Virtual Fear: 10 Scary Videogames, Part 2

I loved scary movies as a child, and I love them as an adult, for reasons both same and different. Horror captures some communal subconscious memory we’re all connected to. It’s about adrenalin, mystery, and trying to find something out about something that is unknowable.

As an adult we still like horror for the same reason it intrigued us as children and adolescents. We also probably take comfort from the fact that as adults, we know that there are true horrors in the world. Fear and dread of a fiction or an iconic, communal boogieman are an entertainment, and perhaps in some way divert us from thinking about the deepest, darkest, real fears we all hold in dark closets of our conscious minds.

Anyone with children will know what I’m talking about here. The thought of anything happening to your child is true horror. The other stuff is an amusement park ride.

Horror fans have an interactive venue in horror videogames that gives an immersive experience that books and movies can’t duplicate, and that’s why we can’t get enough of them. Here’s the rest of the list:

Blair Witch Vol. I (PC)

Now you are really scratching your heads. First Quake, then System Shock 2, now this?

This trilogy was an unabashed attempt to make money off the popularity of the movie. These games were not very good on the whole, and they soon took up residence on the $5 rack at most software stores.

The exception was the first of the trilogy, developed by Terminal Reality, the company that brought you Nocturne (and unfortunately the Bloodrayne series as well). *all three Blair Witch games used the Nocturne engine

Blair Witch Vol. I was actually a crossover between the Nocturne and Blair Witch universes. The story wasn’t horrible, and if you had played and liked Nocturne (like I had), it was actually quite good for a budget game.

Favorite moment: this is the first game since Resident Evil that made me pause, get up and turn on lights. You had to spend a lot of time in those woods, and sometimes you would be in the woods at night and it would get darker. I mean really dark. And you would hear things. And things would find you. Once you went through the first darkening, you always felt a great sense of dread when it happened again.

Silent Hill 2 (PS2, Xbox)

Is this my favorite game of all time? Maybe. I think so. This game brought the series into the next generation of console, and the experience was all the better for it. Everything that made the original great, but more polished, more fleshed out. A great sophomore effort.

Favortie moment: Shovelhead. ‘nuff said.

Fatal Frame (PS2, Xbox)

A pronounced J-horror flavor and feel. Instead of weapons you are armed with a camera that dispatches ghosts, and for combat you need to switch from third person to first person perspective. The stories and the ghosts are very Japanese, and the game is filled with great scares. It’s the closest thing to a videogame ghost story.

Favorite moment: missing all those opportunities for ghost photos because I wasn’t quick enough on the draw.

Silent Hill IV: The Room (PS2, Xbox)

People will say this isn’t a true Silent Hill game, and to them I say bah! As a prisoner of your apartment, holes to someplace bad keep appearing in your rooms. And knowing that bad things wait on the other side, you go anyway.

Favorite moment: for the whole game your apartment, though a prison, has been a safe haven. When you came back from a trip to the Bad Place, you could always stop and catch your breath in the apartment before your next trip. Until that time you got back home and found that the apartment wasn’t safe anymore, and never would be again.

Siren (PS2)

If I have my facts straight this game is the brainchild of one of the original Silent Hill team members that left the team. Like Silent Hill, this game has (surprise!) a siren. It’s not as cool as the siren in Silent Hill, which is kind of a detriment since they named the game after it, but it’s pretty cool.

The premise of this game is not to run around and kill every bad thing in your way. It’s a stealth game. Sort of a horror Splinter Cell. You have to sneak around to accomplish your goals, and way more often than not, you do not want to engage in combat.

Bogged down by a sometimes frustrating difficulty level and an arcane, twisted level progression that was determined by what actions you accomplished in a given mission, this game is not a classic in the way that Resident Evil and Silent Hill are. It is, however, a worthwhile endeavor for horror fans.

Favorite moment: the few times you actually have a gun. They are few and far between.

Doom III (PC, Xbox)

Doom is and always has been a horror FPS. Doom III makes good on the promise of that idea in a way the sprite-based earlier games never could.

Doom III is claustrophobic, dark and fierce. I like Doom III more as a FPS than I do a horror game, but of all of iD’s efforts it has the best single player experience.

Favorite moments: meeting all of the old enemies again for the first time.

I am going to throw one honorable mention out there, and this one may also make some of you scratch your heads. Based on incredible sound design alone, check out Doom 64 for the Nintendo 64 if you ever have a chance. This game makes the best use of ambient noise and sound effects to generate fear that has yet been accomplished in a videogame.
A truly outstanding audio experience, and a good Doom game to boot.

It’s fun to be scared. It reminds us of all the irrational fears we have overcome in our lifetimes, and also reminds us that there could be, there maybe, there is something to fear.

Remember how that basement room scared the death out of you as a child? How you always had to have all the lights on down there? How you ran upstairs when you were finished with what brought you down there in the first place?

You’re grown now, and you’ve overcome such childish foibles. You could calmly find your way to the stairs in pitch blackness if you found yourself down there in the dark, and it wouldn’t bother you at all because you’re all grown up. There’s nothing to fear down there. Is there?

Maybe there is. Maybe the seven year old you was right, and there is something about that room that just isn’t right. Maybe it’s downright bad. Maybe there is something malevolent there. Watching. Waiting. Maybe.

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• 10 Videogames That Changed Everything – Part 1
• Play Doom and Doom2 Online

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