Games that Have Made You Jump -A Halloween Tribute

[McMurphy]

The leaves are dead, and the wind has returned to its habit of blowing cutting cold gusts at night. No wonder Halloween is celebrated on the 31st of this month. To drive home the point further, the superstitious are rewarded an extra treat (or is it trick?) of a Friday the 13th tomorrow.

What noteworthy games have you played that perfectly attribute themselves to the same elements of macabre? What game has made you jump more than any horror film?

For myself, I really didn't play any haunting video games until Resident Evil 2. Sure, I remember playing Castlevania III between rounds of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, which weren't many when living in the country, but the game wasn't scary. It merely felt like a homage to the tone of the celebration. Aside from accidently starting a fire in the microwave while playing the game (a story I will not go into now), Castlevania never made me jump.

But Resident Evil 2 did. I would pop the N64 ported game into the system at night, turn off all the lights, and hook the sound up through surround speakers. Killing hordes of zombies wasn't the scary part. It was the moments of build up when the game cleverly attempted to lull players into a false sense of security yet keeping them a bit unnerved by supplying bone-chilling music (or lack there of), lighting, and isolated echoes. Just when events started to feel like more of a "search and seizure" mission, a, let's say, undead canine would smash through a large mirror: shattering the tempo that the game had taken the time to establish.

 

[C. Craig R. McNeil]

Aliens versus Predator. I played a demo of this game a few years back and I never bought the full game cause it kept making me jump! The shadows and aliens dropping down on me just freaked me out completely! Doom 3 also gave me the willies.

 

[Green]

AvP playing as the marine was hard on the nerves. After five minutes of that game, I would be sitting as far from the monitor as possible, with my arms at full stretch to the keys.

Scariest game I ever played was Silent Hill. Creepy and weird (I always had this feeling I was being watched). It was a shame that the second game was an almost carbon copy of the original. I'd like to see the film, but fear they would destroy my memory of the game.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Resident Evil 2 got me a few times as well.
The best (worst?) being when in the Police Station. You go past this corridor near the STAR office towards the stairs. This is the corridor where you first meet the Licker monster. Anyway, after using this corridor safely the entire game, towards the end you run past it and suddenly zombies start smashing through the windows. I'm pretty sure I mastered levitation briefly for those few seconds...

Parasite Eve 2 for the PS1 had a few twitchy moments too.

 

[Joel007]

Half life and Half life 2, usually one of those walking potatos jumping from around a corner
Silent hill made me jump out of my skin a few times, then again i was playing it at midnight.
and quake 4, when that huge thing punched through the wall next to my head! eep!

i killed them all though.

 

[pixter]

The first Thief game made me extremely jumpy. The sound on those games are incredible and it's kind of unnerving wandering around listening to zombies moaning and just waiting for one of them to pop out from behind a corner....

 

[Wiggum]

Resident Evil 4 got me several times.

Especially when you would be slowly walking around a town or somesuch, hearing the baddies moaning in the distance, keeping your eyes at shoulder level, not paying attention to where you were walking and then

BAM!

You'd step in a bear trap.

Spooked the bejeebus out of me the first time it happened.

 

[Green]

The bit in Doom 3 near the beginning where you look into the mirror in the bathroom and then it all goes Nightmare On Elm Street. Got to be one of the biggest jumps.

 

[the_faery_queen]

phantasmagoria 2, for the pc. scared the pants out of me. couldn'ty play it alone as you never knew when something was going to happen in a sudden jumpy way.

 

[Azathoth]

Doom 3 was pretty freaky. I could only play it for small stretches at a time before my nerves wore out on me.

Call of Cthulhu had a couple *extremely* well-done moments, but it went downhill after the first two hours of gameplay.

I thought Thief: Deadly Shadows had some awesome freaky points; the Cradle, the zombie infested ship, and the twist regarding the Hag were all brilliant, and spine-tingling.

 

[Green]

Call of Cthulhu had a couple *extremely* well-done moments, but it went downhill after the first two hours of gameplay.

You're not joking. I gave up on that game after a while, because it became something it wasn't supposed to be.

Like you say, first two hours were bloody great.

 

[Lucien21]

I can't believe nobody mentioned it.

System Shock 2

Scariest game ever.

Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

 

[Valko]

What about the orig Res Evil when the dogs jump through the window in the corridor?

 

[Jason_Taverner]

Res Evil 4

 

[radioactivemouse]

Nice topic.

I'll say Dino Crisis for PS1. There was just a lot of moments where raptors jumped through windows trying to scare the crap out of you.

 

[Azathoth]

You're not joking. I gave up on that game after a while, because it became something it wasn't supposed to be.

Like you say, first two hours were bloody great.

Lol, I never finished it, either. I mean, honestly, the shoot-out with the Deep Ones was incredibly lame. A mere man with a shotgun can kill a creature from the Cthulhu mythos with little difficulty? Puh-leez. But that hotel...*shivers*

 

[Steffi]

Doom 3...playing in the dark with the headphones on late at night...that would really freak me out.

 

[McMurphy]

Fatal Frame?

Although I have only played a little of the first installment, I have heard that the Fatal Frame franchise can be quite creepy.

Below is a link to the introduction sequence from the second Final Frame game. Can anyone tell which one is the best to pick up, or must they be played in the correct order?

Fatal Frame II's Intro

 

[Barristan]

The game itself wasnt that freaky at all really, but i remember clearly with Dungeon master on the Atari ST a moment when I very nearly soiled myself.

One of the later levels has just a Dragon in it. My party had entered the level and I was doing the cursory sneaking round to see what I could see, when I heard it roar from behind me. It was like a very deep belch and I lost control oof the mouse. I managed to turn round to face it within a few seconds, just in time to see a corridor sized fireball hit me and kill every one of my party.

I was a pile of bones and a gibbering wreck for a while after that, lmao!!!

Far Cry on the PC made me panic actually, when the little creatures start jumping round corners, it really gets to you.

Cant beat Silent Hill on the PS1 for atmosphere though, that just creeped you out. The film has actually captured this mood perfectly, but the storyline is quite different.

 

[Saltheart]

REMake for the gamecube scared the living whiz out of me, especially when those crimson heads suddenly got up and went for you. RE4 scared my when you meet those wolverine guys for the first time, or the first time you come in contact with the regenerators and iron maidens; also the chainsawers are NOT cool.

Eternal Darkness had a few disturbing moments, too, like when you look into the bathub, or that chapter in the church during WWI.

Silent Hill beats everything I've ever played in scaring me to the point of insanity. *Shudders*