trivard676Fear, like humour, is kind of a subjective thing. What might be absolutely horrifying to one person, could seem pretty silly to someone else. It explains why games like Heavy Rain might strike a chord with some folks, and Silent Hill makes others yawn. So it’s no surprise that making a survival horror game (or a horror game in general) would be pretty difficult, taking into account all of the different things people are afraid of, pacing and all of that jazz.
However, it’s pretty hard to deny that some enemies just completely miss the mark when it comes to scaring gamers. Perhaps not for lack of trying, but maybe their heads were just in the wrong place? There are some enemies as well that might have left us teetering on the edge of our seats before, but age hasn’t done them any favours.
T-Virus Infected Elephant – Resident Evil: Outbreak File 1
Capcom was taking Resident Evil in new places with Outbreak. It took everyday, ordinary citizens and threw them in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, each with their own set of skill sets and unique abilities. Too bad one of them wasn’t a zoo-keeper. The team of survivors makes their way into the Racoon City zoo, where all sorts of infected zoo animals were running amok, one of them being the T-Virus infected elephant.
They’re running, but they don’t look all that scared. Kevin looks like he’s out for a nice jog.
We know, we know, elephants are great, majestic beings and all in all are generally awesome – especially considering the fact that they’ve been poached to the brink of extinction in some areas. It’s true, when elephants go on rampages they do tend to wreak a lot of havoc, and to see one charging towards you would probably put you in a fear-induced coma. But somehow, the Raccoon City Zoo’s T-Virus infected elephant just didn’t quite cut it for creeping out gamers.
The elephant really only had one attack on one or two screens (CHARRRRGE!). Sure, it was zombified, in a state of decomposition, but let’s be honest, when you think of digital elephants, what do you think of?
If you thought of the Mathville Help Screen elephant, we really need to talk.
This isn’t the first time that the Resident Evil universe toyed with animals. There was a scrapped plan to include a t-virus infected horse into the RE lore. Since Raccoon was supposed to be in the American Midwest, where horses are a little more common, so naturally animals would be infected, right? The horse would be basically the elephant – angry, bigger, and decomposing. So we guess there would be a lot of goats and chickens also infected by the T-virus, too…
Bone Suckler – Parasite Eve 2
There were a lot of enemies in Parasite Eve that were messed up. Back when the game was released, this “messed up” was “OMGTERRIFYING!” but looking back, a lot of the stuff was…well, kind of ridiculous. To understand just how ridiculous this is, imagine a Jurassic Park of sorts, except instead of dinosaurs, this zoo housed a bunch of different specimens that people could essentially evolve into.
Out of all of the creatures in the Neo-Ark Facility, the pitch for this little guy was pretty weak. “Imagine always staying in your mother’s arms, always being loved.” More like “Imagine being smothered to death without any discernable defense of your own, well into your 30s.” Or, however long the pupal stage is. After it pupates, it turns into the mindsuckler, which is a tad more awesome than a regular mosquito.
Sorry, couldn’t find any pictures of the Bone Suckler, so here’s the Prowler.
This Artificial Neo-Mitochondrial Creature (ANMC) resembled a baby, small and pretty much defenseless. It has a very thin skin, so thin that the blood vessels just underneath the surface give the entire creature a red, almost glowing appearance. Not only does this thin skin also mean that it can only come out at night, but it means that it has no real attack, not even pyrokinesis, or some other sort of magic. The only attack it has is diverting massive amounts of blood into its head and exploding. It self-destructs in a totally non-scary way. If Aya so much as kicks the Bone Suckler, it explodes like a water balloon hitting a porcupine.
If by some chance you happen to die from the exploding baby, you really need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if you really deserve to continue playing.
The Darkness – Alan Wake
There’s a lot to like about Alan Wake, but there’s also a fair bit to dislike. A lot of work went into making the main enemy in the game a unique baddie that gamers have never faced before. It’s familiar, but fresh. We just know that it makes people think horrible things and do horrible things, but on the surface, on its own, it’s…about as scary as a room without a night light.
When The Darkness takes over familiar faces, that’s when it gets scary. Turning ordinary, friendly people into axe-wielding murderers out for Wake’s blood, that’s some pretty freaky shit. However the issue we really have with The Darkness are poltergeist items. Gigantic construction tubes, logging machinery, flying books all become ‘possessed’ by The Darkness, just the same way the Darkness possesses people. It will attack Alan Wake until the light from his flashlight destroys it.
When the poltergeist object is defeated, the object itself, the object that The Darkness possessed, just disappears – as if it never existed in the first place. So did The Darkness just make up a tractor to attack Alan? Of all the things that it could have made – for instance a Darkness Cougar – The Darkness decided that the most damaging thing was a manhole cover.
Also…tornados are pretty awe-inspiring. Enough to inspire millions of people to chase them and get dangerously close to them in Tornado Alley in the US. The Darkness Tornado, with a bunch of bathtubs, sofas and school buses, was not. Stick to repossessing humans.
Re-Dead – The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time
It might not be so much as a horror enemy, but how could we not include Hyrule’s version of a zombie in this list? Lurking deep in caverns and in grottos lurks the Re-Dead. We understand that Nintendo doesn’t necessarily have a proven track record being a horror power house, but browsing through some forums, a lot of gamers listed the ReDead as one of the scariest enemies they’ve ever encountered.
The enemy stands completely still until Link ventures close enough. An ear-piercing shriek sets the creature moving – but who’s screaming? Is it Link? Is it…it? Then comes the lunge, and the horrible, horrible…wait, what is it doing?
The Re-Dead didn’t just appear in Ocarina of Time, either, it also made appearances in other Zelda games as well, where we find that not only does the Re-dead like to dry-hump little kids, it’s also a dancing MACHINE.
Dino Crisis – T-Rex
We really liked Dino Crisis when it was first released. We admit, Dino Crisis reminded us a lot of Jurassic Park, except without all of the PG stuff from the movie, or, ‘with’ all the stuff that the PG movie left out.
Blood, guts, FIRE! Fuck yeah! Also puzzles.
Unfortunately, the game has not aged well. Or should we say, the main dino antagonist has not aged well. Whenever he would show up, he would menacingly try to turn you into Regina pate after making a dramatic entrance accompanied by thundering footsteps. Chasing you around the burning helicopter, it just seemed so much more pants-ruining back when we first played it. It reminding us of that scene in Jurassic Park…yeah, you know the one.
Now? Well now the game makes us wet our pants for a completely different reason. While playing through this game a while back for another feature, we took one look at Mr. T-Rex and just sighed. Perhaps it was in memory of our long-lost childhood, when survival horror was new and edgy? A time where everything seemed a lot bigger and badder than it actually was.
Maybe we’re judging the T-Rex unfairly? But there’s just something about it that makes it lose all of its ferocity…
Don’t move, Regina! He can’t see you if you don’t move!
So you’ve heard some of our picks for un-scary monsters in our favourite games, what about yours? Sound off in the comments section, in the new HD forums or on our Facebook page! Adversely, what are some of the scariest enemies you’ve ever faced?
