YMMV / Pathways into Darkness

• Cult Classic: Bungie's first real commercial success, and a perfectly good game by the standards of the time, but it was released on Macs only, limiting its customer base, and faded into relative obscurity.
• Demonic Spiders: Skitters, the near-literal spiders, especially their venomous variation, and Greater Nightmares, who shoot homing plasma balls and can only be damaged with certain ammunition.
• Memetic Mutation: "I've got a bone to pick with you!" became a fairly big one after MandaloreGaming's review. Amusingly, a lot of people apparently thought this audio sample was actually part of the game after watching the review.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The Nightmare's death noise where they explode in a wet squelching sound is incredibly satisfying.
• Narm Charm: The monsters are goofy and look (in the words of Mandalore) like "glorified Halloween decorations", but they're supposed to be created by the dreams of an Eldritch Abomination, and at any rate have lots of personality and rather unique designs that accentuate the bizarre alien nature of the pyramid.
• Nightmare Fuel: There's an unused error message that simply reads "The Dreaming God has awakened". In the final game, there's any of the endings that don't involve you escaping alive (or living for much longer afterward).
  • The dead people (Nazis, Cuban explorers and US Special Forces) you can talk to mention how death is cold and dark and they're stuck inside their corpses, gradually losing their senses and memory.
  • Speaking of those dead people, many of their bodies have been literally torn apart or dismembered by whatever killed them.
• Polished Port: A fan made port to the Aleph One engine is about the only way to play the game today without busting your ass trying to get a Mac emulator running. Thankfully it streamlines the interface and allows higher fidelity graphics and sounds, mouse look and widescreen support.

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