Creep-Out in Video Games.

[I-chi]

Hell, that said about Human-PLUS, one could also include (if applicable) the cutscene for when you fail the final mission.

Spoiler: Spoiler: Read at your own risk

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Both great examples as well, particularly the Murakumo Escapee; and if you recollect that mission as well, it was also atmospherically unsettling; being at the top of a destitute tower with only the sound of the wind in the background, and the escapee's own thrusters making this distinctly high pitched whirring sound. Not to mention what he says, hell if every instance where you encounter a test subject gone out of control isn't creepy as hell, it makes you consider the implications of what exactly was being done to them to cause them to go crazy.

Spoiler

That and the whole nature of the Controller AI and the Nine Balls being created to prevent a Raven from rising above it

 

[Jaimas]

Both great examples as well, particularly the Murakumo Escapee; and if you recollect that mission as well, it was also atmospherically unsettling; being at the top of a destitute tower with only the sound of the wind in the background, and the escapee's own thrusters making this distinctly high pitched whirring sound. Not to mention what he says, hell if every instance where you encounter a test subject gone out of control isn't creepy as hell, it makes you consider the implications of what exactly was being done to them to cause them to go crazy.

Spoiler

That and the whole nature of the Controller AI and the Nine Balls being created to prevent a Raven from rising above it

More so when you consider that the first guaranteed Human Plus you actually fight, Escapee aside, is Losvaise, who will flat-out murder your ass during the mission to just cause as much chaos as possible during the diversionary op. Virtually every one of them you encounter as part of the story is tinged with tragedy and horror.

 

[c-no]

Both great examples as well, particularly the Murakumo Escapee; and if you recollect that mission as well, it was also atmospherically unsettling; being at the top of a destitute tower with only the sound of the wind in the background, and the escapee's own thrusters making this distinctly high pitched whirring sound. Not to mention what he says, hell if every instance where you encounter a test subject gone out of control isn't creepy as hell, it makes you consider the implications of what exactly was being done to them to cause them to go crazy.

Spoiler

That and the whole nature of the Controller AI and the Nine Balls being created to prevent a Raven from rising above it

More so when you consider that the first guaranteed Human Plus you actually fight, Escapee aside, is Losvaise, who will flat-out murder your ass during the mission to just cause as much chaos as possible during the diversionary op. Virtually every one of them you encounter as part of the story is tinged with tragedy and horror.

That said, the creep out could go further considering Master of Arena. Anyone that plays the first game knows of the true nature of Hustler-1, the pilot of Nine-Ball but you soon find out how he ties in with both your operator and the corporations (which honestly felt refreshing to me in a sense that for all their power, the corporations were more of king chess pawns. Despite being important, they were only playing pieces) in Master of Arena (being expanded at least).

One other genuine creep-out I had: Jetforce Gemini. I only rented it as a kid and in the days of Blockbuster, I basically played the save file of someone else. The creep-out I faced was in the form of a planet. Said planet had zombified bug soldiers, fog that obscured them (may or may not of been partially. This was a long time ago so I can't remember the exact details), and music that didn't help in making me not feel creeped out.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

Back in the day, Alien Trilogy on the Saturn creeped me the fuck out. The combination of darkness, very low draw distance and the creatures in question made that game a much more tense experience than I'm sure it was ever intended to be.

There was also a really surprising tonal shift in the first chapter of Shining Force 3 where your group stays overnight in an abandoned village. You end up exploring the village and some weird stuff happens like boxes floating around. Nothing too major, but then then a crash or smashing sound effect plays out of nowhere. I swear it scares the crap out of me every damn time.

 

[Trucute]

River Twygz from Super Paper Mario. Nothing like casually finding yourself in a river of death while the souls of the damned yell at you with autotuned voices. The high pitch both grated on me and just made it more disturbing.

 

[Jaimas]

Back in the day, Alien Trilogy on the Saturn creeped me the fuck out. The combination of darkness, very low draw distance and the creatures in question made that game a much more tense experience than I'm sure it was ever intended to be.

That was a really good game, too. The part that always creeped me out was the hive levels later, where you'd periodically encounter people stuck to the walls giving this distorted "HELP ME...!" voice. Really disturbing shit since you pretty much had to gun them down or deal with more chestbursters as you went through the level.

 

[AnOminous]

The screaming of headcrab zombies when you set them on fire in HL2.

Also, the mere existence of stalkers, former humans who have been surgically altered and enslaved for resisting the Combine.

 

[Coster]

The screaming of headcrab zombies when you set them on fire in HL2.

Also, the mere existence of stalkers, former humans who have been surgically altered and enslaved for resisting the Combine.

The Stalkers are creepy, but not nearly as much as their original design.

Spoiler

 

[XH 502]

Metroid Fusion should be sub-classified as a horror game, in my opinion. Every time I play it (even to this day) I feel a fresh wave of fear whenever I encounter the SA-X. The lack of music, the loud footsteps, and how you have to either hide or run for dear life (barring the boss battle at the end of the game) is a perfect formula for terrifying.

And then, of course, there's always the Nightmare boss fight.

Sweet Jesus, Nintendo.

And then it just gets worse.

 

[c-no]

Metroid Fusion should be sub-classified as a horror game, in my opinion. Every time I play it (even to this day) I feel a fresh wave of fear whenever I encounter the SA-X. The lack of music, the loud footsteps, and how you have to either hide or run for dear life (barring the boss battle at the end of the game) is a perfect formula for terrifying.

And then, of course, there's always the Nightmare boss fight.

Sweet Jesus, Nintendo.

And then it just gets worse.

Dear lord, the SAX. You know it's creepy when that thing around and the chase through the second sector, you'd have to run like hell and freeze the thing to buy yourself a few seconds.

 

[XH 502]

Dear lord, the SAX. You know it's creepy when that thing around and the chase through the second sector, you'd have to run like hell and freeze the thing to buy yourself a few seconds.

It's basically a panic attack in video game form.

And holy shit I forgot to mention the fucking spider boss.

It takes forever to get to this motherfucker and you can't save beforehand and there's Space Pirates out to murder you and then you finally get to this bitch and the second phase it turns into some kind of possessed Exorcist head THAT'S ALSO A DEMON ROBOT SPIDER.

FUCKY YOU.

 

[Jaimas]

Metroid Fusion should be sub-classified as a horror game, in my opinion. Every time I play it (even to this day) I feel a fresh wave of fear whenever I encounter the SA-X. The lack of music, the loud footsteps, and how you have to either hide or run for dear life (barring the boss battle at the end of the game) is a perfect formula for terrifying.

And then, of course, there's always the Nightmare boss fight.

Sweet Jesus, Nintendo.

And then it just gets worse.

Metroid Fusion has a legitimately horrifying atmosphere. Wish we'd see more like it. The only games in the series that have come close otherwise have been the Prime games.

Now for a more recent example.

Recently, I've been playing Salt and Sanctuary, a 2D Soulslike on PS4 that's coming to PC eventually. One of the earliest bosses is an undead entity known as "The Queen of Smiles."

Spoiler: A Holocaust of NOPE

You fight this shambling abomination in a room filled with columns of dead bodies impaled there for her amusement. It's only after you defeat her that you learn that she's the undead form of Lenaia, the previous Queen of Liven, who, having turned completely bloodthirsty out of a desire to feed the Sword of Reign she carried, succumbed to undeath and now exists only to add more to her grotesque garden. You can build her sword later using the component you get from her. And then there's the music for the fight:

As if this isn't bad enough, if she kills you, your corpse will appear on one of the pillars in her room in another player's world.

 

[XH 502]

Metroid Fusion has a legitimately horrifying atmosphere. Wish we'd see more like it. The only games in the series that have come close otherwise have been the Prime games.

Even Prime couldn't match that level of terror, though. I mean, yes you get Dark Samus as an adversary, but her power was not overwhelming. Echoes features more of a rivalry: Samus and Dark Samus get stronger in tandem as you progress through the game and the multiple face-offs feel like they're testing each other's powers before the final boss confrontation.

Fusion outright tells you that if you see the SAX your only option is to run. There's no rivalry and there's no fighting against it. If the SAX sees you it will kill you and fast. It's one of the few - if not only - times that Samus is powerless against an enemy and you're now trapped on a doomed space station with it. Alone.

That powerlessness is a big reason why I'd pick Fusion as my favorite Metroid game. Samus Aran is a legendary figure even in her own universe and no matter what enemies you encounter during your travels there's the assurance that - no matter how massive the foe - Samus has the ability to prevail. Fusion begins with her almost dying, and throughout the game you're placed in scenarios where you have no chance of winning. It adds a complexity to her character that I haven't seen in any of the games since, and perhaps the biggest reason why I found Other M so goddamn offensive. They tried to re-create the vulnerability we saw in Fusion, but in the worst way they could have possibly chosen.

Plus there's that whole thing where Samus never said she loved Adam in Fusion. He loved her, and she respected him, but what stays with her is the fact that he's yet another person willing to die in her place. The whole goddamn game is about death and how she quietly ponders her own humanity and the fact that so many people place her life above theirs (Adam, her parents). And then fucking Team Ninja comes in and fucks up all that beautiful complexity in one fell swoop.

Fuck, but I'm getting off topic. Point being: Fusion is terrifying because it made Samus Aran - of all characters - powerless.

Recently, I've been playing Salt and Sanctuary, a 2D Soulslike on PS4 that's coming to PC eventually. One of the earliest bosses is an undead entity known as "The Queen of Smiles."

Spoiler: A Holocaust of NOPE

You fight this shambling abomination in a room filled with columns of dead bodies impaled there for her amusement. It's only after you defeat her that you learn that she's the undead form of Lenaia, the previous Queen of Liven, who, having turned completely bloodthirsty out of a desire to feed the Sword of Reign she carried, succumbed to undeath and now exists only to add more to her grotesque garden. You can build her sword later using the component you get from her. And then there's the music for the fight:

As if this isn't bad enough, if she kills you, your corpse will appear on one of the pillars in her room in another player's world.

This is the most metal thing I've ever heard. Yet another game to add to my library when I eventually buy a PS4.

 

[Billy_Sama]

SAX your only option is to run. There's no rivalry and there's no fighting against it. If the SAX sees you it will kill you and fast. It's one of the few - if not only - times that Samus is powerless against an enemy and you're now trapped on a doomed space station with it. Alone.

The sudden silence and the terrifying music made SAX spooky for me as well but that made Fusion so good and such a classic.

When I grew up with the N64 Legend of Zelda OoT and Goldeneye creeped me out. I shut off my N64 the first time I went Hyrule Field went to night and the skeletons popped out and the ReDeads in the Graveyard and the ruined Hyrule Town. That and Majora's Mask had spooky stuff in general for young kids like me back then

Goldeneye gave me jumpscares with the levels with spawning enemies as they surprised you with gunfire out of no where and the dread of slow motion deaths.

 

[Count groudon]

There are two things in particular that I remember freaking me out as a kid:

Spoiler: Weird motherfucker

In one of the last few dungeons in earthbound, there are these enemies that look like lobotomites wearing suits made of fire. I have no idea why but they scared the shit out of me, and anytime I got to that part as a kid I would have take a break and muster up the courage to keep on.

The second was in Bully. There's an asylum in the middle of a spooky forest that you have to go to in a few missions. The woods themselves are super quiet and the only sounds you can hear are howling and gusts of wind, and they're really confusing so it's easy to get lost in them. The asylum is just as bad, it's completely run down and the walls are decorated with disturbing childish drawings and Xrays of deformed humans, with the only ambient sound being the screams from the inmates. There's also a few really weird glitches and shit that happen in that area. Like if you lead another character into the entrance to the woods, they turn and run away screaming, and in the asylum there's a mysterious door you can break down by jumping into it a certain number of times that leads into an abandoned medical wing. That's already spooky enough, but if you go there regularly, there's also a chance that yet another locked door in the abandoned section will suddenly be open, and if you go through it, it locks you in an outdoor area that's not on the map and you're forced to stay there until you pass out from exhaustion and wake up back at the school gates. It was freaky shit.

 

[Pepsi-Cola]

The entire game Yume Nikki.

If you don't know what it is, it's a dream exploration game made by a Japanese guy on RPG maker. Ironically, the game is not in fact a RPG. It's not even really a game as much as it is just exploring really creepy, unsettling environments. The game has become semi-infamous for a really weird and hard to find secret character named Uboa, who's like a mask with hood on if I had to describe him. What's creepy about him is how you find him, there's this small, seemingly insignifcant cabin you find with a little girl inside, and everytime you enter the cabin there's a 1/64th chance that if you touch the light switch she'll turn into Uboa. What makes this even creepier is, she's the only other human you find in the game who's not deformed or dead.

Anyways, just to further illustrate my point, I'll put a few screenshots in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

 

[ULTIMATEPRIMETIME]

creeped the shit out of me as a kid. i always liked the type of games that go the "you suck and everything you love is fucked" route for bad endings.

 

[Too Many Crooks]

...I'm a total horror sperg, so I've got a lot.

-The bloody mirror room in Silent Hill 3 terrified me- you cannot open the door to escape; you can only wait for Heather to die.
For the same game, the damaging red light that chases you in the haunted house attraction. This got even nastier in Silent Hill: Downpour.
And then, there's the creepy guy making the threatening phone calls to Heather in the hospital.

-Once, I was playing Silent Hill 2, and a creature lunged out from beneath a car as I walked by, convulsing and shrieking wildly. I literally screamed.

-In the first Bioshock game, the medical pavilion and Fort Frolic. Dr. Steinman has gone utterly mad, ranting his delusions on tape recorders and mutilating corpses/splicers, while Sander Cohen has also gone utterly mad, putting some colleagues in death traps for his deranged whims.

-There's a room in Bioshock 2 in which there are a bunch of mannequins, and they move around and strike warped poses if you shift your view from them.

-In The Evil Within, the main villain Ruvik tends to show up without warning, and the background ambience shrieks and warps. Don't get me started on "Laura". And in general, the shambling noises of the larger, non-Haunted monsters.

-Not out-and-out scary as the other examples I've given, but Raiden turning into "Jack the Ripper" at the end of mission 3 (Metal Gear Rising) was chilling. When he started that evil laugh, I was just like "Noooo..."

-The general atmospheres of System Shock 2 , Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Silent Hill: Downpour.

-Everything about Haunting Ground (except the player character Fiona and her dog Hewey).

 

[ZehnBoat]

-The bloody mirror room in Silent Hill 3 terrified me- you cannot open the door to escape; you can only wait for Heather to die..

I could have sworn that you could leave after a certain point

The entire game Yume Nikki.
[/SPOILER]

it's not even a horror game, and it does horror better than most horror games


i find richard from hotline miami 2 rather creepy
one of the few characters i can think of that legitimately made me feel scared without having to actually do anything

the invisible water monster from amnesia scares the crap out of me too. anything involving a chase just makes me freak out.

 

[c-no]

-The general atmospheres of System Shock 2

The creep out moment I get from System Shock 2 came in the form of the Von Braun's cargo bay. While most of the areas didn't freak me out, there was something about the cargo bay that got me. You see all the service droids in their boxes and the moment you move could be the moment they come out to blow up in your face. There was something about the area that creeped me out.

FEAR gave me some creepouts with it's non-canon expansion Extraction Point. The creep-out came in form when going through the hospital. At first, it's a normal romp gunning down replicants and weird monsters that come from Alma's psyche but seeing things like faceless nurses (yeah, insert Silent Hill reference/joke) and going through the areas that may as well be in your mind were unsettling, especially in the final Alma encounter where you find these cells filled with various people, from men with mutilated faces that are shaking to even seeing Harlan Wade and his daughter Alice in their cell just sitting there felt rather creepy.

Spooky's House of Jumpscares would no doubt be a game that could lose it's horror due to being randomly generated rooms most of the time with either a chase from the Happy Mask salesman or a walking parasite with legs but the unsettling factor for me came in the form of coming across the rooms that were put in the RNG. Best example was the fast food restaurant. I honestly expected @Satan to jump out but he didn't appear until I got the key to leave and that was when you know through the music to run.