With Halloween just gone, readers name the most frightening opponents in gaming – from Necromorphs to ReDeads.
This weeks Hot Topic asked whats the most terrifying opponent youve ever faced in a video game, whether it was in an actual horror game or not. What makes for truly scary enemies and whats the most important thing to get right in their design?
It may have the reputation of being one of the least scary of the series but the Regenerators from Resident Evil 4 were one of the most common suggestions, as well as the alien from Alien Isolation, and just about anything from Silent Hill.
Fear is the mind killer
Before I played Alien Isolation I would have said that the scariest video game enemy was the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. After I played Alien Isolation there was no contest really, the antagonist in that game was absolutely terrifying.
Actually, Nemesis and the alien have a lot in common, which is probably why they were both such potent threats. First of all the enemies are (at least initially) indestructible so all you can do is run from them.
The Nemesis and the alien also manage to generate a strong sense of portent in their games. Clever audio cues suggest that the creatures might be nearby even though the player cant see them.
Id suggest that this sense of foreboding is what makes the alien and (to a lesser extent) the Nemesis so scary. The developers of Isolation were very clever in letting the players imagination do a lot of the work.
Less is more and all that, especially in the horror genre. You dont always have to show the bogeyman, you just have to infer that he might be there…
msv858 (Twitter)
Big baby
I still maintain that Dead Space 1 and 2 are the scariest video games ever made and so by extension the necromorphs are the scariest enemies. There are some real nasty ones too, with the exploding babies in 2 being particularly awful. Really not the sort of thing you wouldve expected a company like EA to allow in their game but the whole thing was filled with gross enemies and real scares. The bit with the drill and the eyeball was another good/horrible bit.
Ive heard people complain that the necromorphs themselves are kind of original looking and I can see what theyre saying but for me it doesnt matter as long as the game uses the enemy effective. There are plenty of cool looking enemies that arent actually that scary, usually just because the game throws them at you and makes them hard to kill. But thats not enough.
Guile
The uncompleted
I promised to write in about this from the normal Inbox but for me the scariest video game enemy is Lisa from the P.T. demo/Silent Hills. Shes not an enemy in that shes someone you can fight or defeat but she is absolutely terrifying everytime you face her, and Ive play the demo so many times I couldnt even guess that total number.
Silent Hills being canned must go down as the biggest crime in gaming history. All because Hideo Kojima has some kind of spat with the upper management. The game was on course to be the best survival horror ever and the footage from the Tokyo Game Show was just incredible in terms of how scary and weird it all was. I fear well never see the like again.
Dettol
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Coming in too fast
Any enemy which charges at you with pace I hate in video games. Not in the sense that I think they are a poor design choice or anything, I hate them because they often surprise me and because they force me to react quickly, and unless they are tanks, they are often harder to aim at as they move so quickly. Im thinking of those floating heads in Doom 2016 or the zombies in Left 4 Dead. Each of them are reasonably easy to kill when they are stationery as they have low health, but when they move I begin to panic and what makes it worse is that they are often in high numbers which makes my hatred of them grow even more.
Shout out to the bat creature in Batman: Arkham Knight whose appearance whilst I was innocently gliding about nearly threw me off my chair!
Angry_Kurt (Twitter)
Now playing: Dark Souls Remastered (Switch)
Virtual scares
I dont startle or scare easy so jump scares dont really do anything too me but that said I do enjoy a good horror game or movie. There have been a few stand outs over the years in regards to individual enemies, with honourable mentions going to the xenomorph from Alien Isolation and Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 but I personally think the best of them is the Shadow from Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
I think what makes these three stand out is the almost indestructible nature of the enemy, the feeling of loneliness within the games and the feeling of helplessness when they turn up as this ratchets up the tension, with tension being the key word to a good horror. Ive spoken to friends who have either tiptoed through these type of games at a snails pace, only played a little bit at a time or given up completely due to fear.
On a lighter note, I have been very tempted to get a PlayStation VR unit to play Resident Evil 7 as that sounds right up my street. I havent played it at all yet and apparently its the best way to play it.
It has been said before that VR is the ideal home for horror games and it baffles me how few there are for it. Im sure there was also a rumour that Alien Isolation was in development for it at one point. Can you imagine the xenomorph or the Shadow in full surround, could be terrifying!
I also hope that Nemesis will get the full budget remake that Resident Evil 2 is getting as that is looking like an excellent remake that Im personally looking forward to with its February release being good timing and that should see it do well.
The main problem with horror games is that they dont sell well and due to this have budget restrictions so severe that the majority turn out rubbish with the same prescribed by-the-numbers plots. This is doubly frustrating due to cinematic horror – It, Halloween, Sinister, The Conjuring, and A Quiet Place spring to mind – doing so well over the last few years so why hasnt this translated to games?
Mr.Saveloy
GC: We definitely played a demo of Alien Isolation during the early days of the Oculus Rift, but thats as far as it ever got.
Has claws, brings death
My first thought was the Regenerators from Resident Evil 4. But that guy will probably get a lot of love/fear/hate/whatever this weekend. Its not exactly the scariest name – you might think of a superhero or your kitchen fridge rather than this nightmare fuel.
A greyish mass of parasites and minced flesh with the sort of sharp teeth that you would draw on your monsters when you were five, they – wouldnt you know – can regenerate from almost any damage. They can also stretch out their arms from several feet away like an evil Dhalsim, which always manages to catch you off guard. Your only defence is to equip the sniper rifle with night vision scope (or was it infra-red?) and target the little scorpion-like Las Plagas parasites burrowed within them.
Which naturally requires you to slowly aim and fire at each. All the while with it coming your way with that heavy, tortured breathing…
Urrgh.
I also think the Deathclaw from the Fallout series deserves a mention. Particularly in New Vegas. While they will destroy you if youre unprepared in the fourth game, probably right up until you get the Gauss rifle – you can still beat them with high explosives or a Gatling gun. In New Vegas they are nigh invincible until around you get toward the end game – and even then you have to be very careful. On repeated play, some areas are just no-go areas.
I tried to clear out a quarry of the buggers on my first go. And it was the first time I had come across them so I thought to myself: Ooh! Deathclaws! Dont they sound tough and scary? Well, yes. Yes they are. Even when I scored a critical hit from stealth with whatever my strongest weapon at the time, it barely scratched him. And then he was running my way. Very fast. With at least two of his buddies. In V.A.T.S. I might as well have thrown my bullets away for all the good they did and I had neither the health or the armour to last in straight-up fight with even one of them, never mind three. My companion at the time, likely Cass, was killed in one blow – I didnt last much longer.
They may only just charge you, but its a hell of a thing to be charging at you. Its attack power and armour rating are so enormous that it doesnt need to be smart because it knows that theres very little capable of stopping it and it can rip you apart in less than five seconds. Which is not a happy thought.
DMR
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Scare of your life
To me the scariest enemies are the ones which take you by surprise and are not obvious or hyped up in anyway. Its like when a movie gives away a load of information in just the trailer alone and spoils any initial scares which I may have got. For example, in Resident Evil 4, a lot of clues were given to a variety of enemies and creatures like Dr Salvador who was given a lot of coverage before release and I knew Id be bumping into him at some point.
Though I still remember the time when I went into a house outside of the main area of the village somewhere and I went upstairs to a bedroom where a cut scene played out. I then walked calmly out and along the passageway outside and downstairs into a kitchen with a save point. I thought now would be a good time to end it for the night and save the game. But stupidly I went outside to check the area before I saved to see what was ahead of me for my next session!
Thats when I heard a chainsaw start up and a screaming madman running straight towards me. Damn it, Dr Salvador and just bolted back inside and upstairs with this chainsaw freak in hot pursuit and no time to save. Kicking doors open and sprinting back through the bedroom and down the stairs until back outside. I prepared my shotgun and composed myself and was able to take aim and take him down and then save my game after.
That was a frantic scare but for absolute chilling scary atmosphere it was within the laboratory areas where you see dissections and experimentations on these horrific creatures called Regenerators. That whole area just made me think this is horrible and I just wanted to get out of the entire area ASAP! Their hissing and rasping sounds just chilled me to the bone.
The original Project Zeros Kyrie was another scary entity and being hunted by her, or just coming across her, was terrifying as Id never played a game like this before. The fact that the Camera Obscura got you into the face of these ghosts just made the experience more terrifying. Project Zero II: The Crimson Butterfly, had a village full of ghostly antagonistic spirits of all sorts and was one of the best experiences of horror in my gaming life. And to name one enemy which scared me more would be impossible as there was a variety of ghost forms taken from the best of Japanese supernatural horror movies and folklore.
A scary enemy, I think, must be elusive and stay in the shadows and come out at the right moment and not to be overused. The other is the opposite, just complete insanity like Sander Cohen from BioShock who revels in the spotlight. The voice work and conversational scripting is superb and some of the best in gaming history. A very dark and humorous bloke, who after much taunting finally reveals himself at the top of a grand staircase and walks down like the star he is.
It will be interesting to see what other viewers favourites are as I have come across many others but the above definitely had an effect on me and to this day. I cant forget the initial moments I met these creatures and characters for the first time. Oh, I nearly forgot Lisa Trevor from the GameCubes Resident Evil remake and her sad story. The bedroom of hers and underground passageways away from the main mansion through the woods was just chilling but very sombre and again affected me a lot with a variety of emotions – I felt her creepiness but still very sorry for her all at the same time, amazing really.
Hope you all had a great Halloween.
Alucard
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