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[Jakkarra]

ah, clocktower, that was fun game.

scissors are hilarious weapons.

[cowofdoom78963]

I'm going to say the title of one series. Even on the SNES It scared me.

Clock Tower.

Same here, title scares the shit out of me.

[Luke_Prowler]

I was thinking of doing another game tonight, but i realize that one of the reason my project keep failing is that i don't pace myself. so I ask the readers: should I write up another review, or can you guys wait a day?

[Keiseth]

A few games startle me, like Eternal Darkness, Dead Space did when I rented it, etc. The only game that has actually made me *scared* is System Shock 2. That wasn't "I don't want to walk into the next hallway, something might jump on me." It was more along the lines of "I wish I could crouch and hide in the nearest locker, praying nothing can find me."

No other game has freaked me out like that one. I don't even know why it does. It's not extremely dark like Doom III, or batpoop insane the same way Eternal Darkness was. It's just, pure and raw scary.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Aliens Versus Predator was pretty scary as a marine, though most of it was startles.  There was always that feeling of dread when the beeps started.

AvP 2 had one scene that really instilled a sense of fear in me.  When you start out you don't see any aliens for a long time, you keep expecting something to happen but for what seems like a long time you're mostly just exploring, and listening to the sound of your empty motion tracker.  Then you hear a beep, and you freeze in place,  You realize that the blip isn't really moving much, and you inch forwards slowly, finally rounding a corner into this courtyard, you peek around, and you don't see anything...  and then you look up...  and see a crane blowing in the wind, beep, beep...  Eugh...

I haven't really played many horror games.  I found the dream levels in Max Payne kind of scary though.  For some reason things on a screen just don't seem to scare me much.  I was terrified of the dancing lions during Obon, when I was a kid, and I remember keeping my eyes closed the entire time during the haunted hay ride one holloween (again when I was a kid.)  But I've never played a game or seen a movie that really terrified me.

[umiman]

Oh yeah, the max payne dreams were pretty freaky, what with the baby crying and all.

In its defence, I thought when I first started playing Doom 3 it was really, really freaky. Especially since you had a shitty weapon and all hell was literally breaking loose.

[Jack_Bread]

Oh yeah, the max payne dreams were pretty freaky, what with the baby crying and all.

In its defence, I thought when I first started playing Doom 3 it was really, really freaky. Especially since you had a shitty weapon and all hell was literally breaking loose.

Thanks. I got nightmares for weeks when I watched my brother play that.

[Sowelu]

You realize that the blip isn't really moving much, and you inch forwards slowly, finally rounding a corner into this courtyard, you peek around, and you don't see anything...  and then you look up...  and see a crane blowing in the wind, beep, beep...  Eugh...

I'm sitting here in my cube at work, late at night chuckling at this and all the random other scary stories, and just heard a loud banging from the other room through a few doors.  I know it's just the maintenance crew, but wow, bad timing.

Cube farms in the dark can be scary places once the noises start up.  And I NEED to get STALKER.

(System Shock 2 only really scared me in the very beginning, when you actually can hide in a room and peek out a window as a zombie shambles past, stops for a moment and mumbles "Something...out of place...kill me..." and then, later, comes charging at you with a pipe groaning "I'm sorry!"  Most of the rest of that game was more OHSHI-- moments, like 'Oh god I actually have to fight past those turrets?', or 'IT DID WHAT TO SPACE?!')

[Shzar]

I remember when my family got its first computer: it was a 386, and I was 9 or 10 at the time. It had a demo of Ultima Underworld on it, and to this day, I have never been as scared of anything as I was then, at that game. I remember being attacked by some tentacled monster after falling in the water, and it was so terrifying that I quit the game without escaping or saving, but the bloody thing followed me into the bedroom and violated me in my dreams. (No, not like that. I dreamed that I was playing the game and fighting the monster.)

Nothing has topped that scare, but I've had some good frights since. System Shock 2 didn't frighten me until Shodan revealed herself; she just freaked me right the heck out. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s (jeez that's hard to type) underground segments made my skin crawl, especially that one dungeon with the levitating objects that fling themselves at you. Dead Space frightened me, in more than just a startling way. I think it was the music that got to me in that one. Even if they do announce incoming baddies, those shrieking violins are FREAKY. Doom 3, on the other hand, was more irritating than anything. I mean, really. Just minding your business, brushing your teeth, washing your AN IMP APPEARS BEHIND YOU! No, that never gets old.

[Sowelu]

Starflight used to scare me.  Every time I fire it up again, I realize it still does.  For two reasons.  Two reasons that can both make me jump out of my chair/kill the window.

Some background...saving is roguelike-ish.  You CAN back up a save, because 'one save at a time' is more of a technical issue since you usually ran it off a floppy disk, but it's not easy or quick to fuss with backups.

Okay.  So your ship has a navigator, with navigation skill.  The higher your navigator's skill, the more likely you are to see dimensional fluxes while traveling through space.  Now, these fluxes are always in the same place every game...but are they glowing flashing things?  No.  The area of the screen that you can SEE around your ship is, oh, two, three inches across and high, so it's pretty small.  As you fly around, the starmap scrolls past...but if there's a flux, then you have a quarter-sized region where the stars are flickering randomly instead of scrolling by.  It's hard to spot, and that's your only warning.  And you only even see THAT, if your navigator makes his check.

Stumble into a flux...and SUDDENLY YOU GET A RUSHING THROUGH STARS ANIMATION AND WHOOSHING STATIC IN YOUR SPEAKERS OH GOD

...and now you're SOMEWHERE ELSE.  Your location on the starmap shows up as ?? x ?? or just jumps around randomly until you fly around enough for your navigator to get his bearings.  And the whole time, you probably wound up in hostile territory, but you don't KNOW where you are, and your proximity detector is saying MOTION DETECTED AT +3,-2...  MOTION DETECTED AT +2,-1...  And you're trying to figure out where you are or how to get back and you see a flux and let's GO BACK WHOOSH and then you start seeing other proximity warnings and realize that the place you came from in the first place didn't have any other ships and then your navigator gets his readings and you're WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GALAXY because your first jump put you right in the middle of The Staff which is a huge bunch of fluxes and once you go through one OH GOD you have no way of knowing WHICH ONE GOES HOME and you jump back and then suddenly the ENCOUNTER BELL GOES OFF

Getting lost in fluxes always made my heart rate go waaay up, but the encounter bell tended to give me a heart attack at age 9.  See, it's just three long low monotone PC speaker beeps, but suddenly there's these other ships--and if you're lucky you can hail them, and if you're lucky you might make sense of what they're saying--

But you turned out to be in Uhlek space and by the time you hit the "Hail" button, you're getting blasted by Class 6 plasma bolts and going "WHAT THE HELL, the highest shields you can buy at Starport only go up to Class Fi--" And then you're sucking vacuum and it's game over.  And then you say okay, let me reload my game, and you fire it up and it says "Game in progress was not saved.  Exiting..."

[Jack_Bread]

I want to play that game.

[Sowelu]

Yes, you do.

It was the DIRECT inspiration for Star Control 2.  It's Star Control 2 with more exploration, more RPG elements, a harder plot with less fetch missions, but less-arcadey combat.  (Also, it's 1986 tech.)  Exploring planetside is way better in Starflight than in Star Control 2.  There are more interesting, immensely bigger planets in Starflight than in Star Control 2.  Learn to fear landing in the mountains, or being far away from your ship in your ATV when a snowstorm hits.

It even had a code wheel!

It works in DOSbox but you might want to research good settings to play it with, since it's old and a little finicky.  Also:  Starflight 2 is a little easier and a little more technically advanced than Starflight 1, but they are both good.  Notably, Starflight 2 puts more emphasis on trade and friendly relations with aliens, whereas Starflight 1 is a lot more hostile (but simpler in the trade department).

Apparently there was a Sega version of Starflight 1.  It probably isn't too bad, and it might be better than trying to DOSbox it.  I don't know, I haven't played it.  If you play Starflight 1, play the original CGA version, not the slightly-broken EGA version.  Although research seems to indicate that non-DOS versions are also decent; if you are handy with an Amiga emulator, have a blast.

Oh yeah, and Mobygames explains the significance of Starflight:
"Starflight (and the sequel) contained over 800 planets, each with specific artifacts and minerals to find and mine--all on two 360K diskettes (which also had to share space with program code and graphics) and without needing more than 256K of RAM. Consider the following: You could go to any arbitrary planet, find a cluster of artifacts and take only one of the artifacts in the cluster, leave the planet, spend another 20 hours exploring other planets, fighting battles, saving the game, etc., then go back to that same planet and find everything exactly as you left it, including the cluster of artifacts with only one taken! This was (and still is) an astonishing technical achievement!"

[JoshuaFH]

Yahtzee's John Defoe quadrilogy scared me, ESPECIALLY the second one. That scared the CRAP out of me, mostly because, in the first game, the main nemesis would only attack you in predetermined, scripted events, so even though the atmosphere was creepy, you never really had anything to worry about.

In the second game however, once you awaken the big bad, scripted events are out the fucking window. Pretty much any room in the game, he can pop up, lurch towards you, and if you can't get your only method of stunning him out, aim and fire fast enough, BAM! You're dead!

The drone of the motor throughout the game really instills the feel of hopelessness as well. I was mildly angry though, as I didn't know how to get past a certain part, and had to use a walkthrough, but other than that, just great.

[Jack_Bread]

I don't know where to find Starflight.........

[Sowelu]

http://www.starflt.com/starflt.php?ID=intro ?