5 Creepy Moments You Missed In Classic Games
Most video games that set out to creep you out tend to keep their creepiness right out in the open, while others make you work a little bit harder to plant seeds for nightmares later that night. But whether it's the result of a glitch or a deliberate attempt to make a few people do goat imitations, the scariest parts of popular games are often easy to miss ...
Red Dead Redemption 2's Nosferatu Run-In
The Wild West was horrifying long before video games allowed armed 12-year-olds to explore it while screaming racial slurs at inanimate objects. And when the word "Dead" is right smack in the middle of a game's title, you can rest assured you're in for a bloody ride as soon as your console finishes taking the entire weekend to install it. Still, no one buying Red Dead Redemption 2 expected any point of that bloody ride to have a goddamn blood-sucking vampire. And we're not talking about any old vampire here: this one happens to be the spitting image of Count Orlok from Nosferatu ...
Scattered throughout the city of Saint Denis are a number of weird poems written by someone with a clear affinity for blood and death:
Should you be bored enough to locate every one of his little emo love letters, you'll be able to track him to a dark alleyway sometime after midnight. And when you finally find him, Nasty Nos will be kicking back a couple of cold ones ...
If you need a verbal warning, he'll be glad to tell you that he'll absolutely "suck you dry" and not in the typical way that offer is dropped by a stranger in a dark alley. To make matters worse, the trusty dagger he carries with him is powerful enough to kill you in one shot. Your best bet would be to follow Thanos' advice and aim for the head, or even better, walk right past those notes when you see them and get back to hogtying strangers instead.
If you're one of the tens of people that happen to be a huge fan of both the Fallout games and the sitcom Cheers, have we got some news that's sure to give you mixed feelings. The creators of Fallout 4 did not forget to pay homage to your favorite Boston-set sitcom when they brought their popular game series to the same city. It's just ... quite possibly the most uncomfortable thing that could have been done with Cheers. Well, aside from that time that Bill Cosby was under consideration to play a character in charge of making people's drinks.
Should you wish to ignore quests entirely and explore every single corner of the Fallout 4 map, you'll eventually come across an unmarked location that looks very familiar ...
Inside you'll find a faithful recreation of the bar set from the show ...
Sam's office is there too, complete with plenty of baseball memorabilia. There's also the pool room in the back, of course. And don't worry, the jukebox doesn't fail to make an appearance either. Oh, and then there are the skeletal remains of all your favorite characters ...
Cliff and Norm are appropriately seated in their usual places. On the floor behind the bar are Sam and Diane, who hopefully just fell there and weren't in the middle of a wrestling match over the last post-apocalyptic beer. They even threw in Frasier for good measure, which means that even in the post-apocalyptic future, his story goes on for longer than originally anticipated.
The Halo universe is no stranger to unusual shit. There was that weird human monkey family in Halo 3 that exists with no explanation whatsoever, and Halo's original E3 trailer showed that there were even goddamn dinosaurs lurking around at one point ...
Though perhaps the most unsettling experience you can have is by way of a glitch in the original Halo (and the remake):
At the beginning of the 343 Guilty Spark level, throwing a well-timed plasma grenade will allow you to stay aboard the ship meant to drop you off and check out more of the map than the designers wanted your nosy ass to hit up. After exiting the aircraft, the ominous sounds of every woodland horror movie are there to greet you. You're seemingly doomed to wander around endlessly when suddenly ...
Way out in the boonies of Silent Hill is a marine who bears a striking resemblance to one of your fellow soldiers staring off into the nothingness for no discernible reason:
And don't expect to get any clarification out of him either. All he does is stand there with the blank expression of being hypnotized mid-coma. No, "Hey, funny seein' you out here in this foggy shithole," or, "Sorry, I decided to go for a little hike and then just stop in this exact spot forever." All you're getting is crickets and the space marine version of the Blair Witch ending.
To make matters even creepier, when remodeling the level for the Anniversary Edition ...
... the designers decided to obscure the soldier by placing a tree directly in front of him. As a result, he now permanently stands face-to-face with said tree as if he refuses to accept that he lost at hide-and-seek.
When your sanity level drops in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, any number of visual distortions can occur, from shakiness to good old blurry vision. It's a mechanic that might seem annoying at first, but you'll be thankful it's there once you realize that some of the monsters inhabiting the castle you're exploring have no qualms about letting their dicks dangle freely for all to see.
Having your view obscured can be suspenseful in and of itself, though the most frightening result of having low sanity is one you're least likely to notice. In an office tucked away in the back hallway of the castle's study is a painting of its former owner, Alexander of Brennenburg. Since it's unlikely for your sanity to drop in this specific area of the game, chances are if you even glance up at the picture, it'll look like a somewhat normal person ...
On the rare occasion where you're sniffing around there on low sanity, though?
No wonder everyone walks around here with their schlongs out; it's easier than constantly needing to change underpants. How 'bout a change of scenery? We hear the furthest possible location from this one is lovely this time of year.
The first BioShock has more than enough scares. However, some unforgettable ones can be totally missed if you're not stopping to smell the gene-spliced roses. Both of these instances will require you to make your way to the Fort Frolic section of the game's underwater city. Behind the bar inside Sinclair's Spirits is a button that opens the door directly across from it and the gate to the Fort Frolic downstairs area outside. Through the first door, you'll see what looks like either a statue sitting in a chair facing a wall or someone's artsy-fartsy way of telling you to piss off ...
Turning your back on it will prove a terrifying mistake as not only will it no longer be seated when you face it again, but it'll be right behind you standing in a freaky ballet pose ...
If you're one of the few players to notice that the downstairs entrance is now accessible when you exit Sinclair's Spirits, you'll be in for yet another skid mark-inducing experience ...
Down below, you'll discover a partially flooded room with a few mannequin torsos on display and some loot further inside by the windows. Not before long, it'll become apparent that you're being stalked by even more mannequin people who like to quietly sneak up on you whenever you let your guard down ...
The ghosts of pierrots past are haunting you, and they won't stop until they have your skin for new tutus.
Check out Tony Alpsen's weekly comic strip, Ying & Yan, at Yingandyan.com.
Top image: Rockstar Games
