8 Times Video Games Told You You Were Safe (And LIED)
Sure, you can save here...
Pacing is everything in video games, because if developers don’t portion out the chaos with necessary moments of respite, players can end up feeling exhausted in the worst way possible.
And so, it’s a given that even the most action-packed and intense of video games will insert moments of safety and quiet amid the carnage, where the player has no doubt that they’re entirely safe.
But of course, these moments give developers a ripe opportunity to thoroughly screw with players, luring them into a false sense of security only to make the supposedly safe space a sheer carnival of horrors.
And that’s precisely what each of these video games did, promising players that they could chill out and take a load off for a moment, only to surprise them with the exact opposite of that totally outta nowhere.
In each case it caught players en masse with their pants down, bamboozling them with a physical threat at the precise moment they believed they could catch a breath and calm down.
It might’ve pissed you off in the moment, but damn if it wasn’t effective in keeping us all on our tippy-toes for each game’s remainder…
8. The Door Animations - Resident Evil 2
The original Resident Evil established the series' instantly iconic loading screen door animations, each of which provided brief moments of respite as players ventured from one room to the next, with no possibility of a famished zombie attacking them during those precious few seconds.
Except for that door in the O.G. version of Resident Evil 2, of course.
In the building behind the police station, opening the grey metal door will lead into what seems to be another garden variety loading screen... only for two zombies to suddenly appear out of nowhere in the middle of the animation, complete with pant-soilingly scary music to boot, forcing you into an immediate combat engagement.
For anyone who put the controller down for a few seconds to take a sip of their drink, scratch their head, or do basically anything else, it was one of the game's greatest "Oh s**t!" moments, and one which left a bruising effect on anyone caught out by it.
After spending hours across the first two Resident Evil games believing that the door animations were 100% safe, the sequel made it clear that even those fleeting slivers of peace weren't totally sacred.