Sounding Scared

I never realised how evocative sound could be. I suppose I should have, remembering the night I was near paralysed by the sound of children playing on rusted playground equipment - memories of Silent Hill flooded in to terrify me. Yet even this drunken encounter didn't drive home to me just how powerful sound could be.

I used to play games while talking or listen to podcasts, trying to fit as much as I could into my busy life. Sound was never as important to me and so a whole sense in gaming was passing me by.

Strangely, moving in with my girlfriend presented a new challenge, the need to play silently. If she decided to sleep early our small apartment ensured that I was to play with either no sound or not to play. Electing to keep the audio to a minimum was in many ways okay with me. But this restriction made me want to hear games I previously would have been happy to fumble through near deaf.

My solution was surround sound headphones, and they completely changed my gaming.

I revisited Dead Space on the 360, a game that I originally played with the volume at levels that left me straining to even the most dramatic explosions. None of the ambient noise filtered through. Putting on my new headphones fundamentally changed the experience. I was sucked into a world of subtle sounds that I was previously unaware of. Every creak of the ship or sigh of a pneumatic door had me jumping from my perch at the edge of the sofa.

The spatial awareness the headphones granted was also effective in building my suspense. Knowing that a sound came from behind me would have me spinning to look at where I believed the noise originated. I expected to be face an alien, but frequently the area would stand vacant creating in me paranoia. Had it moved? Was I being stalked? Or had I inadvertently knocked a tray on to the floor?

The industrial environments of Dead Space lead to unfamiliar sounds. The ambience was constant and industrial. It enabled perpetual misdirection. Set this along the next game I tried with my new toy and I had a very different, but no less disconcerting experience.

Siren: Blood Curse is quiet. There is no sound but those of the aggressors. As I snuck through the silence its oppressiveness became increasingly apparent. I would hold my breath as I heard the rasping breath of enemies. Sitting for minutes, wondering if I could risk a look around the next corner, if I could make it to the next door without being seen.

Both sound and its absence can be used to powerful effect. By placing on my headphones I instantly lost the safety-net of 'home'. The loss of this lounge-tie let me slip deeper into the game. And I became acutely aware of the real world encroaching on my game. My girlfriend calling me crept in through the cushioned headphones just enough to allow me to imagine the game was calling my name, and my dog touching its cold nose to the nape of my neck made me spring a foot in to the air, much to everyone's alarm.

To be scared you need to be immersed. A movie can terrify at a cinema can be rendered laughable with your friends at home. Any distraction, any anchor to your reality will break the illusion. To truly reap the benefits of a 'horror' game you have to be prepared to let yourself go. It's harder than it sounds because its human nature to avoid the feelings the game it trying to conjure, to make light of it to break its spell. But if you can allow a game to manipulate all your senses, and let yourself believe in its fiction with both vision and sound, then you can be open to what the designers truly intended.

Game People family video game reviews support Association of Family Gamers. They also offer niche and anecdotal dad, mum, teen and senior video game reviews.

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