Survival Horror Bloopers

[FullAuto]

Have you ever managed to scare yourself playing a game, despite there being no threat? Shot a corpse when you thought it was a zombie? Stayed cowering in the corner of a room for a good five minutes until you realise the music is always going to be like that, you're not under attack? Set an elaborate trap for the 'orrible fing chasing you, involving a shotgun, some dynamite, a length of rope, a chair, and a wardrobe, only to have the damn thing come in through the window, and panic-stricken, run into your own trap?

 

Do tell.

 

I've been playing Dead Space again of late, so here's three examples of me making a tit of myself.

 

1) I passed through a room, and then heard this THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP behind me. Footsteps! Turned, got my rifle into the shoulder, took aim back at the doorway, and waited.

 

THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP...THUMP-THUMP.

 

Then nothing. Edged back into the room. No enemy. I checked my corners, kept the rifle up in aim, cleared the room.

 

THUMP-THUMP.

 

Turned round. It was a little tub I'd knocked over, rolling across the metal grid floor.

 

2) Clearing up a little group of facehugger types, I closed in to get a better shot, only for one to try and, well, facehug me. I fired, but it kept coming, and latched onto my face. A small panic attack ensued, involving running into walls, flailing, shooting, and all sorts of embarrassing behaviour before I realised it was dead. The physics engine merely ensured its little tentacley form draped nicely over my head, like a little dead alien hat.

 

3) Opened a door. Within, a malfunctioning laser array, and a big charging alien. Swap to uber weapon. Uber weapon's magazine is empty. Charging alien charges right through the laser array and comes to bits. But it's still moving. I back away fast, reloading. Door slams down as alien passes through, severing it in twain. I get my uber weapon up and cook the remaining pieces before realising it was dead as soon as it hit the lasers, just momentum kept the bits moving.

 

Oh, the shame.

[Sunflash]

Hrm. Well I know Half-Life 2 is actually a Survival Horror game, but screw you if Ravenholm wasn't scary as ****.

 

Case in point:

 

Only a short way through, where you turn a corner to an open door. Approching this door gives a clear view across some sort of side-passage-thing. The details are mostly unimportant. Concern yourself with knowing that you have a CONVENIENT view of a rooftop a ways ahead. By the time you reach the door itself, some...THING has scampered atop it, and HOWLS. Framed by the moon, etc etc etc.

 

A short but nasty fight later, I'm rounding a corner closer to that first rooftip. Look up to see SOMETHING hanging against the wall?! KEEEEEL IT!!

 

 

Several clips of precious ammo later I realize it's a corpse pinned to the wall. >.>

 

Also in EU I tend to keep overreacting: rockets exploding single sectoids ftw. >.>

[chiasaur11]

You want scary HL2?

 

Ever played Minerva Metastasis?

 

Best mod ever.

 

And I have unloaded over multiple playthroughs a good deal more buckshot than I would admit into long dead headcrabs.

 

Hard mode really teaches a new kind of paranoia.

[Matri]

Anyone tried the HL1 mod They Hunger?

 

The lack of any HUD increases your anxiety quite a bit, and once you get to the asylum you'll be so hopped up on adrenaline, you'll do what I did:

 

Emptied most of a clip at nothing when the light flickers.

 

Oooh, and if you have Fallout 3, do stop by the Dunwich Building.

[FullAuto]

Hrm. Well I know Half-Life 2 is actually a Survival Horror game, but screw you if Ravenholm wasn't scary as ****.

 

Case in point:

 

Only a short way through, where you turn a corner to an open door. Approching this door gives a clear view across some sort of side-passage-thing. The details are mostly unimportant. Concern yourself with knowing that you have a CONVENIENT view of a rooftop a ways ahead. By the time you reach the door itself, some...THING has scampered atop it, and HOWLS. Framed by the moon, etc etc etc.

 

A short but nasty fight later, I'm rounding a corner closer to that first rooftip. Look up to see SOMETHING hanging against the wall?! KEEEEEL IT!!

 

 

Several clips of precious ammo later I realize it's a corpse pinned to the wall. >.>

 

Ravenholm was a great section, I chopped more than one corpse in half using the gravity gun and the blades.

[Thorondor]

System Shock 2.

 

You turn a corner. The corridor stretches ahead of you with doors and openings to other rooms. You haven't been here before. Not being wholly lit itself, some light emanates, flickering, from adjoining rooms as well as from an area further down at the end.

 

Time here had taught you caution. Perfectly still, you try to see if anything stirs.

 

In the distance you hear what seem like faint ape-like vocalisations, in mixed notes of aimless whining, aimless anger, echoing down to you. Unseen lightbulbs continue their spasmodical repertoire of going off and on.

 

It's like a neat little asylum in a rather calm day. There's nothing wrong, really. You just have to get used to being alone. By yourself, the only marginally sane thing.

 

Staying pegged in place yields its results. You spot something; a hunched form, back to you, slowly moving away in the shadows, making little sounds to itself, oblivious as of yet of your presence.

 

It's close enough that, at any time now, it could turn around and spot you. Or you could make a noise and it will hear you. Running a single step, you know, would be a messy last mistake.

 

The mind races. You don't dare opening doors. Maybe you could just sit still and gradually be left behind.

 

No. You need to go where it's going. So you decide the absurd: inch along, crouching, staying low, getting ever closer to it from behind. There's absolutely no telling what else might lie in the areas ahead that could be disturbed if you make a sound. You'll be crossing open doorways, too.

 

The large lump of metal shoved in your belt and pressing itself against your hip is an empty handgun. What you hold in your grip is your last chance of survival. A heavy steel wrench painted in fading yellow.

 

It must be timed right. It must hit the head squarely in the downward swing. Bated breath, almost close enough to discern the creature's coating. Closer...

 

You feel like screaming. You stand (to lend weight to the blow), the creature senses something and turns shrieking. You do hit it, but with a glancing blow, and it lashes back.

 

You're horrified, bleeding, unthinking, and run madly past the thing, escaping forward, to the end of the corridor. Get away, get away, get away noooow!!

 

You splosh clumsily. You can't understand. Past the darker darkness ahead, two forms, something unmistakably previously human and rushing headlong to you with a strange, ungainly gait. You can almost feel the infection they carry, amid the blubbering utterances they spew... the madness.

 

It's narrow here. You don't know where you are. Half-running ankle-deep in what appears to be water. There are two doors to your left and nowhere else to flee, you enter the first.

 

One foot in the small division, you stop. It's a dead end.

 

Barely registering the surroundings still makes things evident for you in the blink of an eye: the restrooms. In disarray, water overflowing from there to the outside. This is one, next door is the other one. Doomed.

 

You exit to find them upon you at arm's length, ready to swing and claw.

 

In crazed desperation you too claw away helplessly, mindlessly...

 

::

 

You discover yourself wet. Wet yet. You must have crouched at the last moment, because crouching you cowardly were, but alive, in a very small, low, recess you had previously missed altogether.

 

Right there before you, verily towering, but unseeing - the two mournful assailants remained, as before, lost in the labyrinth of their deranged minds...

 

- The End -

 

[FullAuto]

Resident Evil 6 logo shenanigans.

[Pete]

Resident Evil 6 logo shenanigans.

 

More like a man in the front half of a giraffe outfit, but I can see it too.

[FullAuto]

That makes it worse.

[Sgt. Strike]

Fallout 3 really fraks up my mind. I can handle, easily, things like Half-Life 2, and a few other games, but after a while, Fallout 3 just gets to me, and rattles my nerves. Bioshock, no problems, Doom 3, well, a little, but after breaks from the game, it's all good. Other, similar, games, I'm gold. But I got tired of things jumping out at me in Fallout 3, when they were supposed to be dead.

[Matri]

You think that's bad? Try FO3 with Martigen's Mutant Mod.

 

Have fun sleeping with all the lights on and a couple of auto-turrets in the room.

[Sgt. Strike]

Next time I install FO3, I'm going to play in very small, well spaced, time, during day light hours. I personally would like to have something like a Duke Nukem voice over for the game, instead of scary, it could prove actually funny.

 

Matri, what I use is not just auto-turrets in the room, but in the hallway, spaced between laser trip mines at various angles, levels, etc. As well as roving robots armed to the teeth. And sleep? I sleep during the day, not at night, and I make sure I have protection and all weapons fully loaded, and close to hand. Any corpses when I wake, get dragged around in a pile, doused with flammable liquids, and set on fire to burn the night away.

 

As to things like Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, etc. those are fun games. The one I really like, though, is Shadowman.

[Space Voyager]

I'm gonna say it, and stand behind it - Alien vs. Predator 1 is the scariest game ever. Playing as a marine, naturally. Always watching the ammo counter, switching through weapons that actually have a number on the counter and nervously looking in all direction where to go and where a new goddamn Alien will appear. Minimalistic sound, dark corridors with alarms and flashing red lights. And than there is the moment when you encounter the facehuggers... And have one "embrace you"... Scary, SCARY sh...

 

Always worth the play. With all three races, but Marine is most tense, for obvious reasons.

[silencer_pl]

Have you all played Amnesia The Dark Descent?

[Space Voyager]

Have you all played Amnesia The Dark Descent?

No, but by the looks of it (trailer and a review) it looks pretty scary. It can't take away the no. 1 from me though as Alien has a history of fear in my life. Ever since I saw the chestbursting scene as a very little child.

[silencer_pl]

AvP1 for Marine had some moments, but there are far more scarier games. I didn't play but take also example from RE series, Alone in the Dark or Silent Hill.

[FullAuto]

There's a kind of siren in the Dead Space games, that makes a kind of SSHHHHHYYYEEEOW noise. Anyone know it? I seem to recall it ocurring a lot around heavy machinery, usually only a few times, like a "Commencing movement" and "Ending movement" alarm.

 

Because there's something near where I live that makes a very similar sound, I think it's a pedestrian crossing or something, and it shits me up all the time.

[silencer_pl]

I recall one scary moment in Doom3. I was walking in a corridor then I met a dead end. Suddenly all lights goes out and that creepy women voice. "They have taken my baby".

[Azrael Strife]

I'm gonna say it, and stand behind it - Alien vs. Predator 1 is the scariest game ever. Playing as a marine, naturally. Always watching the ammo counter, switching through weapons that actually have a number on the counter and nervously looking in all direction where to go and where a new goddamn Alien will appear. Minimalistic sound, dark corridors with alarms and flashing red lights. And than there is the moment when you encounter the facehuggers... And have one "embrace you"... Scary, SCARY sh...

 

Always worth the play. With all three races, but Marine is most tense, for obvious reasons.

 

Aliens Colonial Marines is just around the corner my friend...

[Space Voyager]

Aliens Colonial Marines is just around the corner my friend...

I know, I am tracking this game at AvPGalaxy. I'm having a hard time being all excited though, as I'll play ACM on a new computer. In a year or two, at the best.