For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies.
I had way too much fun playing it to be traumatized by it at the time, although when i was old enough to understand the horror of the whole “your memories and experience becoming food for a god-like being that has absolutely zero respect for your existance”, that did inform my perspective of other media such as Evangelion or Childhood’s end when I watched them for the 1st time.
What was your equivalent to this? I’ve heard the Resident Evil games are quite common for this but I want to hear your perspective.
Thief 3’s Cradle level was formative in the way that I have never ever seen a better horror game. Overall I didn’t like the game as much as the previous two. But the Cradle is unsurpassed.
The demo for Alone in the Dark 1 also lives rent free in my head because it was one of the few games we had back then. Plus the graphics were absolutely astonishing. But I never knew how to finish it. I always died pretty quickly to some dog monster. I never played the full game.
Jup. Thief 3 had the best horror. No jumpscares, just a sneaking game where you spent many levels training to listen for footsteps and now heard footsteps where there was nobody. One of the few games that has ever scared me.
First and second Amnesia game had some of the same type of horror too. After that they got less and less scary. Don’t know why.