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[Paint by Numbers]

Basically, I want to know how games unnerve you. Not terrifies you, or scares you, just something that grabs you in a way that it shouldn't. Nothing like zombies or the dark, but just... strange, unsettling things. Not just in general, but especially specific moments or areas in games that just seem wrong to you.

I ask because I'd like to have a repository of unnerving things in games. I like surreal, uncomfortable, or batshit insane horror much more than jump scares and zombies, and I'm interested in hearing what others have to say!

For my own contribution, I am scared by the infinite void outside of levels in 3D games. Noclipping or just falling through into the eternal black or skybox makes a chill run through my body, and I have to quit the game or walk out of the room sharpish. I don't know why.

Also, there is maybe a two-second event in All Of Our Friends are Dead (by Amon26) during the later parts of the game. In between levels, the screen is filled - not really suddenly, but strangely, like nothing else in the game - with the visage of a woman with a wide-open mouth. The image is in threshold and is more black-and-white highlights than anything. Written somewhere on the edge of the screen are the words "and to think she was once a mother!". I love every moment of that game except for that part right there, which I do not like at all. Again, not too sure why.

And that's the heart if what I'm asking. What scares you for reasons you just can't figure out?

[Cypress]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingo

Stumbling upon a living block of pixels in real life would freak me the fuck out.

[Derakon]

A friend of mine gets really squicked out by the original Prince of Persia, when you lure guards into the guillotine traps. Something about the color choice of the bright red blood that gets squirted everywhere, I think.

I got a bit disturbed in Half-Life 2 when I found a sawblade embedded in the wall with half a corpse resting on top of it.

[adam_smasher]

For my own contribution, I am scared by the infinite void outside of levels in 3D games. Noclipping or just falling through into the eternal black or skybox makes a chill run through my body, and I have to quit the game or walk out of the room sharpish. I don't know why.

Yeah, I'm like this way too. My feeling is that when you're immersed in the game, it temporarily becomes reality to you. When the rules and consistency of reality start breaking, your brain tells you to panic.

Lockups especially freak me out. Doubly so if the soundtrack seizes up as well. That pleasant game soundtrack you were listening to suddenly becomes the sound of nightmares.

And the worst were old DOS games using DOS4/GW - when they crashed, they'd dump a whole bunch of cryptic looking CPU and memory info onto the screen.



Absolutely terrifying.

Digital - A Love Story preyed on this fear a couple of times to great effect.

[John Nesky]

I haven't actually played either of these games but these are some great videos:
Glitches in Red Dead Redemption




Silent Hill 3 is a game I did play. Here's a spoiler.

[slembcke]

I remember really liking the dream machine in the Knytt Stories underwater adventure level pack. (don't remember it's exact name) Just when you think you are out of the weird dream land, you suddenly start back at the beginning of the game and reality is all distorted. It's great! It totally creeped me out.

[laserghost]

Playing Mario Galaxy 2, I was surprised to find myself creeped out by the interactions between Luigi and Mario. Here are two brothers, who've grown up together, adventured together, gone into business together, found a secret dimension of talking mushrooms together -- and yet Mario stares at Luigi with the same generic, blank stare he uses to address every other weird unknown creature in the game. It just seems like there's no recognition there. No brotherly love at all. 

[kiwi]

I remember being unnerved by the shriek the little ghosts from The Suffering made before you defeated them.

[Aik]

Have a look at one of the recent games on the Announcements board - Loved. I found the power dynamic thingy it had going there unsettling.

[s0]

For my own contribution, I am scared by the infinite void outside of levels in 3D games. Noclipping or just falling through into the eternal black or skybox makes a chill run through my body, and I have to quit the game or walk out of the room sharpish. I don't know why.

Totally.

Also, graphical glitches in 3D games, particularly those where characters' face textures become somehow screwed up make me feel highly uncomfortable. And related to that, I find certain physics glitches, like dead enemies continuing to weirdly "jitter" on the ground, extremely disturbing. The release version of Bioshock had that, you can't imagine how relieved I was when the patch that fixed it came out.

And lastly, I can't stand overly happy music in games. I mean, it's not like I don't enjoy upbeat music, in fact I love most of it, but when it crosses a certain threshold of "happy-clappiness" is stops being uplifting and becomes creepy. I  always thought the music in Super Monkey Ball sounded like something one of those insane Batman villains would put on while torturing people.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

in multiplayer games it's kind of unnerving / disturbing how angry random internet people get when they lose -- for instance in starcraft 1 and even 2 i've been regularly accused of hacking and called all sorts of names even though i've never said anything and just played well. i know that this isn't anything in the games themselves that's disturbing, but that people who should be playing games for enjoy themselves instead get so angry when they lose kinda qualifies as a disturbing thing about games

[shig]

this is making me giggle uncontrollably.

[N. Crayon]

in multiplayer games it's kind of unnerving / disturbing how angry random internet people get when they lose -- for instance in starcraft 1 and even 2 i've been regularly accused of hacking and called all sorts of names even though i've never said anything and just played well. i know that this isn't anything in the games themselves that's disturbing, but that people who should be playing games for enjoy themselves instead get so angry when they lose kinda qualifies as a disturbing thing about games

I agree, especially if you play any of the "-craft" games. I hated playing Warcraft 3 because you can't get halfway through a game without some man-child calling you every sort of racist name he can think of. It's disturbing and really creepy. Why play a game that makes you so angry?

[fraxcell]

Underwater levels in a lot of games disturb me. Like the water temple in Ocarina of Time (but not any other Zelda game). Also a couple of the water levels in Mario 64. I think it has to do with your limited movement and the abundance of large monsters in the water.

Also, in Deus Ex, when I found the two people who were dead in the hotel room, and then I saw the zyme vials by them and figured out that they were drug addicts... it made me feel uncomfortable because up until then I had been too busy killing people and blowing stuff up to notice all the homeless people, and the people suffering from the plague. For some reason I killed a lot less people after that.

[JoGribbs]

When in an action adventure, or an rpg where an area you could previously visit at any time becomes closed off. Made some of the towns being destroyed throughout the course Tales of Symphonia freak me out a whole lot (oops, spoilers!).

[Ego_Shiner]

fucking weeping angel

[slembcke]

In the original Zelda, there was that spot in the dead trees where you would just keep ending up in the same block over and over again if you went any way except south (or the secret path). That sort of unexpected change can work really well. VVVVVV sort of did this too with the wrap around levels. Once you found the "exit" spot for a screen that didn't wrap around, you could never go back. Not really creepy, but definitely nerve wracking.

It's the same sort of thing in 3D games when you walk through a door and the level changes behind you so you can't get back. It can't be too easily explained like a looked door or collapsed tunnel either. I mean real layout changes like the door to the hallway being replaced with the door to the kitchen.

[LemonScented]

Underwater levels in a lot of games disturb me.

I hear ya. The sound effect that accompanies the countdown to Sonic drowning still brings me out in a cold sweat. Or even the anticipation of that sound as you drag through the water, not quite sure of how far you are from the surface.

A lot of single player FPS games kinda touch my freaked-out OCD gland as well. When I walk into an area and see the obviously-signposted exit I can't bring myself to just stroll through it without doing a painstaking sweep of the area first. Round the perimeters first, keeping the wall to my left so I know I'll eventually loop back round to where I came in, before tentatively stepping out into the open space in the middle. Make sure there is not one single moving thing that can jump me from behind once I start heading for the exit. Seriously, the Bioshock games both took me an age to get through.

Pretty useless approach in multiplayer though, or in a game with monster closets.

Also, I just remembered the "I Get Your Fail" blog, which shows graphical glitches sometimes seen during game development. I've seen a fair few. The particularly freaky ones are when the skeletal animation goes wrong, or when there's a problem rendering the eyes and teeth inside heads:

http://igetyourfail.blogspot.com/2008/12/long-neck-syndrome-part-1.html
http://igetyourfail.blogspot.com/2008/08/all-seeing-eye.html
http://igetyourfail.blogspot.com/2009/10/step-1-misalign-uvs-step-2-kill-it-with.html

[Derakon]

Underwater levels in a lot of games disturb me.

I hear ya. The sound effect that accompanies the countdown to Sonic drowning still brings me out in a cold sweat. Or even the anticipation of that sound as you drag through the water, not quite sure of how far you are from the surface.

Reminds me of a dream I had where I was navigating an underwater labyrinth, in the dark. The tunnels kept getting narrower and narrower, and I knew there was air somewhere ahead of me, but I didn't know if I was taking the right path and I'd gone too far forward to turn back. I'm an excellent swimmer, but...yeegh.

[fraxcell]

Oh, that reminds me of Fathom, the Flixel game. I found that game pretty creepy, especially when the tree came up. The limited visibility and weird architecture really added to the effect.