Do you feel desensitized to scary games?

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After playing so many scary games, do you start feeling desensitized to scary games?

If you are the desensitized type, what things in certain games still scare you?

I think for me in particular, was the ending of Dead Space: Extraction, because you couldn't fully see in specific what the giant pimple monster by the space marker actually did to Nate, and then what happened to Nate after

That and the Crimson Heads from the Resident Evil re-make for Gamecube. I think it was the fact they sprint and show more intelligence than zombies, and don't die unless you set them on fire after knocking them out.

I havent played a ton of scary games in my life. Off the top of my head- Resident Evil series, Evil Within, Eternal Darkness, a little bit of Fatal Frame and a little bit of Silent Hill. I honestly didn't find them scary. Maybe creepy at times, but nothing that really made me jump or anything. I suppose I'm desensitized or just un-scareable or something.

I will admit I rarely play these types of games when sleepy, but thats mainly because I hate messing up in games a lot.

I don't normally play scary/ horror games because I don't find them very interesting.

Having said that, in Borderlands 2, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, the fake loot chests made me jump out of my skin. Usually I can tell myself something is fake faster than it can scare me. Has to be very sudden to have any effect.

The scariest games I have ever played include: Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3 [I haven't got very far in the whole trilogy, come to think of it], Metroid Fusion, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Cave Story, Final Fantasy VIi [JENOVA, anyone?] and Pokemon Explorers of Sky.

I just remembered the Wolfenstein: The New Order brain thing "Kill me please Captain Blazkowicz" - that was somewhat disturbing for me. Oh, and the surgery scene, I couldn't watch that.

I've played all of those games! They didn't really scare me. Especially the original Resident Evil game for Playstation. The voice acting was so bad and some of the lines were so cheesy, it was hard to be afraid. Sometimes I re-watch the voice acting from that game on You Tube just to have a good laugh. Although the Resident Evil re-make for Gamecube had some moments, mainly Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor was actually kind of creepy >_>

I thought Dead Space would scare me but it didn't, and I can't help but think the games are inadvertently making fun of Scientology with the plot. The Dead Space books actually scare me a lot though.

The new Resident Evil Revelations 2 game has Holocaust themes and it just isn't freaking me out. It doesn't help that Barry is a playable character and he still hasn't stopped with the bad puns and dialogue. They're so bad I laugh anyways.

Those made me jump too XD I love Tiny Tina she's my favorite character in that game. I can emulate her voice real well!

Never played that one... :<

I can't play horror games. Especially of the survival or zombie variety. I can barely watch my sister play those games. I scare too easily. Sure, there have been moments where I'm genuinely scared during a non-horror game, but mostly those are far and few between, and happened way more when I was little. Although ReDeads still freak me the hell out. It's the screech. Always happens when I really don't want it to.

Last time I got scared when playing a non-LoZ game, though, was probably the first time I faced a Nemesis in Diablo 3. Actually, my heart skips a beat every time one of those things shows up. Thank god it hasn't happened in my recent playthroughs.

Overall though, when I play a game enough times then what scared me before won't scare me again because I know it's coming. Except with the aforementioned ReDeads and Nemesis enemies. Former because the screech may happen before I get a chance to prevent it, and the latter because I don't always know where my dad may have previously died in the game. Which is why I avoid horror games. I HATE jump scares. Same reason I won't watch horror movies alone and/or after dark.

Extremely desensitized at this point. Beat Dead Space 1,2, and 3 into a pulp and have played many zombie games over the years. Only one game still bothers me, Alien Isolation. Can't beat your enemy only run and hide.

I find that most horror games are badly done. Particularly the stupidly-named "survival horror" genre. I'm sorry, but all of Resident Evil's stupid zombies and such arent very scary when you're given nuclear death beams or whatever to destroy them with. Yes I know that's not an actual weapon in the game but for the purposes of me being sarcastic, I've said it anyway. There's no "scary" in games like that.

Though I guess that's why something like the Freddy's games caught my attention. No rocket launchers in that. You cant run, you cant move, you cant fight; Freddy and his pals are simply too strong and it's made very clear that they have power beyond just what the simple animatronic bots, unposessed, could do. Screw up, and you are dead in an instant. And for the most part, the series doesnt drop the immersion aspect. You dont lose control to watch some cutscene really. The later games have their "minigames", but... those ended up being very different from normal "cutscenes" and were freaky in their own unique way (and again, control was not taken from you). Tension in the games is also created by the fact that the jumpscares are not arbitrary; they *only* happen as punishment for when you screw up. That's a very rare concept and one I find quite interesting.

Good horror games, to me, tend to have those qualities. There's another one recently that I think is interesting, with the bizarre name of "Emily Wants to Play". In that one, yes, you can run away, but that's all you can do, yet even then, sometimes that either wont do it, or will very specifically get you killed. As in the Freddy's games the various dolls that roam the house simply cant be fought off; you either follow specific rules for each in order to get them to go away, or you die. One of them is kinda like the Weeping Angels from Dr. Who, attacking you stupidly fast if you're not looking at her, and only vanishing if you keep her in your view long enough. Another one needs to be run away from, going away only if you get a certain distance from where he first appeared. Yet another specifically kills you, unavoidably, if you're moving when he turns and looks at you. It gets creative in how the various things work, and the story behind everything is found without ever once leaving any of that behind or losing control.

Though my favorite is Spooky's House of Jump Scares (which is, oddly, very low on actual jump scares). I dont want to spoil that one much, but... suffice it to say it isnt quite what it first appears to be when you see it. Spooky herself is downright adorable, and the game seems cutesy at first, until, well... there were more than a few moments in that game where you sort of go "OMG WTF NOPE NOPE NOPE" typically while running in the other direction. The further into it you go, the darker and more messed up it gets. At the same time it parodies a variety of other games. And again, you cant fight the monsters when they appear (with one very notable exception). It's not an action game, it's a "get the hell out of there!" sort of game.

None of those use much in the way of blood or gore either. Usually blood/gore in a game says to me that the developer either ran out of ideas, or tried too hard to be "mature" just because that's the trend (sigh). A *really* good horror game to me doesnt NEED those things to provide it's effect.

But your more typical horror games? Yeah, definitely desensitized. They usually feel more like action/adventure games to me, albeit with alot of blood and enemies that are more messed up than usual. But they're also very same-y and tend to use the same exact ideas over, and over, and over, and over...

There are a very few games that I find scary at all. I always get a good laugh from the over-the-top violence in Dead Space and Resident Evil.

Similarly, If I want to watch a good comedy, I usually go for a grisly horror movie.

What scares me is usually the constant suspense (like in Night of The Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers), not the shock-and-awe boogeyman (predictably) jumping in your face.

That's why I never managed to finish Amnesia: The Dark Descent... My nerves just couldn't take it...

I swear I must be the only one that didnt find Amnesia to be scary.

I dunno what it is. That game seems to have the right qualities but that specific one never clicked for me. Strange, really.

I haven't played very many games that actually scared me, but the ones that did, I would say I am not desensitized to them.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Uninvited, System Shock 2, Thief Gold...

The fact that you mentioned System Shock reminded that I actually tried to play Bioshock, but could barely make it through the first part of the game without feeling scared out of my mind. The atmosphere had me constantly on guard and the splicers just freaked me out. I have no issue with reading horror, honest; Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and even horror manga doesn't bother me. But when I can see that stuff actually moving and happening on a screen I can't keep sane.

Yeah, the splicers are kind of insane. Not as scary IMO as the butlers or the midwives from SS2, though >_<