The Haunted Mansion: Fun With Grim Grinning Ghosts

Welcome foolish mortals, to the next installment of Halloween-inspired posts on Strange Moments in Gaming.  If you're a fan of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, then the game featured today is right up your alley.  This game is none other than The Haunted Mansion, a ghost-filled experience that is somewhat unique due to being based on a theme park ride.

Ready to dive into this massive house of spooks?  Ok then, there's no turning back now.

First thing's first, don't be deterred by the fact that this game was released in the same year as Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion movie, this game has nothing to do with that mostly-unfunny film.  This means no annoying subplots involving kiddies trying to face their fears or whatever nonsense happened in the movie (I've only seen it once).

In the game you play as Zeke, who has applied for the caretaker job position at the mansion, not knowing that the house is packed with nine hundred and ninety nine happy haunts (sorry, it's very hard to write about this game without referencing the ride's audio track).  Anyway, the truth about the mansion hits Zeke the moment he walks through the door and encounters his welcoming committee AKA a large group of ghosts.

Soon afterward we are introduced to Madame Leota, who you may remember from the ride as the talking head inside of a crystal ball.  It is here that you learn about the plot, involving an evil wizard who has enslaved the ghosts of the mansion and forced them to do his bidding.  In short, you have to explore the various rooms of the mansion while fighting off evil spirits and gigantic spiders, in order to restore peace for the happy ghosts who inhabit the place.

The majority of evil ghosts you encounter aren't all that scary.  They'll usually just spawn in large groups and then charge at your location, making them easy cannon fodder for your magical spirit lamp (your only weapon in the game).  However, there is one type of evil specter that can be somewhat freaky, due to the fact that they don't make any sound as they slowly stalk you through the rooms.  Once they get in striking range though, they will scream like a banshee to inflict damage (oops I mean "fear" as the game puts it).  I was pleasantly surprised to receive a couple slight jump scares from what I initially thought was a kid's game.

The best part of The Haunted Mansion though is its various references to the ride it's based off of.  You'll explore rooms containing the famous "changing" paintings from the ride's queue, as well as the statues whose gaze follows your movements.  You'll have a humorous encounter with the hitchhiking ghosts, and the singing quartet busts from the graveyard even make an appearance, complete with new songs to serenade you with.

In short, if you're a Disneyland fanatic this is a game you should have in your collection.  If you can get past the simple gameplay you will find this to be a game with a very enjoyable spooky atmosphere.

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Five Nights at Freddy's: The Pizzeria From Hell

It's October again!  Time to drag those dusty Halloween decorations down from the attic, then load up a horror movie while you carve up some pumpkins.  October also means it's time for Strange Moments in Gaming to transform into Scary Moments in Gaming, where you'll find articles about all sorts of creepy and/or terrifying segments of games.

So let's kick off the month of horror with one of the scariest and most suspenseful games I've played in years: Five Nights at Freddy's.

Freddy Fazbear, your new best friend.

The premise of Freddy's is that you are a security guard who works the night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a sort of alternate universe Chuck-E-Cheese where instead of a single ugly rat mascot, there are four animatronic animal mascots.

Aww, they are so....unsettling.

So far you might be thinking "hey this isn't so bad, I'm just making sure nobody breaks in and messes with the animatronics."  Upon starting the first night of your job this assumption is quickly shattered as you receive a phone call from a security guard who previously held your job position.  It turns out that after the pizzeria closes for the night, the animatronics are set to a free-roaming mode to prevent their servo motors from locking up (or so the former guard says).

He also notifies you that if any of the mascots see you at night they won't recognize you as a human, but will instead think you are an animatronic who hasn't gotten into costume.  This will result in the mascot forcibly stuffing you into a vacant suit (which is full of various electronics, leaving no room for a human to fit), instantly killing you.  Remember that line in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum states that when Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists?  Apparently something equally nasty happens in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

Anyway, upon starting the game you immediately experience a feeling of helplessness.  The whole game takes place in the pizzeria's surveillance room, where the only movement you are allowed is a slight turning of your head.  So much for running away...

While in the office, you can check out the various cameras to see different locations in the pizzeria, including the room where the animatronics are stored.  You can also light up the doorways to your left and right, just to take a peek at any potential "buddies" standing outside.  There's also a panic button that shuts the doors to the office to prevent the mascots from seeing and killing you.

Now you might be wondering why you can't just lock both doors and wait out the night, and here's where strategy factors into the game.  You are given a limited amount of power, and performing actions such as looking through the security cameras or closing the doors will drain the power at a faster rate.  If the power drains completely, all the lights go out and you're left completely exposed to the horrors patrolling the place.  Therefore you must conserve energy and hope you have enough to keep you alive until 6am.

Basically, the "you're screwed" moment in the game.

Ok, now that we've established the atmosphere (although the only way to do it justice is to experience it yourself), let's talk about a typical night on guard duty.  The night starts off fine and dandy of course, a quick peek at the security cameras shows the animatronics all safe and sound in their room, standing completely still.  Coming back to this camera later will usually show one or more of the mascots have gone missing, which is when the terror begins.

They are all there.....for now.

At this point you have to frantically switch between the various cameras to keep track of which rooms the mascots are currently patrolling in.  A "fun" fact is that on the security cameras you rarely actually see the animatronics move, they will just be standing frozen in a different position each time you check on them.  To screw with you the game includes one camera with audio only, so you can listen to these horrors knocking over pots and pans and various props as they stalk around.

Also to mess with your head, every once in a while a hallucination will quickly pop up on the screen, usually involving one of the animatronics in a disturbing state, such as missing their eyeballs.  You know...in case this game wasn't scary enough already.

Barney the Dinosaur has really let himself go.

Anyway, if you notice that one or more of the mascots is getting a little too close to your office for comfort, it's time to quickly shut the doors and wait for them to go away.  If you don't close up in time, you will be presented with an absolutely terrifying jump scare where one of the mascots will appear directly in front of you and proceed to lunge in your face (one of the only times we actually see them move), causing an instant game over.  I'm not exaggerating about the terror of this jump scare either; the first time it happened to me, I was switching out of security camera view so I could shut the door, only to be greeted by a screaming and biting animatronic in my face.

Warning: Do not play if you have a phobia involving animatronics.

It's the anticipation of this jump scare that makes Five Nights at Freddy's the most suspenseful games in years.  It's all about avoiding this one-hit, wet-your-pants death.  You have a feeling of dread the entire time you're playing, it is seriously stressful.  And as the title suggests, you have to make it through five nights of this, with increasingly difficult AI.

Words really cannot describe the experience of playing Five Nights at Freddy's.  If you have a love of horror games this is a must play.  If you don't have nerves of steel....well I warned you!

For everyone who has already played this game, what did you think of it?  Did you survive all five nights?

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Garry's Mod: Sandboxing Your Way to Strangeness

If you're a frequent user of the Steam PC application, then chances are you've come across Garry's Mod at one point or another.  Garry's Mod (or Gmod for short) is a sandbox game built on Valve's Source game engine, which uses assets from their most popular games.  By this I mean you have full access to characters, props, and maps from these games, and you may combine them in any way you see fit.  Have you ever wanted to take characters from Team Fortress 2 and place them into the Half-Life 2 universe?  Gmod has got you covered!

Garry's Mod has no real purpose other than letting you have fun messing with game objects; there's no true "game" here (although if you're crafty you could use it to code up your own online multiplayer game). 

A very cool feature is the ability to import enemy NPCs from Half-Life 2, allowing you to either fight them yourself, or stage massive NPC versus NPC battles.

Combine soldiers battle a swarm of Antlions

However, the big draw for most people is the complete control over the character models from Valve's games.  You can pose every character as you see fit, even down to their facial expressions.

As you can probably imagine, this has opened the door for amateur filmmakers to utilize stop motion techniques to create their own short videos, usually starring Team Fortress 2 characters.  Who can forget such timeless classics as Sniper is Stupid?


Top notch animation right?  That really puts Pixar to shame doesn't it?  To be fair though, I have seen a few Gmod videos with incredible stop motion animation constructed out of thousands of screenshots.

Now you may have noticed earlier I said that Garry's Mod allows you to manipulate the facial expressions of the character models.  This is where the strange factor comes in.  In addition to standard models that allow a limited range of facial expression, the game contains an additional set of models where you have full control of the faces, which can lead to some unexpectedly terrifying results:



And because Youtube is.....Youtube, there are people willing to take these horrifying facial expressions to the extreme (I apologize for any IQ points lost during the viewing of all these vids).


Okay, I feel like this is enough brain-draining stupidity for one blog post.  If for some reason you can't get enough, by all means head over to Youtube and continue the search (a good starting point is typing something involving a TF2 character into the search box, such as "Heavy is ").

Thanks to the free release of Valve's Source Filmmaker software, which includes tools for creating smooth animations (no need for stop motion here), there has been a steady decline of Gmod videos being produced and shared. 

If you're a huge fan of Valve's games, or just sandbox games in general, you should head over to Steam and check out Garry's Mod ASAP, because it really doesn't get much better than this.  One last thing I should mention is that Gmod contains a huge database of free downloadable characters/props/maps (my personal favorite is the Kakariko Village map from Zelda: Ocarina of Time).  Have fun, and if you decide to create a masterpiece of stop motion animation, be sure to send me a link because I'd love to see it!

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Happy Three Years of Strange Gaming!

Wow, how the time flies by.  Three years ago today I created Strange Moments in Gaming in order to talk about all of the weird things I've encountered in videogames throughout my life.  I have certainly experienced many cringe/shudder-worthy moments in games (and I'm sure you all have as well), so I figured I might as well share the pain with everyone!

The evolution of the beloved (at least to me) site logo.

To celebrate the three years of this blog's existence, let's go for the totally not gimmicky approach of summarizing three of the strangest game character articles I've posted on this site.  If you're interested in reading the original articles in addition to the summaries, just click the title header of each section.

#3 - The Sligs of the Oddworld Games

Every good platforming game has to have its signature baddie, and Oddworld is no exception.  But whereas enemies such as the Goombas of the Super Mario series or the pig soldiers in Rocket Knight Adventures are somewhat goofy, the Sligs in the Oddworld games are downright horrifying.

Mario would probably soil himself if he ever came across one of these tentacle-mouthed lizard creatures, which Oddworld protagonist Abe encounters on a daily basis.

#2 - The Little Sisters of Bioshock

There isn't much about the Little Sisters that isn't creepy.  Their glowing pupil-less eyes and otherworldly voices provide plenty of nightmare material to gamers who venture into the halls of the city of Rapture.

As if that description isn't bad enough, hang in there because it gets much worse.  The sole purpose of Little Sisters is to extract and drink the blood of corpses scattered throughout the city (dead bodies are quite abundant thanks to Rapture's civil war).  The blood is then processed by slugs which are implanted inside the Sisters.  All of this horror exists just so a batch of the superpower-inducing substance called ADAM can be produced by the slugs.

#1 - Ooccoo from Zelda: The Twilight Princess

This monstrosity happened to be the very first strange thing I wrote about in this blog, and easily earns the top spot on this list.  Half-human, half-chicken, all terror is a good way to describe Ooccoo.

Did they really have to add nipples too?

Despite being somewhat useful to gamers by allowing us to save our location in a dungeon when a break is needed, you can't help but wonder why the game developers had to make this creature so darn scary-looking.  Even Link himself has a look of shock on his face the first time he encounters Ooccoo in a dungeon.  But then again I guess we shouldn't be too surprised; these are the game developers who brought us Tingle after all.


Speaking of Tingle, I bet you're wondering why he isn't on this list, he is one of the most talked about characters in this blog after all.  Well to address your concerns, I figured everyone was probably Tingled-out by now, thanks to his multiple appearances in Strange Moments in Gaming, including a starring role in this blog's lengthy 100th post.

I hope you've enjoyed this three year anniversary post, many thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting over the years!

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Tingle Island Revisited: The Horror Returns

A few years ago, around the time Strange Moments in Gaming was created, we talked about Tingle the man-elf.  Tingle is easily one of the creepiest, if not the creepiest character in the Legend of Zelda series, so it was fitting that he made an appearance in this blog.  However, looking back on the article I feel like I had not done justice to Tingle Island in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker due to my somewhat brief mention of the place.

Because of this grievous mistake, and because this current entry marks the 100th post in Strange Moments in Gaming, I have decided to once again face the terror-who-wears-green-spandex by giving a more in-depth look at Tingle Island.  Join me on my adventure to the land that makes Lost's island seem like Disneyland.

Upon arriving in the vicinity of Tingle Island, I find that the land itself is somewhat small and barren.  Dominating the landscape is the massive and threatening Tingle Tower.  This tower is composed of a single column carved with various designs which we'll see in a bit.  As a warning to all passing sailors, the top of the tower is capped with a gigantic rotating Tingle head, making this a lighthouse from hell.  Let's take a closer look shall we?

After making landfall, it immediately begins to rain on the island.  I think we can all take this as a bad omen; something is warning me to turn back while I can.  Instead I gather my courage and continue on a little closer to the tower, to observe the various carvings on its column.  It doesn't take long for me to notice that one of the carvings is the giant pig head of Ganon himself (or one of his minions).

Something is definitely not right here.  For someone who claims to be a fairy, why would Tingle create a monument to the world's biggest threat?

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, I begin to scale the single ladder that leads to the top of Tingle Tower.  At the top I make first contact with the island's natives, which consist of not just one, but three Tingles!  The horror is tripled and Link and I are both fighting the urge to power off the game, but we stand our ground and begin to make some observations.

First, there appears to be some slave labor occurring here.  Two Tingles in light-colored spandex struggle to rotate the giant Tingle head we saw earlier, while the green spandex-wearing Tingle we all know and fear watches over them like an overseer.  He doesn't lift a finger to help despite the grunts of agony from the two laborers.

I decide it's finally time to speak to the "man" himself, the green Tingle.  I'm sure he'll provide some insight into this whole operation, right?

Tingle is as creepy as ever.

Nope, not only does he provide no explanation about the purpose of this tower, but he refuses to acknowledge the back-breaking work of the other two Tingles.  Instead he insists the tower runs on "fairy magic."  I figured this would be a good time to back away from the delusional man-elf and take to the seas, but I felt obligated to do one last thing: experience Tingle Island at night.

What better way to maximize the creepiness than this?  Seeing the carved Ganon head during the dark of night serves to make the tower appear even more imposing, and to top it off the rotation of the giant Tingle head now sounds like the moaning of tortured spirits.

I then proceeded one last time to scale Tingle Tower, where I was greeted with...oh no.......no........

How I survived this ordeal I'll never know.  I appear to have woken up in my office chair, where I have been hastily writing this article to warn you all of the dangers of Tingle Island in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

On a more serious note, I hope you've all enjoyed this 100th post in Strange Moments in Gaming!  Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting on my posts, I enjoy hearing from all of you.  Here's to another hundred posts!

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