Creeping across the decayed checkerboard tiles of the dentist's office, I happen upon a desk set in the alcove of a wall. Searching furiously for ammunition and a rememdy to the gunshot wound I had been carrying, I unearth a small collection of armour-piercing rounds and a hyperdermic of ADAM.



I hear a low hiss, at my feet steam begins to swirl. It envelops me.

Shrouded in it's choking, unpenetrating curtain; the feeling of dread and isolation flush through me. My shuddering hand reaches for the revolver at my hip, as I grasp the handle, I take solice in its offered protection. I start at the pain in my leg, stepping backward and drawing the revolver I realise nothing is there, groping the blinding steam ahead of me, I catch the corner of the desk.

A shiver surges down my spine as emptiness echoes in my ears, the hissing had stopped, I feel more isolated than before; however, the steam starts to dissipate. The shroud melts before my eyes as I stand staring at the raided desk. I feel my shoulders relax, and my breathing slow. Replacing the revolver in it's holster I begin to turn, wringing my hands as I notice the layer of sweat and condensed steam covering them.

I look up.

I feel my skin tear on the old desk now behind me, I crash into the front of it as I jolt backward from the shock.

His jaw covered with a dentists mask, a reflector adorned his head. This only resulted in intensifying his stone like gaze, as it brushed over me with questioning authority. Watching me frozen in shock, piled against the desk, he lunges at me.



I fumble with the revolver, forcing it into my hand only a second too late, the strike tears the skin on the side of my head, through the spotted vision and spinning visage of the dentist splicer, I take aim. The reflector made for a perfect target, it's reflected light breaking through the daze. A gunshot rings through the room. The reflector shatters as a trail of blood escapes from the back of his skull. The destist's body goes limp as he falls to the floor dead.

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So it may not have happened in such a overly dramatic way, but this moment in 2K's bioshock genuinely scared me. I jumped so high when I saw him standing there, I swear I came close to hitting the roof!

Bioshock wasn't an extremely scary experience, this seems to be a one off sort of case. I'm not sure this has even happened to anyone else, my other gamer friends seem to have either forgotten or not recieved this near brutal shock.

I'm not one to scare easily, but turning around in a room you thought was empty only to see someone watching you with so much intensity you would swear thier eyes where burning through you, really made me jump. Not just me either, my brother jumped almost as high as me, and he was just watching!

I think bioshocks immersive nature really 'added' to the scare, otherwise it would have just been another enemy lurking about. Throughout the rest of the game i kept thinking this was going to happen again, it became the classic 'monster under the bed' situation, you thought something was there, but you really didn't want to check just in case there was.



This scenario is a tribute to the work that 2K did, although im not really a big fan of the overall game, these sort of moments are what made this game so immersive, so revolutionary, so much fun until about the 3rd or 4th level when everything got a bit too easy and a tad too repeditive. Bioshock was as story, much like Assasins Creed, only with better gameplay. The story is so well embedded in the game and so well expressed and explored through the gameplay that, really, without the story it would have been another forgotten game.

This remains my biggest scare in a video game, it hold the title above anything in Resident Evil and beating, but not by much, the darkened floor of 'zombines' in half-life 2: episode 1.



The dentists eyes keep plaguing my memory, and will continue to, at least until Resident Evil 5 comes out.



...He watches you while you sleep...