I joined this forum strictly to post my fav. horror (mentally creepy more than blood/guts) game. I just played it on the Xbox 360 last week and I was freaked out!!!
F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon)
A core element of F.E.A.R. is its horror theme, which was heavily inspired by Japanese horror. The design team attempted to keep "[the] psychology of the encounter" in the player's mind at all times, in order to "get under [the player's] skin", as opposed to the "in your face 'monsters jumping out of closets' approach". Lead designer Craig Hubbard stated in an interview that "horror is extremely fragile ... you can kill it by spelling things out too clearly and you can undermine it with too much ambiguity". He remarked that he attempted to strike a balance with the narrative elements of F.E.A.R., to give players "enough clues so that [they] can form [their] own theories about what's going on, but ideally [they will] be left with some uncertainty". Lead level designer John Mulkey stated, "Creating expectation and then messing with that expectation is extremely important, predictability ruins a scary mood".
The main source of the game's horror is Alma, a ghostly little girl. Craig Hubbard remarked that "a guy in a mask chasing co-eds with a meat cleaver can be scary, but on some level you're thinking to yourself you could probably kick his ass if you got the drop on him ... but when a spooky little girl takes out an entire Delta Force squad, how are you supposed to deal with that?" While Alma has been compared to the character Samara from The Ring, Craig Hubbard stated that she "was born out of a tradition of eerie, faceless female ghosts" and not "as an answer to any specific movie character". Hubbard acknowledged that Alma "admittedly bears some visual resemblance to the ghosts in Dark Water or Séance," but "creepy little girls have been freaking [him] out since The Shining".
F.E.A.R.'s audio was designed in the style of Japanese horror films, with the sound engineers using inexpensive equipment to create sound effects, utilizing methods including dragging metal across different surfaces and recording pump sounds. Monolith Productions commented, "The sound designers had to be concerned with avoiding predictability," since "listeners are smart ... they will recognize your formula quickly and then you won't be able to scare them anymore. "Silence was also utilized in order to "allow players to fill in the space, which lets their imagination create their own personal horror".
