Horror thread

Didn't see one in the catalogue so I'll start one now, recently finished Scratches, a really good fucking game if you ask me.

You know what theme I think many horror games lack? Conspiracies

And I don't mean it in the Deus Ex kind of way "there is a terrifying harrowing conspiracy". I want a game or anything horror that uses paranormal horror to a global scale. The protagonist should come across paranormal horror, cosmic horror story stuff like eldritch abominations etc, and when he tries to get the government help to do anything, he notices that not only does he not get help, the government straight up starts doing everything to get in his way.

You know for example that theme of a creepy village filled with strange and creepy people who are visibly hostile to the protagonist and trying to hide their secrets? You know that one horror story where the village seems as if it's filled with crazy/possessed people? Now imagine that a protagonist of such story finds out about a murder that once happened in there and tries to contact the police. Obviously the local department tries to shut him down, but once he gets in contact with the outside world and tries to contact the higher-ups, it turns out that them and possibly the entire law enforcement of his country are also against him.

I want shit like SEELE to appear in horror games, stories and movies to raise the paranoia levels as high as possible.

Are there any games that do that?

Bump

Nice, one of these… posting one creppy/crappy PS1 game, you think this is just some monster chase? wrong! is eldritch horror.

Lovecraft’s ’The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ would be a perfect fit what you are talking about.

A game version could be set in the late ’20s as in the story, or a more modern setting – you play an average Joe who visits Innsmouth to visit the home-town of one of your ancestors, to look for a missing family member/friend, or as a journalist or private investigator. You find out that the gov’ment appears to be involved in some sort of secret cover-up – Innsmouth won’t show up on modern maps, satellite images/Google Maps, etc., and there doesn’t seem to be any mention of it online.

After you discover what is going on in the town, we switch perspective, and you play as a more action character (cop, military, FBI agent, etc), sent in to extract the other character, or to take down the Esoteric Order of Dagon and those affected by the ‘Innsmouth look’.

Something like Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth?

No, like HPL’s TSOI.
CoC – DCotE was a mix of TSOI & TSOoT it was just a big mess. The first half was very good, with the exception of the TSOoT inserts, and the gov’ment raid was incredibly underwhelming.

I see, well, first and foremost, what should the gameplay be?

If the game was divded into two parts, the first would be stealth, exploration & puzzle solving.
You can go around most, if not all, of Innsmouth – most houses are of course locked and impossible to enter. You could talk to people and try to figure out what is going on – the journalist angle might be the best one, since it could work in a sequel to TSOI. The raid of 1928 did happen, but some of the cult members got away, and the Esoteric Order is back and controls the town.

After you attract the attention of the Order you would have to find a way out, or call for help. No firearms, but maybe some limited combat.

The second half would be a squad-based shooter (F.E.A.R./DOOM) with the army or FBI.
Perhaps add some more puzzle elements, investigation techniques to detect evidence of the Order’s dealings & the Deep Ones. As in TSOI, the gov’ment should do a cover-up – claim it was a raid on home-grown terrorism, or to stop a doomsday cult/mass suicide à la Jonestown.
The raid could turn into a massacre, with everyone suspected of being affected with the ‘Innsmouth look’ being exterminated.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

Fuck you OP

Glad you liked Scratches, OP. I've been singing its praises for a long time in these threads, definitely worth a playthrough.

Don't go into the basement

Having those two styles could feel disjointed if you ask me, at least if you separate them like that.

Why is horror as a theme so great, yet survival/horror as a genre so garbage? The intentionally bad gameplay and game designs?

Depends, survival horror from the 90's or modern survival horror?

They become too repetitive & if they are too long the feeling of dread and the atmosphere the game has built up begins to disappear. Especially if it throws a bunch of enemies at you just to pad the game.

scratches' praise in these threads always sort of surprises me because for every one thing it does right, it does another ten bad things.

It kinda reminds me of the old horror h-game Divi Dead in that in order to progress the story you had basically recheck every fucking location right after anything happened in order to locate the random conversation or trigger that would move the story again - rinse and repeat.

Maybe I just was in a bad mood playing it but in general I found I was just constantly going through the same rooms of the house over and over again checking to see if the game's story had advanced enough to trigger some arbitrary change that let me interact with the environment in a slightly different way than I may or may not have been able to before.

It's got some legit scares in it and some neat ideas, but I think as an adventure game it's a good example of how having a decent story can trump mediocre, padded gameplay. I hope when Asylum comes out never ever? they'll have learned from their mistakes and it'll be just as spooky.


survival horror has just been done to death and no one has the balls to take it back to its roots or take risks so they keep fucking it up and making sequel after sequel to franchises that the genre barely even applies to anymore. I hate to say it but at this point we're probably at the mercy of non-pozzed indie devs to make something that isn't total dogshit unless crapcom actually doesn't shit the bed and REmake2 is everything I hope it will be

No, you are right in that it's a bit obtuse even for being an adventure game and I'm not ashamed to say I had to use a guide at least once or twice in the later days. I'm also hoping Asylum will be as good with the mistakes made in Scratches addressed and corrected.

will there ever be a good new silent hill game?

No, but is better that way.

I feel like not enough people talk about condemned. Why is the protagonist always some weak pacifist who can't fight? Nigga, everyone can fight, it's just a question of how well they can or cannot do it. The only people who literally could not put up any fight at all are in a coma, unconscious or dead.

I fucking hate Slender for making combat nonessential in Horror, when so many people have missed it's usefulness in horror, making you feel desperate, tense and alert. In horror games without combat, all you're doing is proceeding in the story, completing fucking puzzles If there are any and waiting until the next monster shows up so that you can run away/hide. It's equally sad because these games don't even give you the option of fighting.

On the other hand, you have games like Dead Space, which give you such powerful weapons and musical cues when the enemies appear, that it just isn't that scary, because you know when an enemy shows up because it sounds like someone just tripped over the london philharmonic orchestra.

Amnesia came first

At least Amnesia wasn't like the rest of the generic tidal wave of jumpscare indie horror games.

>tfw no horror game about getting chased by nigger dicks

Does the Umbrella corporation from resident evil fit the bill or does that count as a deus ex conspiracy to you?

I think RE series is more of a "thriller" and "suspense" kind of horror to be honest.

Dead space is fucking stupid with giving you powerful shit. I mean the fucking starting gun is the best fucking gun in the game and makes every encounter a breeze.

Resident evil 4 killed the entire genre.

Daymare 1998 doesn't look like complete shit though, might be worth a pirate

Only because everyone has tried to make their games RE4 and done it wrong every time. It's stupid too because I would love if we could get more games like RE4 but they always fuck it up. Not even capcom has made a good RE since.

Condemned criminal origins is THE go to hobo mode game. It even features the hobo olympics when you come out of the library. It's basically hobo simulator.

I love it.

Technically, Penumbra and its two sequels came first. They're all from the same team, including Amnesia, however.

But I'm with Condemned user, I'm really not a fan of horror games where I'm supposed to run away from the monster, I like being able to explore my environment and take everything in, and generally at my pace.

You sure about that?

Though strictly speaking there are games as far back as the atari era which did the whole "run from the monsters" thing.

I think the main problem with this approach is it's too easy to get a sense of plot armor in the game. You know the monster is going to give up and leave because having them actually check where you've hidden would be bad game design if there was nothing you can do to prevent your death.

More games need to use the best of both worlds: using ammo conservation, but ammo is so scare that you need to use run and hide to avoid wasting precious ammo. That way there's always a possibility in the back of your mind that the monster isn't going to leave, because that's what your gun is for.

I've been playing through this for the first time the past couple of days. It's alright, but a lot of times I just can't figure out what the game wants me to do, or I try to do it but it doesn't activate so I get confused. It's only crashed once, and I've found a handful of places I could go to that the devs didn't want me there.


Heh.
This is why playing AvP2000 marine campaign with no music on is fantastic. All you have for a warning sound is the beep from the motion detector.

Specifically Penumbra black Plague took out the combat, in the first Penumbra you could use a hammer and kill the enemies, in the latter you could throw stuff at their face and stun them.

Speaking of which, are there any ripoffs or games inspired by Penumbra in the setting way? I kinda like the Artic mixed with Bunker things, it also has some sort of charm I can't quite put my finer on. Cryostasis came close but had no puzzles not that Penumbras where some tough nuts

On the note of self defense in horror games: Why do horror games not try to implement more intuitive ways to inform the player or let the player act? Specifically Amnesias first Trailer comes to mind which showed the player using objects in the world to actually block the monsters path that wasn't some goofy collision shit or an actual soundscape that doesn't rely on music cues? I mean done right you could even take away visuals in some cases.

RE4 wasn't even that good TBH. It only sold so well because of the brand recognizion. Everything past the village is pure dogshit, and the island shouldn't even exist. Remember when you just walk through a door in the castle and suddenly you're inside a fucking VOLCANO? There's no consistency to the level design, just like there's no consistency to the "police station" in RE2&3. The 1.5 layout makes infinitely more sense.

Is level consistency really all you're going with? Because I don't recall anyone giving an atom of a shit about that across the entirety of video games before dark souls came along.

It did always bother me slightly, but lately details like that have begun to really grind my gears. Just like >clip when talking about a magazine, chambering a new round when you already have one in the chamber, magic magazines that load themselves when you pick up ammo, etc.

I was also hinting at RE4 becoming a complete rooty tooty shooter after the village, where the game just showers you in magnums, shotguns, rocket launchers, healing items and ammo, and all the suspense is gone.

I could never get into these, the first one I've tried was dracula something back in the day and I instantly though "it's a fucking jpg picture stretched around camera".
And when they finally made proper 3D one, guess what, it turned out to be gone homo.

Yeah, that's a succinct way to put it.

This is probably takes more talent and money to do right and draws less moron youtubers. Which is the reason imo we've seen a flood of run and hide games. A classic like REmake is probably too hard and too hard to make.


The only Lovecraft story I think is truly great is Whisperer in the Darkness. It's got the conspiracy, the awful lurking truths people weren't meant to see, the mythos. Someone goes insane in almost everything he wrote, but its the only one imo that has its protagonists world methodically stripped of its normalcy in a way that's relatable and chilling. Most of the story is a professor writing letters to a strange hermit, and you aren't sure how reliable the old man is. Enough is left to your imagination. A character talks about not caring if he dies because apparently he's learned of a "fate worse than death." The effect is actually unnerving instead of telling you the character was unnerved. Then the stuff at the end doesn't have to be gory or even action packed, it is just weird, but that is scary bc it led you there.

Man I wish games could get some good writers once and awhile.

What OS are you using? I keep hearing people say that this game is unplayable on modern machines, doesn't help that the share thread is gone.

It's "playable", in that with the unofficial fix shit you can technically complete it, but it's insanely buggy and prone to crashing. Combine that with the shit-tier save system and you've got a recipe for tearing your hair out when you're routinely losing 10-20+ minutes of progress because the game shit the bed and you need to re-do these AWFUL scripted events, only to have them crash right before you get to a save point.