Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Isolation works so amazingly well because unlike most of the other games in the franchise out there, you can't kill the monster. You can only hide from it, distract it or scare it away for a short period of time until it returns.

Also, these guys..



Whenever you'd get grabbed by one when you least expect it, along with that eerily droning voice of theirs..

"I'm not going anywhere, you might as well show yourself."

"You are becoming hysterical."

I found them scarier than the xenomorph being honest.
Dead creepy.

Another scene I remembered was from Dead Space 2 in the stations nursery.....unsettling.....

This little scene from Batman Arkham Knight. After flying around rooftops for 6 hours, this monster popping out of nowhere really got me

Resident evil 2 has had me on the edge of my seat

I'll +1 Alien: Isolation and Dead Space. Actually, there's a moment in the second that wasn't jump-out-the-chair scary, but which I found deeply unsettling.

It's a text log near the end, where one of the scientists working on replicating the Marker has realised that they're no different from the Unitarians who worship the things. The Markers influence people to become obsessed with them and copy them, and don't care how people justify that to themselves. It's quite a little Lovecraftian moment, where faith and reason are equally meaningless in the face of the cosmos.

The 343 Guilty Spark level of the original Halo. The remastered version is lacking compared to the original as the people working on it didn't seem to understand how the environment was instrumental in building the tension before the reveal.

Alien Isolation has already been mentioned but I'll say some specific moments. The section in Medical for the first time is probably the best in the whole game, in my opinion. It is before you gain any means of combating the Alien, so you are completely helpless until you find the Pipe Bomb schematic in this level which requires some rarer materials to make and so are limited in number. The Alien for much of it stalks the corridors without re-entering the ducts so you cannot wait it out and have to move from hiding place to hiding place, every moment you are having to traverse a longer corridor you feel completely exposed and vulnerable.

@ Elemental: That’s a really interesting observation about faith and reason. I’ve never played the Dead Space games... but that has piqued my interest!

I was playing Half Life: Opposing Force as a kid and walking down a corridor near the start of the game. I saw some scientists operating on a dead head crab zombie, so I stopped to watch them. Then the zombie got up and threw a scientist at the glass...

I pulled the plug out of my PC and ran out the room. I don't get why it scared me so much after playing it a few times but it was the most frightened I've ever been while playing a computer game

I remember playing hotel 626 flash game when I was in elementary. That game gave me nightmares.

I was legit arachnophobic. (Tamed now, but growing up I was under threat of extremely serious side effects when exposed, like full on panic attacks that could stop me from breathing.)

Recently, an area of dark souls 2 is heavily spider themed. I could barely get through it, but did.

Long ago when the phobia was overwhelmingly strong: An entire “level” of Turok 2 on n64 is heavily arachnid-influenced. I couldn’t do that one. I had to get a buddy to borrow my game and play through the area for me.

As for more traditional scary things that aren’t enhanced by my old hangup: system shock 2 had some good moments. I remember going back near the beginning of the game to hack open a door that I couldn’t get into earlier, I open it expecting some loot only to find a big active enemy mech standing right in my face.

F.E.A.R. Of course was pretty stout on the topic a few times.

I was playing metal gear solid 2 back in high school when I stayed up playing vidya til like 5 am every morning. It was around 3 am when I got to the end section where things start getting weeeeeird, and in my late night sleep deprived state I wasn’t actually sure if I was imagining what was going on or not, which was like it’s own kind of scary.

FISSION MAILED indeed.

Wolfenstein 3D had its moments, especially when you think you have cleared out a level of enemies, running low on health, and then you jump out of your skin when that guard dog sneaks up from behind and kills you instantly.

Alien Isolation was pretty good but eventually the Alien becomes annoying than scary. The atmosphere is brilliant though and the bit that stands out is the time when you are waiting for the shuttle-cab thing to arrive and you get the Alien-trailer theme...urrrhh! I don't know if he actually appears in that part, but I don't stick around to find out!

Oh, really amazing bit in Colonial Marines( yes, I know, the game is crap ) is the bit where you are unarmed in the sewers and have to avoid the blind-aliens. The final bit of that section is the welding and unwelding of doors to escape that brute-alien. That was a geniune heart-racer...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Alien Isolation has already been mentioned but I'll say some specific moments. The section in Medical for the first time is probably the best in the whole game, in my opinion. It is before you gain any means of combating the Alien, so you are completely helpless until you find the Pipe Bomb schematic in this level which requires some rarer materials to make and so are limited in number. The Alien for much of it stalks the corridors without re-entering the ducts so you cannot wait it out and have to move from hiding place to hiding place, every moment you are having to traverse a longer corridor you feel completely exposed and vulnerable.

Ah the san cristobal Med lab! They needed a swear-box in that place....

He does appear if you take too long with getting in. On a replay I took a little too long and as the doors closed he was looming just a few paces away, staring.

Biggest problem with Isolation is probably the length of the final portion of the game. It went on a bit too long and drew things out too much in the end.

I don't think I really found the Alien to become annoying. It became much more adept at finding the player as the game went on which meant that it was better to try to keep moving and use gadgets like noisemakers than hide (especially when it begins looking under tables). Incinerator fuel is also quite plentiful and you can stock up during the Android sections of the game, not to mention crafting molotovs and pipe bombs, so being found isn't the worst thing. Short bursts whilst advancing on the alien is pretty good at getting him to back away.

Going into the nest, where you first encounter multiple aliens at once is also pretty terrifying, especially once you've set the core to purge and are walking back out through flashing hazard lighting, trying to keep an eye out for facehuggers scuttling along the floor...

Alien Isolation is the only game I've maxed out the Steam Achievements for, which involved farming deaths to the Alien for the final one. Was fun seeing how effective each of the weapons is at deterring him whilst doing that! Shotgun is okay if you aim for the head and have enough time to get several rounds off, pipe gun can do the job if the first shot is fully charged and you have enough time to get a second off and get head shots, incinerator is of course king and the pistol can repel it but you're going to get hurt and need enough time to empty a clip into its head.