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Post by Jambowayoh on Dec 7, 2022 12:14:59 GMT
Hahaha, of course.
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Post by simple on Dec 7, 2022 12:15:15 GMT
Yeah, I just see horror as a theme. There's very few (maybe a handful) of horror films that I actually find scary But you’ve got bowels of stone if the RE Village thread is anything to go by |
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Post by Jambowayoh on Dec 7, 2022 12:18:24 GMT
Now, THAT BIT in RE Village, you know the one, that fucked me up. Also Dead Space's sound design still scares the shit out of me.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 12:21:16 GMT
That bit in Village, and that bit again in the DLC. Alma in FEAR 1 & 2. A few others. Most horror games aren't actually scary though, just horrific in terms of subject matter, and are often tense as fuck. This is on a par with Dead Space and Doom 3 for my money. Sci-fi action horror. But still horror.
"It's not a horror game" - okay random twitter fuckwit, what is it then. It's not a fucking JRPG is it.
For my money, Condemned will always be the scariest game on the planet. Specifically a certain department store rendered as a liminal space perpetually piping out Christmas music as the manikins shift position when you're not looking. |
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Post by Jambowayoh on Dec 7, 2022 12:24:01 GMT
Condemned is a good shout.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 12:27:54 GMT
Silent Hill 2 for my money - the atmopshere in that game is on another level.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 12:30:46 GMT
But it's also just whatever scares you innit.
There was an old space sim for the C64 called Interdictor Pilot that my dad had. You could choose to fly against a dummy enemy ship that didn't move. For some reason, I would slowly fly up to it and I found it one of the most unsettling things ever. It still creeps me out now and I can't place exactly why. Just that little grey dot slowly taking shape as you move closer. More and more detail as it fills the screen until it's this big grey silent outline of an alien craft with nothing but endless space behind it. Crude as fuck but just... Creepy.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 12:32:30 GMT
To be honest I think scares are very subjective.
I find most western horror games/films to be thrilling but not that scary (and often unintentionally funny).
Things like Audition, Silent Hill 2 or Ringu creep the shit out of me though.
Edit - beaten to it.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 12:35:23 GMT
Certain scenes in Twin Peaks have unsettled me more than most horror films.
Hell, even the Land of the Living segment from Grim Fandango made me feel uneasy.
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Derblington
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Post by Derblington on Dec 7, 2022 12:49:50 GMT
I don't think the problem with this is that it's not scary because it's not horror, I think it lacks scares because as a player you're overpowered. It fails at the survival part, which leads to some failure in the horror.
ed: Scares are subjective, fo sho, but I didn't really fear anything coming as I knew I was going to dodge it's attacks and then bash it's face in with ease. The tension tends to come from anticipation and I just wasn't worried about what was coming.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 12:54:33 GMT
Certain scenes in Twin Peaks have unsettled me more than most horror films. Hell, even the Land of the Living segment from Grim Fandango made me feel uneasy. Lynch uses dream logic in a lot of his stuff and I find that fucking terrifying (see the famous diner scene in Mulholland Drive for example). That reminds me, I've got Inland Empire on my watch list. Moving off games slightly, you mentioned J-horror but if you've not seen Kairo (Pulse) then that has a corridor ghost sequence that's pant filling through the sheer unnatural atmosphere it creates. It's hard to even pinpoint "scare" effectively. TCP, Dead Space, Doom 3 etc have shock value, are tense and are full of gross imagary. At the time it works well, and you could easily class that as scary.
Yet, the likes of Bart's fucking Department Store has it's creepiest moments just standing before a dilapitated Christmas display whilst the lights flicker and the music plays in the background. That also sticks with me more than the other stuff I've mentioned.
I also recall being really creeped out wandering a Call of Duty map years ago without any other players. There was no threat, no jump scares, yet it was really bloody sinister just being there. There's something utterly unnerving about an empty server with just you in it.
You've then got parts of games that are scary just because you know what happened there. I maintain that Oolacile and new Londo Ruins in Dark Souls 1 are two of the creepiest locales ever. New Londo has you walking over the drowned bodies of every resident that was sealed inside in the dark as the water came in. Oolacile and you can actually hear what sound like the screams of children running terrified down there in the dark as the abyss drags the whole city down into the depths.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 7, 2022 12:57:12 GMT
Yeah, I just see horror as a theme. There's very few (maybe a handful) of horror films that I actually find scary With films it's usually the psychological horror films that work best for me. Similar case with horror games. If they provide time, soundscape, story and so on, I'm usually pretty good at scaring myself. I think a lot of people just don't meet these kinds of games half-way. Understandable, as they probably don't want to be scared as it's an uncomfortable feeling, but it's still detrimental to the experience. |
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 7, 2022 12:58:02 GMT
Yeah, I just see horror as a theme. There's very few (maybe a handful) of horror films that I actually find scary But you’ve got bowels of stone if the RE Village thread is anything to go by Ha, that was was more case of being prepared for it and being too familiar with game design (the lockers you can hide in were a dead give away). It was disturbing but I felt too in control for it to be scary
I generally find horror games very effective at being scary. Easily the genre that elicits the strongest emotional response from me. System Shock 2 and Silent Hill 2 are counted among my favourite games but I've never actually finished either personally. Silent 2 especially genuinely filled me with dread whenever I sat down to play it (I had to really force myself) and the entire time I'd be thinking 'well, I've played it for half an hour, I can stop now'
Either way I enjoy the themes and ideas of horror. They're scary to think about even if I'm not playing/watching through my fingers
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 12:59:11 GMT
I've not seen Kairo and Inland Empire is the only Lynch film I've not seen - need to get on both of those!
If we're talking scary locales I'd have to put the Von Braun from System Shock 2 and The Zone from STALKER in there, especially the latter.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 12:59:13 GMT
I think we can all agree that the scariest ever gaming experience is PT though. Surely.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 13:02:54 GMT
Heh - I was weirdly unaffected by PT.
As Derbs said earlier you need a good balance with the 'surival' aspect of horror games. Not having any way to defend yourself kills the horror dead after you've been caught once. For me anyways.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 13:03:42 GMT
Oooh yes System Shock 2, naturally. If we're talking Looking Glass then Thief is in there with Down in the Bonehoard, The Haunted Cathedral and The Sword amongst other levels. Talking of Thief. I grabbed Thief Deadly Shadows for my OG Xbox earlier this year. Must get around to playing it and seeing what the Shalebridge Cradle is all about. In fact, the new Thief (even though it's 8 years old already (!)) has it's own rather creepy asylum too. There's another middling game I loved for you all - the Thief reboot.
Oh, and middling games in conjunction with Silent Hill means I have to mention Downpour, and the fact that a couple of it's side missions are also up there as classic horror gaming moments. There's one in an old house involving a father murdering his family and it's just jobby city.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 7, 2022 13:04:16 GMT
Certain scenes in Twin Peaks have unsettled me more than most horror films. Hell, even the Land of the Living segment from Grim Fandango made me feel uneasy. I also recall being really creeped out wandering a Call of Duty map years ago without any other players. There was no threat, no jump scares, yet it was really bloody sinister just being there. There's something utterly unnerving about an empty server with just you in it.
This was a thing on one of the TikToks, about empty spaces. There's a few ARGs about it as well |
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 13:06:16 GMT
Heh - I was weirdly unaffected by PT. As Derbs said earlier you need a good balance with the 'surival' aspect of horror games. Not having any way to defend yourself kills the horror dead after you've been caught once. For me anyways. I agree up to a point. Although in FEAR the protagonist is a fucking weapon, yet that's still scary as hell. TCP had me constantly on the verge of running out of everything which I thought worked well for keeping me tense as all hell throughout.
PT I could only play for a few minutes at a time before hearing Lisa breathing behind me was enough to make me turn it off.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 7, 2022 13:09:56 GMT
The horror in FEAR worked pretty well when I was playing it the first time, but not so much when I recently revisited it. I'm guessing Alma is just too cliched and she is too much of a recurring jumpscare that can't actually do anything. But she's also too close and too tangible at the same time. Very in your face. But the overall atmosphere did work pretty well for me... Not quite sure how to describe it, but Condemned often feels similar. A sense of desolation and foreboding perhaps. It's often rather quiet for extended periods of time.
And yeah, Stalker. While there are some obvious horror sections it's sometimes also just particular music selections that play on certain maps.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 7, 2022 13:13:37 GMT
Oooh yes System Shock 2, naturally. If we're talking Looking Glass then Thief is in there with Down in the Bonehoard, The Haunted Cathedral and The Sword amongst other levels. Talking of Thief. I grabbed Thief Deadly Shadows for my OG Xbox earlier this year. Must get around to playing it and seeing what the Shalebridge Cradle is all about. In fact, the new Thief (even though it's 8 years old already (!)) has it's own rather creepy asylum too. There's another middling game I loved for you all - the Thief reboot. Oh, and middling games in conjunction with Silent Hill means I have to mention Downpour, and the fact that a couple of it's side missions are also up there as classic horror gaming moments. There's one in an old house involving a father murdering his family and it's just jobby city. Thief 3 is decent, at least I always felt it was an alright sequel compared to Invisible War. The Cradle is better in its first half I think- definitely scared the life out of me. I still think Thief 1 is scarier though, for the missions you mentioned. A lot of people seem to not like Bonehoard but it's my favourite level in the game. I really love it
Didn't get Pulse though. I can never even really remember anything about it and I've watched it more than once. I think there might be one creepy scene with a woman that's moving all fucked up in a dark room or something but that could be from something else [/spoiler][/div] |
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Post by simple on Dec 7, 2022 13:14:37 GMT
Yeah, I just see horror as a theme. There's very few (maybe a handful) of horror films that I actually find scary With films it's usually the psychological horror films that work best for me. Similar case with horror games. If they provide time, soundscape, story and so on, I'm usually pretty good at scaring myself. I think a lot of people just don't meet these kinds of games half-way. Understandable, as they probably don't want to be scared as it's an uncomfortable feeling, but it's still detrimental to the experience. Speaking of sound design there’s a very low res point and click game from a few years ago called The Last Door that looks like it was made for a micro computer but has full redbook audio and manages to be totally creepy despite everyone looking like they’re made of Lego |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2022 13:15:31 GMT
Alien Isolation was probably the most scared I've been by a game. RE7 a close second, Village didn't really do it for me, even that bit.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2022 13:15:58 GMT
Actually RE7 in VR was absolutely horrific.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 13:17:22 GMT
I found Alien Isolation more tense than actually scary. Tense though. Oh god was it tense. More tense than a festival campsite.
I actually reinstalled it the other day. Do you know what, it STILL looks fucking amazing.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 7, 2022 13:18:55 GMT
With films it's usually the psychological horror films that work best for me. Similar case with horror games. If they provide time, soundscape, story and so on, I'm usually pretty good at scaring myself. I think a lot of people just don't meet these kinds of games half-way. Understandable, as they probably don't want to be scared as it's an uncomfortable feeling, but it's still detrimental to the experience. Speaking of sound design there’s a very low res point and click game from a few years ago called The Last Door that looks like it was made for a micro computer but has full redbook audio and manages to be totally creepy despite everyone looking like they’re made of Lego Yeah, I remember playing that; did a really good job of keeping up the threat level. Feel Lone Survivor falls into this category too. |
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Post by simple on Dec 7, 2022 13:19:29 GMT
Actually RE7 in VR was absolutely horrific. I don’t think I’d make it through the prologue. Hell, even the empty* house in the Beginning Hour demo was was creepy enough. * Or is it? |
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 13:25:14 GMT
Ghosts man. Ghosts in games just do it for me. The sound design has to be top notch as well. One of the reasons that (going back to) Thief was so damn effective. Graphically it looked like a porno made for mechanoids but the artistic direction with the darkness and the astounding audio just worked so well.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 7, 2022 13:30:56 GMT
Speaking of sound design there’s a very low res point and click game from a few years ago called The Last Door that looks like it was made for a micro computer but has full redbook audio and manages to be totally creepy despite everyone looking like they’re made of Lego Yeah, I remember playing that; did a really good job of keeping up the threat level. Feel Lone Survivor falls into this category too. Never finished Lone Survivor. For some reason I thought it a good idea to start a first playthrough on Expert Mode...
Stasis also worked surprisingly well in spite of just being an isometric point-and-click.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 7, 2022 13:33:12 GMT
Craymen are the worst enemies in Thief. I had a formative experience where one creeped up behind me and made that horrible fucking clicking sound. Escape. Quit game. Fuck off
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