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.
Resident Evil 1. I saw bits and pieces of my older brother playing it on the PS1, but was too scared to watch very long. I remember the iconic opening up to the zombie looking over its shoulder and then standing up right in front of you.
I rented it years later for the Gamecube and tried to play it while my little brother watched. I was playing super slowly and wasting all my ammo on every zombie because I was so scared. I remember one part vividly, I was in the long hallway where you pick up the arrowhead and theres a zombie just around the corner. I could hear the zombie so I baited him down the hallway so I could shoot him from a distance. I started shooting when he was off-camera and coming towards me, and when he appeared at the bottom of the screen and his head rotting head being very large in the perpective, I said “woah look at his head” at the exact moment before I got a headshot and the zombies head exploded. Me and my brother were really shocked, so I just paused and quit out. That was enough resident evil for me.
More years later I got resident evil for the DS for cheap at EB games and it became the first game I ever beat repeatedly for different endings and faster times, eventually leading me to now say that horror is my favorite genre.
Also, I never got into Silent Hill as a kid but since playing them in recent years I think they perfectly encapsulate my love for that age of gaming and survival horror in general.
And The Evil Within 1 is the best survival-horror action game ever made. In all its extreme jankiness and difficulty. I did a challenge run of no keys, no upgrades, no cheese in the cheese spots, single segment, no dlcs items, AKUMU difficulty and got 5 deaths. Shit is hard.