Happy Spooky Season, Everyone!
…wait, what do you mean I missed it by a single day? Drat!
Oh well, in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I’d revisit the subject of an older article of mine, and talk about another 10 really scary moments from non-horror video games. Because, for someone reason, there are a whole ton of these moments despite these games not being intended to be frightening theoretically (and many of them being children’s games). Still, I can’t help but have a strange love for these ill-fitting moments of frights!
Let’s get into things!
10) “Not Take Mirror” ~ Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
If you’d asked a much younger version of myself what the scariest moment in any video game was, there would be a pretty high chance that this is what I’d give the top honors to! But seeing as it’s one of those moments that, spooks-wise, doesn’t really carry over into adulthood, it only ranks here on this list. Still, there’s definitely something undeniably creepy about a jovial snow lady becoming possessed by a cursed mirror, having her entire face spin around Exorcist-style, and then screech at you with a demonic expression. Twilight Princess isn’t a stranger to scary moments, and this is one of its most memorable.
9) Mimi’s Chase ~ Super Paper Mario
I think it’s a basic fact of life that no one enjoys being chased (even those that might say they do really just enjoy the thrill of the moment over that running-away action itself, in my eyes). Regardless of that, there’s zero people in the world who would want to get chased by a demonic spider girl through a maze-like haunted mansion! And yet, that’s exactly what happens to cap off Chapter 2 of Super Paper Mario. It’s bad enough seeing Mimi snap her own neck and mutate into a spider demon…but the fact she then chases you through the proceeding maze, following you room-to-room? And she’s invincible? And she shoots projectiles, preventing you from finding little corners to hide in? And she won’t stop until you reach the end of the maze? It really gave a younger version of me the chills big time!
8) Meeting Little Birdie ~ Metroid: Other M
Metroid: Other M gets a lot of undeserved hate for a ton of reasons, and a sad side effect of that hate is that people miss out on some genuinely amazing things about the game in the process. For example, I genuinely believe that Metroid: Other M has the best atmosphere of any Metroid game, especially when it comes to evoking feelings of classic sci-fi like Alien. The entire locale of this game, The Bottle Ship, is pretty off-putting and unsettling to begin with, but the specific stretch where you find an abandoned lab room, a bunch of dead scientists, a ton of blood, and a broken cage? It gets your heart racing, especially with the tense music. Then you find this creature outside…just…standing there. Staring at you. With those emotionless dead eyes. It’s a phenomenal moment.
7) The Wolf Cave ~ Tomb Raider (2013)
And coming it at the number one spot on a non-existent list entitled “Things I’d Never Ever Do In Real Life“, we’ve got this moment here from the Crystal Dynamics reboot of Tomb Raider. Sure, I get it, the wolves stole the backpack with the only working radio, and you need it to call for help to escape this island filled with crazy cultists. Understood. But…to go all the way into a pitch-dark wolf den to fetch the backpack, all while you’re slowly being cornered by wolves in confines so tight you can barely draw your bow (your only real weapon)? Geez, even thinking about it sends shivers down my spine, and although this moment is over in less than five minutes, I dread it each time I replay this game!
6) Brigmore Manor ~ Dishonored
There’s something inherently spooky about stealth games (or stealth sections in non-stealth games). Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say that it creates an aura of high-tension and it induces anxiety. Regardless, stealth can be scary, and that goes double for games played with a 1st Person POV, where you can’t see your pursuer without slowing down to look behind yourself. And then that goes triple when the area you’re trying to be sneaky in is an abandoned swampy mansion filled with terrifying, cackling, teleporting magic witches who can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. You’re never safe in Brigmore Manor, and that makes each second spent in this dilapidated abode a nail-biting one.
5) Spotted By Syntax ~ Freedom Planet 2
From one moment of stealth to another, we’ve got the final level of Freedom Planet 2. While I can’t exactly say that the decision to make the final level in the game so drastically different gameplay-wise from everything that came before was good, it was certainly memorable. This is one of those levels that makes your chest tighten uncomfortably as you play, until you’re basically folding in on yourself from the anxiety. The slower you go, the faster Syntax sees you, the more the screen begins to darken, the louder she begins to scream at you, and the faster the Instant-Death gauge on the left of the screen begins to fill. It’s horrifying on your first playthrough, and still a moment of great stress each time I replay this masterpiece of a game.
4) Lights-Out ~ Luigi’s Mansion
Can you believe I forgot to include Luigi’s Mansion on the last list, despite using Luigi in the article’s featured image? What a fluke on my part!
This came up the last time we did one of these lists, but I have an intrinsic fear that has persisted since childhood of not being safe. It’s why I’ll ride any roller coaster you throw at me, but I’m standing thirty feet back from the cliff of the mountain I just hiked. One of those things is safe, the other is not.
Well, at this point in Luigi’s Mansion, you’re nearing the top of the mansion when suddenly lightning strikes and all the lights go off. Suddenly, no room in the mansion is safe, including rooms you’ve already cleared AND including normally-safe rest areas. Ghosts are everywhere until you find and flip the breaker in the basement to resolve this mess. This whole ordeal terrified me utterly when I was a kid.
3) Stalked By Juice ~ Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Rounding out our trio of stealth-focused horror, we’ve got this exceptionally memorable and wholly unexpected level from the fantastic Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. In what is otherwise a cute and bubbly platformer filled with wacky weapons and comedic baddies, you end up stumbling upon an abandoned research lab and its escaped science project, the spiky behemoth pictured below. By the end of the level, you’re best friends with the beast, name it “Juice”, and it helps you fight off the actual villains.
But it doesn’t start out that way.
Juice, before being befriended and named, is an absolute menace. It jumpscares you at multiple points, smashing through glass or being heard roaring in the distance. But finally, you end up in a nearly pitch-black room where you have to switch two flips on either end of the room…with Juice roaming about in the middle. It’s a full-stop, no-holds-barred stealth section, with a monstrous and scary invincible beast ready to pounce and end your life if you so much as make a single out-of-place noise while creeping around. It’s not as typically scary as anything you’d find in a real horror game, but something about this setpiece existing within a kid’s platformer makes it even more scary, you know?
2) Hyrule Field Skeletons ~ Ocarina of Time
Okay, you’ll have to hear me out on this one, especially as the picture I included below is about the least scary thing of all time. I mean, just look at that goofy guy! But this entry’s placement on the list really comes down to two major things, and that’s the fact that I played Ocarina of Time when I was very young, and also this moment preyed upon that intrinsic fear I mentioned earlier of not being safe.
Or, more pertinently, being safe and THEN suddenly not being safe anymore.
After finishing the first dungeon, you enter the idyllic and pretty Hyrule Field, with your destination being the town in the distance. So I begin walking over, meandering a bit as I go. By the time I reach the town, night has fallen…and to my surprise the drawbridge is raised right before my eyes, blocking my access to the town. Then, an owl hoots to signal nightfall, and suddenly an infinitely-spawning horde of skeletons rise up from beneath my feet and begin to attack, while the tense fighting music kicks in, and I’m trapped with nowhere to go in an area I’d thought one minute ago was completely safe.
It actually gave me nightmares, and not only that, it got me to stop playing the game for over a year.
1) Literally Any Monster Appearing ~ Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
This is another weird one I’ll have to explain in more detail, because it’s another somewhat strange case. It’s not quite like any of the other examples on this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less scary!
In any Monster Hunter game that isn’t 3 Ultimate, monsters just sort of exist in the world. You can walk around them without them getting angry at you (depending on the species), and mostly mind your business. If you do upset a monster, a little exclamation point pops up, there’s an alerting sound cue of reasonable volume, and then a few seconds later a battle begins with the proper fight music playing. It’s standard stuff.
In 3 Ultimate…this plays instead: SPOTTED
And it doesn’t play when you tick a monster off. No, it plays the very nanosecond a monster spawns in the same room as you. One frame there’s no monster, the second frame there’s a monster and this is being blared at the sound of a nuclear alarm blasted directly into your eardrums. I hope the YouTube link conveyed just how agonizingly loud this sound is, because I can’t stress enough how absurdly overtuned that soundbite is compared to the rest of the audio.
It’s especially egregious because, outside of combat music, there’s no ambient tunes in Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. When you’re just wandering around, it’s dead silent except for the crunch of leaves under your feet. To be slapped in the face by this piercingly-loud song (often when your back is completely turned as you’re just peacefully gathering supplies) is one of the scariest things ever. Or maybe put more accurately, the closest I’ve ever come to having a heart attack while playing a video game!
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
(Also, this is your mostly-yearly reminder that I won’t be posting any articles for the next four weeks, as I’ll once more be participating in NaNoWriMo. The official organization might be gone, but the spirit lives on! Wish me luck, and I’ll see you all again on the 6th of December, as we jump into our annual tradition of looking back at my favorite games, shows/movies, and books of the past year!)
The Contrarian Corner 