What Makes A Video Game Scary

Lighting, lighting, lighting. Lighting in scary games is like location in real estate. The original FEAR was a lighting masterpiece. Stalker SoC does very well with lighting too. Doom 3 had lighting completely wrong by trying to scare you with the darkness rather than scaring you with the lights.
 
Doom 3 was awful.

It had a handful of well done, genuinely scary moments, but it can't make up for the fact that the developers decided to overuse monster (re)spawns for cheap scares, plus the "story" and gameplay in general sucked. After awhile you just get sick of endless dark corridor's with the same handful of monsters jumping out at you.
 
FEAR 1 for me, I didn't expect a lot of it, in FEAR 2 I kinda knew what to expect in the series. FEAR 1 though, man, played it at night with all the lights off and volume cranked. I loved it.
 
AvP 2 when playing as human.

FEAR 1 and FEAR 2 with its atmosphere and sounds. The school level in FEAR 2 is the only level I have ever played, that I finished sweating :)

Clive Barker's Undying.

Doom 3 had its moments too, but the ones above are those that I consider to have mastered the scare factor in a game.
 
aKrippler said:
Its just when I compare it to other horror games it doesnt even touch them IMO. FEAR is too much running around blasting shit, what is there to be afriad of if you know whatever is around the corner you wont have a problem just running around aimlessly blasting shit? In a real life situation you wouldnt run out guns a blazing like a hollywood action hero.

Wich is why I loved penumbra so much. The first time you encounter an enemy in it you instantly go to hide. TBH I hid from it so much that I didnt even entirely know WHAT it was I was hiding from until the second chapter of the game. That feeling of not being able to see somethign coming closer and closer to you. You can hear it right on the otherside of that barrell, but dont know if its looking your way or not. The sound gets louder and louder but you dare not look because you know if you do you will get too scared and give away your position.

Thats what makes a good Horror game IMO.

Remember in Resident evil, finding a group of 10 zombies and knowing that they would kill you before you could kill them all because of how shittly the game controls worked? Thats scary to me, having an actual realistic gimp. (In RE it was the shitty controls, in Penumbra it was the fact that you are just human and theres no way your going to fight a zombie dog one on one without a gun.)
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I found with FEAR that the whole "I are teh invincible supersoldier!!" mechanic made the game scarier... because you can go from super-awesome to completely at the mercy of the supernatural at the drop of the hat. It looses the effect after a few replays, but the first time through was some of the best horror gaming I can remember. Penumbra looks really interesting, I haven't played it yet but it sounds like it'll be great. I can't say the same for the RE series, the controls totally killed the immersion for me, instead of getting scared I just got mad, which wasn't scary at all :D They got better controls in RE4 but then the opposite problem, the controls were good enough that you never really felt helpless. RE4 is actually my go-to game now for "run and gun" zombie exploding fun.
 
HEAD CRABS I must have jumped out of my seat a bunch of times while playing HalfLife.
 
Clock Tower was one of the very first games that scared me really bad....

You had absolutely no power.. no weapons, no nothing.

And you could hear the shears louder and louder as the freaky enemy got closer and closer.

No matter where you hid he could find you.
 
Silus said:
AvP 2 when playing as human.
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I can't believe no one has mentioned this game until now. This game ranked right up there.
The motion tracker was supposed to help you. It only made things worse. The bip bip bip noise it made would mask any noise the creatures did make. You knew they were coming, but never sure from where. 1 alien on the scanner could actually be 5. You would assume they would pop out of the floor or ceiling like in the movie. Then they always leaped out at you from the one place you never guess...the shadow right in front of you.

On a side note, I can't wait for the new AvP game coming spring 2010. Its going to be DX11 also. There's also Aliens: Colonial Marines being developed, but I hear its pushed back.
 
computerpro3 said:
GOOD SOUND. It's the single most immersive aspect of a scary/horror gfame.
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Yeah, System Shock 2 had fairly mediocre graphics even when it was released, but the sound design was exceptional. Those damned screeching monkeys...

Loved the original FEAR too, but the expansions/sequel tried much too hard and missed the mark.
 
Immersion and sound.

I personally hate games like Doom3 that try to be scary by RAWR POPPING AROUND A CORNER WITH A LOUD NOISE. That's startling, not scary. Not scary, not fun, just lame and boring while extremely repetitive. FEAR was creepy as hell in my opinion.
 
Rofl-Mic-Lofl said:
Immersion and sound.

I personally hate games like Doom3 that try to be scary by RAWR POPPING AROUND A CORNER WITH A LOUD NOISE. That's startling, not scary. Not scary, not fun, just lame and boring while extremely repetitive. FEAR was creepy as hell in my opinion.
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I put too much thought into video games, some people just ignore stuff.
 
FEAR and Doom 3 were really the only games that I considered scary, and they were scary in completely different ways
 
The scariest game that I've ever played was Aliens versus Predators. It was scary mainly because I knew what the Aliens were capable of and finding myself in areas where I couldn't get away from them, or risked falling to my death while they were running and lunging at me.

F.E.A.R. was the creepiest game that I played and rather enjoyed because of the paranormal teasing where you would see something but never encounter that something soon afterwards.

I played Doom 3 for a while and found it to be hardly scary. Clearing a room only to have monsters reappear in it to attack you from behind, come on john, you can do better than that!

Atmosphere, teasing you with sightings, and seeing a moving shadow on the wall while hearing some nasty sounding noise and then finding yourself in pitch black darkness (one of the F.E.A.R. expansions) usually does the trick for me.

I find most horror games to far less scary than they are billed to be. I wish the developers would actually do some research to find out what truly is scary instead of hyping their game up to be something that it is not.
 
Resident Evil 2.
The portrait on the wall and lamps puzzle.
Everything is all nice and quiet, then that giant , slow walking, thing busts THROUGH the prerendered wall, and starts walking towards you SLOWLY. Unload your ENTIRE ammo, and that moth%$#%@! is still walking and backs you to a corner.

Game turn off.
 
Amateurs...

Quake was the scariest. I've not been more freighted since. NIN sound track topped it off.

Wolfenstein is second in a close contest with Half-Life 1/2.
 
computerpro3 said:
GOOD SOUND. It's the single most immersive aspect of a scary/horror gfame.
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Turn up the volume and turn down the lights. Works almost everytime.

That and prices of games these days, scares me to think how much I've spent.
 
Playing at 3am in a creaky house where everyone is "asleep." while wearing headphones. WTF WAS THAT NOISE. did something in the room just move or was that my imagination. FEAR is my favorite of all time.

My roommate actually shat his pants playing FEAR, it's that awesome.
 
unfortunateson said:
Alone in the Dark...original PC version, spooky stuff for a kid!
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played it on the PS1, was really scary specially the music, now it’s hard to be scared!, fear 2 had some scary scenes though specially when you play it alone … in the dark.
 
i cant believe system shock 2 was only mentioned twice.

it wasnt perfect, but, no other game ever had me feeling such despair and hopelessness. and the sound was amazing.
 
Doom 3 scared the shit of me on level 3. Playing it at 2 am with headphones on, lights off and totally immeresed in the game. Fear and Fear 2 made skin crawl, but FEAR scared me more than FEAR 2.

Little girls walking on ceilings... yeah.. fucking scared me.
 
The Penumbra games were the first to scare me, bioshock creeped me out in the beginning but that faded really fast.
 
Games spend too long long prepping you for whats coming, takes all the surprise out of it.... The only thing scary that can happen in a game is when your in a BAD situation totally unprepared, but the effect has to be sudden.. The lack of NOT knowing what to do is where fear gets involved..

I remember the first time I ran thru RE3 and the Nemisis popped into a corridor and not only was I not prepared for a fight, there was no way at that point to know what to do, first instinct is RUN, as fast as you fxckin can, never knowing which door on the way back may lead to your doom.. RE2 had a couple points where dogs would pop thru a window, one in front and one behind..

Games these days spend too long letting you know whats going to happen and being predictable.. L4D to me has done a great job with making games less predictable and keeping online play fun because it weeds out freelancer retards that think they are the shit..

I see a lot of games that set the stage for great thrills but have EXTREMELY poor execution.. BioShock and FEAR just to name a couple.. Cutscenes always seem to have the most intense action, and you always just sit and watch that crazy moment, not play..
 
also, They give you no reason to be scared anymore..
All that happens is they throw a big scary monster at you and thats it.. No real reason to be scared other than its bigger than you.. blah.. Nothin a few hundred rounds wont fix.. In essence, GAMES ARE TOO EASY! There is no element of fear built up around a certain entity.. If they gave me a good reason to fear doors, then Id fuckin fear doors..
 
If you want to fear doors and what may be behind them, play Penumbra, as others have said. It was recently 5 dollars on the D2D anniversary sale and I finally picked it up. Since you have to use the mouse to actually turn objects and open doors and swing your weapon, it's quite immersive. It makes you slowly move the mouse to open a door, wondering what's behind it, all the while the surround sound is making you hear things you may or may not ever run in to.
 
Resident Evils that had pre-rendered backgrounds were all scary since it looked real. The sound and sudden random events usually do it ;).
 
I gave up on Penumbra: Overture when it descended into endless pupycide, I'll try it again one day. Penumbra: Black Plague certainly hits the mark and keeps the suspense running for a good length of time, a fine game and good horror/suspense.

Dead Space? A collection of notionally frightening elements put together in a seemingly random fashion, at best a waste of opportunity, at worst horror by numbers.

I enjoyed F.E.A.R. I think it got a lot of things right. Besides I always find spooky little girls, well, err, spooky. The back story was well conceived too.

WinkyDaRabidElf said:
Thief 3, The Cradle level.
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Something of a classic I believe though I'm not a Thief fan. Instead I offer 'The Hotel' from VTM:Bloodlines as an example of horror: how to get it right. In fact the entire game presents a number of well executed examples of various horror genre, it's one of my favourites and well worth taking for a spin.

As an answer to the topic question. Good writing, good direction, attachment to the player character and atmosphere - lots of it. Twenty grotesque creatures jumping out of a wall is 15+ Wack-A-Mole.
 
WinkyDaRabidElf said:
Thief 3, The Cradle level.
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This is exactly what I was going to say. It's what I consider to be the most frightening experience I've ever had in gaming.

http://gillen.cream.org/thecradle.pdf


Another game that had some "rough" sections in it is Condemned (the first one. I haven't played number 2).


FEAR never really did anything for me. The atmosphere was creepy but I always had an arsenal of weapons with me. Same with Doom3. After I realized that there was going to be a monster behind every single door it lost all of it's scare factor.
 
The orginal Doom was the first game that made me actually turn my head at the monitor making me believe I could actually see around the corner by doing so....that was the first game that got me "involved".

The first time you run into the Flood in Halo was very creepy. Of course Halo has always been top notch on sound quality and as many pointed out, that adds quite a bit to the feeling. But the music changes to much grimmer tone, you hear that weird crinkling Flood noise, crazy shit jumping out of every nook and cranny and you realize your kinda low on ammo. Thats why I love Halo.
 
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