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I definitely agree there is a lot of subjectiveness in a subject such as this. I, for example, can get seriously scared by games that I can't die in, simply because I startle easily. All it takes is to have something unexpected jump out at me (even if it's not meant to be scary), and I will be scared. Even in real life this often occurs. I'm I'm listening to music on my headphones at work, and someone taps me on the shoulder unexpectedly, I almost always freak out and jump. But I realize that my exaggerated startle response is not something that most people typically have. :)

 

For me, at least, creepiness is directly correlated to fear. If something creeps me out, you can bet I'm going to be afraid, at least at some level.

 

Talk to you later!

 

JDHJANUS

Josh

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Yeah, it's kind of hard to distinguish between "creepy" and "scary". No scene in DOTT, Full Throttle, Monkey, or Grim Fandango is especially scary. Creepy? Definitely. But not scary. 

 

I remember games like Gobliiins and Woodruff having some very unsettling scenes, and you can't die in those games either. The scene in Goblins 3 where you're dead, and you have to walk around in total darkness until you can paint the scene in various shades of red, purple, green, etc., each colour revealing a new twist on the scene -- very creepy. There's also strong demonic imagery in various other scenes... definitely very disturbing to me even today.

 

In Woodruff, the drug abuse metaphors in particular, combined with the weird ambient music of the game, also still creep me out. The whole Red Light District -- ostensibly a fun place but overrun with an intensely sad vibe -- is easily one of the creepiest areas I've experienced in a game. (Then there's the Tax Collector waiting around every corner...)

 

But scary? Nah... Scary is Police Quest 2 and 3, as you poke around areas where you know a killer lies in wait... The pentagram shit in PQ3 was terrifying to me. The final scene where you bust into the crack house? Wow.

 

So yeah, death is a necessary but not sufficient condition for genuine scariness in a game for me. KQ1 isn't scary; it's silly. But poking around the murder scene for Jesse Bains in PQ2 is scary precisely because you know he can kill you.

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Talking about King Quest...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70g61W92CXc

 

Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about stupid King Quest V deaths...  :huh:

Haha ok that's a little stupid. But not annoying. You'd have to be pretty dumb to do something like that. Besides, maybe the rocks are extra slippery and there were sharp ones he was impaled on.

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The Realm of the Dead (the parts of the Isle with the zombies) was terrifying to me as a child. Even now it's still kind of disturbing. You see a Zombie woman with torn clothes and a limp; another female zombie with a butcher knife sticking out of her back; a male zombie with it's arm torn off. As someone who enjoys horror, it's easy to imagine any number of horrifying stories surrounding how these zombies came to be deceased.

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I agree to a certain extent. But if Hitchcock had worked with death the way Sierra often did, Janet Leigh would just have tripped and hit her head in the shower.

 

I lol'ed. :)

 

Okay, scary games. Well, for my money, you need the threat of death for something to be truly scary. Even if it's the sort of "zap! right back where you started" try again-type deaths. The psychological implications of just having gotten someone killed -- by extension yourself -- is the sort of primal fear that is so deep-rooted, it's a given.

 

Okay, so you could conceivably imagine a game where you don't outright die, but are captured and either thrown in a dungeon or a pit, or horribly mutilated, or whatever. That still counts as a death scenario in my book. (And, for the record, Maniac Mansion had both!)

 

If you take away the threat of incapacitation or death, stuff merely becomes creepy, not scary.

 

That's not to say you can't do creepy without deaths -- I mean, The 7th Guest was pretty creepy, at least conceptually -- and you can't die in that game ... because, well, you're already dead. Oops, spoiler.

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  • 4 weeks later...
I was not afraid of anything in an LA adventure game. Granted, they're usually geared more towards comedy, but still...

 

 

That was precisely why they went in the 'mostly comedy' direction. The fact that you can't die in most of their games makes it impossible to be entirely serious...instead, they went the other way with things, and started having fun with their games. Finding more and more increasingly hilarious reasons for you to *not* die when you logically should became something of a hallmark of theirs. :D

 

I played Maniac Mansion as an adult (just a couple of months ago), and those scenes you mentioned still seriously freaked me out in the same way

 

 

"Silly me! I should have tied you to my bed!"

 

They freaked me out too, although perhaps not for the same reasons...

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