Things in games that surprised/scared/dazzled you

[lazygecko]

Yeah, let's just list our various gaming experiences that really made us jump out of our seats for whatever reason.

In the first (quite massive) stage for Tomb Raider 2, near the end there is some chasm or something where you can climb down. I assume this was a bit of a secret area since it took me a few playthroughs before I noticed it. Anyway, once I made my way down there and ran around a bit I came across a couple of skeletons littered around the ground, and out of nowhere comes a bigass roaring T-Rex and scares the shit out of me.

I hadn't played the original Tomb Raider far enough to know that dinosaurs were a recurring theme in the series so it really got me since it was so damn unexpected.

Second is in World of Warcraft, it was just another day casting Astral Recall on my shaman (teleportation spell, is meant to take you back to whatever inn you assigned it to), only this time it teleported me into a random spot in the world, mid-air and rapidly flying in a random direction.

So there I was stuck with my character, unable to do anything and flying in the same direction until I reached the boundaries of the game world, continuing out towards the endless void. Managed to bring myself back by having some friends summon me back via a summoning stone.

Then I tried using astral recall again, and again appeared slightly outside the game world, this time falling down while I could see the ocean, and eventually the ocean floor disappearing in the distance. Kind of a creepy experience. Eventually I found out that this happened due to corrupt game files, because apparently your character movement is handled by your client instead of the world server. I'm guessing this is to reduce laggy experiences with higher latencies. Still, real WTF moment.

And third is Advanced Daisenryuku for the Genesis. I picked the ROM randomly, expecting it to be a quirky Japanese shmup or something. So I wait through the Sega logo, and the expected bunch of Japanese text. And then... a full-screen photo of Hitler appears, and an audio sample playing "DAS DEUTSCHE REICH! SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL!". Turns out this was a turn-based WW2 strategy game, and I can see why it didn't make it outside Japan.

[Gario]

Wow, that Sega game makes it sounds like Japan supported Hitler during WW2.

Speaking of picking through random roms, I pulled up a game called 'Bad Omen' for the Sega, since my younger siblings were working on a game with the same title ages ago. I opened it up, and the title screen was quite promising - a pretty good soundtrack with a classy fantasy backdrop. It looked like it was going to be a pretty decent platformer... until the play screen opened up an Arknoid clone that was a bit messy in it's design. I let out an inconspicuous 'What the fucking hell?' when I saw that.

Ages ago, my oldest brother, for shits and gigs, decided to name his file 'POOP' in Zelda II (this is when it first came out, so we were around 9 and 4, and yes we were immature at that age). To our surprise, the file started us out with every spell and max upgrades (8-life, 8-magic, 8-attack). There was a catch, though - if you got hit a single time, you died instantly. We were crapping our pants, there, and it didn't change when we took the game out, either. Unfortunately one of us eventually erased this anomaly, and while we tried to get it up again using the same name it just didn't work the same. Ah, bless the days of random game wack-outs.

[Benjamin Briggs]

I can recall at least 3 occasions during link's awakening that I wanted to stop playing because of a genuine sense of dread and/or fear

and in all honestly it's because the music was so well-written

[Unstable Hamster]

I'm gonna say one of the biggest bombshells for me was in Megaman Zero 3.

SPOLIER ALERT!!!--------------------------------------

When I had just gone through the last stage, kicking trash I get to the last boss. Omega, I figured alright, it's time to take this behemoth down. So I get to fighting him and I beat him, of course, I knew he had another form. Megaman end bosses NEVER have just one form. So I'm sitting there and see the wreckage of omega and zero pops out. Now, I realized that I was zero as well. And when I found out that THAT zero was the REAL zero from megaman X. My whole entire mind, body, and soul was blown. THAT surprised the hell out of me, and to this day it's my favorite plot twist.

SPOLIER DONE!!!------------------------------------------

Those who didn't want to get spolier'd, I suggest getting the DS repackage of the zero games. now.

Edit: Oh yea, for fear stuff. It took me a whole year before I gained the courage to beat the forest temple in LoZ: OOT.

[Skrypnyk]

Dragon's Lair/Space Ace used to scare the shit out of me as a kid, as well as the cut scenes in Out of this World.

[Murmeli Walan]

Eternal Darkness on GameCube. The bathroom insanity scene. That is all.

[EC2151]

I can recall at least 3 occasions during link's awakening that I wanted to stop playing because of a genuine sense of dread and/or fear

and in all honestly it's because the music was so well-written

Were those times the Dream Shrine, Face Shrine, and Windfish Egg?

What scared the hell out of me in Link's Awakening was using that glitch to get to places you were not supposed to get to, and you'd find yourself in secret areas in which there was no escape.

When I was a young lad playing Majora's Mask, I was doing the Ranch defense for Romani, and my heart was beating fast the entire time.

However, the aliens got past me, and broke into the barn, and my impressionable eyes watched in horror as they dragged Romani away kicking and screaming.

Being the sissy I was, I quickly turned off the console, ran out of the basement, and didn't touch the game for a few days. Ha ha.

For the 'dazzled' part, it happened recently while I was playing Sin and Punishment 2, Secret of Mana, and Dynamite Headdy, where my mind was just literally blown by how great those games were.

For surprise/shock, I did jump when Serris blindsided me in Metroid Fusion a couple years back. Same with Yakuza and the TRO encounter with the SA-X. Oh those wily R&D1 dudes.

[HalcyonSpirit]

The only thing in a game that I can currently remember that's managed to startle me upon first encountering it. Actually, it still manages to do it to me. Makes cavern crawling... interesting.

[Speeeven]

Pretty much every moment of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That game is truly terrifying.

Aside from that, in Final Fantasy VII, when you wake up in the Shinra building's prison with all the doors open and you see the trail of blood... that was freaky.

[Gario]

Almost forgot, AvP for the good ol' computer... those fucking face huggers scare the living shit out of me to this day.

[Chickenwarlord]

I can recall at least 3 occasions during link's awakening that I wanted to stop playing because of a genuine sense of dread and/or fear

and in all honestly it's because the music was so well-written

Face Shrine send chills down your spine at age 7?

[Brandon Strader]

fission mailed

[Nick Hyral]

Time for some laughs here I imagine but here it goes... I still have to this day a shameful fear of certain death scenes in games. As a kid when my parents would play Mortal Kombat I'd have to leave the room each time my mom would pull off Scorpian's finishing move.. Ogre Battle's depressing game over theme and "May our leader rest in peace" bit just phased out over me a few years ago to where I could play the game without it bugging me. But usually any game that involves a death where a character can't come back, or where they show a tombstone or funeral scene of any kind still to this day bothers me. Not as much as it used to, but still scares the crap out of me.

[Thalzon]

Eternal Darkness on GameCube. The bathroom insanity scene. That is all.

This, among others.

"Ghosts don't... DIE! Heh heh heh... Can you get out of here.... alive?"

Jesus, that creeped me right out when I was 10.

A more recent one was in Arc Rise Fantasia. The game is boppin' along, introducing its gameplay, being rather run of the mill with a neat battle system... Then the guest party member is kidnapped. Then it's revealed that she's the summoner of the chaotic death god. THEN she goes crazy and half my party just up and abandons me, to side with her! It was the first plot twist in a good long while to actually floor me. Sure, I eventually got half the guys who abandoned me back... But still, it was an awesome twist that was hinted at with some real subtlety.

[SotSS]

The entirety of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

[Anti-Syne]

Nemesis. Getting hunted down and chased by a shit fast muscular super zombie terrified me when I was younger.

I borrowed it off my friend thinking I was brave enough, but as soon as he started ruthlessly chasing me through the alleys of Raccoon City I just ran into a safe room, saved the game, turned off my ps1, took out the disc and left it under a pile of magazines.

I'm now 21 and only brave enough to play it with a friend...Being chased by him is just 100% panic for me.

Aside from that I once had a ps1 demo disc that got a bit scratched, so that instead of loading up a demo for an old football game, a black screen with plain white writing loaded up telling me about a coming alien invasion, the creepy thing was none of the games on that demo disc had anything to do with aliens at all. That freaked me out as a 10 year old

[Kenogu Labz]

'nuf said.

[ectogemia]

Ages ago, my oldest brother, for shits and gigs, decided to name his file 'POOP' in Zelda II (this is when it first came out, so we were around 9 and 4, and yes we were immature at that age). To our surprise, the file started us out with every spell and max upgrades (8-life, 8-magic, 8-attack). There was a catch, though - if you got hit a single time, you died instantly. We were crapping our pants, there, and it didn't change when we took the game out, either. Unfortunately one of us eventually erased this anomaly, and while we tried to get it up again using the same name it just didn't work the same. Ah, bless the days of random game wack-outs.

Ohhhh, yes. Nothing bonds two brothers closer together than doing silly shit in a game. My brother and I named our first Secret of Evermore character "PENNISDICK" because 1) we couldn't spell penis (totally means we're not gay, dude) and 2)because that's when we first realized that the NPCs will all call you a hilarious name throughout the game if you so desire them. Seeing what silly things the NPCs would say calling us PENNISDICK drove us to finish that game together, and we did it in record-awesome time.

PENNISDICK started us playing games together, and for a long time, that's just about all we did together, mostly because he was a son of a bitch almost all the time, like all older brothers. Thank you, PENNISDICK. You helped spawn more creative RPG character name classics that spice up every NPC conversation, such as " asshole", "Hitler", "you dick", ", bone me,", and the subtly hilarious (really, try it) Canada-ifier, "eh?".

Another awesome time we had was playing SMB3 on the NES, but we jostled the cartridge a bit, and the data was shifted. All the sprites were... not as they should have been. For instance, in world 3, instead of that little canoe you can ferry around to the mushroom huts, there was the warp tornado. EXCEPT IT WAS BROWN AND LOOKED LIKE POO!!!!! And to this day I still think one of the funniest things I've ever done is piloting a poop tornado that makes a cute little "deedle-eedle-eedle-ee" sound around the map.

[Gario]

As a kid when my parents would play Mortal Kombat I'd have to leave the room each time my mom would pull off Scorpian's finishing move...

You sound like you had some awesome parents growing up.

[Schwaltzvald]

The entirety of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

I love the 2:00 mark on the second link; hilarious and scary at the same time.

I would have to say Silent Hill 4's ghosts bothered me a lot.

"FUCK WALLS" they say as they squeeze through them and swiftly try to kill me. Beat the shit out of them, they come back as aggressively as ever. Later on in the game even if I stun them they instantly revive. The hauntings occurring in my apartment does not help things either as I had been living in an apartment at the time I first played it.

I don't need to start imagining the squirrels scratching on the other side of the walls are anything more then that.

They are worse than the Shibito from Siren in this regard; perhaps on equal levels as the poltergeists in the Fatal Frame series.

For the record I'm aware of the five swords I could use to pin down the especially powerful ghosts but that doesn't make the situation any better that there are plenty of them floating about.

[Gollgagh]

'nuf said.

hahaha yeah

[Chernabogue]

Rampage Through Time. The TV guy, who snorts and gargles during a 1-minute cutscene. He is scaring. Seriously.

[captaineegee]

'nuf said.

Was there even a way to get past that bastard? No matter what I did, he would always catch me.

[DarkeSword]

The only thing in a game that I can currently remember that's managed to startle me upon first encountering it. Actually, it still manages to do it to me. Makes cavern crawling... interesting.

Yes. This guy scared the crap out of me in broad daylight. I turn around and he's RIGHT THERE.

Also, any time you see another person in Riven, which is few and far between.

[Arek the Absolute]