The Horror! Games that scare you silly, or did.
#62
Posted 24 January 2008 - 08:56 AM
<!--quoteo(post=169306:date=Aug 10 2007, 11:03 AM:name=Legion)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Legion @ Aug 10 2007, 11:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=169306"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--fonto:Arial--><span style="font-family:Arial"><!--/fonto--><!--coloro:#483D8B--><span style="color:#483D8B"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->So why the unholy flying purple donkeypunching fuck will it not work on yours? Just what kind of machine are you running there? Your toaster?<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And the man again!
<!--quoteo(post=180859:date=Jan 16 2008, 02:29 PM:name=Legion)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Legion @ Jan 16 2008, 02:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=180859"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In my opinion it's saying, fuck the lightsabers and special effects and fuck your voiceovers and fuck your stupid multimilliondollar game studios; you don't need any of those to make brilliant and scary games that will fuck with your head.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<u><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->My Getting Huge Progress (Gym and weight gain diet)<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--></u>
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#63
Posted 24 January 2008 - 09:02 AM
( A friend of mine from Chicago called me while I was doing this, and he admiringly told me that I was the biggest dork he'd ever dealt with, because not only was I dorking out to National Public Radio, I was also dorking out to a suvival horror game. This coming from a guy who's such an uber-dork he just nailed a job at The Onion. So I was extremely flattered!)
ANYWAY.
Scariest game for me ever, no questions asked, was Fatal Frame (Project Zero, as it's called elsewhere). It was sadistically terrifying, and I couldn't get enough of it. But only with my SO in the room. He got extremely testy after a while because I wasn't able to *stop* playing, but he was really getting tired of me making him stay awake. (It just wasn't the same when he slept; I needed his wakefulness to keep the ghosts from coming through the TV like Samara from Ringu and choking the life out of me. Shut UP.)
That game was truly designed for nothing more than making gamers shit themselves. Not only did you play a frail, helpless Japanese girl; that didn't make you vulnerable enough. You had to play a fragile, hapless Japanese girl who runs as fast as a slug copulates, who has nothing but a camera as a makeshift weapon (she draws the souls of the ghosts into the camera; there's nothing to kill because everything's already dead), and who is at the mercy of random camera angles (frustrating as hell, but very much in line with the spirit - heh - of the game). It was simultaneously pervy and scary, as are so many Japanese games. (Yep, every time you complete the game in various modes you get a new, more pervalicious costume for your character.)
I also played the hell out of the second one, Crimson Butterfly, which only sounds like an 80's hair band. In this one you play helpless, fragile Japanese twins, one of whom has a terrible limp and hinders the already pitifully slow sister from running from terrifying, moaning ghosts. On one level, the entire game is a tiresome escort mission, but on the other, deeper level, the developers do such a good job getting you to bond with your "twin sister" that after a while you develop real affection for her. At first she seemed like a frustrating weight who only got in my way during battles, but as the game went on I began to feel really protective of her. For a while she's absent, and by that time I remember actually missing her.
Until you play these games, they really do sound stupid. I mean, Japanese girls? No weapons, just a camera? You have to take pictures of ghosts to complete the game? Nightmare mode is impossible? Health items are rare as save points and hens' teeth?
You might scoff until you try to play it. It's an unremittingly dark game, literally and tonally. Like the film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the game is based on an ostensibly true story, and the supernatural element has a solid reason behind it, involving Shinto shrines and human sacrifice. The cinemas are done in grainy black and white, and the only real color you get in the whole thing are splashes of red (when dreadfully appropriate).
You don't get anything friendly in the entire game; the environment is scary, the ghosts (who can pop up anywhere without warning) are heart-stopping, and there's no music at all, just ambient noise and non-diegetic sound that pops up when you go into battle mode. In Project Zero you're alone throughout the entire story line, and the game's resolution is less an ending than an escape. I'd say that the soundscape in this game is at least as frightening as was, say, the fog in Silent Hill 2. It's like a separate character - a malevolent second character that wants nothing more than to drive you insane.
In truth, if you're at all a serious survival horror fan, you should do yourself a favor (or an unforgivably cruel jolt to your endocrine system - hello, adrenaline!) and get these games. I haven't played Fatal Frame 3 yet, because even though I could do RE4 alone (with the help of velvet-voiced NPR announcers), I couldn't even dream of trying to handle any Fatal Frame all by my lonesome. My ex got custody of those games in the breakup.
The Silent Hill franchise scares me too, but Fatal Frame puts you right in the action, which to my mind is much more frightening. There's no distance at all between you and the enemies when you're in camera mode, so it's really very much like being in your own horror movie. And dying in it - repeatedly - because not only is it terrifying, it also has very challenging gameplay. I find that after a while Silent Hill essentially just becomes a rather redundant hack-and-slash with scary environments, but Fatal Frame is short and lean enough to pack a solid punch.
Seriously, just thinking about it now, here in the predawn dark, is freaking me out. Plus, I hear coyotes.
Sorry, didn't mean to write a novel. I was just excited to see this topic. I'll shut up now and go look at puppies or something over on cuteoverload.com.
#64
Posted 24 January 2008 - 03:04 PM
Also, I just started "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth". Pretty freaky stuff. For the first 1/3 of the game you have no weapon whatsoever and when confronted by baddies your only options are to run, bolt doors behind you, push bookshelves in front of passageways, and sneak around hoping you aren't seen. The game does seem to lose the "oh god I think I just peed a little" factor slightly once you find a weapon, especially the shotgun, but still manages to be fairly creepy. It didn't get great reviews but I think the people reviewing it thought it would be an FPS like Doom 3 and not as adventure-gamey. If the remade 5DAS needs inspiration for making a first-person adventure game scary, they could do much worse than this one.
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The Queen's own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
#65
Posted 24 January 2008 - 05:52 PM
#66
Posted 24 January 2008 - 05:53 PM
Quote
#67
Posted 24 January 2008 - 10:42 PM
And you can get the flabby blob of jelly ending, too, if you kill off every one of your characters in the closing sequence. The last one gets caught by AM and you get to see what the flabby blob of jelly looks like in amazing 1995-vision (holy mother, it doesn't SEEM like it was that long ago).
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The Queen's own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
#69
Posted 25 January 2008 - 12:44 AM
Anyway, can we get back on topic?
Have you ever played the game Medievil II? I can't speak for Medievil I, but Medievil II was really creepy at times. I haven't played the game in a good five years, so I'm gonna be vague as possible. You're an undead skeleton knight who was brought back to life in 1860's England, and you have to stab zombies and stuff so you can fill soul chalices and get new weapons. Holy shit just talking about this game is like someone took a crowbar and pried open a vault of Playstation nostalgia in my brain, and the feeling is quite nice. But Jesus, did it get creepy.
Wow, I don't remember that. I played through both Medievil games a couple of times each as they were awesome games (the second has nothing on the first though) and I never remember it getting creepy even as a kid.
This post has been edited by rippa32: 25 January 2008 - 12:46 AM
#70
Posted 25 January 2008 - 01:12 AM
just started played SS2 good atmosphere but not scary yet...weeeeee!!!
snake logan ask the mexican's,they love it in america because they can work for dirt money here and send it home to take care of their entire family in mexico. we really need some border security but our agriculture economy would crack like an egg without the mexican workers... if we built a fence and hired illegal workers would it be hippocratic if they were only building the mexican side of the fence?
i post without caps to annoy sniffles. kisses ;)
#71
Posted 25 January 2008 - 02:45 AM
#73
Posted 25 January 2008 - 08:03 PM
#74
Posted 25 January 2008 - 08:29 PM
So the story is very, very different. Personally, I think the original short story would have made a terrible adventure game.
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The Queen's own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?