn't want to leave the hospital - so she spares you if you lure some local partygoers into the hospital for her to feed off.

On that note, I think the reason VTM does well with horror is that it very clearly established what your capabilities are. What each of the bloodlines can do, what humans can do, etc - it makes you feel like a powerful predator - and every now and then, it shatters that ego by introducing you to something wholly beyond you, where you are miles out of your depth and powerless to defend yourself let alone retaliate. The game as a whole was a solid B+ at the time, but looking back on it, what it excelled at was that the story arc was designed to roller-coaster your confidence as described.

[Skeppio]

Pffft, the eel is like entry-level scary. :P

The piano in Boo's Haunted House is far scarier.

[Deleted]

Iam just vulnerable to jump scares and cant help how music influences my mood.

[Skeppio]

Iam just vulnerable to jump scares and cant help how music influences my mood.

I find music can make a huge difference when it comes to setting moods in games. It may just be me, but certain types of music can make me immediately feel really tense or just plain unnerved.

[TheFreeman]

For me would be Dead Space 1 and 2. Dead Space 2 even better. Basically any scene where multiple necromorphs are coming at you and you have three or so seconds to precisely dismember them before they do the same to you. If they get to you they disembowel you in the most horrific manner possible.

Love the survival horror genre. Also enjoyed most moments in Doom 3. I even got the remastered version that came out a couple of years ago.

Warning Extreme Violence!

[Deleted]

I find music can make a huge difference when it comes to setting moods in games. It may just be me, but certain types of music can make me immediately feel really tense or just plain unnerved.

It's not just you. I read a small study (or maybe it was two) that tested The effect of music and sound on players when they played different genres of games. While music had an inpact on all types of games, The genre with by far The largest difference between sound and no sound was horror.

[theWocky]

Honestly, Outlast.

When I was still YouTubing seriously, G/F was away and I thought I would put a headset on and play in the dark in front of my 42" TV.

It friggin' scared the living bejezus outa me.

Also, my first jump-scare game, haunted memories, I think it was called.

[Zafire]

Oh yeah, in Majora's Mask that one quest where you have to stop the aliens from messing up the ranch. That music was creepy.

[Yvaelle]

Oh I thought of another scary moment - in The Dread Wastes in Kunark, in EverQuest 1 - there was an invisible dragon with an aggro radius almost the size of the entire zone. Now, for most people this just meant going to this zone probably meant dying a sudden and inexplicable death. However, to a Ranger (what I played) you could track every mob and player in your zone as a list sorted by distance - and as you try to sneak through the zone to the little Druid grotto (tiny cave entrance that the dragon couldn't fit through) - you would initially see it far away, and then at some point - despite that you were invisible and running fast (pre-mounts) - it would suddenly smell you and start flying up the list: and it was this race between getting to the cave entrance before the name on the list got to the top: fear of the known unknown

That actually reminds me of a jump scare that did get me though - Tomb Raider 1, you have crashed in the mountains, fought some wolves, climbed through a cave, you see some light and green grass ahead: things appear to be improving - you drop down into the grassy patch in the cave - suddenly the music cranks up, the games begins shaking violently, the area ahead is misty - and then a T-rex charges out of the mist and you die (everyone dies the first few times to the T-rex). It's scary because it's just not that sort of game up until that moment, you've been doing gymnastics and the height of scary so far has been a pack of four hungry wolves versus your dual automatic pistols: then there is a T-rex.

[Littleraven]

The original DooM back in the day. The level "Command Control" when you walk into that dark maze and it is filled with specters (The invisible pink demons). As a child that put me into tears lol. That said I probably should NOT have been playing that game when I was 5 or 6 or however old I was lol.

That is all I can honestly think of. There have been tense moments since but nothing I would say has really scared me. I tend to stay away from horror games. I guess the Vault connected to Little Lamplight in Fallout 3 was spooky to me for some reason as well. That one I have no idea why.

[Yunru]

Hm probaly only 2 things...

Getting a crab jump into your face in half life and that..


And this alien from Gunman Chornicles, the part where you need to cross the bridge and he jumps at your face...yes i did fall down.

[Skeppio]

It's not just you. I read a small study (or maybe it was two) that tested The effect of music and sound on players when they played different genres of games. While music had an inpact on all types of games, The genre with by far The largest difference between sound and no sound was horror.

Horror's an interesting one, because it can be improved with the right background sound, but can also work very well with no background music at all. I guess it depends on the scene in the game. I can definitely see why music choice has the biggest impact in horror titles.

For someone as timid as myself, I sure do enjoy creepy stuff in games, particularly music. o_O

[Mustardisbad]

When I was playing Area-51 on the original xbox when I was little, I went to pick up a severed hand so I could use it to open a door. It was in a tiny little box like room that entered into a tram line. I placed the hand on the scanner and had to find another one. But when I turned around I could hear heavy breathing from a mutant. I sat there for about 5 minutes hoping he would come around the entrance and show himself but he just sat around the corner breathing and growling. When I tried to leave he jumped infront of the entrance and screamed, I freaked out and threw my controller in the air. Didn't play it again for a few years. I was 10 or 11 at the time.

[DechCJC]

The King Kong game when you had to kite the T-rex with sticks. Fucking scared the shit out of me.

[Pony Soldier]

- The first part of Dead Space where the necromorph is chasing you and you don't have any weapons so you have to run to the elevator before he gets you.
- In Resident Evil 3 Nemesis when Nemesis just bursts out of nowhere going "STAAAARRSSS...." in that whispy tone and starts chasing you. As a kid playing this had me panicking so much.
- In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time fighting that white zombie thing with the long neck and arms in the Shadow Temple. Still freaks me out.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh my god this too.

[Kryctos]

DAO the broodmother section of a Paragon of her Kind, the poem/song thing didnt help.

[Jeanclaude]

When DST dropped and I thought the RL would ninja it.

+1 for an old reference.

+1 again for making me LOL, literally out loud.