The FR.com update
#16
Posted 17 October 2008 - 02:02 PM
I'm quite happy with a constant level of tension throughout, breaking the tension can sometimes damage the chances of it building up again so effectively. I'd rather be tense the whole time than have little bits of tensions and then some real fear for a minute or so. Makes things a bit more even.
League Of Villains
#18
Posted 17 October 2008 - 05:03 PM
Some of you may be 4channers, I don't know. Rules 1 and 2 can wait outside for a moment, while I say I dabble. One of their venerable instituions is creepypasta, basically an entire thread of scary stories, with the odd scary/creepy pic for good measure.
They may be bookended up basement-dwelling illiterates demanding tits, and photoshops my cat could better, but consider this. They may not be that scary by daylight, with people about. Read a threadsworth, at midnight, on your own, with no light coming in through the window, and you'll be huddled in your bed going "holy shit what the fucks going to try busting through the window tonight?"
No matter what medium your scary things take, its all about how its presented, how the recipiant views it, and such set and setting things as that. Same as with any creative medium. If done right, you could make someone laugh making ballons out of someones skin*.
*wouldn't recommend it tho.
Less Is More v4
Now resigned to a readership of me, my cat and some fish
#20
Posted 17 October 2008 - 07:05 PM
Hecc, I dunno what your problem is, none of us said that was the point of the article - which I believe was something about censorship, though I can't even tell if he was solidly for or against it as it was so vague and meandering - but it's just something I disagree with and said so. Why shouldn't I focus on such a small part?
#21
Posted 17 October 2008 - 11:59 PM
Books, at best, can only make us afraid for the characters they present, scaring us through us is an entirely different matter, and impossible through merely the written medium, (and I'm talking about horror here, not fear; reading a medical thesis is enough to scare me shitless that the person who wrote that is currently practising medicine).
Movies can get us somewhat more attuned to the character, but even if the character is YOU, you still aren't controlling "yourself" at that point, and it is still a passive medium. And you aren't, currently, the person on the screen.
In games, however, with a good control system, you feel that you are the character. The character does what you would do. S/he does not run into the path of certain doom by knife stabbing, s/he does what you would do, because you ARE doing it. You are controlling the character, you ARE the character.
And thus games are a better medium for horror because they have the potential to involve the player/reader/watcher, because they are an active, but mass media.
#22
Posted 18 October 2008 - 02:15 AM
Because you're completely missing the entire point. He didn't write an article about how scary video games are, he wrote an article discussing the need for a proper rating system for video games in Australia so that developers need not sacrifice content at the risk of having their product banned. If someone like me, who often fails to read into subtext or to absorb read information beyond what's written in the most literal form can pick up on that blatantly clear message, why can't you?
#23
Posted 18 October 2008 - 01:19 PM
#24
Posted 18 October 2008 - 04:06 PM
That is one badass baby.
#25
Posted 18 October 2008 - 05:55 PM
Saying that, Manhunt 2's out on the 31st in the UK, finally.
-The League Against Tedium
#26
Posted 19 October 2008 - 02:44 AM
I never felt less prepared for an alien invasion.
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#27
Posted 19 October 2008 - 04:29 AM
...the fuck?
#28
Posted 19 October 2008 - 05:34 AM
Human enemies:
Blood (love how they just turned it green):
Gore and lots of splattery stuff:
No more bodyparts, just... screws.
Death of NPCs:
And so on.
Now I've never played any German version of a game after Half Life, I think (and I only got that version by accident as well), so I don't know what other shenanigans went down since then, I just heard that they kept on censoring everything from Counter Strike till the latest Half Life episode.
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