Demonic Spiders do their best to ensure that Survival Horror games involve a little less survival and a whole lot more horror.
Games/franchises with their own pages:
Individual examples:
- Alien: Isolation has the Working Joes, creepy Artificial Humans who are your primary enemy in several levels of the game. They're dramatically tougher than humans, they can block your melee attacks, they can kill you very quickly when they get into melee with you, and they're immune to the Alien so you can't sic it on them the way you can on human survivors. It gets even worse when they start showing up in environmental suits, especially since by then you'll have been forced into giving up your guns, as they are now immune to EMP bombs and stun batons, meaning now you can only hope to use pipe bombs and sneak attacks to fight them.
- Crawlers are this to Cold Fear. It takes a full clip of shotgun shells to kill one, and they are fantastically speedy and stealthy Wall Masters. They have a nasty habit of jumping on to the ceiling and hiding in a ventilation shaft after you have damaged them, then reemerging from a different ventilation shaft elsewhere in the same room so they can sneak up on you.
- Also, their Weaksauce Weakness was supposed to be a fear of bright light, but that really just makes them wander off so they can attack you from behind later.
- After its transition to 3D, The zombie MMO Dead Frontier added several "Boss" zombies throughout the maps. Pretty much the only ones of them that aren't an example are the Bones (which are only moderately more powerful than normal zombies) and the Bloats (which are ungodly slow and whose main gimmick, exploding upon death, is easily avoidable with ranged weaponry). The rest? Oy...
- The Reapers and Tendrils will oneshot low level players easily with their insane melee attacks, and the Tendrils in particular have ungodly speed and a massive attack range.
- Sirens don't even have any actual attacks, and yet they are the bane of many players because as soon as they detect you, they emit a scream that alerts pretty much every single zombie in the area to your location, with predictable results.
- The Spiders are ungodly fast and nearly completely immune to knockback.
- One of the more recent updates added Burning Zombies to the mix. They are as (if not more) fast than the Spiders, always spawn with maximum aggro (which means they hone in on you at top speed) and, contrary to what you may expect from a Man on Fire, they have a massive amount of health. On the plus side, they tend to drop mid to high tier loot when they finally go down.
- Most variants of Zombie Dogs other than the basic one (which is a Goddamned Bat). Give them insane speed and damage for the "recommended" level, a good amount of health and Hitbox Dissonance (attacks on their head may not register) and you've got a deadly foe on your hands. The Blood Dog is found as early as the green (second) zone, hits as hard as the Reaper (see above), moves extremely quickly and cannot be outrun even at max Agility, and has a great amount of health for a second-area opponent. Take the Blood Dog, double its already high damage and health to make it even more painful than the Tendril, give it even more speed, and you get the nightmare that's the Flesh Hound. As for the Hell Hound, take the Flesh Hound, multiply its health and attack by 2.5x, and... you get the idea. Worst of all, since these aren't the uncommon mutant zombies like Bone/Tendril/Reaper/Spider, they appear much more frequently than most of the other Demonic Spiders listed above.
- Dead Space has a number of enemies that can prove frustrating, but the Guardian and the Crawler stand out. The former spits out "pods" that explode with considerable force (though, thankfully, not as much as an Exploder) if Isaac gets too close and which otherwise sprout a quill-throwing tentacle and fire at a much faster rate than Lurkers do—and the only way to kill the pod is to sever the tentacle. The Guardian spits out pods at a fairly steady rate, and the only way to kill it is to sever the five tentacles that it attaches to the wall—and which it can pull inside of itself and reattach if it feels like it. Oh, and did I mention that getting too close results in an Instant Death cutscene? Crawlers are small, tend to come in groups, move quickly and can be hard to hit, especially due to their leaping around. Dividers are actually easier to handle than Crawlers; hit the Divider with Stasis, then calmly blast each Crawler component. The Twitcher (due to its speed, random movement and ability to "jink") and the various Advanced Necromorphs, particularly the Scorpion and Lurker, get honorable mentions.
- It should also be noted that the whole while, the armless upper torso that is the core of the Guardian is letting out screams of apparent agony. Not only is it really disturbing, but can prove to be a major distraction while fighting the pods and the Guardian itself.
- Swarmers are like ultra-tiny crawlers but ten times as dangerous: They come in gargantuan groups, they stop you dead in your track until you shake them off (and each individual one takes a second or so to shake off, while a dozen more has jumped on you in the meanwhile), and can with their cumulative damage kill Isaac in a shorter period of time than any other enemy in the entire game except for the Guardians. And did we mention that only two weapons are anywhere near useful against them, and one of them is useless for everything else, and the other one you get fairly late in the game?
- Don't forget The Pack in Dead Space 2, which can be incredibly irritating on harder difficulties, and Stalkers, which are incredibly smart, as well as fast. Stalkers are capable of playing hide-and-seek, something no other Necomorph can do, and their presence is enough to make anyone's paranoia level go through the roof.
- The Leapers get an upgrade in the sequel, now they're fast as hell and kill you dead before you can even finish your girly scream after the thing drops on you from the other side of the map.
- Dead Space 3 gets in on the fun!
- Did you like the regenerating enemies in 1 and 2 that couldn't be killed by normal means and hounded you for entire levels? How about a dozen? Dead Space 3 is happy to provide!
- The standard feeder is a Fragile Speedster Cannon Fodder with whom you'll share a love-hate relationship, because one intense firefight will leave you with an armory's worth of ammo and supplies. However, the Enhanced Versions are complete hellspawn. They're tougher than the standard Slasher and still come in packs!
- Unitologist Rocket Soldiers always enjoy ruining your day from a far away location with lots of explosions. They're not much tougher than other human opponents, but they always show up when you're focusing your attention on the monsters currently eating your face.
- Therazinos from Dino Crisis are not only insanely strong, highly dangerous and -thanks to their traveling in pairs- nearly impossible to bypass, but they're also given their own Press X to Not Die cutscene which makes you think they're a one-off Dual Boss. Nope. They're a regular enemy from that point on! Be warned: save your poison darts or get ready to snap a few controllers dealing with them.
- The Oviraptors from Dino Crisis 2 are very troublesome, to say the least: they're very small and extremely fast, hunt in rather large packs, and are nearly impossible to target all at once as they have the tendency to surround you completely. Worse, they have a ranged attack so while you're taking out the ones in front of you, the others can hang back and spew acid/venom at you. They also like to jump-kick you from out of nowhere, have a high respawning rate...even if you return to an area you just left a second ago, and will jump onto you to peck you to death.
- Late into The Evil Within, you encounter Invisible Haunted. Bad enough that they're invisible in the first place, but they compound that sin by being Damage Sponges who can't be snuck around or Stealth Killed and are even immune to being burned like regular Haunted! Judicious use of doorways and explosive bolt traps can be a huge help in fighting them as Sebastian, but expect to have lots of fun dealing with them as Kidman in the DLC, where stealth kills are your only option.
- AlterEgos likewise suck up a lot more damage than the Haunted do, are far harder to burn, and are much harder to headshot than their counterparts, on account of having two heads.
- In a game already the stuff of nightmares with its surprise random encounters which can mystically appear in a room you've been through several times already and often appearing with little or no warning directly in front of you (screaming ensues, if the player is particularly into the game), Fatal Frame has its own demonic spider to fear and fear greatly. The Blind Ghosts, especially in one encounter in a cramped corridor, can turn fear and terror into fear and loathing. They can pass through walls (wherein they become difficult to detect and invincible), move much faster than your character, lunge at you when provoked or if you move (being blind of course means they have superhuman hearing), may not flinch when attacked (this counts as provoking them, naturally), can teleport behind you at any time (including when they're invisible because they're eight feet inside a solid wall, leading to more "AGHHH!" moments when you suddenly catch sight of them less than a foot from your face), and have a nasty tendency to kill you in a single hit. And did I mention they like to counterattack?
- Fear & Hunger: Termina has the Death Masks, a type of enemy which has a chance to spawn after passing by one of the many coffins lying around town (which can happen fairly early in the game). They're very fast, making them hard to avoid in the overworld; they have large pools of health, making them difficult to kill even with a full party; and worst of all, their swords — which they can attack with twice per turn — are guaranteed to dismember limbs on hit, making them likely to cripple the party within a couple combat rounds. Causing one to spawn will make your life much more difficult.
- The mutated rats in part IV of Lakeview Cabin Collection. Not only do they cause Interface Screw and hit both fast and hard, they can randomly spawn in any room that has a vent, meaning that there is a likely chance that a character inside one of them is going to die within seconds unless you move them out.
- The Eyesaur in Hard-Boiled mode of One Night at Flumpty's. To start with, it is difficult to track and whenever it catches you with the lights on, your exposure meter will skyrocket due to how many eyes it has. This naturally gets worse in hard mode almost to the point of being a One-Hit Kill. While in the normal mode of the game the Eyesaur will only attack near the end of the night, it walks around much earlier in Hard-Boiled mode.
- The Bats from Parasite Eve 2. One hit-point, any attack aimed at them kills them... But let them touch you and you are paralyzed for 5 to 8 seconds while it slowly seeps your health point per point... And they come in swarms of ten or more. Preferably at arm's reach. The precognition REALLY applies to this one.
- Oddly enough, they're instantly killed with a flashlight attachment.
- The Desert Chasers also apply, and while they aren't too difficult to fight in areas with a lot of open space, they are notoriously annoying in confined areas such as alleyways as well as the one that is scripted to attack Aya once she reaches the locked door in the outdoor alleyway that is very narrow once she arrives in Dryfield. And later on, they appear in packs of two or more, depending on the difficulty, and if they hit you with a fully-spurred charging attack, it REALLY hurts, especially on harder difficulties such as Bounty or Nightmare.
- Also, the Knight/Bishop GOLEM. These cyborgs are not only powerful, but can turn invisible. In fact, they automatically land a hit on you when you first "detect" them, grabbing you from behind without warning and either poisoning you or paralyzing you unless you can kick them away in time. In addition, they use a decoy attack. Fall for it and it guarantees a hit. So not only are you fighting an invisible enemy that swipes at you with the power of a Kodiak bear, but you may potentially start the fight with a quarter of your health gone and a serious status ailment. What's worse is, while they only show up in the regular game mode towards the end of it, these bastards show up way earlier in the Nightmare and Bounty modes. And since enemies hit for more damage in these modes, if they land two hits on you, it's Game Over.
- Rule of Rose: Most of the imps count, if nothing else because they usually respawn and/or come in hordes. Some jump onto Jennifer so she can be pummeled by the rest around her. Other types (birds and pigs especially) enjoy knocking Jennifer down... and then doing it again as soon as she stands back up. You'd better start getting Brown searching for some sweets...
- The Nine-Tailed Fox units in SCP – Containment Breach. Unlike the various SCP objects the players encounters, the Nine-Tailed Fox have ranged weapons and work as a squad to hunt you down. Players often have to utilize stealth to survive encounters with the squad, which is a rather jarring strategy compared the more direct approach of SCPs such as 173 and 106.
- Silent Hill is generally pretty lenient as far as regular enemies go, but is not without its own Demonic Spiders:
- From the first game: The Romper, which appears in the Otherworld town streets later on. Like the weaker Air Screamers, Rompers spawn endlessly and move very fast. But unlike the other street enemies, they're more than a nuisance: they can full-on tackle Harry and pin him to the ground. Stopping to fight them is usually a terrible idea, especially since it allows multiple ones to reach you.
- Slurpers in Silent Hill 3 seem like they were engineered to be the most obnoxious enemy ever, so much so that calling them Goddamned Bats is far too light. Though they look weak, they have the ability to knock Heather to the floor, leaving her stunned for over 5 seconds; and while she's down there, they can crawl on top of her to deal extra damage. This knockdown is so easy to trigger that going anywhere near them is just asking for it to happen. And Slurpers are most often found in tight hallways, with oppressive visuals that make it hard to see anything, so slipping past them without getting hit demands some incredibly precise movement. They're surprisingly hard to kill too, with a lot of health, a low profile making them hard to hit, and they can even play dead.
- The same game has Nurses with guns, one of very few enemies with a ranged attack - and an incredibly lethal one, at that. There's also the Pendulums, flying enemies that launch themselves at you if you shoot them, making it best to avoid them altogether.
- Silent Hill 4: The Room has the Victim Ghosts, Invincible Minor Minions who can chase the player anywhere (they can bypass walls), deal damage just by being near and otherwise have no reliable method of defeat that's not rare to find.
- The Smogs from Silent Hill: Homecoming. Not only do they have a ton of health, their attacks can only be dodged by rolling away, as they can stun you with a smoke cloud that is unavoidable (and does damage). Also, if you can't break out of it, they knock you down, dealing even more damage. While it's easy to run past them, they are also the only enemies to have a ranged attack, and very damaging one at that. On the bright side, they can be downed in two shots if you wait until they expose their chest cavity to shoot them.
- The Dolls from Silent Hill: Downpour, especially if you're going for a no-kill run (which is required for an achievement). Not only are they invisible without the forensic flashlight, but they appear in huge groups.
- The Shibito in the Siren Games are giggling, bloody-eyed Japanese farmer zombies who somehow manage to pop you with a headshot from across the map through a copse of trees if you make even the slightest error in traversing the level. Apparently becoming Shibito imbues one with the accuracy of a Navy Seal sniper. There's some good news, though—you can actually survive one shot to (hopefully) dive back into cover... and you can use sightjacking to tell exactly where they're looking and when, so you can stay the hell out of the way. Also, not all of them have rifles—although some of the ones that don't are nearly as bad.
- For an example of "nearly as bad," look no further than the Crawlers. Their melee attacks can kill you in two good hits, depending on the character—the same as a gunshot, for reference—and they're fast and particularly alert and difficult to hide from. Oh, and some of them can walk on walls. The plus side is that since they move on all fours, they can't open doors... and they're usually found in the presence of a Shibito brain, which will knock them all out at once if it's taken out. The bad news there is that Shibito brains are Goddamned Bats, due to their tendency to be able to tell you're there without seeing or hearing you, then run away quickly.
- Let us not get started on the flying Shibito, who are essentially snipers with wings.
- Festers in The Suffering are bloated corpses that periodically tear open their stomachs to release a swarm of giant rats, which explode when they reach you. These rats home in on you, and if one hits you, you'll likely be stunlocked until the entire swarm explodes in your face. (It's possible to shoot the rats, but you'll never get them all in time unless you rapidly equip the tommy-gun, which isn't very good against the Festers themselves.) Axe attacks hurt the Festers quite a bit, potentially allowing you to finish them off before they can release their rats, but their melee attack is quite powerful and does damage in a circle around them, so it's recommended you keep your distance. And as a final fuck-you, killing a Fester with a non-fire attack will automatically release a swarm of rats as it dies, and fire weapons are in short supply in this game.
