Poll: Are Old Horror Games More Scary Than New Horror Games?

[RandV80]

I definitely go with the older games. To me it's not so much about the 'horror' aspect, as it is the 'survival' part being streamlined out to make a more user friendly game.

Just compare Resident Evil 4 to Resident Evil 2. In RE2, saves were few and far between, ammo and healing items were scarce, and there were more zombies than bullets meaning you had to pick your places. In other words, suspense wasn't just created by the atmosphere but rather the knowledge that at any point in time if you screw something up there are real consequences. To me that's the 'survival' part int he survival/horror genre. RE4 on the other hand, while it had a great atmosphere, completely tossed 'survival' out the window. There was always enough ammo to shoot up every enemy, saves were frequent and unlimited, and worst of all you could restart or retry any room you entered.

In the old RE games, if you walk into a room and get mauled by zombies, you have to stop and think "do I push ahead and hope to find a first aid spray soon before I die, or do I restart to my save point made 30 minutes ago?" In the new RE games, go ahead and screw up as many times as you like, you can just retry the room till you get it perfect. They create the suspense and horror atmosphere but the gameplay has been streamlined to be linear and forgiving.

 

[TrogzTheTroll]

Older games. I mean, I was playing RE4, which, by the way is a great game, but it felt more like I was playing an action-adventure game, like Legend of Zelda, or something, than horror. So, yeah, there are some scary games still coming out now and then, but the older games, were focusing more on the horror, than on the action.

Though, some old games we're all about action, but had a creepy enough atmosphere to be considered "Scary"
I would like to direct your attention back to Half-life. It was a shooter, but it still had its very terrifying moments.

 

[Nieroshai]

In one sense, older games because of the creepy atmosphere and element of surprise. Silent Hill 2 is a great example. On the other hand, Dead Space had me afraid to turn the next corner and even running for my life at times. I would say there are more older good horror games, and now a good horror game is a rare gem.
EDIT: DS is criticized for its monster tactics, but it's STILL scary as hell to be snuck up on in soundless outer space while you're trying to escape before you run out of air. It was what I wanted Doom 3 to be.

EDIT 2: I sold Dead Space to buy Arkham Asylum, because a horror game's charm wears off after five playthroughs for achievements. I may re-buy it when it's dirt cheap. I AM looking forward to the Silent Hill 1 re-envisioning, however. It looks more genuine horror because it analyzes what actually scares you, from monster behavior to Eternal Darkness-style mindfucks.

 

[Ziltoid]

there are more old horror games that are actually scary, but i think that the Condemned series is really good and scary, I like the first person view and I think there is alot of potential for some new very scary survival horror. but for now the old games are scarier.

 

[TrogzTheTroll]

Game company: "What? Tension? Screw that! Make a monster pop out of every corner."

 

[Knonsense]

I feel like the iconic rather than superf**k realistic imagery that you find in older horror games has greater emotional resonance than what you see today. I'm not easily scared by new games but The Last Half of Darkness atill scares me when I walk into the wrong room, encounter the Shining esque little girls playing patty-cake, and get stabbed to death when I try to leave, even though I know it's coming and I'm mostly playing to see if it still scares me. Of course, I first played that when I was about eight, so it might be some kind of emotional flashback.

 

[quack35]

Dead Space is pretty good, and makes you panic a bit sometimes.

 

[TrogzTheTroll]

Dead Space is pretty good, and makes you panic a bit sometimes.

The only problem I had was, once again, scare factor. It actually lifted the mood when I dismembered all the enemies in a funny fashion.

 

[axlr4]

nemesis made me shit my self now re5 villegers are a joke.

 

[SantoUno]

Obviously the old horror games were more scary because the genre was new at the time and was just barely starting to rise and really scare our pants off. However we have grown up since then and have experienced it all so we are no longer scared. Most horror games today are just cheap wannabes of the old horror games of the 5th and 6th generation.

 

[Evil Tim]

Actually, there are some newer games that do achieve a somewhat 'scary' atmosphere, I believe STALKER is the closest I've felt to 'scared' in a game since the turn of the century.

What STALKER got right was establishing an uneasy sense of reality before trying to scare you; the surface world is dark and threatening, but full of things you're familiar with; men with guns, wild animals, odd but predictable phenomena. It's only when you go underground that things get dark, you hear weird crashes in the depths with the familiar sound of gunfire suddenly replaced by eerie silence, and you suddenly realise how alone you are. It's also why Clear Sky wasn't scary; being stalked by a couple of high-damage Bloodsuckers in a destroyed village is creepy, a roaming pack of a half-dozen ridiculously invincible Bloodsuckers isn't.

Games like FEAR can't wait to show you the monsters, and as a result there's never a sense of normality to break down disconcertingly; the older games like Silent Hill manage the same thing, with a protagonist embarking on a fairly normal objective and witnessing sanity slowly draining from the world. And as has been said by others, far too many modern games simply rely on jump-scares rather than atmosphere. Dead Space stands out particularly, if only because dodgy line-of-sight detection means it frequently plays jarring scare chords just before a monster is actually visible, leaving it to scurry by rather apologetically a moment later.

Also, enemies aren't getting any smarter; the Nemesis in Resi 3 scared people because it could break the established rules for zombies and do things only the player could do, like pass through doors. If anything, horror games have actually regressed; Dead Space's Necromorphs will flail idiotically at doorframes, and even the mighty Regenerator / Hunter is rigidly scripted.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

I would say that Fatal Frame is much scarier than Dead Space. So I guess.

 

[lacktheknack]

Yes. All the old Korean "Actually Scary" games have seemed to have been played out (Silent Hill, Fatal Frame) and all the new American ones are all just great big flashy jumpfests.

 

[SantoUno]

Yes. All the old Korean "Actually Scary" games have seemed to have been played out (Silent Hill, Fatal Frame) and all the new American ones are all just great big flashy jumpfests.

Those games are japanese not Koreon .

Don't forget the OLD Resident Evil games (1-3, Code Veronica).

 

[Smack-Ferret]

Ravenholm. First-Person platforming. Nuff' said.

 

[whycantibelinus]

There is an old 3DO/PC game called Killing Time that I think was the scariest game ever.

 

[Evil Tim]

Just as a further note on people recalling older game mechanics; most of these [limited saves with excessive distances between them, dodgy cameras, sluggish player control] were 'good' because they added to the sense of danger that was difficult to create with just blocky low-poly monsters and hammy acting; from any objective point of view, being forced to play the game more is kinda a bad thing to threaten the player with.

The real problem is, again, that monsters are still shambling morons who are simply placed in the level at specific points; the player, with modern controls and a recent save, has little reason to fear their capabilities or see them as anything but targets. I think 'fewer and smarter' needs to be the philosophy if real survival horror games are to make a comeback, as opposed to just making the monsters ever more physically grotesque, using establishing cutscenes to show the monsters as far more dangerous than they actually are [the killed-behind-glass cliche, for instance] or regressing back to using frustration as a gameplay device.

 

[TrogzTheTroll]

Ravenholm. First-Person platforming. Nuff' said.

Welcome to Ravenholm! Notice the lower half of a man hanging on a tree, what a great welcome.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

Games like Fatal frame, Silent Hill, The early Resident Evil games (not 4,5, Umbrella choronicles), Haunting Ground...Just to name few of the games that i actually enjoyed and was scared at some points.
F.E.A.R attempted to used some of the psychological ways to scare people with Alma, but honestly F.E.A.R lacked anything that created fear, i found myself laughing at the kid. The thing is that the newer games are based more on Action than psychological aspects, it just isn't immersive.
Resident Evil RE:make actually creeped me out, because you didn't know whether there was a zombie around each corner, the stupid green herbs were scarse, as were bullets when you needed them. RE4/5 = Action packed shooter with zombies coming from every direction in broad daylight, you have green herbs and first aid sprays thrown at you (not so much 4 on this one), alongside bullets in nearly every crate you bust open. That is survival action not survival horror.
/rant.