8 Terrifying Video Game Moments That Are Laughably Outdated Now
How did anyone ever take Slender Man seriously?!
Thanks to being a uniquely interactive medium, video games and horror have always gone hand-in-hand. Even when they lacked the technology to effectively do so developers have always tried to scare players silly, even back in the NES days, and over the years have amassed quite an impressive library of classic horror moments that have haunted the nightmares of gamers both young and old.
Unlike movies or books - who's scares can remain legitimately terrifying for years - the ever-changing nature of the video game industry means that something that was considered bone-chillingly horrifying as little as a few years ago is tame (or even hilarious) now.
With technology improving at a rapid rate, the ability for game developers to create scary scenarios is constantly getting better, but it's resulted in their previous attempts being embarrassingly dated in hindsight.
In fact, if you look back on some of gaming's most iconic scares you'll wonder how they could have ever frightened a toddler - never mind a grown player. Between dated graphics, jarring camerawork and terrible voice acting, today these moments have everything going against them, but at the time you could only watch them from between your fingers.
8. Resident Evil 3's 'Random' Nemesis Encounters
One of the defining differences between Resident Evil 3 and the previous games in the franchise was that players were always being stalked by the deadly Nemesis. A biohazard engineered to bring down the game's heroes, the monstrosity constantly showed up at seemingly random moments throughout the title to terrorise the player.
The thing is, while the idea of having an omnipresent villain constantly attempt to thwart the protagonists is pretty scary, the design of the Nemesis was anything but. This leather-clad hunk always felt out of place in the Resident Evil universe, and was a clear symptom of the developers trying too hard to make something cary by committee, rather than just letting it happen naturally.
Consequently, it's only the anticipation of the Nemesis showing up that ever managed to be sort of scary, because once you knew when he'd show up he became more of a garish nuisance than anything else.