In the spirit of Halloween, what better way than to go over some of the games, and moments, that crippled me with fear?In the spirit of Halloween, what better way than to go over some of the games, and moments, that crippled me with fear? Nowadays games don’t tend to give me the jumps, but back in the day a good horror game could cause me hours of lost sleep. Here are the games that did it best.
Dead Space
This has been the most recent game that I’ve played to truly get me whimpering. From beginning to end, this game does what all good horror games aspire to do, and use the player’s imagination and tension to make the slow moments between fights absolutely unbearable.
Claustrophobia has never been an issue for me, but apparently, in the confines of the Ishimura, terrors I never knew I had were born. That, and a crushing lack of ammo for my trusted plasma cutter, brought out some of the most embarrassing screams that have ever left my mouth.
I thought I was too old for a game to scare me. Dead Space broke me.
Resident Evil 4-The Chainsaw Sisters
This game, for the most part, didn’t scare me. I felt in control the whole game, even when the first chainsaw man shows up looking for Leon’s blood. Of course all that changed when the game introduced the Chainsaw Sisters showdown.
Now, I didn’t have the option to just play with my food, so to speak, like I did with the first chainsaw boss. Now there were two maniacs wandering around looking for me. Focus on one for too long and the other was likely to get behind you and kindly remove your head from your torso.
A revving chainsaw has never sounded the same to me since.
Resident Evil (Gamecube Remake)
What’s this? Two games from the same series in one list? That’s the beauty of the Resident Evil series. I missed the original Resident Evil game when it initially came out, but picked up the remake on day one. I spent hours and hours searching that damn mansion in a panic for keys, emblems and other ridiculous unlocking mechanisms.
The constant back and forth brought out the most horrifying element of that game: the Crimson Heads. I thought I was ready for everything in that game. When I found out that unless you disposed of each zombie by burning their bodies, they would return as the much faster and stronger Crimson Heads. My blood pressure started to rise. I hadn’t done that to a single zombie. Enemies twice as deadly now inhabited every room I entered that I assumed was safe because of previous visits.
In essence, I made that game much harder, and more terrifying, than it should have been. I suck.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
I’m going to let you in on a secret: timed missions in video games stress me out. Ever since I was a kid, I have hated these missions to the point where I would get so stressed it would lead to actual terror. As I’m sure many of you may know, the entirety of Majora’s Mask is a timed mission.
Not only did the constant counting down create an ever-present fear for me, but I think we can all agree that Majora’s Mask is a pretty dark game. A giant, mean-muggin’ moon was going to fall on this town, killing everyone, and the only way to stop it was to painfully and excruciatingly alter Link’s body over and over and over.
That game is fucked up.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (NES)
I’m sure you’re wondering why the hell this game is on here. Let me tell you a story.
When I was little I watched E.T. and became haunted by him. No, I wasn’t scared of that stumpy little shit for the majority of the movie, but when you see the dying, white E.T. being eaten by a raccoon in the woods, I lost it. The scene later where that gross mound is lying in a bathtub reaching for Elliott only cemented my fear for years.
The fear got so bad that eventually I became convinced that this terminal E.T. lived in the storage room of my already creepy basement. Conveniently my NES was also in the basement. One day my mom brought home a rented game for me. You guessed it, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the NES. Now, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I could ignore the game and risk my mom never renting me a game again, or I could play the game of my most-feared foe while convinced a dying version of him was watching me. I chose to play the game, and to this day, it remains both the worst, and most horrifying, gaming moment of my life.
Life is hard, guys.
