Top 10 Scariest PC Games
#6: Aliens vs. Predator (1999)
Aliens await you in the darkness - load up and go get them!
Coming up to the half-way point in the Top 10 list, is Rebellion Development's sci-fi FPS game based around the Alien and Predator movies. A feature that made it a success in the stores is that it’s virtually 3 separate games together; one can play as a Marine, Alien or Predator, going through different storylines and levels, and it was playing as the soldier that did it for most people who voted. You see, both of the non-human characters are huge, powerful and able to leap great distances or cling to walls. Sure Marines are armed to the teeth with pulse rifles, flamethrowers and smart guns but what use are they when your enemy bleeds acid? How can you fill it full of ammo when the damn thing is invisible? Aliens vs. Predator pitched the Marine at just the right level: potentially very dangerous but at the same, fragile and vulnerable. And you are, of course, pretty much alone in your missions: just you, your guns and a motion tracker. Beep-beep...beep-beep...beep-beep. It's funny how such a little thing can play on your nerves so much; changing in tone with the proximity of a moving target, the device can easily force you into a firing frenzy, wasting rounds on nothing but darkness. And just at that moment when the last round clack-clacks off, you just know an alien will pounce from above.
It's not a perfect scare-fest though: the Marine's running speed would make him a 100m world champion for decades to come and there is no way to reload a weapon mid-usage, almost forcing the player to charge through a level, wildly blasting away, when in reality one would almost certainly be peeking around every corner. But like Doom before it, voters picked it for the great memories it gave them, albeit scary ones!
#5: Doom 3 (2004)
Doom 3's obligatory and totally mad scientist.
If there is ever a game to neatly split opinion, it has to be Doom 3 - loved and hated in equal measure. It’s not really a sequel to Doom 2 (or Final Doom or Ultimate Doom) but rather a spiritual successor; perhaps Doom 3D would have been a better title as Id Software brought the franchise back to life with an all-singing and dancing 3D OpenGL renderer, resplendent with normal mapping and stencil shadows. With the right hardware at the time, it looked fantastic and although many of the textures are quite low resolution by the yardsticks of today, the level detail and feeling of claustrophobia are still of a high standard. Doom 3 also goes straight for the jugular in terms of scariness: classic, B-movie shocks abound with zombies bursting out of lockers, lighting suddenly failing, death cries of fallen comrades over the radio and so on. And it’s all very effective - for a while. Alas, one can always have too much of a good thing and the constant barrage of scare tactics on the player simply imbues one with total immunity to the surprises. In the worst cases, they are plain annoying and the use of the flashlight (the player was limited to using a weapon or the light) received considerable flack rather quickly.
Like an old uncle desperately trying to hip and down with the kids, Doom 3 is enjoyable and scary but in small doses only.
Related Stuff Games: Resident Evil 4
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