Published , by Shack Staff
Published , by Shack Staff
Happy Halloween! A day late. Oops. Oh, well. The weather outside is getting frightful, so the Shacknews staff decided to gather 'round the campfire and tell spooky stories about the first games that spooked us. Read what we have to say--IF YOU DARE--and then tell us about your "Shinji Mikami's going to make me pee my pants!" moment in the Shacknews Chatty comments below.
Alright, so I'll make a bit of a confession. I've never been the type of guy to actively seek out horror games. And if I did find myself playing them, they'd never really "scare" me. Sure, I might get wigged out by elements of the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, but there was never anything that outright frightened me. Having said that, Alien: Isolation scared the bejeezus out of me. It's the game that haunts you with the spectre of a nigh-unkillable extraterrestrial, one that's in constant pursuit throughout the entirety of the game. And more than that, if you make too much noise or squirm too much in its presence, it will lunge at you and get right in your face, murdering you in gruesome fashion.
I still remember seeing this game for the first time at the Game Developers Conference several years ago and I'm not embarrassed to admit that I was one of the handful of media attendees who had their hair nearly turn white while playing this game. The Alien's sudden movements and its tendency to strike completely out of nowhere make this the scariest game I've ever played and the first one to truly scare me out of my wits.
I still remember the night I rented Resident Evil 2. I had driven out to my local Hollywood Video to get a copy. It was two towns over from where I lived back in the long long ago and by the time I got home to pop in the game the day had turned into a very dark and spooky night. I was the only one home and all the lights in the apartment were off. I booted up the game thinking that a rugged manly man (I was 17) like myself would be able to handle it. I noped out before I could even get through the police station.
I still to this day can’t really explain why it got to me so much. I’d played horror games before, but I guess this was just some sort of perfect storm of the right game in the right environment to really make me jump. I’d also factor in the weird-ass control mechanics that the series is famous for because they can be panic-attack inducing all on their own. I’ve played Resident Evil games before and since Resident Evil 2, but if we’re talking first-time spooks, it will always be my number one.
My gut response to this question is the infamous corridor of Resident Evil where dogs crash through windows and charge at you. If I really think back, there were games that scared me worse, and--germane to this question--scared me first. The earliest of those I can recall is Veil of Darkness.
Released in 1993, Veil of Darkness was billed as an action-RPG, though it’s far from the mold that Diablo would set a few years later. You don’t gain experience, level up, upgrade gear, or advance skills. Veil is more analogous to Zelda’s action-adventure template, where you advance by solving puzzles and finding items in areas as they open up for exploration.
The premise is that you, an amateur pilot, are flying over a valley when your instruments go haywire and a bat splats against your windshield. Your plane goes down, and you find yourself trapped in a valley caught in a curse. Night never ends, and no one can leave, which means the townspeople you encounter are unaware of modern inventions such as the airplane that dropped you in their midst.
To escape, you have to fulfill the demands of a prophecy by solving puzzles. Doing so involves brush-ups with supernatural creatures such as vampires, banshees, and werewolves, just to name a few. One of the puzzles concerns a werewolf killing off townsfolk, so you have to search for clues and accuse the right NPC of being a shapeshifter. If you’re wrong, they’ll laugh you off. If you’re right, the beast will transform and charge you. The revelation and subsequent transformation can be quite shocking if you were just lobbing out guesses and were unprepared for the attack, as 10-year-old David was.
From areas blanketed in perpetual darkness to the horror-movie monsters that haunt them, to a moody soundtrack and spooky death scenes, Veil of Darkness always made me tense. It may not hold up, but I’ll remember it as one of my fondest, and most terrifying, gaming experiences.
The first game to scare me was Resident Evil 2. Not the 2019 version, but the original that came out in 1998, although I have no clue how close to release I played it.
What I do know is that I was in grade 12 and it was a particularly awful time. My family was going through something rather heartbreaking. Because of this my mom headed to her sister’s across the country to take a mental break, and I was left with the house to myself for a couple weeks. In the time I was alone, my best friend’s mother died suddenly and far too young. Four of us spent a weekend camped out in my living room playing Resident Evil 2 from start to finish.
I’m not good with scary games. I enjoy scary movies and some scary games, but most of them are not for me. Resident Evil 2 was different. First, it’s a lot easier to play a scary game with your friends there. Secondly, it was the best game I’d ever played at the time. There was a mix of combat and puzzles and a bunch of teenage guys covering up their fear with jokes and laughter. I recall appreciating having those guys there because playing that game, as terrifying as it was for me, was keeping my mind off other things, and I was able to cope with the game and life at the same time because of that.
For better or worse, I was exposed to the Friday the 13th movies (as well as its contemporaries) at a rather young age. I found slasher flicks to be lots of fun. As was the case in the late 1980s, movie and video game consumption was done via rental in my household. On most weekends, I looked forward to the trips to the video store. I was mesmerized by horror flick VHS box art and rentals were the way I got to play most NES games.
One weekend, Friday the 13th for the NES showed up on the rental rack and selecting it was a no brainer. The game drops you into the shoes of several counselors at Camp Crystal Lake, the location where most Friday the 13th movies take place. The central antagonist of the series, Jason Vorhees, is running wild across the game map and you must defend the camp’s children from him while not getting murdered yourself.
A combination side-scroller and third-person behind the back (when you are inside cabins, etc) suspense thriller, Friday the 13th suffers from faults inherent in many licensed games, but it succeeds in one area — jump scares. While playing the game, Jason Vorhees can pop up out of nowhere and every time it happens, the occasion is celebrated by a loud sound effect that, when coupled with anxiety of the player’s impending doom, make things pretty scary, no matter how many times it happens. Due to NES limitations, Jason is represented in purple coveralls and a blue mask, but somehow everything still works to make me hop out of my seat 30 years later.
In 2001, a masterpiece was released called Halo: Combat Evolved. Bungie, always the king of storytelling and universe-building, was able to take me on a journey across the galaxy to an alien artifact. I was lost in the world, living every moment. A victorious battle was exhilarating, each death of a marine a soul-crushing loss. But I also felt something else: terror.
343 Guilty Spark, the sixth level in Halo: Combat Evolved, offered a dramatic shift in the tone. You had gone from fighting in bright vibrant areas full of action, to the creepy and eerie dripping of a swamp. Enemies appeared on the periphery of your vision, gone before you could make out what they were. Hallways were empty save for blood and bodies. There was a deep foreboding and sense of dread. I had never felt anything like it.
When Jenkins collapsed into my arms, I was taken, hook, line and sinker. His helmet camera showed me true horror. The terror rose in my chest as I realized the monsters I was about to face. I was trapped, dozens of miles beneath the surface, and I had to fight my way out. Clawing my way to the top like the undead clawing out of a grave. I had encountered The Flood.
It was the first time I felt true terror in a game.
Listen. As a kid, I kept myself a safe distance away from scary games and movies. However, I was always taken by fantastical worlds (see: Harry Potter and Star Wars). I also loved to watch my older brother play games that were a bit too complex for my young mind.
I remember the day he brought home Fable in 2004. The box art and description sounded like something akin to Lord of The Rings, so you can imagine my excitement to see this story unfold.
For those who may need a refresher, Fable opens with some brief narration that sets the stage for our protagonist - a seemingly simple boy living in a generic village. However, on his sister’s birthday, the village is attacked by bandits. These bandits kill your entire family, including your sister. At a mere 6 years old, I found this subject matter to be so unsettling. The imagery of decapitated and deceased civilians and the village burning were disturbing. I didn’t watch my brother play Fable after that. Moving forward, whenever he popped the disc in, I calmly excused myself and left to play Pokémon Emerald.
This memory stuck with me so strongly that I didn’t touch the Fable series until nearly a decade later when Fable III hit the “Games with Gold” program.
Just hearing O Fortuna as the game’s intro kicked off scared the crap out of me. The game is super campy, but it has some very violent moments that were pretty graphic for its time. This and RE2 are probably the earliest times I was ever genuinely scared by a game.
Probably Silent Hill 4: The Room. I'm very hard to scare when it comes to games (or anything else related to horror). I'm more terrified of having a bug touch me. Or going to the doctor. I was pretty terrified of that game though, mostly because it kept me out of my comfort zone. I'm used to having a safe area in games, and those are usually right around save points or close to them in Silent Hill. When I realized that ghosts (that you can't immediately or permanently kill at first) could start appearing in Henry's apartment and that I wasn't safe from them even if I was just trying to regroup and save, that really got my heart racing. It felt like my personal space had been invaded, and I had no idea what to do.
I can still remember 17-year old me, nestled up in front of a crappy laptop I’d bought with my high school graduation money, literally sitting on the edge of my equally crappy computer chair, my face planted into the screen as I explored the dingy and decrepit hallways of the Von Braun as ghoulish enemies lurked around every corner.
Despite being a game created in the late 90s, System Shock 2 didn’t simply devolve into jump scares to try to get something out of you. Instead, it painted the entire game with an oozing atmosphere that left you unsettled and unsure of whether what you were doing was the best thing or thing. It’s a feeling that not many games have managed to reproduce for me, and one that I hold onto quite dearly.
System Shock 2 is by far one of my favorite games of all time, and it’s a game that I’ve revisited often over the past nine or so years. But, no matter how many times I play it, I can’t seem to get rid of that uneasiness that settles over me or that fear that grips my heart as I slink my way through the Von Braun. A fear that has been a welcome companion each time I have booted up the game since 2010.