Saturday Night Horror Thread

I'm playing through Silent Hill for the first time and it still holds up extremely well. The control improvements they made compared to RE are great (sidestepping, instant 180, moving while aiming) and made the combat way more fun while still keeping things slightly clumsy as a Survival Horror should be. The horror elements are very well done, it has RE beat in this department so hard, goddamn. I've also never heard a soundtrack so fitting for a Horror game before, Akira Yamaoka did a fantastic job. Only complaints I have are that it gives out a bit too much ammo and healing items (so far), it focuses way too hard on real lived in spaces, making the level design a bit samey (classrooms all look the same, square box, realistic yes, but not the best for level design) making it a bit hard to remember certain rooms and their locations.

I think the PS1 era graphics actually work in its favor, since they are shit, you have no idea what you are even looking at, which enhances the horror. The use of lighting and color perfectly match the atmosphere they were trying to create, way fucking better than modern games that just lazily make everything pitch black, which is more annoying than anything. There are tons of little touches I love as well, like how you can't look at your map or interact with anything if your flashlight is off, but you can stealth around some enemies. The static emitted when enemies are around is unnerving and makes things more tense, it seems like they put a ton of effort into how certain sounds can mess with people, the sound design is top notch. This is probably going to be one of my all time favorite games if it stays this good to the end, I'm kicking myself for not playing it sooner.

Playing TEW2
I'll be back

The abundance of health and ammo will be a boon in the later stages of the game if I'm not mistaken, user. At a certain point it goes full nowhere and you're running around chainlink mazes that alter from place to place and there's way more enemies to deal with.

Must suck only being able to think in absolutes.

I think female protags in Horror games work really well since it makes you feel more vulnerable and weak. If you're playing a guy, well why don't you just punch the fuck out of the monster or crush it with a fucking TV or some shit. Since men are much stronger and taller, obstacles that would obstruct women and make for interesting puzzles would just be trivial, if you're a guy you can just push the heavy thing out of the way or reach up and grab whatever is above you, you can also swing heavy objects with ease and control recoil of firearms much better as well as run faster. Men are built for harsh situations like this whereas women are built for just making babies, so playing as someone so out of their element like that adds to the horror.

I'm not one of the fags that thinks all games should have femal protags and I don't mind male survival horror protags at all, I just think it works in this instance.

I actually agree with that. But I think it's not only females appearing more vulnerable and weak, but male players also having a biological protector instinct towards them; one that runs amok and makes you panic when the female gets into a dangerous situation.

Add to this a third-person camera (over the shoulder or with fixed cameras), and you recognize the character as an independent entity that, while controlled by you, still feels more like someone else than something your control from a first-person camera.

I think being unable to protect/guide such independent character during stress situations actually builds up and enormous amount of psychological pressure on the player, especially with tank controls where you are more or less helpless to see the figure that relied on you being torn to pieces by monsters because of some poor decisions you made. In this context, it would be interesting to see how players react if you make this "control scenario" more obvious, i.e., you do not actually control the character, but the latter has a basic AI that follows scripted orders from you.

To put it into perspective: Imagine the actual player character has to guide the protagonist through the doomy house of doom via radio and while observing him or her through security cameras only. And then shit happens, you keep shouting into the mic for the protag to GTFO of the room as quickly as possible. Especially because your camera view allows you to see things the protagonist can't, including other rooms in which ghosts and whatnot just begin to manifest and move towards your charge.

Of course, you'd need to have the player empathize with and care about the protagonist enough to make it really scary. Could be all the little things - like the protag uneasily asking if you're still there if you haven't given out a command in a while.

I swear there was a game that did something very similar to this but unfortunately had very iffy voice recognition. I think it was released for the PS2? My memory of it is super vague.

I find that difficult to believe, especially given how much of a pain in the ass it would be to narrow down the respective commands in combination with the notoriously shaky voice control.

Found it. Lifeline by Konami.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeline_(video_game)

Would love to see a modern take on this game.

It was a pretty good bossfight. Cheesed that with the upgrade that increases damage with each consecutive hit.

Noice. Thanks for digging it up, user. Will have a look into it.

I've been playing Vampire: Bloodlines a lot, can I chill with you guys? It's more an RPG but it's got a lot of comfy horror elements. Gonna start playing survival horror as we get closer to Halloween.

It's been like a decade since I played it but I remember the haunted house section being really well done, also those monsters that were just a head with limbs and fast as fuck scared the shit out of me. Would love to see more genres crossover with Horror, at the very least it ends up with a great aesthetic. A new Horror FPS in the same vein as DOOM 3 and FEAR for example, just with proper low ammo count and limited supplies of Survival Horror.

I'd play the shit out of it. Shame it seems like we'll never get a sequel to Bloodlines and it seems like after Skyrim RPGs are swinging fantasy.

Wouldn't work with the mass market. People would cry about too little ammo/health kits/whatever faster than you could believe.

But that's basically what Evil Within 2 is on Nightmare mode, and nobody is complaining.

1. How many people played Evil Within 2
2. How many people played Evil Within 2 in nightmare mode.

If the "gamers" won't complain, it'll be fucking Polygon.

But Polygoy loves Evil Within 2. That's the wonderful thing about properly balanced difficulty modes that alter resource distribution and gameplay mechanics. 'Casual' mode is for Holes and Journos. 'Survival' mode is for normalfags. 'Nightmare' mode is for Survival Horror fans. Finally there's the unlockable 'Classic' mode which is a meme difficulty mode and has highly limited saves, etc.

Everyone can pick the difficulty level that's suitable for them and have a good time. That is the proper mass-market approach.

Even on survival there's barely any ammo. If anything I found an overabundance of first aid kids and medical syringes.

I was looking forward to that, but no dice it seems.

Now that Visceral games was thoroughly raped to death by EA and had to close, how would you make a proper sequel to Dead Space 1, assuming you had sufficient resources?

Playing Destiny2

Is FOR HONOR (un)dead yet?

KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI KICHI

Honestly I wouldn't. Dead space was pretty heh.

I honestly hate how niche markets are treated even though those markets are usually the ones who have the most innovation in them

Finished my first playthrough on Nightmare. They really, REALLY want you to use stealth; can't play it like RE4. The boss type enemies you start regularly encountering take obscene amounts of damage to kill; you can easily unload you entire inventory into them and they'll still be on your ass.

Now I'm gonna try to play through it again on the "super hardcore" difficulty, but no weapon upgrades probably just means I'm almost never going to use guns. I can't imagine it will make the game very much fun.

I really don't have any complaints for the first Dead Space though I haven't played it in a very long time. From what I remember I think they really nailed how to do a TPS style Survival Horror game. I wouldn't mind a sequel that was just more of the same but with new environments, weapons and enemies, so an expansion basically. It does make me really sad that we won't be seeing Isaac anymore, that series is such wasted potential, fucking EA is goddamn cancer made manifest in publisher form. What are the chances of many of the members of Visceral getting together, starting an indie dev team and making a spiritual successor through kickstarter?

I was playing The Void but no spooks only frustration and tits so I went to try spooky mansion of jump scares but it doesn't run so I installed F.E.A.R. Extraction Point.
So i'm a bit spooked I guess.

God what happened to these kinds of reviews

the one with the reporters?where you were teh camera guy and had to lead the anchor gal/guy by pointing at things or flashing the camera lights?