Destructoid 评选游戏史上最恐怖的时刻

Horror comes in many forms. But what is, objectively, the scariest moment in video game history? I enquired the Destructoid staff to find out.

Andrej listed a bunch of games that do a great job of making the player feel stalked: “The entirety of Ravenholm in HL2, the first appearance of Pyramid Head in SH2, the first sections of Outlast 1, hearing Mr. X’s footsteps in RE2 Remake, getting chased in general is particularly horrifying to me, definitely the BTs in both Death Stranding games, in particular the section in Middle Knot City Ruins.”

Right before I even had the chance to ask his thoughts on Amnesia: The Dark Descent, he wrote, “DEFINITELY the entirety of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.” I recommended that he play the original Resident Evil 3 because it’s totally chill that way. Jokes aside, great horror need not come from the sudden release after a moment of intense suspense. Never allowing players the relief of even a scream, as they can’t stop running away from an unshakable enemy, is equally efficient. And so is Silent Hill’s more subdued psychological horror take.

Pedro has a lot of memories from the original Silent Hill that surprisingly echo my own when playing the game long before I’d reached the recommended age.

“Decades later, I still remember playing Silent Hill with a friend in a pitch-black bedroom late at night. We set foot in Midwich Elementary School, and when you’re eight, “abandoned school at night” is as much of a twisted, wrong place as it gets. We held our breaths through our entire sequence, but nothing could have prepared us for the childlike apparitions that roamed the halls.  The fact they weren’t out to get us somehow made it all worse, like they were innocent kids who were subjected to an incomprehensible fate against their will—being children ourselves, that resonated on an existential level. It’s the only time I’ve ever paused a horror game out of fear, and it’s stuck with me ever since.”

I regret none of it. I bet Pedro doesn’t, either.

Arka had a very poignant take about a very real and sadly timely kind of horror: “I played Spec Ops: The Line when I was 15. There is this one scene where I (the character) thought I was killing terrorists. Instead, I poured white phosphorus on survivors. Seeing that sight left me haunted. To see a kid and her skin burned while she was alive left me with a dread that I would rather not talk about…”

It got me thinking that no scare hits everyone the same way, because our biology, combined with our lived experiences, makes us more susceptible or stronger to different types of horror. So, like our scaredy beautiful cat of an editor, Luci, said, “a random shadow fills me with dread.” Players are most susceptible when they’re at their most relaxed, after all..

Like, what the hell is this in a Batman game?

So, for my personal verdict, one that comes after having experienced most horror games ever since the original Alone in the Dark, I just cannot think of a game that scared me more than the original Tomb Raider. Yes, actually.

And I’m not even talking about the legendary T-Rex encounter. Whether it’s the wolves that might sneak up on you right in the first level while you’re still getting the hang of the controls, the goddamn bear waiting for Lara down in a hole should she mess up one jump, or the absolutely gruesome monstrosities from the Atlantis levels. They look straight out of Hellraiser, move like total freaks, make horrifying noises, and straight up explode upon death—the final jump scare nobody knew they needed.

Or maybe it’s that fucking eel from Super Mario 64.

The post What is the absolute scariest moment in gaming history? Here are Destructoid’s picks appeared first on Destructoid.