Three creepy PC classics for October
9For October & Halloween, there's lots of ways you can celebrate the month and enjoy the holiday: eating candy, dressing up, and watching horror films.
If you'd like to try something a little different this year, here's three fine PC classics you can buy today that work on any system (Descriptions/links to GoG, all also available on Steam):
Sanitarium
Imagine a world created out of insanity – deformed children, ancient gods, ghosts from your past in the house inside of a water reflection. You are an asylum patient and you have just survived a car crash – the problem is you can't remember anything. Visions reveal answers to some questions, but create even more riddles! Which part of it is true? What do all these things mean?
This is a beautiful, creepy adventure game.
System Shock 2:
The starship Von Braun took a giant leap for mankind as it made its first interstellar journey. The mission was going as planned until a lone distress call from the Tau Ceti V sector was picked up. An away team was sent on a rescue mission, but once it arrived at its destination, there was no sign of any humans and the source of the signal remained unclear. They didn't realize something crucial, though: they brought something back with them when they returned. Now, you--a member of the ship's security team--awake from cryostasis to the sounds of screams of pain and horror as everything falls apart. The state-of-the-art spaceship becomes a deathtrap, and the only hope you have is the contemptuous whisper of a voice guiding you through the dark corridors, leading you towards the ominous secrets that lurk in the shadows.
If you've played this, you'll have no doubt why it's on here, even though this is not a horror or adventure game. If you play this game in the dark with headphones on, it's an experience you won't soon forget. If you liked BioShock or Deus Ex, you'll want to try this one and the original- the genre started here!
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream:
The last people on Earth are buried deep within the center of the earth, trapped in the bowels of an insane computer for the past hundred and nine years. Gorrister the suicidal loner. Benny the mutilated brute. Ellen the hysterical phobic. Nimdok the secretive sadist. Ted the cynical paranoid. It's time for them to play a little game...
This is based on the short story of the same name by Harlan Ellison, who voices A.M., and worked on this version.
This is a creepy and downright disturbing adventure game that covers very adult themes.
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I swear, I thought my brother and I were the only ones who had ever played Sanitarium when it came out! It was weird, occasionally funny, sometimes creepy, but definitely interesting to me. The visuals were pretty good for the time IIRC. And now, because I am a complete nerd, take a look at what I just went and pulled out. (Warning, thar be a creepy clown pic ahoy!) http://imgur.com/Sjr37EW,wjY7GXY,JmdAkQB,87I68KQ
@kalira Damn you and your clowns! So much for sleep tonight....
@kalira @thumperchick can you fix the link here? thanks!
@dashcloud but... the link isn't broken. it's just a link to a set of images. probably nice of @kalira to not embed creepy clowns :)
@dashcloud she linked to an album. And yeah, she was being nice by not posting creepy clown on purpose.
I saw the title and the first game that came to mind was Sanitarium, good to know I'm not alone in my thoughts.
The original System Shock was one of those eye-opening moments in video games for me. While the onslaught of FPS games with better, flashier graphics were sort of kind of fun, I was kind of losing faith in the direction games seemed to be heading. Then this game came along, if I remember correctly you don't even start with a weapon, you're just in this empty, kind of trashed-looking room. You find a pipe, and if you're anything like me you start swinging it around and knock out all the lighting in the room. The whole thing was very dark, very immersive, and challenging on multiple levels.
Does the description of System Shock 2 remind anyone else of the movie Event Horizon?
@dashcloud I still have my IHNMAIMS mousepad somewhere!
(gotta love lenticular 3D)
@curtise I miss that sort of thing, I still have a copy of "burn cycle"(i think) with the hypercolor / thermal reactive box art.
Sometime this month I need to take time out for horror. I have 3 comics I bought last month that I want to read, and I want to try out some of your suggested games. I do manage to watch movies (in parts) on Shudder while I take a bath (sorry for TMI). I've rewatched American Werewolf in London and saw Dead Snow, Children of the Corn and The Theatre Bizarre for the first times.