For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies.
I had way too much fun playing it to be traumatized by it at the time, although when i was old enough to understand the horror of the whole “your memories and experience becoming food for a god-like being that has absolutely zero respect for your existance”, that did inform my perspective of other media such as Evangelion or Childhood’s end when I watched them for the 1st time.
What was your equivalent to this? I’ve heard the Resident Evil games are quite common for this but I want to hear your perspective.
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Growing up with the NES, horror games weren’t really a thing.
Some were spooky themed, but I doubt they qualify as horror by any standard. Like Castlevania, Ghost & Goblins and such.
The first real horror game I remember playing was Phantasmagoria. But I was a teen at that point, so it’s not really from my childhood.
Edit: Remembered my actual first horror game.
friday the 13th on nes is kinda spooky, especially the music
Resident Evil first then a few years later Silent Hill. Those two kept me awake many nights in my teen years.
The exact two that I thought of. I honestly enjoyed Silent Hill more than I expected and even liked it more than Resident Evil.
Doom 3 when I was a young teen, although much later it was Amnesia: The Dark Descent that got me more interested in horror games.
I really wanted to enjoy doom 3, but even 20 years later I haven’t finished the main campaign. Too many cheap jumpscares and the switching to the flashlight just to see, really put me off in the end. However, it was a pretty game for the time.
Amnesia is great, I haven’t finished that one either but it’s the good kind of horror, much more creepy and slow-burning.
Uff, hard to say, a lot of the ones comented before applied to me.
As old pc gamer still missing one of the most influent scariest games. Alone in the dark… when you have to deal with the monsters added to frustration of bad controls…
Also dark seed, with all those HR Gigger stuff…
This is the one that immediately popped into my mind. “Alone in the Dark” is the game that made me realize I don’t ever want to play another horror game again! :-D
Honestly I think that game has possibly one of the best ‘first rooms’ in horror game history, like even with the low poly graphics, that thing jumping through the window, giving you the impression that shit is happening and you need to move, and then doubles down with the zombie out of the floor, and that if you know what’s coming, you can prevent both. It’s a shame the final section is filled with janky-ass platforming.
The 7th Guest was the fist one I really cared about. I grew up watching horror movies from the age of 5, but never really played a horror game until I got The 7th Guest in a CD-ROM drive bundle for Christmas of '93. It’s not so much a horror survival game as it is a horror puzzle game, but a great game nonetheless. I’ll never forget the opening: “Old man Stauf built a house and filled it with his toys. Six Guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise…”
I remember this game too! The live action cut scenes were really creepy as a kid. I distinctly remember the hands trying to press through the painting and the ghost luring you deeper into the maze. My dad and I got stuck at the one Othello style puzzle with the amoebas. We went out and bought a guide to get past it, only to learn that the author of the guide couldn’t solve it either.
Fun fact - that ‘puzzle’ has its difficulty set by your processor’s speed. The game uses a set amount of time to determine the best move for the computer, and plays the best it’s got after that time. On slower processors of the time, it would only be able to calculate so many options before needing to come to a decision, but because it didn’t account for better hardware, the computer can make the best move every single time, causing it to be unwinnable even if the human player also plays perfectly.
Hell yeah, The 7th Guest! I was a little kid when we got this game and the family used to play together trying to solve the puzzles, good times. Gave me nightmares lol.
Btw we have [email protected]
I remember the first time I ever saw 7th Guest.
All I could think about, was this was the future!! The graphics (lol), oh man!! It was on a CD! That went in your computer
The game was kind of boring though, IMO anyways. Never really got into those 7th Guest, Myst games that deeply, as they could never hold my attention long enough.
Parasite Eve and Silent Hill 1. I became a big Silent Hill fan and then eventually came to play and enjoy some of the Resident Evil series.
These games came out in very late teenage-hood for me, but the amount of nights piled around the TV with the bros, pounding beers and bongers, and scaring ourselves…oh man the memories. Those games were absolute rippers, Parasite Eve 2 especially (except for that end boss)
Fallout 3 isn’t a horror game but man that atmosphere is crazy. I remember one of the very first missions has you go to galaxy news radio from the first settlement, megaton to talk to the DJ. It’s a really long journey through subway tunnels and ruined DC streets. The wasteland is pretty horrific and lots of enemies are disgusting and almost disturbing to look at.
As much as Bethesda gets shit for that game, they did an amazing job converting the atmosphere from the first two games into a 3D world.
Animal Crossing and the crushing weight of mortgages
You’re kidding, right? I wish a bank would be so lenient with me as to let me pay off my interest-free loan with terms of ‘whenever you feel like it, off the money you make as a freelance forager.’
Resident Evil 1. I saw bits and pieces of my older brother playing it on the PS1, but was too scared to watch very long. I remember the iconic opening up to the zombie looking over its shoulder and then standing up right in front of you.
I rented it years later for the Gamecube and tried to play it while my little brother watched. I was playing super slowly and wasting all my ammo on every zombie because I was so scared. I remember one part vividly, I was in the long hallway where you pick up the arrowhead and theres a zombie just around the corner. I could hear the zombie so I baited him down the hallway so I could shoot him from a distance. I started shooting when he was off-camera and coming towards me, and when he appeared at the bottom of the screen and his head rotting head being very large in the perpective, I said “woah look at his head” at the exact moment before I got a headshot and the zombies head exploded. Me and my brother were really shocked, so I just paused and quit out. That was enough resident evil for me.
More years later I got resident evil for the DS for cheap at EB games and it became the first game I ever beat repeatedly for different endings and faster times, eventually leading me to now say that horror is my favorite genre.
Also, I never got into Silent Hill as a kid but since playing them in recent years I think they perfectly encapsulate my love for that age of gaming and survival horror in general.
And The Evil Within 1 is the best survival-horror action game ever made. In all its extreme jankiness and difficulty. I did a challenge run of no keys, no upgrades, no cheese in the cheese spots, single segment, no dlcs items, AKUMU difficulty and got 5 deaths. Shit is hard.
Silent Hill was the first video game I really played all the way through on my own (and was also on the first console we ever owned). I had played Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Goldeneye, etc. at my friends’ houses, but that was the game that really started it all! I was already into horror stuff at that point, so it was right up my alley, though. I still think of Pyramid Head on foggy days.
Related, but PT was a fun experience when it first came out. Played it once on my own and then once with a group of friends!
I played Silent hill with my friend, whenever one of us got scared we threw the controller to the other one, there were times that we were playing 10 seconds each.
Same here! Silent hill 2 and 3. We usually played F-zero x or Diddy Kong racing to ease the atmosphere before wrapping up for the night. But it was so sparking creepy to go home at 3 in the night still…
Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the games that I always went over to a friend’s place to play, and when Resident Evil 3 came out I got my own copy, and it felt much more like “my game”.
Those, plus the original Silent Hill games (1 and 2) really helped define my taste in games, and they’ve got something I feel even the more recent throwback Survival Horror games don’t have, in that they, and the original Alone in the Dark, shared some DNA with the old Point and Click adventure games, like Monkey Island, and Myst. Puzzles based on collecting things, and combining or using things on or with other things, often in mind-bending, nonsensical ways.
The Spencer Mansion, RPD Station, Raccoon City, and Silent Hill were all big explorable areas that opened up as you progressed, and you really got to know them. Games these days feel like they’re scared of being accused of “backtracking”, so you never spend long enough in any one area to really get to know it.
I loved Resident Evil but it was the third one that really got me, with the havoc in the streets and the scare where you realize Nemesis can literally chase you from room-to-room and/or show up literally anywhere at any time.
System shock 2.
Hugo’s House of Horrors.
The dog and the butler (chef?) terrified me.
One of them would shank you, wouldn’t they? The butler? I’m struggling to remember the exact specifics, I just remember someone would kill you.
Yeah, if you walked in to the dining room the butler would cut your head off. If you walked out to the backyard the dog would tear you up.
Phantasmagoria.
No, not the more recent VR Game, Phasmaphobia. Phantasmagoria was a DOS PnC adventure game that absolutely scared the shit out of me when I was 9.
I remember that game. It came on like 7 CDs and was pretty much entirely FMV if I remember correctly.
Yep. It had a script over 550 pages long; about the same length as an average hollywood film and also had a huge 25 actor cast, many of which were classically trained actors.
And here I am only remembering the basement and the scary sounds that made me stop playing for a week.
Goddamn did that game push some limits. I guarantee something like that remade today would get an AO rating.
