protectyourlimbs: meyerkev: protectyourlimbs: RKade: The banshee noise in ME3 scared the hell out of me... and then one of them CAUGHT me... Yikes.

Too bad the ending sucked so bad.

He turned out to be Luke's father?

Trying to make this reasonably spoiler-free for ME3 (but assuming that you played ME2):

....

So imagine the state of mind you're in (especially if like me, you basically played the whole thing through in one sitting, so you haven't slept or eaten in a while). And then no matter what you do, you cannot win. You cannot save the galaxy as it is, you cannot pass "Go", you cannot collect $200. Galactic civilization WILL fall into a heavily implied apocalypse, even if the Reapers are defeated and destroyed. There is no such thing as a happy ending.

That's why the ending sucks.

/Also, it's incredibly unfulfilling (because they barely show what happens to anyone after it's ...

I actually played ME1(obviously) and ME2 for the Xbox but decided to buy ME2 for the PS3 since it was only $20, so I could play all the extra missions.

Right now I have ME3 for the Xbox and was going to get it for the PS3 once I finished ME2 again but now waiting since it sounds like having it for both is not only a waste of money but time...

Honestly, the first 99% was utterly fantastic. Combat was incredibly fun (barring those Banshees, for whom I would drop the game to Casual, kill them and then bring it back up), and never boring, Music was great, Conversations, while fewer than I'd prefer, were fantastic and philosophical, and they actually made scanning not boring. Everything up until the (2nd) big white column of light was probably the greatest game I have EVER played, and then turned into a terrible, terrible shiatpile.

Honestly, I'd wait a bit. It plays much, much better if you're importing save games (just because you get your characters and all the side characters, and all the side quests*), so I'd wait for the ME3:Broken Steel DLC, grab that, and then fire up a save editor and play through every wierd try you want (Seriously, Conrad Verner's sidequest is very clearly trolling by the devs, because it's dependent on 4 different flags from ME1 that had NOTHING to do with ME2, and I had never seen half of them)

/*Among other things, getting peace between the Geth and the Quarians is impossible in the defaults and really incredibly hard even if you have the right imports (which I didn't. So I went and found Eve Shepard (new window -bottom) who did pretty much everything I wanted to, with the right imports. It's not exact, but it's close enough.

meyerkev: protectyourlimbs: RKade: The banshee noise in ME3 scared the hell out of me... and then one of them CAUGHT me... Yikes.

Too bad the ending sucked so bad.

He turned out to be Luke's father?

Trying to make this reasonably spoiler-free for ME3 (but assuming that you played ME2):

....

So imagine the state of mind you're in (especially if like me, you basically played the whole thing through in one sitting, so you haven't slept or eaten in a while). And then no matter what you do, you cannot win. You cannot save the galaxy as it is, you cannot pass "Go", you cannot collect $200. Galactic civilization WILL fall into a heavily implied apocalypse, even if the Reapers are defeated and destroyed. There is no such thing as a happy ending.

That's why the ending sucks.

/Also, it's incredibly unfulfilling (because they barely show what happens to anyone after it's ...

I actually played ME1(obviously) and ME2 for the Xbox but decided to buy ME2 for the PS3 since it was only $20, so I could play all the extra missions.

Right now I have ME3 for the Xbox and was going to get it for the PS3 once I finished ME2 again but now waiting since it sounds like having it for both is not only a waste of money but time...

RKade: protecty

Ouch.. part 2 made me angry... I PRAY you are wrong but kind of already have a feeling you aren't....

That radio was the only way I could withstand playing the first Silent Hill. It became easier to handle when I learned the light being off meant I had to get much closer to the baddies before they decided I was a tasty treat.

/I also cheated like a little biatch and plugged in the Konami-branded light gun and really went to town. That made it fun enough to replay and get all the endings.

Ahhh, fresh meat!

The capacitor is empty

although this was replaced by.

BeepBeepBooopBooopSCREEEEEEE

From my Doom list, I'd have to say the doors, sometimes you'd hear one off in the distance... wait, I didn't hit any buttons or open anything... what was that?! For some reason that sound is so ingrained into my mind, when I hear it elsewhere I instantly look around and think of Doom (Dr Who, I'm looking at you and your recycled sound!)

The ghasts and the pigmen from the nether region in minecraft.

//the soft mewling sounds freaked me out.
//just got the willies

THe sound of the mindflayers bells from demons souls gets me every time.

the sound of a ghoul in the subways of fo3 can really set me off if Im playing a low level character. alot of times if you hear one call out its because he's spotted you and is calling his buds to the buffet.

meat0918: FooDog: Clearly missing Ocean House segment from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. Jumped out of my chair getting through that the first time.

[media.gamespy.com image 400x300]

No kidding.

That is hands down one of the best quest lines of any game to come out in the last 20 years.

It started out scary, but then I remembered I was a badass vampire and ripped through it. Now Shalebridge Cradle from Thief 3, that was scary, and primarily due to the sounds you heard.

Kind of a weird one, here. When I first started playing TES:Oblivion, I'd be sneaking through a dungeon and the game would make the noise indicating that my skill level just went up; I'd jump out of my skin every time. I'm still not sure I'm completely immune to that one.

DooM in general for me. Play a little bit, and you aren't phased. Play too much, and you gotta cool off from the building paranoia from the sounds.

And of course, the 'Is someone there?' from Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I found it! MIND WALKER for the Amiga - came out in 1986.

Simply freaking AMAZING sounds - check it out!

http://youtu.be/WA1qz2QQ89E

8:11 for the first death sound - seriously in 1986, playing a game on a home computer in a) stereo and b) 4086 colors was incredible. The 'analog' sounds of the game really rocked my world.

There was this incredible Amiga game where you had gone utterly insane, and had to solve puzzles and challenges to 'get back' to sanity. There was one section when you were running with outstretched arms and this..horrible breathing would speed up all around you.

Can't remember the title, but Holy Balls nothing I've played since has had more terrifying sound. Even the huge Death's Head Skull flashing out of the screen with corresponding deep synth note was terrifying.

FooDog: Clearly missing Ocean House segment from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. Jumped out of my chair getting through that the first time.

[media.gamespy.com image 400x300]

This. That quest scared me so bad the first time I played it. What a great underrated little game.

Niveras: meyerkev: So imagine the state of mind you're in (especially if like me, you basically played the whole thing through in one sitting, so you haven't slept or eaten in a while). And then no matter what you do, you cannot win. You cannot save the galaxy as it is, you cannot pass "Go", you cannot collect $200. Galactic civilization WILL fall into a heavily implied apocalypse, even if the Reapers are defeated and destroyed. There is no such thing as a happy ending.

That's why the ending sucks.

Actually, this sounds like an incredibly awesome ending, assuming that (in hindsight) it follows logically and that it's not just the developers being dicks to be dicks. Games could do with a few endings having that aren't 100%-cheerful-everything-worked-out, especially when you have opportunities to play through differently and get a better ending.

I don't know what the scale is or even what you have to do get it higher, but I imagine your ending might play "better" (that is, more of what you expected in terms of the standard and cliche 'happy' ending) with a better readiness. You mention that there is no better ending but you did not say that you played through with a higher readiness to say for sure. Personally, I'm still okay with there only being a downer ending, presuming it's still decently done (which may not be the case, given your comments regarding lack of effect and plot holes and other comments about the game in general).


2 things:
1) it's a bit of an surprise. The bleakness was not after the preceding 6 hours or so, but the "exact mechanism" really comes out of nowhere, with very little setup, and in the process invalidates quite a bit of the lore, while turning the entire 30-90 hour (all 3 games, dependent on how fast you were, and how many sidequests) campaign into one decision, completely irrelevant of all your other decisions, and either way, you're still screwed. Yeah, there's technically a "You survive" ending (though it requires pretty much 100% sidequest completion plus some multiplayer plus picking one very specific ending), but that still doesn't prevent the galactic apocalypse. Plus it's really unfulfilling. There's no cutscene showing the galaxy rebuilding or anything, it just kinda ends.

2) Mass Effect has never been that bleak. ME2, despite the whole "turning people into slush before your eyes" bit was fundamentally an optimistic type of game. Shepard never had to choose between genocides, the Paragon option almost always had a "good" result (or at least a better result than Renegade, and even the Renegade options were rarely "bad" as far as outcomes), and you always felt like Shepard's work was making a difference. It was Shepard and some buddies flying around in a cool ship, going up against a giant army of bad guys, and kicking their behind to the other side of the galaxy (to incredibly triumphant music), and ME3 was not that.

//Seriously, this is the Climactic ME2 music: Link (new window), and this is the climactic ME3 music: Link (new window)

cirby: The Pfhor sound in Marathon. Half of the time you heard it, it was to the left or right of you in what you thought was an empty room - on top of being a basically scary sound in the first place.

Oh lord, those sounds...


Hearing these guys' warble coming out of my Performa speakers in the wee hours of the morning was too much

This might be a bit obscure, but from Myth and Myth 2:

"Casualty. CAUSALITIES!"

If anybody played those games (and you should have - the best games that Bungie ever made by far), you'll know what I'm talking about.

Chris Berman as the announcer in ESPN NFL 2K5.

Oh, and the entire Shalebridge Cradle level of "Thief 3: Deadly Shadows."

The game had a lot of issues, but that level wasn't one of them. I was freaked out the entire time.

meyerkev: So imagine the state of mind you're in (especially if like me, you basically played the whole thing through in one sitting, so you haven't slept or eaten in a while). And then no matter what you do, you cannot win. You cannot save the galaxy as it is, you cannot pass "Go", you cannot collect $200. Galactic civilization WILL fall into a heavily implied apocalypse, even if the Reapers are defeated and destroyed. There is no such thing as a happy ending.

That's why the ending sucks.

Actually, this sounds like an incredibly awesome ending, assuming that (in hindsight) it follows logically and that it's not just the developers being dicks to be dicks. Games could do with a few endings having that aren't 100%-cheerful-everything-worked-out, especially when you have opportunities to play through differently and get a better ending.

I don't know what the scale is or even what you have to do get it higher, but I imagine your ending might play "better" (that is, more of what you expected in terms of the standard and cliche 'happy' ending) with a better readiness. You mention that there is no better ending but you did not say that you played through with a higher readiness to say for sure. Personally, I'm still okay with there only being a downer ending, presuming it's still decently done (which may not be the case, given your comments regarding lack of effect and plot holes and other comments about the game in general).

My most recent sound that gets to me is the Hunter in Left4Dead. The Witches can be avoided, Boomers are a temporary annoyance at worst, and even Jockeys can be fought long enough for you to get help. But Hunters are hard to find, harder to hit, and always seem to get you just as your teammates are busy elsewhere, tearing into your health 25 points at a time.

Can't tell you how many times I've almost tossed my laptop off onto the floor from a surprise Hunter in the face at 2am.

Playing a clip of the creeper's hissing dubbed over by the sound of the Price is Right's losing horn kind of defeats of the purpose of having a clip of the sound you're trying to... showcase.

ProfessorOhki: Not a WoW player myself, but I've heard Murlocs can get quite a rise out of you. It was certainly one of the more jolting ring-tones I've heard.

Yeah, that was posted upthread a bit. Like I said, the worst part of hearing a murloc aggro is that they have a nasty tendency to come in packs and you KNOW you're about to have a hell of a fight on your hands.

Not a WoW player myself, but I've heard Murlocs can get quite a rise out of you. It was certainly one of the more jolting ring-tones I've heard.

TigerzDad: My (now 23 year old) son used to absolutely freak out and even start to cry when he heard the Sonic drowning music.

When I was a kid, my little sisters would watch me play the Sonic games. We'd all start freaking out when the drowning music started to play and my sisters would point at the screen and shout at me to get an air bubble before poor Sonic drowned. Once I got used to it, I would intentionally drown Sonic or wait till the very last second to reach an air bubble to troll them. I think they may still be traumatized by that. Good times, good times.

HulkHands: No "!" sound from Metal Gear Solid?

I have the "!" noise as a text alert tone. Still makes me (and everyone withing listening distance) jump out of their skins sometimes.

/Snake, don't forget to pick up paper towels before you get home.
//Snake, are you listening? Snake...? SSSNNNAAAAAAKKKKEEEE!!! *echoing gunshot*

MusicMakeMyHeadPound: The zombies weren't so scary, but the sound of the poison headcrabs from Half Life 2 freak me out.

The headcrabs, poison or otherwise, definitely belong on the list. I will never forget playing the first HL for the first time, in a dark room with headphones on, late at night... yeah, I screamed out loud like a little girl.

Anything from 7th Guest?

The zombies weren't so scary, but the sound of the poison headcrabs from Half Life 2 freak me out.

No blue shell from Mario Kart?

protectyourlimbs: RKade: The banshee noise in ME3 scared the hell out of me... and then one of them CAUGHT me... Yikes.

Too bad the ending sucked so bad.

He turned out to be Luke's father?

Trying to make this reasonably spoiler-free for ME3 (but assuming that you played ME2):

Remember that one Suicide Mission where everything went terribly wrong? Where you had lost 3 people, including your best biotic, even before you hit the base, and you ended up stumbling out the other side with Garrus and Zaeed as the only survivors? Remember that? Now imagine that it lasts 6 hours. And instead of the epic uplifting music, it's surrounded by music that sounds more like this: Link (new window). Where nothing you do goes right, where nothing , no interrupt, no conversation option, you do can prevent those people who you care about after these 3 games from dying. (And it didn't help that I only had 2483 readiness points. It's not the most depressing ending, but it's close).

Oh, and at least once, the Paragon option is "Commit Genocide", and you don't realize it until it's happening. Or the places the Paragon interrupt does NOTHING to prevent the trainwreck. And being a Paragon means that people who you care about die and that things go wrong because you "did the right thing". Where being a Renegade just this once would have led to the world being a better place and You. Did. Not. Know.

So imagine the state of mind you're in (especially if like me, you basically played the whole thing through in one sitting, so you haven't slept or eaten in a while). And then no matter what you do, you cannot win. You cannot save the galaxy as it is, you cannot pass "Go", you cannot collect $200. Galactic civilization WILL fall into a heavily implied apocalypse, even if the Reapers are defeated and destroyed. There is no such thing as a happy ending.

That's why the ending sucks.

/Also, it's incredibly unfulfilling (because they barely show what happens to anyone after it's over), there's that whole implied apocalypse thing, there's some plot holes, it's a major copout, it does nothing to reflect your choices, etc, etc.

//It doesn't help that the first half (as Paragon. From what I can tell, Renegade is amazingly bleak the whole way through, but I haven't played that yet) was following a very similar arc to ME2 (Major enemy attack starts you off low, you start to pull together allies, have a couple of plot-relevant fights where you push back the enemy (possibly with some deaths, but they're pretty CMOA, so that's OK), and then you go into the heart of the enemy against all odds to triumphant music, culminating in an epic boss fight, thus triumphing over all evil), and then about halfway through, the game just says "Screw dat", and turns incredibly bleak.

protectyourlimbs: He turned out to be Luke's father?

Nope. It was one of those artsy fartsy endings that didn't end a damn thing and turned what was the best third person shooter I'd ever played into a series that I'll never play again made my a developer I'll never buy from again.

Suffice to say, it made me appreciate Tolkien's and Michener's work all over again. THEY knew how to end stories.

Serpoltas: [www.pallydog.com image 250x405]

The sound of aggro.

Oh god, this, because if you hear one, you know about fifty of his friends will be tagging along... and my husband has that sound as his fricking ringtone.

Funny story about WoW and scary game sounds... hubby and I were both leveling paladins through Outland back in TBC. I was questing along when I heard that sound. The one that makes everyone who leveled through Outland have an immediate 'OH CRAP' reaction: the godawful metallic roar of a fel reaver. Dropped what I was doing and ran like hell for cover...

...just to realize, a few seconds later, that there ARE NO fel reavers in Nagrand and the sound was coming from hubby's laptop, not mine.

My entry would have to be Duke Nuken 64's Protazoid Slimers. Not so much the squishy/slimy noise they make when moving about, but that unnerving sound you hear while it's sucking on your first-person-shooter face. The sight makes it even more unnerving.

RKade: The banshee noise in ME3 scared the hell out of me... and then one of them CAUGHT me... Yikes.

Too bad the ending sucked so bad.

He turned out to be Luke's father?

The banshee noise in ME3 scared the hell out of me... and then one of them CAUGHT me... Yikes.

Too bad the ending sucked so bad.

Station: Missing:

1) System Shock 2
2) Clive Barker's Undying

This ...this this this this!

Station: Undying

What got me with Undying was it seemed to me the audio for your foosteps was done in such a way that you'd hear a shuffle occasionally that sounded like something else moving near you. More than once I found myself spinning around thinking something was coming up behind me. That was very well done if it was intentional.

No Shalebridge Cradle?

Also, not necessarily frightening, but much of the aural experience of Portal is quite haunting. Glados's voice, the distant industrial sounds, and the atmospheric music (new window).

List utterly fails without the bloodlust sound effect from Warcraft 2. Nothing worse than hearing the sound of someone lusting their ogres just outside your base when you're not prepared.

improvius: The sound of these guys (new window) from Rescue on Fractalus always terrified me.

That used to terrify me too. I'd close my eyes when the guy was running up to my ship, and if I heard the alien noise, I'd shoot blindly.

JonnyBGoode: The chittering sound of the spiders in System Shock 2.

It was always the monkeys that got me in that game. That screech echoing down the halls.

mikefinch: Clanks around in the darkness and all you can hear are the screams of your own men as they are turned to zombies.

Most of the point of X-COM was to teach us that aliens are, at their core, a bunch of assholes. Their behavior was so dickish I'm surprised the grays didn't pop out and start teabagging dead squad members.