For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies.
I had way too much fun playing it to be traumatized by it at the time, although when i was old enough to understand the horror of the whole “your memories and experience becoming food for a god-like being that has absolutely zero respect for your existance”, that did inform my perspective of other media such as Evangelion or Childhood’s end when I watched them for the 1st time.
What was your equivalent to this? I’ve heard the Resident Evil games are quite common for this but I want to hear your perspective.
Phantasmagoria.
No, not the more recent VR Game, Phasmaphobia. Phantasmagoria was a DOS PnC adventure game that absolutely scared the shit out of me when I was 9.
I remember that game. It came on like 7 CDs and was pretty much entirely FMV if I remember correctly.
Yep. It had a script over 550 pages long; about the same length as an average hollywood film and also had a huge 25 actor cast, many of which were classically trained actors.
And here I am only remembering the basement and the scary sounds that made me stop playing for a week.
Goddamn did that game push some limits. I guarantee something like that remade today would get an AO rating.