8 Hilarious Moments In Otherwise Truly Terrifying Horror Video Games

I'm meant to be scary! Stop laughing!

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Gun Media

Horror, whatever the medium is a surprisingly hard emotion to elicit from an audience. A lot of people confuse it with "shock" or "surprise" thanks to the over-reliance on jumpscares in films and video games, which can be garnered very easily. You could drop a piece of cutlery from a table and shock someone who didn't see it coming with as great effect as a face appearing behind someone for a split second in a mirror.

Fear, (or quasi-fear if you want to get technical) on the other hand is much harder. This requires setup, direction, pacing, and information about the threat of danger this being or object presents being fed to the audience without being explicitly told. It's a suspension of disbelief that's easily broken and there are many examples of horror video games that drop the ball on this without meaning to, and even a few examples of developers intentionally highlighting the silliness of the situation in order to blow off some steam.

So let's take a look at when fear fell on its face for a few seconds as these are 8 Hilarious Moments In Otherwise Truly Terrifying Horror Video Games

8. The Kitchen Music - Resident Evil: Directors Cut

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Capcom

The original Resident Evil is rightly held up as a true survival horror classic. It's incredibly tight direction and use of fixed camera angles create a sense of claustrophobic dread in nearly every scene. This coupled with enemies that will not take the hint and go down quickly and a scarce lack of ammo makes for a runtime of pure exhilarating terror from start to finish.

Then in comes the voice acting, and yes it's been made mention several times over that this...well wasn't the best. However, it's become entwined with the experience that it's almost cruel to mock it, even if Jill Sandwiches and Master of Lockpicking's aren't the only ham on the menu.

In truth, there's actually a moment that shatters the immersion of fear even more than these cheesy vocal skills and that's found in Resident Evil's Directors Cut Mansion Basement Music. This track is...ungodly in how hilarious it sounds, and while it does possess an attempt at using stacked notes and uncomfortable pacing to try and make the player feel dread, it comes across like something a clown would have as a ringtone.

It might well be one of the most infamously terrible pieces of video game music ever and only serves to remind us all that while the original composer for the game was reportedly deaf, this turns out to be a decades-long ruse and that he had a ghost composer write this and other tracks for him.

Still doesn't explain why this track is so bad when the actual writer could hear though.

 
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Jules Gill hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.