Black Lake Lodge is arguably the scariest level in the entire game. You need to investigate a dilapidated hunting lodge in the mountains that's been abandoned for decades. Dead bodies. Rabies. A guy being mauled by a huge, rabid Grizzly Bear with blood caked to his fur and strings of drool hanging from his jaw. Being chased by the huge, rabid Grizzly bear. The huge rabid, unkillable Grizzly Bear. Oh, just a ''touch'' from him and you're treated to an extremely horrifying "game over" screen featuring the bear knocking you to the ground, standing on his haunches and roaring, mauling you and finally literally biting your face off or ripping your arm off.
The nightmares don't stop there. The meat of this level is searching for detonators in the main lodge while occasionally fighting SCU members sent to "clean up" some crucial evidence and kill you. It's unnerving enough to know that you're being hunted, but if you value your pleasant dreams, then please, for the love of God, DO NOT look closely at the taxidermy scattered throughout the lodge. The next level, taking place in both an abandoned bowling alley and the school from the first game, somehow came as a relief.
The heavily armed SCU agents sent to blow up the lodge deserve a special mention. They're the first enemies you'll face that universally carry firearms, and their assault rifles can take off a segment of the player's health bar in just two shots on Hard difficulty. If you manage to close the distance or disarm one you'll discover the agents are also aggressive and skilled melee fighters. But what is most unsettling is how eerily silent they are: besides a few scripted call-outs as the player progresses through the lodge the agents make no noise except for quick, ragged breathing, as though they're hopped-up on stimulants, and grunts of anger or pain in combat. Their silence, combined with being Faceless Goons clad head to toe in heavy tactical gear, makes the SCU agents seem Ambiguously Human or perhaps nearly as Brainwashed and Crazy as the monstrous thugs you've fought up to this point. But two Jump Scare agent attacks stand out especially! First, on the way to one of the upstairs detonators the player will enter a small empty room where an agent wearing a black ballistic face mask will fall in through a hole in the floor above directly in front of you. If you don't counterattack immediately this agent is liable to gun you down at point-blank range in seconds. Second, after friendly Agent Le Rue busts down the wall in the main foyer to rescue Ethan one final SCU agent will rush down to block your escape. Unlike the other agents in the lodge this last bad guy is armed with the Riot Shotgun that can take you down in just two shots at close range.
In the abandoned doll factory it was those fucking dolls... it's not just the way they look that was scary but the fact that they were alive,you can use them as weapons and if you hold it in front of you, the thing still moves.
The apartment complex features a room with a posed mannequin in the centre. Go through the doorway on the right and turn around. Well how about that, three more mannequins have been moved (or just, y'know, moved) to block the way back. This becomes something of a pattern for a while. Considering that the first game had the exact same mannequins stalking and surrounding the player in the department store, this hallucination seems to exist purely to cause PTSD-style flashbacks in the player.
During the apartment level, you find a message in blood warning you to stay away from a certain room. If you ignore the message and go in anyway, a thug with a shotgun barricades you in with a mattress and starts firing at you. What makes it scary is that at this point in the game, firearms do the same amount of damage to the player as to the enemies - which means you will go down in two shots if you don't react fast enough. And when you're finished dealing with the gunman, a massive junkie bursts through the wall and attacks you.
The revisit to the abandoned school. If for nothing else, the Torture Cellar you fall into appears to be in the same location of the bathroom you have the freak out in the first game. Just what is going on there?
SCU Headquarters starts off fairly normal with Ethan going in for a CT scan per Rosa's request, but suddenly, while in the machine, he finds himself all alone in the facility. The first half of the level has the player walking the empty halls and rooms, which is unnerving on its own, but soon enough your vision gets progressively more distorted with the tar monsters running by you and hearing monstrous growls. Eventually you meet up with two SCU agents who try to evacuate you from the building as it has now become covered in the same black sludge from earlier, soon consuming you and the two agents—until of course it's revealed that it was all in Ethan's head and he's still getting a CT scan. The progression from fairly eerie to full blown nightmare makes the SCU one of the more memorable levels.
Also as a creepy Easter Egg, when riding up the elevator near the level's end, there's a flyer on the wall sharing an announcement for a memorial service for two agents, the same two agents you encountered earlier in the level.
