- 4 hours ago
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:07Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we are showcasing some of the most stressful moments we've
00:12experienced throughout horror video game history. Though, as usual, we're sticking to one entry per
00:17franchise to keep things interesting. Before we dive in, we publish new content all week long,
00:28so be sure to subscribe, and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:34Seeing the Slender Man. Slender the Eight Pages.
00:45It may seem a little basic by today's standards, but Slender Man's iconicism during a certain era
00:51cannot be denied. Walking around a dense, dark forest with only a flashlight, knowing that this
00:56gangly, no-faced stalker hunts you was an almost universal experience. Legions of players went
01:02through this. Your flashlight suddenly passing over him, the terror that hits you like a lightning
01:07bolt and sends you fleeing the other way. At that point, who cares about collecting those stupid
01:11pages because you have absolutely no defense against him. It's a testament to this game's
01:16strong atmosphere that it was able to do so much, with so little.
01:25Hotel Escape. Call of Cthulhu, Dark Corners of the Earth.
01:35Dark Corners of the Earth is a bit of a mixed bag due to its troubled development,
01:39but there are still some genuine moments of fear and stress. Case in point, when you're mentally
01:45unwell PI main character is attacked by an angry mob of crazed villagers. It's not like you have any
01:51weapons to defend yourself with. As you make your way through each room of the hotel, you can hear
01:56them commentating as they chase you, smashing through doors as they search. The stress is only
02:01amplified by you having to very slowly push bookcases out of your way to reach other rooms.
02:07Don't let him get away. It won't budge. Hold it. The Teacher. Little Nightmares 2.
02:22Little Nightmares is great at tapping into primal childhood-based fears, such as this looming,
02:29overbearing teacher from the second game. Her stretchy neck, which is creepy just in general,
02:33and behavior prompts memories of a particularly mean teacher you might have had as a kid,
02:39somehow able to see everything you did. Plus, given the gameplay style of Little Nightmares,
02:44you get plenty of opportunities to try and sneak past her. By far, the most stressful moment comes
02:49at the very end when her neck stretches so she can chase you through a vent.
03:02Scissorman appears. Clock Tower.
03:12In terms of enemies that relentlessly hunt you, we owe a lot to Scissorman. Long before modern survival
03:18horror refined its mechanics, Clock Tower was doing something genuinely revolutionary,
03:23and genuinely terrifying. Throughout Clock Tower, he pursues poor orphan Jennifer with gigantic scissors,
03:29while tearing through everyone else in his path. All you can do is hide or set traps,
03:33while confronting him, could spell death. It was an early example of relying on your instincts,
03:38because encountering him could instantly put you on edge. Early on, it established that sometimes the
03:44most stressful thing in a horror game isn't a monster you can fight, but one you simply cannot stop.
03:49Blue Knees. Madison.
03:58Madison is a solid evolution of two horror tropes. Being chased by some horrific monster defensively,
04:05and the picture taking mechanic of Fatal Frame, a series we'll get to later. Its most stressful moment,
04:10by far, comes as you encounter a demon named Blue Knees. It attached itself to a children's book,
04:16and haunted your character's grandmother, draining her sight before killing her. You have a monster with the
04:21ability to do that, with black eyes, pale skin, and bloodied sharp teeth, hunting you in dark
04:27hallways. You can only defend by flashing your camera, while searching for its real eyes,
04:32and listening to its creepy theme song.
04:39So yeah, it's pretty stressful. The Turn. Doki Doki Literature Club.
04:45Unfortunately, there's no way to talk about our next entry without spoiling the game's first major
04:50twist, so viewers beware. The first half of Doki Doki Literature Club is exactly as it appears to be,
04:56a cutesy anime-style high school dating sim. But there's a now famous moment where it turns into
05:02distinct, fairly unsettling horror. One of the romanceable options, your best friend Sayori,
05:08struggles from depression. Club President Monica then shows you one of her extremely dark poems,
05:14leading you to go check on her. That creeping feeling sets in, even though surely the cute dating sim
05:19won't do that. You discover Sayori has hung herself right before the game does a meta reset.
05:26It's a moment of not only stress, but pure chaos as the rug is pulled from underneath you.
05:31From there, with Sayori literally deleted from the narrative, the second half is… certainly more
05:36interesting than the first. The Nursing Home. Alan Wake 2.
05:51This particular chapter of Alan Wake 2 takes a slow burn approach. Even still, there's bound to be one
05:58moment where the stress sets in. Things start off relatively okay, with Saga searching the Valhalla
06:03Nursing Home for two residents. But eventually, you have to navigate the area in the dark with plenty
06:08of twitchy quick-moving enemies to lunge at you while you try to progress. You're eventually forced into
06:13the basement, culminating in a fight against the taken form of Cynthia Weaver, essentially demonically
06:19possessed, flying around the area and screaming at you. Bear Attack. Condemned 2. Bloodshot.
06:35Let's break up the psychological horror with a little bit of physical terror. At a certain point
06:40in Condemned 2, rummaging around a seemingly abandoned building, you become aware you're trapped with a
06:45bear. After witnessing it rip through someone, you then have to find a way out as it chases you.
06:51Naturally, you have nothing to defend yourself with as it barrels in your direction. You can only run
06:56and punch it in the face if it gets close enough. Needless to say, it feels good to reach that
07:02shotgun.
07:02A blackout. Amnesia the Bunker.
07:14The Amnesia series certainly deserves its flowers, and the Bunker reaches peak levels of helplessness
07:20against a terrifying foe with one of its key mechanics. As you work towards a way out, the fuel
07:25in your generator naturally, gradually, decreases. Once it runs out, and with the lights now off,
07:31the monster becomes more active. And that's not helped by the noise of your wind-up flashlight,
07:36your one source of light. This is a perfect environment to test how well you can maintain
07:41your cool under pressure. You might grow used to dealing with blackouts or avoiding them as you go,
07:47but those first few hours are nonetheless going to be stressful.
07:51The Crawling Woman. Fatal Frame 3. The Tormented.
08:06You could argue in favor of multiple ghosts from the Fatal Frame series, but the Crawling Woman from
08:11the third entry makes a very compelling argument. You encounter her while crawling underground through
08:17a tight space. Already, your alarm bells should be ringing. She doesn't take long to lurch out of
08:22your side view, taking hold of you to shriek in your face. You can only move slowly down here,
08:27and even if you shake her off, she can quickly disappear before you snap a photo of her.
08:31You have to be quick and calm to get rid of her.
08:34Alerting a Witch. Left 4 Dead series.
08:45The special infected of the Left 4 Dead series each bring a different level of stress. We all know the
08:51danger of a charging tank or the fear of being suddenly yanked away from our companions by a
08:57smoker. But the Witch is a special brand of tension, something that the others simply cannot match.
09:03Whenever you hear her weeping, it immediately puts you on edge.
09:11Past the bricks.
09:14It is paramount that you make sure you're prepared to take her on, or find the quickest path away from
09:21her.
09:21Once she's alerted by either you or a teammate, she sprints towards whoever's responsible,
09:27knocks them to the ground, and begins ripping into them. Only a significant amount of damage
09:32will get her to stop, and god help you if there's a horde or other special infected around when it
09:38happens.
09:46The Evil Within
09:56Of the many twisted foes you'll find in The Evil Within, nothing gets our hearts racing like
10:03Laura. As a disturbing manifestation of the horrible fate that befell the main villain's sister,
10:09the developers went all out on making her scare the bejesus out of us.
10:19Her ghost-like visage, her multitude of arms that flail about as she chases you,
10:24and the fact that she emerges from dead bodies, all combine to make one hell of a boss encounter.
10:31Bullets don't work on her, which is super fun to learn the first time. Fire does, thankfully,
10:37but that doesn't change the fact that every second she spends barreling after us is just adding to the
10:43nightmare fuel tank.
10:50Marta and the cart. Outlast 2.
11:00No matter who you're being chased by in the Outlast series, be it the brutish Chris Walker in the
11:07original game, or the unsettling groom Eddie Gluskin in its DLC, you're gonna be stressed out.
11:13But we'd like to shine a light on a moment from the second game that managed to trap you
11:18with your pursuer. The developers did this with Marta, a ruthless cultist who mumbles insane religious
11:24ramblings. At a certain point, you must push a cart to a nearby wall so you can climb over it
11:40to escape
11:40her. Unfortunately, it isn't as if she sits idly by and watches you. You make slow progress, fleeing as
11:47soon as she gets near to try and hide. As she smashes through the environment, or grabs hold of you
11:53if
11:53you push the cart for too long, it's hard not to feel distressed.
12:02Save, file deleted. Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem.
12:13Anyone who has played this underrated GameCube gem knows that the most unique thing about it, and why it's
12:20so well remembered even today is its sanity meter. The lower it gets as you play, the stranger and
12:26more disturbing things you'll encounter. This can take form in a variety of ways. Blood dripping down
12:32the walls, your character's head falling off, your volume being lowered, or the screen going black as if
12:38your TV was turned off. But by far the most stressful of these moments was when the game acted like
12:52it
12:52was deleting your data while you attempted to save. It's every gamer's worst nightmare, and even though
13:09we knew how this game liked to mess with us, even if it was only for a split second, all
13:14logic went out
13:15the window and was replaced by sheer terror. The Xenomorph's Entrance, Alien Isolation
13:33Most players will have slightly different experiences as they progress through Alien Isolation.
13:39The Xenomorph's AI is so strong it may react differently depending on your playstyle.
13:44But we all share that same first moment with the iconic Alien. And boy, is it a doozy.
13:56As you carry out your task, a vent in front of you suddenly bursts open, giving us our first look
14:02at the Alien. As we hide and it prowls around the room with its slithering tail coming far too close
14:08to
14:08us for comfort, it's enough to make your body go rigid. For fans of the film series, this moment
14:13adapted something we'd seen on the screen in such an immersive way, and the game would build on this
14:19stress throughout our playthrough.
14:29Eye Surgery
14:36It says a lot that one of the most memorable moments from the Dead Space series has nothing to do
14:43with
14:43Necromorphs, who have more disturbing designs than nearly every video game enemy. Towards the end of the
14:49second game, Isaac must use a specialized machine to access marker data stored in his brain. Unfortunately for
14:56everyone, the machine uses a giant needle to pierce through his eye.
15:06Everything about this scene is a masterclass intention. Isaac's increased heart rate as the
15:12machine gets closer, and his twitching eyes making it harder for you to line it up.
15:22Failure leads to a death most brutal, and something long and sharp sticking into your eye is a universal
15:29fear that can stress anyone out. The Final Encounter, Until Dawn
15:44Until Dawn is another game built around stressful moments, like the multitude of well-implemented
15:50quick-time decisions that could lead to doom or survival. As you try to keep the cast of characters
15:56alive, you uncover a community of thriving Wendigos, who are all too happy to hunt you at any opportunity.
16:02This comes to a head during the climax, when the remaining survivors are trapped inside the ski lodge with a
16:08group of them.
16:17While gas fills the building, you must make all the right decisions, and not move at the proper moments
16:23using the controller's motion sensors, in order to get everyone out alive and blow the Wendigos up.
16:28One slight mistake could lead to you losing one or several characters all at once.
16:45The Labyrinth, Silent Hill 2
16:48The Labyrinth, Silent Hill 2
17:06The Labyrinth, Silent Hill 2 is an expression of dread in its purest form. James has to draw a map
17:13as he explores, naturally,
17:15and it's really easy to feel like you're being trapped in a loop. Of course, there are several disturbing enemies
17:20roaming the halls, including good ol' Pyramid Head, and a boss fight against one of the most unsettling foes
17:27to ever grace the series, Abstract Daddy. The 2024 remake expanded on this area with new sections,
17:40all of them taking full advantage of the graphical overhaul, with visuals that are sure to surprise and
17:46disturb.
17:54The Hospital's Lower Levels
17:57The Last of Us Part 2
18:09Any time a game tells you you'll have to descend into a basement,
18:13you know you're in for a bad time. During Abby's section, you're meant to go into the lower levels
18:18of a hospital in search of medical supplies. Extremely dim lighting, rooms with stalkers and clickers,
18:24and some unsettling sounds of something big not too far in the distance set the mood.
18:30After finally finding what you need in an ambulance, you're jumped by the Rat King,
18:34a horrific amalgamation of several infected types, fused together by years of fungal growth.
18:51As if the resulting chase wasn't tense enough, you then have to battle the thing in a tight environment,
18:57and about halfway through, one of the infected rips itself off and begins hunting you while you
19:03continue the fight. The anxiety is unbelievable.
19:18If you love games, be sure to check out WatchMojo's new game Terrible Influence,
19:23just launched for purchase at TerribleInfluence.com. Terrible Influence is a satirical board game about
19:28the dark side of fame from the writer of the most popular girls in school and us, WatchMojo.
19:33Boom. I can make an apology video. Oh, you so would.
19:37Click on the link in the description to check out the game and be the first to play Terrible Influence.
19:43House Beneviento, Resident Evil Village.
19:46I love you both so much. I had to. I had to do it.
19:56Honestly, you could look at any entry in the Resident Evil series and pick a moment that would fit nicely
20:01on
20:02this list, but today we're going with the unholy locale of House Beneviento. Things start off only
20:09mildly creepy as you piece together puzzles amidst some unsettling wooden dolls, but things take a
20:15turn for the worse when you're subjected to the effects of hallucinogenic chemicals. You lose
20:20access to your weapons during this section, which is a shame because, rummaging around in the dark,
20:26you'll be met by a gigantic undead baby with the ability to swallow you whole.
20:43This creature's design is a perfect combination of disgusting and terrifying. Having to run and
20:50hide from it while looking for the swiftest exit is one of the game's standout, stress-inducing moments.
21:04What's the most you've ever been stressed during a horror game? Share your experience in the comments,
21:09and we'll see you next time.
Comments