Nightmare Fuel / Shadow Man

• The Playrooms no doubt freaked out anyone and everyone who played the game as it combined innocent infant bedrooms with blood-stained killing rooms while the laughing and crying of babies mixed in with the combo soundtrack of a music box and the sounds of some kind of power tool cutting into something wet and crunchy. The Playrooms area was pure psychosis in video game form.
  • Most of the aforementioned rooms have their own Background Music. None of these can be considered a relief from the area's main theme. Here's all of them together, in an extended cut from composer Tim Haywood.
• The lairs of the Five weren't much better, including a derelict, abandoned New York apartment building full of corpses and an attic filled with enough blood to form literal pools and waterfalls.
  • In a darkened section of the tenements is one wall with graffiti of a woman, entirely in silhouette except for a pair of dripping, bleeding eyes. Having this fucker pop into view as you frantically scan the area with your flashlight is easily one of the most heart-stopping moments in the game.
• The underground London subways in which Jack The Ripper lives.
  • The music that plays in Jack's shrine is probably the most disturbing tune in the game, and considering how pants-wetting most of Tim Haywood's soundtrack is, that's quite a mouthful. When played in reverse it's a slightly jangly rendition of the Moonlight Sonata's well-known first movement, but when properly backmasked here it just sounds so... evil.
• The Texas prison where all the guards and most inmates have been killed and reanimated as headless zombies where a disco-obsessed nutball, a Vietnam war veteran and an insane doctor reside.
• Even the more mundane areas usually have some creepy factor to them.
• The final villain just happens to be the very same "Legion" that Jesus encountered in the Bible. He's a lot scarier here than he was back then.
• The sequel, however, seemed less so, as it felt more akin to typical video game dungeons. But, the main hero was now an emaciated skeleton ghoul rather than a muscle man with a mask in his chest.
• There's an enemy type in Deadside that starts popping up when you enter the Asylum, all based on hulking figures in masks, who make this horrific distorted —and LOUD— piglike squealing noise when they attack you.
• The Asylum level called "Playrooms" sounds like fun, doesn't it? Interestingly enough, many areas in Liveside are even scarier. It comes to a head in the dilapidated New York tenements, which features very few enemies but is drenched in terrifying, pitch-black atmosphere. The music does not help at all.
• It gets even worse: the desiccated corpses in the tenement all have tape recorders playing a single two-second loop of someone whimpering in most versions, but the PC edition has them play several longer clips consisting of the Home Improvement Killer forcing his terrified victims to repeat Mark 5:9^note And he asked him, "What is thy name?" And he replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." as they sob and plead for mercy. Yeesh. As if this wasn't disturbing enough, a few of these corpses are missing their heads in the remastered edition.
  • To say nothing of the walking "corpse" that emerges from a locked box in one hallway. Whoever this thing used to be, it's too far-gone to do anything but shamble around pathetically until you put it out its misery. The victim's voice on the tape deck hanging around its neck sounds even more hysterical than the previous ones you heard. The remastered version is even worse: It's no longer a mummified victim, but a fresh one; stripped to his underwear, covered in blood, and his arms and face have been cut off. Giving this poor soul a Mercy Kill is as much a relief to you as it must be to him.
• To one up the above comment, picture this scenario: You're in Deadside and you see a waterfall of blood. Normal given the circumstances of where you are. Now, back in that liveside domain you see another waterfall of blood like in Deadside and you start thinking to yourself: "Ya know what? I think Avery's killed a little more than twelve people..."
• Gardelle County Jail is littered with the headless corpses of Dr. Batrachian's victims. Even Mike is freaked out when they start getting up and attacking him ("This isn't happening!"). The harsh, ragged breathing and snarling noises these victims make through their exposed throats is deeply unnerving.
• Jack the Ripper's domain is also quite creepy, especially when you come upon his private chambers and find his "homework" hanging from the rafters. The fact that the bodies are concealed under bloody sheets mitigates it only slightly.
  • If you hadn't guessed already, this too is much worse in the remastered game, where one body is not covered by a sheet anymore, nor is the one on the bed in the next room. The former is fully nude, the latter topless, while both corpses have a large, gaping cavity running down their torso from where Jack eviscerated them. Both rooms are now also littered with severed body parts.
• When you first encounter Marco, he starts making a disturbingly cheerful rant about the upcoming apocalypse that really gets creepy when he starts talking about Michael's dead brother, Luke. It's the tone that really sets it off...
  Marco: And he's screeeeeeeaming for his mommy, but mommy's gone doooown Deadside waaaay! She can't help him and neither can you!
  Mike: DAMN YOU!!
• Once you reach the second and third floors of Avery's domain, he starts appearing out of nowhere with no warning and shooting at you for awhile before disappearing just as suddenly, all while the music takes on a completely different tone well suited for an ambush or chase. Pretty unnerving on its own, but during the day, he's invulnerable. And then there are the times when he appears in a completely different part of the level, and you only ever hear his gunshots, with no idea if he's right around the next corner or not.
• This Nintendo Power letter turns an auditory oversight of breathing noises in Deadside into paranoia fuel.
  I was playing Shadow Man the other day and as I was going across a rope in Deadside I realized that Shadow Man was breathing. I thought that Shadow Man didn’t need to breathe on Deadside–isn't that why there’s no time limit for air?
  NP: There are two possibilities. One is that it was a slight auditory oversight. The other is that while you were playing the game, some undead creature from Deadside was standing right behind you, breathing heavily. Sleep well!
• The "Trueforms", Legion's shocktroopers for the Apocalypse, are towering giant monsters who fire homing energy blasts and unleash Shockwave Stomps. Not only are they hideous to look at, but their origins are horrifying: each Trueform is a golem built from flesh and bone harvested from countless Deadsiders, dozens or perhaps hundreds of corpses maimed, mangled and mashed together to form the raw building material that is then carved into shape and sutured together to make a single hulking, brutish form. Thanks to the Dark Soul implanted in their hollowed out chest, they are immortal; unless you have the powers of a Shadow Man, all you can do is temporarily stun them, causing them to enter a regenerative torpor from which they return to full capacity. No wonder Nettie claims that an army of 120 Trueforms could lay waste to the Earth!
• When you reach the kitchens of the Texas Prison where Victor "Lizard King" Batrachian, you get to see firsthand why there are headless corpses all over the prison when you encounter your first survivor, a guard... for all of two seconds before his head bursts like a melon, leaving his headless body to attack you. As you keep going, you'll find more survivors, including Victor's fellow inmates, who all suffer the same fate as soon as they see you.
• In the Updated Re Release, Milton Pike and Marco Cruz are given their own levels instead of sharing the Texas Prison with Victor Batrachian.
  • Milton has Camp Ocala in Florida, a once-peaceful summer camp that he has turned into his own fortified stronghold. You have to fight your way through swamplands crawling with alligators and several camp structures that Milton has used for his own purposes, including using a bunkhouse as butchery and creating a trail of blood smears and mocking poetry (a copy of his personal poem as one of The Five) through a theatre, leading to where a bloodied human corpse is dangling from a noose in the center of the stage. Then you have to chase him down through twisting, labyrinthine cave tunnels that run beneath the camp.
  • Marco has a Salvage Yard in the Mojave Desert. The scariest part is around the halfway point, where Marco baits Michael to follow him through the Showme Inn before setting it on fire. In several of the burning rooms, you'll encounter people in flames, screaming in pain and trying desperately to reach Michael before collapsing dead at his feet. The worst part is that you have no idea if these people were kidnapped victims of Marco's, or if they were jus transients who had the bad luck to crash here in the inn and wound up as collateral damage.