Lots of responses, thank you all!
I love computer and video games in general, so I've played many of the aforementioned suggestions -- Fatal Frame, Silent Hill series, etc. I love FPS games, third-person action, pure "traditional" adventure games. Heck, I just love games in general.
I've got F.E.A.R., although I'm not sure how well the story is going to play out. The action is great, though.
Finished Indigo Prophecy this week. I'll post a full analysis of that as soon as I can. Moved on to Still Life on the adventure side of things.
Some of my favorite scary games from the past:
1. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Whooohoo!
One of my faves.
2. The Resident Evil Series, which actually has some genuine adventure game puzzle solving thrown in on occasion. And the bad acting is part of the fun!
3. Silent Hill 2. A deeply affecting game, with a wonderfully dark story and some genuine emotional heft. Fantastic music, too.
4. Fatal Frame. It sounds totally lame -- take your magic camera into the spooky old mansion to find out what happened to your brother. Well, you'll scream like a little girl the first time those ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties start a-chasin' you! And yes, it does have adventure elements.
5. Lurking Horror. A text adventure, appropriate for a Lovecraftian game. Was the first game I ever played that I thought successfully channeled the HPL vibe. Superceded only by:
6. Anchorhead. If you think text adventures cant' be scary -- you are wrong. Oh, so wrong. As much as I enjoyed LH back in its day, Anchorhead is the epitome of the Lovecraftian horror game in its purest form -- text only.
7. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. An RPG with lots of bugs, now patched mostly thanks to a fan patch. But there's a haunted house scene in the game that I found absolutely bone-chilling. Also has many elements lifted from traditional adventure games.
8. The Suffering. Somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Surprisingly disturbing and enjoyable. Very action-oriented.
9. Darkfall. Usually I hate third-person adventures, but this one was surprisingly effective. A good story, fiendish (at times) puzzles. Lots of note-taking involved.
10. Half-Life series. Believe it or not, there are some great horror moments in HL1+2. In two, there's a scene where you're blasting reanimated corpses (complete with brain-sucking aliens) in a cemetery while a mad man of the cloth gleefully cackles near you, blowing them away with a shotgun and screaming over and over, "COME! COME TO REDEMPTION MY CHILDREN!," etc.
I could think of a lot more. And will later.
Games I wish I'd played (and still might)
- Realms of the Haunted
- Gabriel Knight 2+3. The reason I didn't play these was not because of a lack of desire but because of poor timing. Both times the games came out, I didn't have a computer up to snuff to play them. By the time I got one, they were not widely available.
Thanks for the great adventure game tips. I managed to find both Dracula games in a single package at EB games for $1.99 (ha!), and I got Ghost Master for $3.99.
Keep those suggestions coming.
Brian
