Carnage: I completed the game more than 6 times. Do you think this place has become less scary? Nope.

KiNgBrAdLeY7: You' re telling me... Upper floor, door opens by itself and child toy rolls alone towards you, ringing even! Brrr, the chills!

Sufyan: To be honest I think the level is tedious and lacking in polish. Everyone remembers how they felt the first time going through it, especially if they did so back in 2004-2005 when it still seemed ambitious and unique. The more you see it however, you start noticing how stilted it is and how unfocused the narrative is. Random poltergeists and ghostly apparitions.. It feels gamey, like walking through a short user-made HL2 level tripping over invisible triggers. The jump scares really don't hold up on a technical level. I might be biased as I spent so many years working with Half-Life level design, I kinda see past the simulation and into the machinery that drives it, and maybe it doesn't feel as gamey and contrived to someone who hasn't. The sound cues are also not that great, they really feel unpolished to me which takes me out of the mood that the level is trying to bring out.

I call it tedious because it does throw you for a loop and there are a couple of places where you need to wait for the scripted events to progress, which makes replaying it after you have already seen all it's secrets and know how not to get killed by environmental hazards s a little frustrating. It is just a long semi-interactive unskippable cinematic with very basic gameplay.

eVinceW21: I can definitely see how it could be less satisfying the second time. As someone who's unaccustomed to horror games I guess this level had a fresh impact on me. I'm used to overt in your face horror and blood and guts and squik in horror games and movies which seems to be the only way to get a rise out of people anymore cuz it's lazy and cheap and it just doesn't have an effect on me.

But this level is the more subtle, more effective kind of horror. Atmosphere, ambiance, intrigue, fear of the thing you *can't* see. The mind-f@#$ sort of horror. I was *not* expecting the jump scares and the visuals really had me going.

In any case this level is very well crafted for this purpose. I was just really impressed.

SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS

And nothing came off as random to me. It's not like I was going on and THERE'S A MUMMY CUZ MUMMYS R SCARY!! You don't know the whole story at first but it all comes together. The fire, the woman, the kids. You get visual storytelling while having the crap scared out of ya! XD

lordhoff: That's a problem with all video games; the first time is gold - exploring for the first time, making build errors and having to deal with it, etc.

alcaray: Or, as Jack says: "...hey, it's never as sweet as the first time."