Return to Racoon City: Revisiting my Boyhood Trauma

Hardcore Gamer: As soon as I was clear of the crash, I started running. Broken humanoid figures – zombies, though the word seems utterly inadequate – lurched toward me from all sides, reaching out to grab me with their putrifying hands as I scrambled to escape. Somehow I managed to weave around them and make my way toward the end of the street before ducking into a nearby gun shop for cover. I found some bullets behind the counter, but before I could even get them into my gun the ravenous horde crashed through the front window of the shop and came for me. Hammering the trigger, I pumped round after ineffectual round into their limping corpses as they stumbled ever closer. Sure enough, they got to me before I could take even a single one of them down, and after a few seconds of struggling they overpowered me and began to rip my organs out. Blood splattered across my vision, the world around me faded into nothingness, and I was left sitting on the couch, shaking in terror and on the verge of tears. I was gripped by an unshakeable fear so profound that for five years hence I was unable to sleep in darkness.

[proskatercam]

And to think, people once considered Resident Evil games to be "traumatizing"...loo k how far we have come.

[admiralvic]

Yeah, now we got truly traumatizing games like Ride to Hell Retribution.

[Irishguy95]

I never even found them scary. Either way RE4 is the best game with the name Resident Evil. People only started moaning about the change of gameplay style when RE5 and 6 sucked. No one cared about the change when RE4 came out.

[Stuart5756]

You're right, reviewers said it was a welcome change, I loved it, it was still dark, atmospheric and scary. I remember playing 5 and thinking why isn't it scary anymore. It wasn't the gameplay style change it was the setting.

[UncleGermrod]

i think re4 was a darker game, with more sinister enemies. the medieval inspired setting, along with the dark enemies stil helped re4 feel truly scary. re5 was too "sci-fi", and the more modern setting sort of took away from it.

[Shazz]

Il never forget my memories of beating resi 1,2,3 especially how those spiders creeped me out way they ran across the ceiling.

[BABY-JEDI]

I've been traumatised by RE5, by how bad it was. Great way to destroy a horror/survival franchise.