Never been so scared in my life (spoilers)

[mr_natural48]

Ravenholm.

What more needs to be said?

This is by far the best thing in the game to this point.
It is 2.00am, I have headphones on, sound up loud and I'm tired.

The tension Valve builds in this level is absolutely brilliant. I am 22 yrs old and I am still shaking 20 mins later.

When the particular scene took place I didn't want to stray too far from the explosive barrels because I was running fairly low on ammo, I keep running slowly around killing as many stray zombies as I could without waking other things and then running back to the barrels. I kept walking further and further away and then next thing I know I'm surrounded by so many enemies and running around doing everything i could without getting killed.

It was pretty funny when I knew I had no hope of survival so I tried to make a run for it. The bloody door wasn't even real. I probably go back on when I calm down. :D

[AkasaReeve]

........So is it scarier than Doom3?

[mr_natural48]

That particular bit was scarier than the bits i've played in Doom 3 but i can't really be any sort of judge because I have only played the demo of Doom 3. I wouldn't go into the game though thinking that because you're most likely to be let down.

[Frutkola]

Damn, yeah, Ravenholm is scarier than D3, imo.

[Hyperion2010]

HL2 is scarrier by far, simply because its soooo un predictable, the complete opposite of Doom3.

The ambience in Ravenholm is bone chilling!

[Lazlow]

There's an area later on in the game - I think it's even scarier than Ravenholm. I had to stop playing because I was alone at night in the dark, and couldn't quite handle it! :)

[we11er]

Those fast zombies, with the black headcrabs - :S those are ****ing scary as shit

[t0v3]

Yeah the way them really fast zombies (i dont know their name) run around and climb pipes and stuff to come and get you...usually they come up behidn you, always have a shotgun in hand while in ravenholm! But damn, its very impressive, and does the creepy atmosphere so much better than Doom3.

[Wraithen]

no ammo and loads of fast zombies and poison headcrabs... and poison headcrab flinger things = soiled trousers

[Doppelgofer]

hl2 in general i find a lot more tense than doom3...its got a whole oppressive feeling about it has half life 2

[NekoFever]

How about at the end when you're on the roof waiting for Father Gregory to send across the basket so that you can get to him at the church? I had hardly any ammo and then you see the pipes start shaking as the zombies come running up :eek:

Then when he finally activates the basket it's the slowest-moving thing you've ever seen.

Very atmospheric.

[AmishSlayer]

How about at the end when you're on the roof waiting for Father Gregory to send across the basket so that you can get to him at the church? I had hardly any ammo and then you see the pipes start shaking as the zombies come running up :eek:

Then when he finally activates the basket it's the slowest-moving thing you've ever seen.

Very atmospheric.

That part was easy as hell. They gave you 2 boxes of shotgun ammo right as you got up there. Just stand right in front of the pipe as they come up...when they're head is close...*BAM*...one shot will kill those fast zombies. Just stand and wait. Valve should've made more than one route the zombies could've come up so it would've been harder.

I didn't find Ravenholm to be scary...just annoying in that last street part before you go to the rooftops - where they have the propeller trap that breaks. Those black headcrabs would hit you and your hp would go to 1 while your suit slowly charged it back. What's the deal with those zombies that throw the black headcrabs? They are way too resilient one rocket shot and a few revolver shots doesn't bring one down...

[Wraithen]

Valve should've made more than one route the zombies could've come up so it would've been harder.


There were two pipes that they came up though... having said that, it was easy. I just sat there with the magnum and picked them off one by one.

[mzhang23]

Poison hc zombies are way too powerful. It's best to use explosive barrels/grenades on them. Any other weapon barely does anything.

[axeil]

So far Ravenholm is my most loved/hated part of the game. Loved because it was so fun to run around and play zombie hunter. Hated because all my zombie hunting left me with the Gravity Gun, 2 'nades, the crowbar and 1 round of 9mm shots.

I was not a happy camper when the fast zombies came around.

[Sniperdan]

Yeah i had to crowbar a few fast zombies to death. damn it was fun:)

[johnnypoopoopant]

btw is ravenholm the only scary level in hl2??

[Black-Falcon]

Fast zombies scare the shit out of me. And they sound scary as all hell too!

[ne0_shiny]

magnum is sweet
btw what happened to the mods?

[Revenge]

I kinda ruined Ravenholm's scariness effect for myself by playing the easy part until 4:30am, going to bed, waking up for work at 6:30am, working a 10 hour day, then finishing the rest of ravenholm during the twilight with people wandering around in the room with me and yapping away.... I ended up finding it mildy challenging (playing on normal difficulty)

[maxmon]

........So is it scarier than Doom3?

Doom3 so freakin scarier lol :sniper: :monkee:

[maxmon]

Look Doom3 is scary in the whole 9 yards but when it comes to orginal zombies its halflife2 :sniper: :monkee:

[Victor2]

Ravenholm.

What more needs to be said?

This is by far the best thing in the game to this point.
It is 2.00am, I have headphones on, sound up loud and I'm tired.

The tension Valve builds in this level is absolutely brilliant. I am 22 yrs old and I am still shaking 20 mins later.

When the particular scene took place I didn't want to stray too far from the explosive barrels because I was running fairly low on ammo, I keep running slowly around killing as many stray zombies as I could without waking other things and then running back to the barrels. I kept walking further and further away and then next thing I know I'm surrounded by so many enemies and running around doing everything i could without getting killed.

It was pretty funny when I knew I had no hope of survival so I tried to make a run for it. The bloody door wasn't even real. I probably go back on when I calm down. :D


Ravenholm kinds of reminds of the way that those crappy Residente Evil games should´ve been made, learn sometinhg from that Capcom!!!!!!!!!

[michael_obrien]

the strider scenes near the end are also quite the nailbiters IMHO.

although one of the striders I downed blocked an entrance I had to get into... meh.

the one scene where you're running down a road with a strider chasing after you and there's nowhere to hide... I don't want to ruin it but that was a lot more of an "oh shit!" moment for me

[MysticalMrBob]

I didn't find Ravenholm scary at all. I thought maybe when you first get into the game it's creepy. The combine and stuff. Nova Prospekt maybe, or something, but the zombies moved too slow and it was too wide open to creep me out. I can only remember very few parts but the stuff I really remember was just looking for some more ammo or some crap. Fast Zombies weren't scary and more of a "CRAP WHATS THE MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON ITS KILLING ME." Not a "OH MY HEART STOPPED."

[wongb18c]

I think the black poisonous headcrabs are the scariest.... those things creep me out like no other. Looks just like a super large spider.. eeeeeek.

[lord dubu]

Ravenholm is absolutely my favorite level. I screamed at the top of my lungs on that first fast-zombie. Here I am creeping into the area, crows suddenly fly off... a howl... and HOLY CRAP! WHAT;S THAAAAAT!!!!

[rum]

if u played the demo of doom3 ,thats all u needed to play because ,its the same game over and over again.

i hated it and brough it back to wal-mart!!!

[cky]

Doom 3 was not a scary game. half life 2 was scarier, but it didnt scare me. Iwe played many horrorgames so i am used to it.

[Jangle]

the bit that really freaked me out was on sandtraps, where you are in the buggy and you go through the tunnel. I saw a zombie, and thought oh no, i'll just drive thrught really fast. But then there are loadsa cars blocking the way so i had to get out of my buggy and there were fast zombies and everything. I was terrified.

[--ping--]

personally i found avp2 a fair bit scarier, but i guess it's just because it was a constant theme-
if hl2 had a scene fighting an icthiosaur though.....my pants still have stains from hl1 :P

[Max_Payne]

people....wtf? lol ravenholm was not sacry. COOL yes... but scary? CMON! u want a twisted scary game? play the silent hill series... ****ing creepy.

PEACE

Mike :cheese:

[Stigmata]

the bit that really freaked me out was on sandtraps, where you are in the buggy and you go through the tunnel. I saw a zombie, and thought oh no, i'll just drive thrught really fast. But then there are loadsa cars blocking the way so i had to get out of my buggy and there were fast zombies and everything. I was terrified.Holy crap, did that part ever scare me too :D I remember moving the cars out of the way with the gauss gun (didn't want to get out of my car), but then they started rushing at me, and my gun didn't aim far enough to the left to hit them, so I ran out and shotgunned the zombies. By that point I was so freaked out that I pulled out the manipulator, shot the hell out of the cars with it, and drove as fast as I could through the rest of it.

Ravenholm is much scarier than Doom 3. The only scary part in Doom 3 was when the Imp lunges at you and hits the glass wall between you and it, and then climbs away. That's it.

[WacK]

Yeah, Silent hill is scary * DamN *

But i also think that ravenholm is ****ing scary, omg, the fast zombies are CraZy!

But let me get one thing straigth:

Doom3 ARE NOT SCARY!!... ¨ i think ¨.
Its a way too dark game, and after a short while you get used to the darkness in the game, and you almost know when ever there will come another monster around the corner, then it is not scary anymore.
¨ But maby it's just me. ¨

[WacK]

Holy crap, did that part ever scare me too :D I remember moving the cars out of the way with the gauss gun (didn't want to get out of my car), but then they started rushing at me, and my gun didn't aim far enough to the left to hit them, so I ran out and shotgunned the zombies. By that point I was so freaked out that I pulled out the manipulator, shot the hell out of the cars with it, and drove as fast as I could through the rest of it.

Ravenholm is much scarier than Doom 3. The only scary part in Doom 3 was when the Imp lunges at you and hits the glass wall between you and it, and then climbs away. That's it.

I totally agree! ¨ Peace ¨ :P

[Mister_Pie]

If you want scary, play Clive Barker's Undying.

For the record, I thought Ravenholm was scary too. :)

[MaverickUK]

I can't see what is so scary about it. I think that Doom 3 was far more scary. For me Ravenhom just wasn't scary.

[Belisarius]

Ravenholm was definitely the scariest part of the game, after first encountering the fast zombies I had to stop and wait to start playing again.

Eventually it got to the point where I was just too tired and scared to care and it wore off on me. I havne't played many video games, but that's the scariest I've ever seen.

Some parts in Nova Prospekt were pretty scary too, especially the part(I guess it was in Entanglement) where you had to fend of the combine attack from four or five directions with yourself and three turrets. That was damned difficult.

[make/believe]

btw is ravenholm the only scary level in hl2??
No way! Have you seen the SDK?

[MaverickUK]

Ravenholm was definitely the scariest part of the game, after first encountering the fast zombies I had to stop and wait to start playing again.

Eventually it got to the point where I was just too tired and scared to care and it wore off on me. I havne't played many video games, but that's the scariest I've ever seen.

Some parts in Nova Prospekt were pretty scary too, especially the part(I guess it was in Entanglement) where you had to fend of the combine attack from four or five directions with yourself and three turrets. That was damned difficult.

i did that turret bi ton my second go. As soon as the turrets fell over I rambo'd my way through that part. The turret room was literally red with blood.

[lammmbda]

ya ravenholm is well-done.

in doom3, its too repetitive~~ i got scared once, its when i looked at the bathroom mirror..... sh*t, that wasnt fun.....

[Ennui]

Ravenholm.

It is 2.00am, I have headphones on, sound up loud and I'm tired.

Exact same thing for me. Absolutely terrifying.

[Hunt3r88]

i love that feeling and the suspence and everything. sure ravenholme was scary for me too but i loved that feeling, you know the feeling you got when a headcrab jumped at you out of nowhere in Half Life, plus no matter how scared i got i couldnt stop playin that level it was just too cool. anywayz just about to play HL2, finished it the other day and just wanted to do it again from the beginning, i liked the ending to what is it with people complaining about it? sorry if that was kinda off topic

[ExoliskX3]

ravenholm was great, not That scary but the most scariest part i played in the while. call me a sissy but i dont like resident evil =) i tend to find games scary when u have hard controls to kill them, and they come at u when u struggle to turn the crosshair,(RE).. in hl u just turn the mouse and "boom"! great game though.

[Combine Hybrid]

Those black headcrabs can leap off very high! when I was on the roof of the building, those black headcrabs just leaped up at me, taking damage. I was like WTF WAS THAT?

[Vegeta897]

Zombies popping out of the water in the airboat section was scary. But not "real" scary, just "pop-out" scary. Like it makes you jump.

The only thing that "really" scares me is the noise the fast zombies make when they are close to you and attacking. EEUGHGHG!!

It's hard to achieve "real" scary. Painkiller had a bunch of it though. That was a good game. (The haunted house part... EEEEEEE!!!)

[The_Great_Walter]

Ravenholm was a good level, but it was only moderately scary, and only in the beggining. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but at a certain point I was just begging for the level to end, I got a bit tired of it.


Doom 3 is much, much, MUCH scarier than Rvaenholm.

[cky]

people....wtf? lol ravenholm was not sacry. COOL yes... but scary? CMON! u want a twisted scary game? play the silent hill series... ****ing creepy.

PEACE

Mike :cheese:

My word.

I have played trough all the Silent Hill games so Ravenholm and doom 3 was peace of cake to me.

[fatal1ty]

i agree with everyone who says its the sound the uber-zombies make when they leap at you from any possible location. that high-pitched scream is what scared me, plus how theyre so damn fast and dont care where you go theyll climb and leap anywhere to get at you.

[TrippyG]

ravenholm was 1 of my fav levels but I didnt find it scary at all...

Scary Games: Doom 3 > Barbie Princess Bride > H a l f - L i f e 2

[eatbugs]

Ravenholm was a good level, but it was only moderately scary, and only in the beggining. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but at a certain point I was just begging for the level to end, I got a bit tired of it.


Doom 3 is much, much, MUCH scarier than Rvaenholm.

This is a halflife 2 site but HL2 was nowhere near as scary as Doom 3. Not as much atmosphere, and whats up with the story? it wasn't that gripping!

[JackelPDW]

Ravenholm wasn't so much as "jumpy" scary, I found it more unnerving. When the fast zombies came flying out of somewhere, my entire body went cold and my heart began to pump, as if I had seen the face of evil, and it was screaming and running at me.

[destrukt]

i didn't really find ravenholm scary or jumpy at all. they tried to create an eery atmosphere and whatnot, but it just didn't do it for me.

[kaf11]

a few parts that scared me were in highway 17, in the coastside houses... it was quite atmospheric. drive along, see a dillapidated old house. as you approach it you hear the thumpers creating a tense, rhythmic pulse that just sounds creepier as you get further into the house. how empty the houses appeared to be contrasts perfectly with what you found in some of them. good way to build the atmosphere. if you let yourself get sucked into the game the way i do, small parts like these can be quite creepy.

[kaption]

I thought the jail had a definate feel of eerieness to it.

Doom3 was fukcing scary too though. The fact you can't have your flashlight and gun out at the same time is scary, cause you see something then shoot it, and when its dark the only light you have is the muzzle flash. Also the part with that girls whispering was freaky.

[Zeus]

Wow people, it wasn't THAT scary. It gave me a couple jumps (the fast zombies) but I didn't crap my pants.

[lord dubu]

[QUOTE=kaption]I thought the jail had a definate feel of eerieness to it.

[QUOTE]

Yeah, especiall that first time you go through one of those tunnels created by something clearly inhuman, and you're thinking "something big is lurking around in here, and it's going to eventually try and kill me"

[m00b]

I'd say Ravenholm is really creepy. You dont get really scared all the time but you feel constantly uneasy because of the athmosphere there.

[eatbugs]

The scariest things are those creepy black headcrabs, they're mainly a pain in the neck though....

[xboxkid257]

I thought that when you first see the fast zombies jumping from the rooftops in ravenholm, and you only see their silhouettes and hear their howls was really scary.

[DarkGhost86]

Ravenholm is my nightmare level. I wish I never play it next time

[Crowbar 15]

Yeh those black and fast headcrabs get me going every time. Reminds me of the facehuggers from AVP, I could not go past a section that had those things in it!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

[Flyingbig]

Now that i think of it was quite tense and when you look back it was scary but at the time you were scared but didn't have time to think "yes i think im actually scared, like in doom 3 were its so slow and predictable) but man those evil looking headcrabs scared the shit out of me everytime i saw one basically because it could put your health right down to 1 which happened to me on a couple of occasions and since i had autosave disabled i really didn't want to be dying.

[BRODIEMAN2k4]

I almost pooped myself numerous times with the poison headcrabs

[TerminallYDead]

Ravenholme was very tense, and scary. As was the beginning was sandtraps.

I also found a couple of parts of City 17 scary, usually involving zombies, such as the infested basment (near where you meet barney). Walk down there, and here a dying guy, and he says about it being infested, and then there are zombies coming outta the water. And the bit in the collapsed tunnel, where you get most of the way across the car crashes, avoiding the toxic slime, and then the zombies start coming, lobbing barrels, and knocking you into the slime.

Also the poison zombie in Nova Prospekt (out of the way in a dark blood smeared room) was scary.

Although the Poison zombies/headcrabs scared me more than the fast zombies.

[NB.]

I didnt find Ravenholm even remotely scary, i thought it was like a funny b-movie horror film. Father Grigori just made the whole thing so ludicrously stupid theres no way you could find it scary imo. Even aside from him though it wasnt scary at all, you could tell it was intended to be, but it just wasnt imo.

[Great Grizzly]

im one of those people who when playing a game such as this, totally lose touch with reality. I truly feel i am in the game, and so when a fast zombie comes out, i am scared shitless.

The fact that you cant get away is the scariest. The normal zombies werent scary because they were slow, no threat. THe fast ones YOU CANT OUTRUN. That makes them VERY scary. This is the same for the ictyasaur (sp?) and the huge monster with the flamthrowers from HL1

[mrkab00m]

I loved Ravenholm. It was kindof scary (note-3:00am+tired+cold) I liked the beginning, too. The whole scene with DOG and fetch then ravenholm was just great. I love those zombie sounds to death. All of the zombie sounds. As soon as I can I'm gonna go into the files and play those sounds over and over again. I love the moaning too y'know, half-human screams of pain/half screeches of the headcrab on top of them...

[Ennui]

The only other time I was that scared in a video game was when I was five and playing Wolfenstein 3d; I was absolutely terrified of the dogs.

[Xenome]

Ravenholm.

What more needs to be said?

This is by far the best thing in the game to this point.
It is 2.00am, I have headphones on, sound up loud and I'm tired.

The tension Valve builds in this level is absolutely brilliant. I am 22 yrs old and I am still shaking 20 mins later.

When the particular scene took place I didn't want to stray too far from the explosive barrels because I was running fairly low on ammo, I keep running slowly around killing as many stray zombies as I could without waking other things and then running back to the barrels. I kept walking further and further away and then next thing I know I'm surrounded by so many enemies and running around doing everything i could without getting killed.

It was pretty funny when I knew I had no hope of survival so I tried to make a run for it. The bloody door wasn't even real. I probably go back on when I calm down. :D

Well .. I'm 18 and a computer game would never leave me shaking 20 minutes later :laugh:

Some horror movies do.. of course.

[niLeGreatFun]

wont be as bad the third maybe fourth time round lol i know u will get there

[KagePrototype]

I have to say, the first time I played Ravenholm (in the alpha :p ), the poison zombies scared the crap out of me. I just hated the way they sounded, as well as the poison headcrabs. I guess it doesn't help that I'm arachnophobic. The fast zombies were pretty scary, but only when they weren't climbing up a drainpipe. All you had to do was wait at the top with a shotgun and shoot them when their head pops up. :p

Overall though, I found Doom 3 a lot scarier, both in quick jumps and atmosphere. But Ravenholm was only a small part of HL2, and the fact that it managed to take on the entirely of Doom 3 at it's own game was quite an achievement.

[neptuneuk]

"Never been so scared in my life"

you need to get out more....

actually dont. you're lucky!

[Toffee]

hmh, Ravenholm didnt leave me with any particular motions, though I liked the atmosphere that were created there.
Only time I got scared in a game must have been the first Alone In The Dark, when it was released and I´m guessing I was 10 at the time. I think it was about the sudden music that bursted out of nowhere as the zombies made their way. Scared the heck out of me :D

[mrkab00m]

!!!
I just replayed Ravenholm without the hud and without the reticule and was AWSOME-constant reloading+don't know your heath=LOTS of fun. enjoy.

[Platinum]

Those fast zombies, with the black headcrabs - :S those are ****ing scary as shit

i second that .... fast zombies + black headcrabs = recipe for scared

[MisterDeak]

This may be a bit off topic, but I thought I'd mention it anyway - I think it's a bit funny that in Ravenholm it's pitch dark and when you pop out at the train yard an hour later (which, considering twilight had just set in when you reached BME, should be at around, say, 11 p.m.), you're back in broad daylight! A temporal anomaly?? Or just something along the lines of "Ravenholm is supposed to scare the living crap out of everyone so let's make it nice and dark"? Don't get me wrong - I loved Ravenholm - but I think that would be a mite on the corny side. Especially in view of the fact that Valve have shown they don't need darkness to create a spooky atmosphere. Some of the coast side houses along highway 17 actually scared me a lot more than the whole of Ravenholm ("Okay, I want to leave. I'm leaving. Now!").
Anyway, does this make me a nitpicker or does anyone have a plausible explanation?

[Ruthless12]

This may be a bit off topic, but I thought I'd mention it anyway - I think it's a bit funny that in Ravenholm it's pitch dark and when you pop out at the train yard an hour later (which, considering twilight had just set in when you reached BME, should be at around, say, 11 p.m.), you're back in broad daylight! A temporal anomaly?? Or just something along the lines of "Ravenholm is supposed to scare the living crap out of everyone so let's make it nice and dark"? Don't get me wrong - I loved Ravenholm - but I think that would be a mite on the corny side. Especially in view of the fact that Valve have shown they don't need darkness to create a spooky atmosphere. Some of the coast side houses along highway 17 actually scared me a lot more than the whole of Ravenholm ("Okay, I want to leave. I'm leaving. Now!").
Anyway, does this make me a nitpicker or does anyone have a plausible explanation?

Well, you're right about the time thing; however, the game does not truly track the position of the sun by player minutes in game. It just adjusts it as you move from one part of the game to another; sort of like how 10 seconds on tv shows lasts for 90 seconds when the writers need it to. Ravenholm was dark for effect. I think it made is scarier because you had a hard time seeing where zombies were in many areas; you end up seeing this "thing" lurching out of a dark alley. Pretty creepy.

They did the same thing with Nova Prospekt (made it dark when you enter it so it would be scarier.) And it worked. Especially after being through Ravenholm, NP at night presented a serious feeling of dread.

Anyways, you have to use your imagination a bit. For example, when you are hanging out at BME, you can assume in plot terms you were there longer than the few minutes that the scenes actually take. Similarly, you "spent the night" in Ravenholm, even though player game time may have only taken at most a few hours.

[Huge Cohones]

The bloody door wasn't even real.:D

LOL this made me laugh hahaha

[Ruthless12]

Well, I agree with those who said Ravenholm was scary. (Note: This doesn't mean I feared for my life or actually thought a video game would hurt me; this means that adrenaline was pumping and felt similar emotions to what someone in Gordon's position would feel. Of course, I might not be as cynical as gen-y-ers ;))

I also agree with whoever said the game felt "oppressive". I think that's the right word for it, and the developers should be commended for conveying that feeling. The creepiness (IMO) starts off when you stop at the fork in the canal on your airboat and you can see that there was clearly a small settlement for someone near the runoff drain. There's a very eery feeling of loneliness to the place, with the wind blowing and the wind chimes. It's obvious the place has been deserted and you get the feeling like you shouldn't be there. Then, a zombie stumbles out of the tunnel. Excellently creepy and it hints at things to come.

Then you get to BME and Alyx tells you about Ravenholm. Nothing too bad about that, but it is obvious at that point that you don't want to go in there and equally obvious that you are going to HAVE to go in there...games can be a bit predictable sometimes...anyhow, in this case I think it worked (for me) because you knew ahead of time that you were going to have to go in some "awful place", so you had some time to let that sink in subconsciously and build up some dread about the next scene. While at the same time you are just having some "safe time" with Alyx and dog. Good pacing by the developers here to manipulate your emotions.

Then dog lets you in Ravenholm entrance and it begins. I felt pretty nervous when dog left and I was alone. Then you go past all the signs of abandonment and all the barricades; the locked barrier on the ladder was especially nice touch. All these little touches really make you feel like you shouldn't be going where you're going and the tension mounts. Then you get to the courtyard and you see how abandoned and eerily silent the place is and I definitely felt like I didn't want to be there and I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

Throughout Ravenholm, the developers did a great job with the sounds; the unearthly rattling of something in a nearby building, strange moans and howls coming out of the night...other nice subtle touches were the way the level was laid out: All the traps, the barricades, fences, and scaffolding really clued you in on how it would be like to spend a lot of time in that place and survive. The shells gave good indications of what happened in the town, and there are lots of signs of the horror it caused (dead bodies hidden away in various hidden spots gives the impression that people tried to survive by hiding, but were eventually found and killed; the infirmary shows that the townspeople tried to treat the infected, but were obviously unsuccessful) The animations of the zombies was good, too. The way they pick themselves up off the ground and stagger towards you is pretty realistic-looking; same with the way the poison zombie staggers around, weighed down with crabs.

The developers also did a good job of making you feel like you were never safe. I was constantly looking around to see if anything was sneaking up on me. Also, by having lots of dead zombies around (another subconscious clue as to what transpired in the town before you showed up) and have some of them actually be alive makes you have a difficult choice: Blast every body you see and waste ammo, or else prepare to have one of these things get up when you aren't watching and get you.

The part where you are chased by the fast zombies and you run into the room and shut the door, then they crash in through the skylight was absolutely brilliant.

Anyhow, I thought the level was brilliant in bringing out feelings of: Dread, desperation, mortality. It definitely makes one uneasy. It took me several nights to finish and I usually had a night or so off in between nights playing so I could work up my nerve to go back in.

(I just played through that level for the third time last night; this time I gave myself a bunch of vortigaunts and citizens as backup, plus made myself invincible and gave myself all the weapons. It was still creepy, but not scary. The vortigaunts absolutely slay everything. They are excellent body guards, but unfortunately they won't follow you like the citizens will. At one point I spawned "dog" to help me, but he ran away from the zombies and hid in an alley!)

Someone above mentioned the term "ambience" and I think that's a good word to use, too, for HL2. Ravenholm was especially good, but the game in general presented a really impressive "atmosphere". Part of that is the graphics, but I think the subtle clues (like I mentioned above) were very important, and I think most notable was the use of sound in the game. The use of sound was, IMO, genius and was the key to the atmosphere in the game.

Some commented that some of the outpost houses along the road were creepy and I agree. The game did a great job of making sure you never felt safe, even during the daytime. There was something very eery about the houses; they showed signs that they were abandoned, but something bad happened there. And it was very quiet (which is unusal because most of the game is fairly noisy.) Then you hear "something" (bad) inside. Someone mentioned the poison zombie in Nova Prospekt being creepy (and it was); there was also one in one of the houses along the coast road. Later on, in the tunnel, when the zombies come at you: That was brilliantly scary as well...

[agentD]

I didn't find Ravenholm very scary at all. Fun as hell, but not scary. Then again, I was too busy shouting my warcry and sawing things in twain to be scared.
Now System Shock 2 is scary. No other game has sent me running out of the room in panic.

[joshsmog]

I didn't find Ravenholm very scary at all. Fun as hell, but not scary. Then again, I was too busy shouting my warcry and sawing things in twain to be scared.
Now System Shock 2 is scary. No other game has sent me running out of the room in panic.
yeah that game was insane. I might actually reinstall it. AVP1 as a marine was scary to me, I always knew there was gonna be an alien jumping out when that corridor went black.

[Solver]

Very nice post Ruthless! That's exactly why Ravenholm is excellently designed... it was very creepy and felt right how it should be. Then again, there were the Delta labs in Doom3, where I felt genuinely scared... ahh!

[Adabiviak]

I've played both Doom 3 and Half Life 2 in their entirety several times and they are both scary in different ways. For both, the first time you go through a level is the best because you don't know what's going to happen next. As predictable as things became in Doom 3, I still jumped whenever a zombie popped out of a dark corner - I just learned to guess where to have a shotgun ready. Doom 3 had both "boo" scary and creepy scary, while Half Life2 was all creepy. In Ravenholm, the howling of the fast zombies (didn't know WHAT that was at the time) was very chilling and then to see them running at you from a distance was great. I think the poison zombies need to be fairly bullet proof because they are such slow lurkers. The only time the poison zombie scared me (as opposed to just being awfully creepy) was in the level of the abandoned laundromat where you take a detour around a hallway in the back and find a very nice weapon closet only to turn around and be cornered by him, staring you in the face. You don't want to use a rocket or grenade at point blank, and knowing full well that it would take a LOT of my newly acquired ammunition to fall this guy was very intense. The first time I played Doom 3 was scarier for me than Half Life 2, but Half Life 2 still creeps me out when I go back.

[Solver]

I was more scared in Doom3... yes it had that "boo" scariness with monsters jumping out, and that would make me jump in surprise... but I was much more scared by the overall atmosphere and sounds. Playing it at night, alone, the sights of blood everywhere, demonic stuff and symbols, strange voices... that was what scared me. Really creepy.

In HL2, I was more scared by the implications of it all, but it was a different scare, more of an emotional one. Like, what have they done to humans, what have the Combine turned Earth into, etc. Very different. Ravenholm relies on creepiness that is more in style of Doom3, but everything else in the game is scary in the "what have they done" style. I think that Nova Prospekt is the scaries part of the game, not Ravenholm - you see their torture devices, the little awful cells where prisoners were kept, etc., that's scary...

[Ruthless12]

One thing I noticed on a subsequent trip through Ravenholm is that you are introduced to the fast zombies early on (though they don't attack you.) You come out of a building and you hear "something" snarling and running along the rooftops. If you look up quickly, you'll see them running along, but it's very quick.

Nova Prospekt was pretty creepy, too, but mostly you are just fighting the Combine and I found that that didn't really creep me out as much (even though they are more deadly than the average zombie.) Also, you are much more powerful on the NP level, especially with your little bug friends. The parts where you have to fend off waves of Combine using the turrets was pretty tense, though. Actually, the game in general was pretty tense. (I can't compare it to Doom 3 since I haven't played it.) I actually felt relieved at the last level because I thought it was unlikely I'd find zombies in the citadel.

I've been trying to spawn the bugs on Ravenholm to help me, but they always just attack me instead. Also, I've never managed to get the uber-gravity gun in Ravenholm. I've heard suggestions that you need to go to the level where you have the uber gravity gun, then change levels to Ravenholm, but whenever I try that it takes away my weapons and sets them to some default set as soon as I change levels.

At the end of Ravenholm, on a subsequent trip through, I spawned a bunch of citizens with shotguns and a bunch of vortigaunts in the graveyard. By the time I was entering the mines, my little body guards had wiped out all the zombies on the map!

[Great Grizzly]

Well, I agree with those who said Ravenholm was scary. (Note: This doesn't mean I feared for my life or actually thought a video game would hurt me; this means that adrenaline was pumping and felt similar emotions to what someone in Gordon's position would feel. Of course, I might not be as cynical as gen-y-ers ;))

I also agree with whoever said the game felt "oppressive". I think that's the right word for it, and the developers should be commended for conveying that feeling. The creepiness (IMO) starts off when you stop at the fork in the canal on your airboat and you can see that there was clearly a small settlement for someone near the runoff drain. There's a very eery feeling of loneliness to the place, with the wind blowing and the wind chimes. It's obvious the place has been deserted and you get the feeling like you shouldn't be there. Then, a zombie stumbles out of the tunnel. Excellently creepy and it hints at things to come.

Then you get to BME and Alyx tells you about Ravenholm. Nothing too bad about that, but it is obvious at that point that you don't want to go in there and equally obvious that you are going to HAVE to go in there...games can be a bit predictable sometimes...anyhow, in this case I think it worked (for me) because you knew ahead of time that you were going to have to go in some "awful place", so you had some time to let that sink in subconsciously and build up some dread about the next scene. While at the same time you are just having some "safe time" with Alyx and dog. Good pacing by the developers here to manipulate your emotions.

Then dog lets you in Ravenholm entrance and it begins. I felt pretty nervous when dog left and I was alone. Then you go past all the signs of abandonment and all the barricades; the locked barrier on the ladder was especially nice touch. All these little touches really make you feel like you shouldn't be going where you're going and the tension mounts. Then you get to the courtyard and you see how abandoned and eerily silent the place is and I definitely felt like I didn't want to be there and I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

Throughout Ravenholm, the developers did a great job with the sounds; the unearthly rattling of something in a nearby building, strange moans and howls coming out of the night...other nice subtle touches were the way the level was laid out: All the traps, the barricades, fences, and scaffolding really clued you in on how it would be like to spend a lot of time in that place and survive. The shells gave good indications of what happened in the town, and there are lots of signs of the horror it caused (dead bodies hidden away in various hidden spots gives the impression that people tried to survive by hiding, but were eventually found and killed; the infirmary shows that the townspeople tried to treat the infected, but were obviously unsuccessful) The animations of the zombies was good, too. The way they pick themselves up off the ground and stagger towards you is pretty realistic-looking; same with the way the poison zombie staggers around, weighed down with crabs.

The developers also did a good job of making you feel like you were never safe. I was constantly looking around to see if anything was sneaking up on me. Also, by having lots of dead zombies around (another subconscious clue as to what transpired in the town before you showed up) and have some of them actually be alive makes you have a difficult choice: Blast every body you see and waste ammo, or else prepare to have one of these things get up when you aren't watching and get you.

The part where you are chased by the fast zombies and you run into the room and shut the door, then they crash in through the skylight was absolutely brilliant.

Anyhow, I thought the level was brilliant in bringing out feelings of: Dread, desperation, mortality. It definitely makes one uneasy. It took me several nights to finish and I usually had a night or so off in between nights playing so I could work up my nerve to go back in.

(I just played through that level for the third time last night; this time I gave myself a bunch of vortigaunts and citizens as backup, plus made myself invincible and gave myself all the weapons. It was still creepy, but not scary. The vortigaunts absolutely slay everything. They are excellent body guards, but unfortunately they won't follow you like the citizens will. At one point I spawned "dog" to help me, but he ran away from the zombies and hid in an alley!)

Someone above mentioned the term "ambience" and I think that's a good word to use, too, for HL2. Ravenholm was especially good, but the game in general presented a really impressive "atmosphere". Part of that is the graphics, but I think the subtle clues (like I mentioned above) were very important, and I think most notable was the use of sound in the game. The use of sound was, IMO, genius and was the key to the atmosphere in the game.

Some commented that some of the outpost houses along the road were creepy and I agree. The game did a great job of making sure you never felt safe, even during the daytime. There was something very eery about the houses; they showed signs that they were abandoned, but something bad happened there. And it was very quiet (which is unusal because most of the game is fairly noisy.) Then you hear "something" (bad) inside. Someone mentioned the poison zombie in Nova Prospekt being creepy (and it was); there was also one in one of the houses along the coast road. Later on, in the tunnel, when the zombies come at you: That was brilliantly scary as well...


Ohhh you know what another nice touch was? all the traps, that had more humans stuck in them then zombies and and head crabs. THis showed you just how insane that monk was. It was almost as if the monk was trying to kill the humans.

[Ruthless12]

Ohhh you know what another nice touch was? all the traps, that had more humans stuck in them then zombies and and head crabs. THis showed you just how insane that monk was. It was almost as if the monk was trying to kill the humans.

I think the humans caught in traps were probably zombies, too. If you shoot a zombie and his headcrab pops off, he looks like a human with some serious injuries.

[Solver]

At the end of Ravenholm, on a subsequent trip through, I spawned a bunch of citizens with shotguns and a bunch of vortigaunts in the graveyard. By the time I was entering the mines, my little body guards had wiped out all the zombies on the map!

Vortigaunts are insanely powerful, they kill Antlion guards as if they were nothing.

[Quelaar]

I think the humans caught in traps were probably zombies, too. If you shoot a zombie and his headcrab pops off, he looks like a human with some serious injuries.

Worthy of note is the OPEN F*UCKING CHEST WITH TEETH and the huge claws...oh, and the massive bloodloss.



Quelaar
:D :D :D

[blanked]

for me, ravenholm scared the crap out of me... i mean the zombies espcially those fast zombies and the black headcrabs. the way they surprise you and catch you off guard adds to the scare factor which makes even the normal headcrabs creepy. but i really really REALLY hate those black headcrabs and their flinging zombie friends, they drop your health down to 1 and they can jump really high with the help of their zombie friend, even unloading a whole smg clip barely does any harm to them :rolleyes: and it prolly doesnt help that im entomophobic. i remember there was one house on highway 17 where you go in and see a few supply boxes there and rush to see whats inside only to find that theres a zombie with 4 black headcrabs on it in the next room, i was scared out of my mind i ran outside to the buggy and floored it, also there was another house where the roller mines came thru the roof, those made me jump :bounce: also the tunnel where you had to use the grav gun to move the cars was freaky, those fast zombies kept running at you while you try to move the cars and on top of that there were more zombies on the other side of the cars. another one was the part where you couldnt touch the sand or be torn apart by those antlions, everytime you miss and touch the ground then the ground starts shaking and then those antlions come after you was really scary. nevertheless it was fun all the way, with exceptions in some parts of ravenholm :eek:

[Bronzer]

The burning question is this! If the Preacher were your grandfather, would you want to spend the summer at his place??

[Ruthless12]

The burning question is this! If the Preacher were your grandfather, would you want to spend the summer at his place??

Does he have any Werther's?

[DarkTimes]

Now System Shock 2 is scary. No other game has sent me running out of the room in panic.

I was going to mention that... :)

Even those three words, System Shock 2, just send a nervous shiver up my spine. The one game where eventually I stopped playing it as I just couldn't bring myself to load it up again. Oh, getting a funny feeling now, just thinking about it.

Edit: And The Cradle mission from Thief: Deadly Shadows. That was damn scary too.

[digitalfire]

It's 2:30am and I just had to stop playing Ravenholm. I got my projector out, so i got like a 8 foot screen in my tiny room, and i got headphones on with the volume up. Wow, it's way scarier with a large screen! I think i'll finish it tomorrow... :laugh:

[alheeley]

They've done a great job, definitely not recommended for late night sessions, I've never been sucked in to such a sinister atmosphere in a pc game before. :thumbs:

[duckmoose]

I got Doom 3 with my 6600GT (love this card SOOO much... on the HL2 benchmark I average 60fps at 1280x1024, 4xAA, trillinear filtering, reflect world, and maxed out everything else... BOOYA, on a basically $150 card [oh yeah and 3.0Ghz P4 and 1024 PC3200 DDR] thanks to the free Doom 3 copy).

I still don't know why people think it is so damn scary. I played it late at night, by myself, volume up, etc. and I may have jumped in my seat a total of two or three times. Sure some parts were pretty badass -- the Guardian, the ending cinematic, sure it was a pretty fun game but scary? Hell no. In fact, I do think I found Ravenholm scarier than pretty much all of Doom 3. Mainly because of the awesomeness of the first fast zombie encounter. Doom 3 made me jump a couple of times, but I think I dreaded the fast zombies at first more than those crappy enemies in D3.

Who else laughed at the pimps with the elastic arms that reached out and slapped you? I pretty much had to stop the game to laugh after one of the bitches smacked me from out behind a pillar. I go to get it between him and me so I can get out the proper weapon, then I see his arm swing out from behind it and give me a tap on the ass. Damn, that game was so unscary.

Horror games amuse me more than scare me really, those that I have played aren't very scary... at all... Resident Evil, System Shock was mildly hair-raising, the Marine campaign in AvP2 had a lot of adrenaline but not really any scares, etc. etc. Now, whoever mentioned the Cradle level in Thief: Deadly Shadows... RIGHT ON. That may be the one level I've played that actually came close to scaring the beejebus out of me. I felt my heart leap the first time one of the ex-asylum patients took a wack at me. In that room with the strobe-lighting. I was like, "Holy shit, get away from me you freak!" That whole level freaked me out, although I've never had a game drive me to quit. Lighting was perfect.

[Sid Burn]

Ravenholm... the scariest of all the places in HL2. Damn I must first pass Chapter 6!!! Darn that elevator!!! must find a way...

[riles]

the fast zombies werent so scary to me but the black headcrabs made my inner child cry.

[TomV]

I don't think Ravenholm was that scary... :P I've completed it two times in the demo, before I got Half Life 2 for christmas :D So it was boring... Kinda reminds me of resident evil or Dawn of the Dead :P

But ravenholm is a good place to play with the gravity gun :D:D:D

[froghawk]

I think it would have been scary had I not seen the videos beforehand.

I really want to get SS2 working on xp..

[duckmoose]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the bustin through the roof part with fast zombies. The other two times I had played Ravenholm at the place with the elevator I had left the door open and blasted the fast zombies as they came around the corner. So the other night two of my friends and I were trying to play through Half-Life 2 in one sitting. They had never played HL2 before and were really freaked out by Ravenholm. So it's my turn and we get to the elevator and I see the fast zombies coming up the pipe and I'm like, "Hey, what if I close this door? Wonder why I didn't try this before."

And my friends are like, "The zombies will open it, duh." So to prove them wrong I go over and close it and then it stays closed. And, I'm serious, right as I was saying, "Hah, well that's cool, I should have done that bef--" CRASH and both of the buggers come down through the roof.

I'm serious, I think all three of us exclaimed at the same time. Then for the next ten minutes we were like, "That was so frikin awesome!"

Half-Life 2 pwns Doom 3 up the wazoo.

[mac_2004]

yup same ere. i found myself ramming the cars out of the way with the buggy (with little effect) as i was too scared to get out of the vehicle

[Shadow][]

the fast zombies arnt scary at all, in ravenholm they fall off buildings, jump off and crash into brick walls which makes me laugh, i think silent hill has a more scarier enemy style

[colson]

There's no way ravenholm is more scary than Doom 3. The weird sounds and lack of light in Doom 3 scared the living shit out of me. Ravenholm inflicted excitement on me (fast zombies) but I was never actually scared. As for Doom 3 being more predictible that's not very fair. Shit popped out of nowhere all the time in doom 3. That's one of the main things the developers relied on in Doom 3 to create a scary atmosphere. Halflife 2 wasn't really designed to be scary in my opinion but to each his own.

[the_lone_wolf]

surround sound makes ravenholm scary enough, the bits that were the kind of passive "chill down the spine" scary were the "chink chink chink" you hear when the fast zombies run across the rooftops but can't see them and when you hear noises but not what caused them.

the visually scary bits were the fast zombies, just to see them at a distance hop from roof to roof calling while you franticaly try to select the shotgun was super, or the part in the mines with all the headcrabs, proper infestation:D

sound makes revenholm more than the graphics do IMHO, unlike the rest of the game

[tembleofbu]

I played the demo of hl2 in full daylight and then Ravenholm wasn't scary but in the full game.. uhh... (which I played through without a brake), Well, about 1:00, in the night (can't remember if thats AM or PM), I got to the Ravenholm level, scary shit, I was already *beep* scared when Alyx said something like ''that's the old tunnel to Ravenholm..... We don't go there anymore'' she just said it on such a way, like... uuuhhh... Maybe because I knew you were going there... Uhh... Well, I completed the game this morning, and have felt paranoid since... lol... Still trying to press F6 in real life to quiksave before I'm going round a corner... Now when I think about it, kinda geekish sitting in front of the pc in about 10-11 hours nonstop.... But back on topic: The creepist in Ravenholm is the big fire with the spiked zombies in it... damn scary... uhh... :sniper:
noyce.

[sniperelite7]

The levels were you are in the canals(Im playing those levels right now)

Gets my heart pumping adrenaline,Certain parts arent that scary but when you get into the dark and the loneliness sets in my heart really starts to go fast,Call me a wimp but im one of those ppl who want/need allies near me because when there is an allie I feel comfortable in the mind knowing they will alert me and cover me in times of danger

[jimbo118]

lol,you know ravenholm will always be remembered by me 4 the mistakes i made on it,ie,chargin in head first,4 example,at the part where father grigori sends the lift across to you i fell off the roof,lol :rolling: ,so i had to run all the way back with those fast zombies following me and on my way back i made the mistake of goin into a house,musta killed 10 of em just getin back to the lift :sniper: ,also in the cave part of ravenholm i just dropped to the bottom little realising the place was infested with every kind of headcrab :hmph: ,that freaked me most as it was my first run through of the game so the fear was escalated

[Phase3]

Ravenholm was excellent, I just played it again. When waiting for the lifts, I sit by the Pipes and shoot them as the zombies run up. But sometimes fall off. I don't know, but Ravenholm actually felt more scary the second time. Even when I had the difficulty setting the same (Hard). When the Priest gives you the shotgun and you run into the building with the lift, I left the Zombies running after me, when they came through the glass room I was like "Bugger", I absolutely hated the Toxin Walking Zombies.

[Sid Burn]

I absolutely hated the Toxin Walking Zombies.
yeah me too... it can inflict 99 damage in one hit!!!

[Dracarys]

Ravonholm was quite freaky... I had to take breaks, and convince myself to resume playing. Amazing atmosphere. The black headcrabs weren't that scary or me, I got attacked by them sucessfully 2 or 3 times, picked them off with the magnum from range usually. But those fast zombies, and the poison ones... eek! That section left me with a ravenholm-phobia, and the bit in sandtraps freaked me out almost a smuch; when I got into nova prospekt I was half scared because of just the way it was, and another half because I was worried about it becoming another ravenholm-like area. Eww, combine zombies...

[Sid Burn]

Ravonholm was quite freaky... I had to take breaks, and convince myself to resume playing. Amazing atmosphere. The black headcrabs weren't that scary or me, I got attacked by them sucessfully 2 or 3 times, picked them off with the magnum from range usually. But those fast zombies, and the poison ones... eek! That section left me with a ravenholm-phobia, and the bit in sandtraps freaked me out almost a smuch; when I got into nova prospekt I was half scared because of just the way it was, and another half because I was worried about it becoming another ravenholm-like area. Eww, combine zombies...
yeah... Nova Prospekt was kinda creepy too. just imagine the horrors of prison life. :farmer:

[maple]

If you're scared by Ravenholm then you're a pussy bicth