You know, like this. Right before the first (yes, FIRST) dwarf caravan arrived. I had ZERO military. Had another moment not long ago in DoD, failed to screencap it but double LARGE zoo on ice level (7?) which is already brutal to me.
Well, I haven't had any such moments with video games, as I don't really care much about them (I mean, it's not like I can't just try again later), but there were a few "you've gotta be kidding me" moments when I started playing the Touhou series (especially the spin-off games). Other than that, I had some such moments when playing tabletop RPGs. Nothing quite makes your day like being forced to use HP casting to save your character from danger your own idiocy got you into (no enemies there), and being left with 2 HPs left (which, I think, was about 5% of total HPs for me).
The "We've Got Hostiles" chapter in HL1 was a moment for me. Same with the 'kill ten thousand heartless' fight in KH2.
I can think of a few moments: Mass Effect 2 - when your crew gets kidnapped and you have to control Joker to unshackle EDI. I think it was partly because Joker keeps says "oh shit oh shit oh shit" during the sequence. Parasite Eve: When you are chased by the Ultimate Being. Baldur's Gate - When Gorion gets killed by Sarevok. At least, if the random dice rolls in your game work properly and Gorion doesn't end up trying to kill Sarevok with his dagger for 10 turns before the game script autokills him.
When I first played the game the sheer volume of magical artillery Gorion was dumping on Sarevok and subsequent "LOL, SWORD" one-hit execution of Gorion by Sarevok made me think "Oh man this game is going to kick my ass."
I think it happens like like...50% of the time. Half of the time Gorion actually dies properly, the other half of the time the game forces it haha
Can we count hallucinations? There was a time that "Someone I Met" (SWIM) was getting really messed up on substances. No I will not reveal more on that except that nothing real or normally imagined can compare to the raw *Oh Fucking Shit* moments that can be had when your bed transforms into a monstrous zombie and actively begins eating you and regardless of how determined that you are that it is not real, you cannot remove the illusion. Kids, please leave the hallucinogens for those days that your mind is clear, you are otherwise healthy, and you have plenty of relaxingly tame content to watch. I promise you will agree wholeheartedly after even a few miserable hours with uncontrollable waking nightmares that cannot be stopped. If anyone reading this thinks I am being a wimp and cannot handle things then you are a plain and simple fool. There are horrors far worse than the worst you can think of when you *TRY* waiting for you if you are foolish with such things. SWIM was fortunate to have a strong heart, otherwise SWIM would have died of literal fear. (And a sitter. Absolutely required for a first delve into psychotropics.) Best not to mess with drugs at all. Or if you absolutely must, ask your doctor for advice. Believe it or not, they will give you honest advice about such things. Tell your doctor what you plan in advance. They can tell you how to minimize the dangers at least. But I doubt anyone reading this will bother to listen if they are interested in this sort of thing. SWIM had to learn on SWIM's own, like far too many otherwise intelligent people. SWIM still recalls enough details to write a series of awful books. But I doubt it would translate well.
Amanitis Muscaria would count as a bad 'shroom I think. (Fly Agaric) It is one of the few legal hallucinogenic fungi in America. And there is good reason for this. It will make your sitter worry that you are literally dying for hours, and when you finally wake, you will not be able to be in the room with that stuff without getting sick again for years to come. The first time I tried it I thought it tasted like rotten chicken. But I have a strong stomach and ate it without problems and washed it down with water. For an hour or two I was unsure I had gotten enough to notice the effects, then *Wham*. I woke up twelve hours later with no memory of watching six awful disney movies in a row while mumbling incoherently and falling all over the place. I will not try that again. But it was not a bad experience. It just was in no way desirable. Having no memory of it, I cannot say that there was anything enjoyable or negative about it. But even the smell of it makes me involuntarily gag years later. The good fungi for the purpose are all illegal here. So I never got to them.
This may be a bit OT but what you said made me think of something I heard years ago. A friend and I were travelling on vacation and we decided to stay overnight with his cousin. She told us this story about going bungie jumping. I asked her what it was like, and she said it felt 'exactly like someone had punched her in the stomach as hard as they could so that she could not even catch her breath'. I never ever felt tempted to bungie jump but it is exactly the type of description that makes you wonder WHY do people think that its fun.
Amanitis Muscaria was not worth the trouble, the cost, or the worry to the sitter. There are drugs I would use if they were legal, but despite legality, I will never touch that foul stuff again. I would also never dream of parachuting intentionally. Hell. I want to remain firmly on the ground at all times. Half the "Exciting" things to do are idiotic in my opinion. I consider what Americans call Football and everyone else in the world calls other things to be the modern equivalent of a gladiator arena. Brutish and muscular people attempt to kill one another while trying to accomplish a simple goal of carrying a ball to a set point and observing the bare minimum of rules they can manage. In fact, I cannot think of a competitive sport that is intellectual at all. If you are a twenty foot tall Giant with rippling muscles, you will invariably win. Otherwise, you are pretty much doomed. Climbing mountains, scuba diving, and even such simple things as hiking can be ridiculously hazardous. Call me a coward if you like, but I choose a cerebral challenge any day over a physical one.
A few times. Many games out there aren't built to really deliver that feeling. I can name a few, even old ones, off the top of my head: Chrono Trigger: Scene where Crono stands up alone against Lavos. Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Playing in Turbo mode against my brother, with me actually winning. Mortal Kombat: Kano's Fatality. (Also, thank Midway for bringing the ESRB down on us.) Diablo 1. First, second, and third times meeting "The Butcher" Quake 1: First multiplayer FPS I played. Turning a corner and getting a face full of nail gun gets me every time. Final Fantasy 7: Scene where Cloud discovers Aeris in the Ancient Temple. Resident Evil 1 & 2: Pretty much every 15 seconds when I first played them. Especially scenes involving zombie dobermans. Sky Muffin already mentioned Parasite Eve's big scene, though a bit of it plays like Resident Evil. Pretty much any of the scenes were the creatures mutate into the monsters. Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid. The Mind Reading was a cheap trick, but there's an ability that he uses that made you think the inputs on your TV suddenly stopped working. I hopped up and looked at the back of my TV for like 5 seconds before it came back on its own. Didn't fall for it twice. Eternal Darkness. The sanity mechanic in that game was a really fresh concept to me at the time, and some of the stuff that happens in the game(there's too much to list) made me go 'Oh Sh--.' I was afraid to go into certain rooms in follow-up play throughs because I was spooked. All of the early Silent Hills, but especially Silent Hill 3. This game, and Eternal Darkness both made me hate bathrooms. This game alone made me nervous of hospitals. Bioshock. The room before meeting, and actually meeting Andrew Ryan. Killing Floor. Being the last man alive on the last wave, with no ammo left. Catharsis if I save the day. The parts of Amnesia between the Start Menu to the credits. Metro 2033: The first scene where the main character (whose name I can't remember) gets the hallucination. Mass Effect 2: As mentioned above, playing Joker, but with a follow-up of discovering your crew in the pods, and watching a woman liquefy in it. It was pretty gruesome
Oh lord, Bioshock. I believe I said this on my first playthrough: "DEAR LORD EVERYONE IN BIOSHOCK IS CRAZY" Also, System Shock 2. All of it. PS: If someone has a copy of Pathologic they wouldn't mind parting with, it's a game I've been wanting to play for forever.
Certainly physics (hence strength, agility, speed, etc.) plays a huge role in sports. That said, when two people are both athletes, there certainly can be an intellectual aspect, at least on some sports. Everything from psychology to simply analyzing your opponent's strengths and weaknesses and coming up with a counter. I fenced a little bit (I was good for my High School, not so good in college) and I do know that you try to turn your weaknesses into strengths by changing your style (long reach -- keep your opponent at a distance, short reach, and you should crowd him, etc.). Same thing is true in Boxing, I'm sure (heck, Muhammad Ali was a relative intellectual in the ring). That said, there certainly is a brutishness to a lot of sports (including boxing and football, especially) that I would have no hard feelings if they would go the way of the dinosaur due to all of the lives they've ruined. BTW, sixty minutes did a really good story about how dangerous cheerleading is (kids getting spine injuries, concussions, getting permanently paralyzed, etc). It's supposedly one of the most dangerous sports there is, just based on the statistics.
Thanks for the reminder on that Fax, I still cant hear a monkey without cringing because of System Shock 2. Most of the rest of the game didnt freak me out so much as those dam monkies. Definatly an OH SHI... moment the first time they fling cryokensis at you.
A sane person doesn't hate the hospitals. They hate checkups, shots, amputations, colonoscopies, urine and stool tests, blood tests, biopsies, IVs, packed waiting rooms, dying relatives, pregnant women, sick people, weight scales, revealing gowns and uncomfortable paper wristbands. I hate the walls, the floors, the parking lot, the bathrooms. God, especially the bathrooms. I hate the architects, the construction workers, their unions, the materials and the companies that sell them, the government appointed specialists, the electricians, and anyone else that had the misfortune of being associated with the erection of one of those horror houses.
Think hospitals are bad? *NEVER* go to an asylum for any reason. They are thousands of times worse. Hospitals can be horrible at times for the reasons you listed and plenty more, but an asylum is *ALWAYS* horrible. The problem is that there is no real advocate for the insane. Only a few really understand how and why they are so bad, but I bet half the people in the average asylum would be happy if it burned to the ground with them trapped inside. At least then they would be free. The average person probably thinks of an asylum as a place for the insane or mentally challenged to seek respite from a hostile world. Sometimes that is exactly what it is. But more often in time even the best asylum turns into something like a mix between a prison and a filling cabinet for the insane. The people are drugged past any chance of clear thought and filled away in small rooms that are simply padded prisons. The word of the insane is cast aside at any expense in almost every case. Sure you can argue that a crazy person may imagine things happening that never happened, but when patters emerge and a staff member or ten were found to regularly abuse the patients in horrible ways and lie about it, it will more often than not result in the staff being fired while the victims are drugged to well beyond the capacity to accurately remember what happened. Even if their memory if perfect, their word cannot be accepted by any legal system for any reason in any case. Nothing is more horrible than being stripped of the dignity to even speak out against those who do wrongs against themselves or others. That is Hell.
