My Top Five "Horror" Gaming Moments

Halloween. For many people it's their favourite day of the year - a chance to dress up as scarily as possible (or at least show a scary lack of imagination) or watch movies that make them jump out of their skin. For me, personally, as much as I like Halloween I'm not a huge fan of "horror" movies or such. Despite this, as a gamer I have found myself being scared, creeped out or simply unsettled by what I am playing. So, in celebration of Halloween I am going to recount my top five gaming "horror" moments.

Now, first of all this is a personal list and thus you may disagree that some of these even count as "scary". Second of all, as I mentioned I'm not a huge fan of horror so most of these are from non-horror games - as such, they are probably scarier for me within the context of the game. Now, without further adieu, let the horror commence!

There will be spoilers...

5) Spider-Man - Monster-Ock

Picture this, you've just defeated Doc Ock and Carnage back-to-back. Spider-Man poses heroically as he begins his "it's all over" monologue when suddenly...

 

The result of Carnage's symbiote attaching itself to Doc Ock, turning him into Monster Ock. However, instead of fighting you have to run away from him as Ock's lab starts exploding. What follows is a very tense run (and swing) for your life, as Monster Ock chases you screaming such lovely things as "DIEEEEEEE". A part of the scariness of this boss is being constantly chased and knowing that if Ock catches up - you're dead. Although this section did go on slightly too long, it was for the most part a thrilling way to end one of Spider-Man's greatest video game adventures.

4) Heavy Rain - The Lizard

Heavy Rain revolved around the story of Ethan Mars and how far he would go to save his son. Many of his tasks involve a little sacrifice or risk of death. The Lizard, however, is the one everyone who plays it will remember. You're asked by the origami killer to cut off the top section of one of your fingers, on camera, in order to get the next clue to your son's location. You're given a wide variety of tools to help you do it...

 

It's one of the hardest to watch scenes in gaming history. It's made worse by the fact that you have to do it yourself (or at least, move the analogue stick to perform the action). It's not "horror" in the traditional sense but there are very few scenes in video games that are more unsettling.

3) Resident Evil 2 - Start of the Game

I'll be honest, I've not played a lot of RE2. Despite this, I still remember the very start of the game and how tense that was. After the opening cinematic, you're left to fend for yourself. The game isn't saved, you have no healing items and very little ammo. You have to run from most of the zombies, but they are relentless.

Through narrow alleyways, buildings and even an abandoned bus you will have to decide whether to fight or flee the hoarde of zombies. Try to fight them all you'll run out of ammo. Run away from them all and you might miss some useful items. Nowhere is safe until you reach the police station and with it, the first save point of the game. Horror games love to remind you how powerless you are at the beginning of the game, but RE 2 did it better than any other.

2) Metal Gear Solid 2 - Arsenal Gear

This one is definitely a personal moment. I was eleven years old when I first played Metal Gear Solid 2 and I was loving it. It was my first entryway into the Metal Gear series and it was quickly becoming one of my all time favourites. Then I got to Arsenal Gear. Running around as a naked Raiden was funny at first but then I started getting codec (MGS' version of the radio) calls like this:

 

Being a rather idiotic eleven year old who did not quite understand the whole "fourth-wall" thing, I did. Embarrassingly, I then had nightmares about this - though the specifics of them I do not remember. Young me simply was not ready for crazy Colonel Campbell and when I did find the courage to play on it didn't get any easier until, as always, Solid Snake showed up to save the day. Even today, I am a little unsettled at this whole section as an aftermath of the effect this had on eleven-year-old me. But ten years on I am a braver man now and I'm not gonna let some silly video game scare me int...

 

AHHHH.

1) Alan Wake

This one is a bit odd because it's not a particular moment that was the scariest. You see, the main gimmick of Alan Wake was that the darkness is unsafe. Enemies are essentially shadows until you shine your torch on them and make then vulnerable to death. The only times you are safe is when you're in light. So, the reason this is number one is due to the psychological effect this game had on me every time I stopped playing. I tend to play games at the dead of night, just before going to bed. I played Alan Wake every night for a week. I would then go to bed. In the dark. After spending a couple of hours training my brain to fear the dark, it would take me a while to switch back to reality.

Alan Wake is a really good game, but isn't that scary. The game itself calls itself a "Psychological Action Thriller" which is a fair description. However it does a brilliant job in conditioning your brain into fearing the dark and that is why it's my number one "horror" gaming moments - because the rest of the list may have been scary within the context of the game, Alan Wake was the only one (bar MGS 2, which can be explained by me being a child when I played it) that truly affected me out of the game. Kudos, Remedy.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Mission 2 - Operation Burning Smoke

We landed in Miami at nearly three in the morning. This should mean that civilians are in bed, blissfully unaware of what is going on in their town. There, thankfully, won't be any chance of civilian casualties. 

Basically, our objectives were: kill all aliens, come home.

Bradford still held my hand for the first half of the mission. He first sent my fellow Scot, Rookie Hunter, into that building.

This method of opening doors may be quieter, and thus preventing the enemy from knowing where we are, but it's nowhere near as fun as kicking doors in. Sadly, this is a time of war, not for play.

Another piece of advice Bradford gave me was to send certain soldiers onto elevated surfaces.

Not only did it help us scout out the area and find two future corpses, but it gave Squaddie Vargas some combat benefits...

This alien made the mistake of firing at Vargas. It made the even bigger mistake of missing. This is how Vargas deals with this level of stupidity...

One alien down.

Rookie Hunter here showed off one of the abilities available to all soldiers, regardless of class - Hunker Down. This is a defensive ability that will turn a "half-shield" of cover into a full shield - with the added bonus of critical hits being completely nulled. It can be very useful if a soldier is near death, it could give them a better chance of coming back alive.

I had almost ordered Hunter to do this, but Roux got the honour of throwing a grenade at the alien - granting him his first kill.

After a few more rounds, our Belgian, Rookie Verhoeven, catches sight of our next target...

Sadly, it's way out of firing range.

Alas, moving closer spooked the aliens into hiding into this building. This easily collapsible building. If only we had a rocket...

The aliens did something weird here, Dr. Vahlen suggested that the two aliens merged their minds or something? I'm still not sure, but it did make the target of the merge more powerful.

Thankfully, it didn't make it any more accurate. Not a single shot from one of these fellas hit any of our soldiers. The latter two images do show off the "Overwatch" ability - anyone that runs into their line of sight will be subjected to a round of fire. Our soldiers can use it too - it is very useful when defending a certain area. It is less accurate than usual, but it can be devastating to our enemies if luck is on our side.

As I mentioned in the last entry, Alejandro Vargas' promotion means he can now carry a rocket launcher. So it's time to perform an experiment - what happens to aliens when a rocket hits them?

Huh, they die. Well, I think that test was very conclusive, but I think we need to run more tests. Maybe, one or two or eighty more?

Easy enough mission, though I don't expect the rest of them to be this easy. Still, I think our squad has earned a few day's break.

Mission Stats

Alejandro Vargas - 3 kills (2 missions, 4 kills)

Victor Roux - 1 kill (1 mission, 1 kill)

Scottie Hunter - 0 kills (1 mission, 0 kills)

Amber Verhoeven - 0 kills

Digital vs Physical

Ever since this generation of consoles introduced the ability to download games straight onto your hard drive, there have been rumblings that the days of buying games in a physical format could be on it's way out. The average console has big enough hard drive's to hold a whole library of games, ranging from the most innovative of indie games to the biggest blockbuster releases of the year. So, it's easy to know why some people think this.

There are many good things about purchasing games to download. Probably the biggest one for me is the fact that they can't accidentally get broken. I'm sure at least once in your life you've gone to put a disc into your console or computer and alas it no longer works. The only alternative is to buy a new copy...except by this point the game probably isn't sold in shops anymore and you have to go online to buy it. Or maybe you find a pre-owned copy at your local game shop. You pop it in and oh no, it doesn't work so you buy it again AND THEN ANOTHER TIME AND IT STILL DOESN'T BLOODY WORK AND YES THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME GOD DAMMIT. And breathe. The point is, digital games (in theory) last forever. So, in conclusion, I much prefer buying them physically.

I still love ya, buddy!

Sure, a lot of my old games are scratched to hell and probably don't work anymore (I was a very careless kid), but the fact is that clicking "download" is not nearly as satisfying as buying a game and then putting it into the console for the very first time. Before I talk about that, however, there is a couple more advantages to buying a physical copy.

One, is the price. You'd think downloads would be cheaper since they don't have to be packaged and shipped. But in my experience, especially on the consoles, they seem to go for full price for a lot longer than their physical cousins. Of course, you can also get pre-owned games even cheaper which is a bonus. I know that pre-owned games take money away from the developers, but I never buy a game pre-owned unless I can't find a new copy or I'm not sure if I'm going to like it. I bought Final Fantasy XIII-2 for £15 today, pre-owned, when a few months ago I was refusing to buy it at all. To put it back on to the debate however, let's talk about FIFA 12. Over the summer the price of it fell a little (because it's now outdated due to the new season), but the last time I checked (which was a while ago, admittedly) on the PSN it was £49.99. I bought it on day of release for £39.99. Obviously that's the RRP of the game, but by that point it was no longer worth the £50, plus an extra £10+ for the Euro 2012 pack. 

The other is the ability to trade. If I don't like the game I've bought then I can trade it in and get some of my money back towards another game, or I can give it to a friend in exchange for actual money or another game. If I do like a game, but I have a friend who won't buy it, I can give the game to the friend to borrow for a little while and then they can "forget" to give it back. Then I have to buy another copy which means more money for the developer/game shop. Everyone wins. You can't do that with downloaded games. If you buy something for yourself and oh dear it sucks, then sorry bud but you just wasted your money. 

Now this is purely for big name games, I don't expect small indie developers to shell out for packaging, marketing and etc. They get a free pass when it comes to this. Of course, in the digital world games can get ridiculously cheap in sales. That's great too. However, there is one thing about buying a physical copy of that I love more than anything: the journey.

It's the day of release of a game I've been wanting for months, perhaps even years. You've pre-ordered it and all that's left to do is collect it. For me, that involves getting on a bus for forty minutes early in the morning. The anticipation has reached new heights and I simply cannot wait to get home and play it. I arrive at the shop a little past nine o'clock and I purchase the game. It's not until it's in my hands that it truly hits me that I can actually play this game. However, there's still the journey home. Another forty minute bus ride which just ramps up the anticipation factor more and more until I'm basically desperate to play it. Finally I get home, turn on my console of choice, open the case, get disappointed at the lacklustre manual that is too common these days and finally put the disc in the console. The feeling as you start a new game is immense, and even more so if the game turns out to be excellent. You just don't get that feeling waiting for a download to finish.

So yes, downloads are fine, but I'd rather take a physical copy any day. I enjoy the two hour journey it takes to get a game on launch day, but maybe I'm strange who knows? The only thing I do know is that I wouldn't trade the journey in for anything, it just makes launch day that much sweeter.

Games Just Aren't Terrible Anymore!

If you're a gamer, you've probably seen more than one video online of an "angry" "video game" "nerd" who isn't the Angry Video Game Nerd, getting pissed off at a terrible video game. And by pissed off, I mean either "mildly annoyed" or "FECKING POOP CRUD PISS". This article isn't about them. No, this article is about those terrible games of yesteryear, and how this generation has nearly killed them off.

Rest in peace, buddy.

Now, this is not to say that there isn't terrible games any more, but they are becoming increasing rare to find, and thanks to the internet, easier to ignore. However, by now most big developers have figured out a formula for their games. This means that while once a game would be terrible, it's now merely average and that is a worse fate. There's no denying that there is a charm with certain bad games, games that tried but failed (or didn't try and made it completely obvious). It's why videos of people playing them are popular, bad games create a morbid curiosity in people. Most don't want to play the crap themselves, but they want to see other people suffer at the hands of these games.

Back when I watched a lot of these some of my favourite things to watch were terrible FMV games. Instead of rendered cutscenes, they would use real life actors in real life sets. The result was rarely great, but sometimes the acting was so bad, or the script and it was hilarious to watch. Now that we can create very realistic characters in-game that kind of magic has gone. Hell, even reputable actors like Christopher Walken when put into one of these games turned into an amateur drama student. Most had the acting chops of softcore porn actresses. That could be because most of them probably were softcore porn actresses.

Over 1 1/2 hours of REAL VIDEO? Excuse me while I rush to buy this!

Bad games were still prevalent in the early 3D era, as developers were getting used to added dimensions. Although voice acting had been around on the PC for a long time, now normal home consoles could do the same. The result was hilariously bad, in most cases. Hey, this wasn't even exclusive to bad games, some great games had awful voice acting. Don't believe me? Here's a video, it might be useful if you, the master of watching...errr...watch it...

That's ten minutes worth of terrible voice acting...from one game...

Now even the worst games can hire experienced and competent voice actors, and while that's good in a way, bad acting will never not be entertaining. Not only that, we can rarely ever get a taste of terrible translations either. Now that developers have millions to play with everything has become competent. Obviously, games that are simply terrible to play will never be fun, but at least they used to reward you with hilarious mis-translations, terribly voiced characters and ridiculous looking moments. These games are still around, but they're a dying breed. Very few people are tempted to take risks with the millions that games cost these days to make and understandably so. But for those of us who enjoy seeing these games we'll always have many generations of crappy games to keep us entertained. Amen.