Good scripted events
Unreal
In the beginning of the first level there is this scene where a door is closed. The player can hear somebody screaming in despair. From under the door's partial opening the player can see some flashes of light and hear gunfire. After a few seconds the doors opens and the player sees the first alien and enemy run away. While this game is not about terror, this scene does a good job in immersing the player in an alien world where many many dangerous await in his or her journey to escape this strange world. This technique also works great to catch the player's attention and make them more interested in the next chapters.
F.E.A.R.
This game is about horror and they successfully accomplished it with scripted events. There are times where lamps shake a bit, a scream is heard, a body falls off the ceiling, windows shatter out of nowhere, scarecrows fly as the player reaches a corner, the player jumps in water just to experience an hallucination, a shadow passes by, etc. I unfortunately don't have experience with this and cannot provide any advice on how frequent those events should be, nor when they should happen.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
When the player meets the first sub-boss there is an scripted event. An army of machines attacks the lush forest which serves as the first level. After bombarding it, the previously lush forest turns into a burning forest. This event explains the change in the environment from one level to the next.
In the game's second zone the same concept is applied. Once the player meets Knuckles, he smirks at the player and pushes a button that turns off the power in the whole level. Every light is now off. In here I'd comment that to turn off the power would literally turn off all moving platforms and other interactive objects in the level. But that would make the level impossible to traverse as everything would be offline. Sometimes ideas conflict with realism and concessions have to be made. In Sonic's case the game isn't about realism, making this lack of realism excusable.
