Yes, I'm behind the times. I know the sequel is coming out in a little less than a week, but I just picked up F.E.A.R. for the 360 not three days ago for about 17 bucks. (Score!) The posters and promos for the sequel intrigued me, and I love survival horror (though if F.E.A.R. is survival horror then I don't know what the term means), so I really don't know why I didn't get it before now. Other than maybe my complete and total aversion to everything FPS, which has since been demolished, thanks to L4D. So I popped it in and started playing yesterday.

I didn't move for about 5 hours.

That game has completely sucked me in. I'm completely smitten with Alma Wade and her flesh-melting deliciousness. I made my family call me Point Man all day. I love it.

But why does it scare me?

The over-used image of creepy dark-haired girls has completely saturated the American film and video game market during the last five years, though it is no new thing in Japan (but this is a country that loves tentacle rape, so take that for what it is worth). I shouldn't be so disturbed by Alma and her sporadic appearances throughout the game, but I am. I do not like seeing her through a window, only to run around and find her gone, only her spooky giggles left behind to taunt me. I do not like wondering when she's going to ambush me next with her insane hallways of blood and fire. I do not like these things, but yet, I keep playing, and I keep being scared.

I'm not all the way through the game yet, but the only enemies I have encountered so far are soldier guys, security guard type guys, weird electrified ninja guys and very random robotic super soldiers, which kill me at an alarming rate. The enemies in the game are not scary, unless you count Paxton Fettel, though I've yet to encounter him in the flesh since he knocked me in the head with a two-by-four, causing me to scream and throw the controller. Heavily armed rent-a-cops and their cloned counterparts are not scary, yet when I enter a hallway, I still listen and wait and watch for any sign of them before continuing, terrified they will jump out of a corner and karate kick my head in.

I thought maybe it was the atmosphere that set me on edge, but an office building, even patrolled by soldiers and the ghost of Alma Wade, is not scary. When the lights flicker or boxes fall of of shelves of their own accord, yes, maybe I get a little apprehensive, but cubicles by themselves are not scary, unless you work in one and then, maybe, I'd understand. I do not, so it does nothing for me.

I've considered the fact that maybe I am just a wimp. It's entirely possible. I slept on the couch after playing Silent Hill 4: The Room, and I still sleep on the couch to this day. (It's the part when you see Walter Sullivan across the apartment complex, leering at you like a pedophile, only to have him disappear before your eyes when you get over to him. And the peephole incident. Completely bizarre and terrifying.) But I am a horror-movie junkie, so years and years of blood and guts should have desensitized me to the normal staples of movies and games. Only the truly bizarre serves to frighten me these days, but for some reason this game has messed me up. I heard someone crunching on the ice and snow outside my house last night and ran screaming back inside, my dog struggling to keep up. So maybe it's just that I do it to myself, or that I'm not as brave as I thought I was.

I just can't put my finger on it. Why am I so freaked out?

Does anybody else feel the same way about this game? What, if anything, scared you? Show me that I am not alone, or at least that I am not alone in my scaredy-catness.


NOTE: Spare me your diatribes about how Silent Hill 4 isn't scary, about how it isn't a Silent Hill game, and blah, blah, blah. I don't want to hear it. KTHNXBAI.