Well I never actually finished Amnesia..... so that should give you a good idea.
Generally no though. Then again, I don't play many horror games.
Generally no though. Then again, I don't play many horror games.
Do horror games actually scare you?
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I've halted progress on Alien Isolation for a while because the pressure of playing that game got to me so much my real world fight or flight reflexes were on edge. It isn't the jumpscares so much as the atmosphere and the pressure/pacing of trying to stay off the radar of the Xenomorph. I actually haven't died once in that game, but I think that only added to the stress in a strange way.
I love the game for exactly that reason though. It managed to make the Xenomorph and the concept of a loose alien stalking you through a spaceship/station scary again.
I love the game for exactly that reason though. It managed to make the Xenomorph and the concept of a loose alien stalking you through a spaceship/station scary again.
I dunno, think I fall out of the norm a little bit. I found Amnesia boring, and Alien Isolation to be more irritating than anything. Outlast I enjoyed, but it only scared me marginally. The huge sewer bit was pretty tense, when you can only see through the camera NV, but I was already dreading that moment when I would be hunted and having only that short range of vision. At least I got through it fairly quick.
When I was a kid though, Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil 2 and 3 scared the pants off me. Loved those games. After that, I only found Fear 1 to be thoroughly scary at times. I appreciate creepy atmosphere, and love games that do it well, but I haven't been scared in the longest time, daresay I just don't get scared by games or movies at all anymore.
OP's mentioning Silent Hill: Homecoming is interesting, such varying opinions on the how and why it is scary. I only dabbled in it briefly, and hadn't got my head around the controls yet so found it a bit of a clunk fest. But I might give it another go if I'm in the mood for something like it.
When I was a kid though, Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil 2 and 3 scared the pants off me. Loved those games. After that, I only found Fear 1 to be thoroughly scary at times. I appreciate creepy atmosphere, and love games that do it well, but I haven't been scared in the longest time, daresay I just don't get scared by games or movies at all anymore.
OP's mentioning Silent Hill: Homecoming is interesting, such varying opinions on the how and why it is scary. I only dabbled in it briefly, and hadn't got my head around the controls yet so found it a bit of a clunk fest. But I might give it another go if I'm in the mood for something like it.
Like I said I can understand why some people don't like it, and poor controls can certainly be one of them. But I think it got something of a bad rep from the ZP review, and deserves a few more points in its favor than it gets generally. But its certainly a different Silent Hill to 1-4.JohnnyDelRay said:
That's what I initially felt from the alien, but once it starts killing you, and there are several trial/error sections that are damn near impossible to get through without dying a dozen or so times, it gets annoying. I quickly got tired of the alien and would much rather just deal with the working joes. They at least gave you a chance to fight, escape and try again once you've gotten your wits back. The alien is just an overly long melee golden gun. Just reload when you hear his angry hiss that he's found you.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
I get "Startled" but never scared because I know I'm under no genuine threat.
In fact, jump scares might give me that brief 'scare' but I always leave it annoyed, and will avoid them for that purpose. I'd love to play Amnesia
ark Descent but I'd rather just watch Let's Players do it.
In fact, jump scares might give me that brief 'scare' but I always leave it annoyed, and will avoid them for that purpose. I'd love to play Amnesia
ark Descent but I'd rather just watch Let's Players do it.Can happen, but happens rarely.
Usually two things need to come together :
- Deep immersion in setting/story and character
- Then not being allowed to take reasonable precautions or to act according to the obvious known danger, forcing you to accept glaring obvious week points and feel really vulnerable. One such option would be to be allowed to move a path, but not be allowed to look at the direction where you expect an attack to come from
I am not saying that i actually enjoy this.
Usually two things need to come together :
- Deep immersion in setting/story and character
- Then not being allowed to take reasonable precautions or to act according to the obvious known danger, forcing you to accept glaring obvious week points and feel really vulnerable. One such option would be to be allowed to move a path, but not be allowed to look at the direction where you expect an attack to come from
I am not saying that i actually enjoy this.
No, not me. Never. I have played a lot of what might be called Horror Games, but for all the ones I have played since the mid 1990's, none of them have genuinely scared or terrified me. Some of the more recent games rely too heavily on jump scares and predictable Hollywood cliches.
Doom 3 did me in when I was younger, likewise with the first Dead Space - while they both used a lot of jump scares, they both did atmosphere really well, and Dead Space had the benefit of doing Survival Horror well by often putting you in positions where you were low on ammo and health, unsure of just what was going to come around that next corner.
Currently, Alien Isolation is doing good for me - the jump scares a bit annoying (never a fan of insta-kill mechanics), but it does a solid enough job of setting up atmosphere, and hearing the alien skulk around is unnerving as hell since it can just appear out of nowhere much of the time. I imagine it'll lose it's edge later in the game when it gets treated more like a puzzle gateway rather than a constant threat, but for now it's doing the horror well.
Funnily enough, lots of actual horror games don't do much for me since they all tend to follow the same ol' beats that the horror genre itself has been working over for the last 40 years. Half the time I play a horror game it just devolves into me calling the game on it's cliched shit, which thoroughly fucks over any immersion or atmosphere. Hard to be scared when I've seen the exact same scene a dozen times before in other games or movies, that's for sure.
Currently, Alien Isolation is doing good for me - the jump scares a bit annoying (never a fan of insta-kill mechanics), but it does a solid enough job of setting up atmosphere, and hearing the alien skulk around is unnerving as hell since it can just appear out of nowhere much of the time. I imagine it'll lose it's edge later in the game when it gets treated more like a puzzle gateway rather than a constant threat, but for now it's doing the horror well.
Funnily enough, lots of actual horror games don't do much for me since they all tend to follow the same ol' beats that the horror genre itself has been working over for the last 40 years. Half the time I play a horror game it just devolves into me calling the game on it's cliched shit, which thoroughly fucks over any immersion or atmosphere. Hard to be scared when I've seen the exact same scene a dozen times before in other games or movies, that's for sure.
Meh. Games only tend to catch me off guard and scare me when I'm focused on something else that the game has presented to me, and I completely forget that the game can do whatever the hell it likes at any moment.
Like Layers of Fear, for example. I was intrigued by the story, and went onwards to figure out what the big hoopla was with all the weird and kinda ugly paintings, wondering what they represented(I'm a huge fan of symbolism in art and media) and then when I think I know what the paintings mean, I go into a room and find another painting contradicting what I thought of the previous painting, and then I think "Wow, this plot is getting convoluted and enigmatic, let's play more and find the end result" and then WHAM!
WIFE-MONSTER!
That's the sort of stuff that scares me. When I completely forget about the monsters, and that I am more focused on the plot than anything else. I loved Layers of Fear, because when it used jump-scares it wasn't just because the game was scripted to jumpscare me, but because I knew it was MY fault that I got jump-scared when I let my guard down and rebelled against the game's yellow-brick-road which I knew had been laid out for me in search for clues to the game's plot.
But sometimes when I rebelled I got burned when I didn't follow the obvious path. I had gotten to a point where I wouldn't know whether I should follow the clear path, or whether I should try and go around it. When I am uncertain, that's when I am scared the easiest.
Like Layers of Fear, for example. I was intrigued by the story, and went onwards to figure out what the big hoopla was with all the weird and kinda ugly paintings, wondering what they represented(I'm a huge fan of symbolism in art and media) and then when I think I know what the paintings mean, I go into a room and find another painting contradicting what I thought of the previous painting, and then I think "Wow, this plot is getting convoluted and enigmatic, let's play more and find the end result" and then WHAM!
WIFE-MONSTER!
That's the sort of stuff that scares me. When I completely forget about the monsters, and that I am more focused on the plot than anything else. I loved Layers of Fear, because when it used jump-scares it wasn't just because the game was scripted to jumpscare me, but because I knew it was MY fault that I got jump-scared when I let my guard down and rebelled against the game's yellow-brick-road which I knew had been laid out for me in search for clues to the game's plot.
But sometimes when I rebelled I got burned when I didn't follow the obvious path. I had gotten to a point where I wouldn't know whether I should follow the clear path, or whether I should try and go around it. When I am uncertain, that's when I am scared the easiest.
Dead Space 1.
As it happens i have this particular phobia of being trapped on a poorly lit massive spaceship infested with grosteque creatures that jump out of the shadows and go ooga booga. So yeh games like dead space 1 are genuinely terrifying to me in a way that probably makes no sense for normal people.
As it happens i have this particular phobia of being trapped on a poorly lit massive spaceship infested with grosteque creatures that jump out of the shadows and go ooga booga. So yeh games like dead space 1 are genuinely terrifying to me in a way that probably makes no sense for normal people.
Aliens vs. Predator 2 on PC. Specifically the Marine campaign when you're on your own navigating the outpost. There's no ambient music, just environmental noise and that. Fucking. Motion. Tracker! It even acts as a tension barometer with it's dull pulse acting as your relaxed heartbeat until shit starts moving and the beeping starts.
That one did a number on me.
That one did a number on me.
Saya no Uta. I don't care what the others said, but the scene
It was a mess-up experience for me.
SOMA also was a great game when
The whole Theme is scary if you sit down and think about it.
with the father killing his family was the point I saw myself openign my mouth from fear.
SOMA also was a great game when
for the "first" time you realised how mess-up is to copy yourself.
I never finished Fatal Frame 2... although, to be fair, that was largley because I got stuck on some dumb puzzle. Still, back in the day I did find that incredibly hard to play for prolonged sessions.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC had its moments, as when I first played it I more or less expected just a conventional shooter. So when boxes and chairs started floating I was genuinely creeped out.
Ditto F.E.A.R., although obviously I went in knowing it was some kind of unholy mash-up of bullet time flavoured FPS and Ring. I've not played it in absolutely years so I've no idea if it really holds up, but that was one of the best FPS experiences I ever had, and that many plenty of scares'n'chills.
I also remember the Dunwich building in Fallout 3 being quite hard to get through...
I'm not sure it's fair or overly useful to discount jump scares, though. Often, a good horror experience will use a variety of means to get a reaction, and jump scares are simply a part of that toolset. They can be used well or poorly just like anything else. Plus, chills, scares, dread, etc - it's all very subjective terminology, so it's hard to specifically compare other people's experiences with your own.
A recent example is SOMA; most reviews/critiques didn't seem to find that overly horrific or scary at all, but even the LP had several moments that got me, and had I been playing it would've had an even greater impact (I'd agree the 'it's a horror game' label doesn't quite fit, though. maybe 'Warning: contains existential horror' is more accurate... ).
Overall, though, whilst I can be easily immersed in a game's world and be 'scared' (use of sound is typically the most potent device; the eye cannot really be fooled, but the ear certainly can as the mind then swiftly compensates to fill in the blanks, so to speak) - and I can find that enjoyable - I don't buy horror films or games as I just prefer other genres/forms.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC had its moments, as when I first played it I more or less expected just a conventional shooter. So when boxes and chairs started floating I was genuinely creeped out.
Ditto F.E.A.R., although obviously I went in knowing it was some kind of unholy mash-up of bullet time flavoured FPS and Ring. I've not played it in absolutely years so I've no idea if it really holds up, but that was one of the best FPS experiences I ever had, and that many plenty of scares'n'chills.
I also remember the Dunwich building in Fallout 3 being quite hard to get through...
I'm not sure it's fair or overly useful to discount jump scares, though. Often, a good horror experience will use a variety of means to get a reaction, and jump scares are simply a part of that toolset. They can be used well or poorly just like anything else. Plus, chills, scares, dread, etc - it's all very subjective terminology, so it's hard to specifically compare other people's experiences with your own.
A recent example is SOMA; most reviews/critiques didn't seem to find that overly horrific or scary at all, but even the LP had several moments that got me, and had I been playing it would've had an even greater impact (I'd agree the 'it's a horror game' label doesn't quite fit, though. maybe 'Warning: contains existential horror' is more accurate... ).
Overall, though, whilst I can be easily immersed in a game's world and be 'scared' (use of sound is typically the most potent device; the eye cannot really be fooled, but the ear certainly can as the mind then swiftly compensates to fill in the blanks, so to speak) - and I can find that enjoyable - I don't buy horror films or games as I just prefer other genres/forms.
Part of my dislike of jump-scares is I don't feel like it ever adds to the experience. Or at least never adds anything that can't be easily replaced.Darth Rosenberg said:
Take FNaF for example. The premise alone is scary. Haunted robots trying to kill you. Spooky. The jump scares take away from that. First time it gets you sure, because its loud and sudden. After that as long as your volume is at a reasonable level, it stops being scary. You may not know the exact second its coming, so your heart may flutter a bit at the next one, but you don't jump or scream anymore. And that heart thing is all involuntary anyway, and I'm sure if you had control of it, it wouldn't.
I don't like jumpscares because you can replace every single one of them with a door slamming or an air horn and your waifu touching your leg when you're not looking. Anything that's unexpected in that second. Anything, from a cat to a ghost to a phone call to Wesley Snipes to someone clapping .5seconds before you're ready for it at a concert. Hell, it may not even be fair to call them scares at all, because you don't have to be anything scary to get a reaction. You just have to startle. Jump-startle. That's more accurate.
I know it can seem like a cop-out answer, but; that is very subjective. Just because they don't do anything for you doesn't mean they're not a valid stylistic choice, or that they can't work effectively for other people.Silentpony said:
What isn't subjective is that, clearly, regardless of whatever jump scares 'are', they endure, and audiences do enjoy them.
As for "jump-startle": that'd be fine, as that also relates to what I said about subjective associations with what on earth a scare even is in the first place. But that still doesn't discredit them as a tool in film or game creation; be it some creepy beastie or a scene in Cruel Intentions (I have a friend who jumped in the cinema during that film, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be a horror or chiller film... ), it's a provoked reaction. If it works, it works - and so job done for the creator.
I'm no fan of jumpscares or games that purposefully take away self defense/combat generally speaking. Yet Outlast really did impress me with it's understanding and respect for the genre and subject matter, while still pushing a few boundaries in ways that don't come off as "trying too hard" or whatever the best phrasing is. The few jump scares within were well placed and played upon expectations where I didn't feel cheated by the game. It can be stressful at times, but am legitimately interested in the sequel and how it will change up the formula. The recent demo had a couple of interesting ideas and well executed moments that cemented my faith in Red Barrels talent for the particular genre of horror.
Soma also had the best suffocating sense of mortal dread and despair that works so well for the philosophical minded and there really isn't another experience like it. The more you allow the ideas to be mulled upon, the more frightening it can be. Also, the designs with the AI failing to merge properly with lifeforms did inspire a certain desire within for future disturbing art scenes, as am very intrigued with how far imagery can be pushed to unsettle people in different ways without resorting to the cliches and pain empathic responses to mutilation/gore/sexual violence etc etc.
Will be trying the Amnesia collection soon. From the snippet I once tried of DD with headphones, the sound design alone sold it pretty well. It's way too long ago since playing SH2 or Fatal Frame/Project Zero 2, so can't effectively comment on the experience there, but they do stand out from the hazy vagueness of obscured memories. Downpour had the right atmosphere and ideas, but boring enemies.
Bloodborne isn't so much scary as a game, it has greatly unsettling design and the darkest of settings, but its' orchestral music is terrifying, and brilliant.
Am always up to a challenge of being horrified, considering reality is often the most horrific of things to witness. So any fiction's welcome to try and outdo that or at least temporarily distract from that. (Oh, did not mean to write that much crap, sorry).
Soma also had the best suffocating sense of mortal dread and despair that works so well for the philosophical minded and there really isn't another experience like it. The more you allow the ideas to be mulled upon, the more frightening it can be. Also, the designs with the AI failing to merge properly with lifeforms did inspire a certain desire within for future disturbing art scenes, as am very intrigued with how far imagery can be pushed to unsettle people in different ways without resorting to the cliches and pain empathic responses to mutilation/gore/sexual violence etc etc.
Will be trying the Amnesia collection soon. From the snippet I once tried of DD with headphones, the sound design alone sold it pretty well. It's way too long ago since playing SH2 or Fatal Frame/Project Zero 2, so can't effectively comment on the experience there, but they do stand out from the hazy vagueness of obscured memories. Downpour had the right atmosphere and ideas, but boring enemies.
Bloodborne isn't so much scary as a game, it has greatly unsettling design and the darkest of settings, but its' orchestral music is terrifying, and brilliant.
Am always up to a challenge of being horrified, considering reality is often the most horrific of things to witness. So any fiction's welcome to try and outdo that or at least temporarily distract from that.
(Oh, did not mean to write that much crap, sorry).
The original silent hill got me too. The weird little claw things in the alleyway at the start really messed me up. I feel like the terrible camera angles really helped there. I was afraid of those things for the rest of the game.
But what really got me was the school shadows.
But what really got me was the school shadows.