Ashley may have been completely incapable of even kicking a ganado in the shins but all the tension of her sections was removed by that bloody sliding puzzle! And I don't even have to mention the suit of armour.....Mangles69 said:
Poll: How should combat be handled in Survival Horror Games
- Thread starter G-Force
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Eternal Darkness is a rare and interesting gem. I feel that in horror, the only reason people die so often is because they're not genre-savvy enough. If we delve into the Zombie Survial Guide and World War Z, it is easy to note that you CAN overcome the zombies if you have the right head and some reliable equipment...or even if you're a nun with a candlabra. Horror that takes on the notion that brainpower can overcome a situation is viable and sometimes absolutely necessary.
Combat in survival horror games should be kept in both the categories A and B.
You should be able to fight back, but just enough for you to get away from the immediate threat. If you include no combat, where if you are discovered or attacked a few times and die, the experience becomes more frustrating and quickly breaks the immersion of the horror setting. Making combat abundant and flashy to the point of making it mandatory, you take away all the horror and suspense from the game and it quickly becomes another shooter with grotesque enemies.
There should be a horror title where you find and keep certain key items that will help you advance the game and double as make-shift weapons to defend yourself with. They can't kill the enemies, but it immobilizes them to the point where you can escape, hide, and proceed once they are gone.
You should be able to fight back, but just enough for you to get away from the immediate threat. If you include no combat, where if you are discovered or attacked a few times and die, the experience becomes more frustrating and quickly breaks the immersion of the horror setting. Making combat abundant and flashy to the point of making it mandatory, you take away all the horror and suspense from the game and it quickly becomes another shooter with grotesque enemies.
There should be a horror title where you find and keep certain key items that will help you advance the game and double as make-shift weapons to defend yourself with. They can't kill the enemies, but it immobilizes them to the point where you can escape, hide, and proceed once they are gone.
If you have combat then make it fluid, but that doesn't mean the player should be able to kill things, zombies were supposed to be notoriously hard to kill yet they became the equivalent of rats in ye olden RPGs.
Keep them coming back up, keep them crawling after you, breaking down walls, gnawing on you bit by bit,... just keep pushing the impending doom feel and players will be flipping out.
Keep them coming back up, keep them crawling after you, breaking down walls, gnawing on you bit by bit,... just keep pushing the impending doom feel and players will be flipping out.
Option A is required.
B is just shitty controls and the game will suffer for it.
C is merely a matter of increased difficulty and a great player will still mow through the monsters, laughing.
D is Doom. It's fun, but it's a straight shooter and not a survival horror game.
B is just shitty controls and the game will suffer for it.
C is merely a matter of increased difficulty and a great player will still mow through the monsters, laughing.
D is Doom. It's fun, but it's a straight shooter and not a survival horror game.
Going through the suggestions one at a time?
A. Player Defenseless: Voted for. Simply makes more sense to me in most cases;
B. Combat is Bad: Giving me bad gameplay is bad, no matter if you have a good excuse for it;
C. Good Combat: Give people the option to play this as an action game, and they will. Sort of what happened in Dead Space for me;
D. Limited Resources: Can work, but more likely it will turn into a game of inventory management and paranoid preparation as opposed to survival horror. Again, this is what happened in Dead Space for me.
By and large, if you want to evoke horror, empowering the player is not the way to go. Of course, that depends on whether evoking horror is the intended goal which, for many of the games mentioned, it really, really wasn't.
Of course, to create good plot and pacing, you need means to relieve tension and add a spark of hope. Implementing a full-on slick combat mechanic just for this narrative necessity, though, strikes me as overkill. Get creative. Weave a means to defend yourself into the narrative of the game.
A. Player Defenseless: Voted for. Simply makes more sense to me in most cases;
B. Combat is Bad: Giving me bad gameplay is bad, no matter if you have a good excuse for it;
C. Good Combat: Give people the option to play this as an action game, and they will. Sort of what happened in Dead Space for me;
D. Limited Resources: Can work, but more likely it will turn into a game of inventory management and paranoid preparation as opposed to survival horror. Again, this is what happened in Dead Space for me.
By and large, if you want to evoke horror, empowering the player is not the way to go. Of course, that depends on whether evoking horror is the intended goal which, for many of the games mentioned, it really, really wasn't.
Of course, to create good plot and pacing, you need means to relieve tension and add a spark of hope. Implementing a full-on slick combat mechanic just for this narrative necessity, though, strikes me as overkill. Get creative. Weave a means to defend yourself into the narrative of the game.
B, I found it worked great in Silent Hill. Its kinda like how it would be if I was in the situation - yes I can physically fight back but I'm not strong, nor have I had any experience in combat (Id expect the same of a writer/journalist/teenage girl/etc). So it really helped the immersion aspect.
To me, the combat mechanics doesn't effect if a game is scary or not, just as long as they make sense within the context of who the player character is. If the character is a experianced combatant like in Condemend, I'd expect there to be combat that is fluent and that can match the skill level that the character is supposed to have. While in a game like Silent Hill it makes sense that the combat is awkward, because the characters in that are just normal people who don't have that much fighting experiance. It really just is all about emersion, you know?
Looks at Poll options. Looks at example. Looks at Poll options. Looks at example.G-Force said:
Do you know what "scarce" means? Maybe it's just me, but every Las Plagas and their dog was dropping ammo.
OT: There isn't any one right answer. It depends on the game in particular.
Also, getting the Purple rune in Eternal Darkness pretty much removes all "weakness".
I really didn't want to say it, but if I posed the question "what style of combat does the RPG genre the most justice: Final Fantasy XIII, Torchlight, or Dragon Age: Origins?" I would expect to be eaten alive, hell I already kind of do expect this. It's a very subjective thing, and its generally in the hands of the developer (Executive Meddling notwithstanding). There's a lot of players out there who don't want to feel tension and the nail-biting a lot of us happen to love.
It really depends on the overall design, I remember a lot of people back in the day when Zelda Windwaker came out not being happy about the "stealth" section at the beginning, I even remember saying "Oh come on, if I wanted to play Metal Gear I would have put that in!"
It really depends on the overall design, I remember a lot of people back in the day when Zelda Windwaker came out not being happy about the "stealth" section at the beginning, I even remember saying "Oh come on, if I wanted to play Metal Gear I would have put that in!"
I can understand A C and D working. A is problematic since in any survival horror, atmosphere is everything, and since your not going to be in a empty room with nothing in it, you can easily find a weapon of some kind, like a club or pole or something.
C works the best, by making you weak but able to fight, forcing you to chose your fights instead of just running away or hiding all the time. Its best to give a option of the two, like you can hide and wait, fight it out with skill, or sneak by somehow.
D can work in games like Aliens, Doom, Dead space, ect. By giving you resources to use like rifles and grenades, but also giving you terrifying enemies made to claw at your sanity and have to have extreme atmospheres to work.
Depends on the game you are going for. In all honesty all these games should have some mechanic of combat, because its not over until you die, and its not hard to find a piece of wood to smack over a head.
C works the best, by making you weak but able to fight, forcing you to chose your fights instead of just running away or hiding all the time. Its best to give a option of the two, like you can hide and wait, fight it out with skill, or sneak by somehow.
D can work in games like Aliens, Doom, Dead space, ect. By giving you resources to use like rifles and grenades, but also giving you terrifying enemies made to claw at your sanity and have to have extreme atmospheres to work.
Depends on the game you are going for. In all honesty all these games should have some mechanic of combat, because its not over until you die, and its not hard to find a piece of wood to smack over a head.
I don't think combat should be made artificially difficult by game mechanics; I think it should be made difficult by circumstances that occur organically in the game.
Let's take a zombie game, for example. What do we typically get in that genre? Loads of ammunition left in places that make little sense, zombie "hordes" that are usually limited to a dozen or so, and melee weapons that are your "get out of death free" card as you smack the zeds around effortlessly.
Now think about how it would play out in real life. A zombie horde would have dozens, maybe even hundreds of individuals; they would be relentless, seeking you out wherever you went, ignoring all sorts of hazards. Ammunition would be difficult to find and would depend highly on your weapon of choice (good luck finding .50AE rounds for your Desert Eagle just lying around). The sound of a gunshot is going to draw all sorts of attention. And considering that it takes a lot of strength to swing a baseball bat or fire axe hard enough to decapitate or smash the brain of a human body, you'd only be able to bring down a few before you'd risk making yourself too tired to run... never mind that, while you're standing there swinging, you've got zombies trying to grab your arms and immobilize you.
DayZ does a lot of this right, but it does quite a few things wrong as well, which is why I can't quite recommend it as the "gold standard".
Let's take a zombie game, for example. What do we typically get in that genre? Loads of ammunition left in places that make little sense, zombie "hordes" that are usually limited to a dozen or so, and melee weapons that are your "get out of death free" card as you smack the zeds around effortlessly.
Now think about how it would play out in real life. A zombie horde would have dozens, maybe even hundreds of individuals; they would be relentless, seeking you out wherever you went, ignoring all sorts of hazards. Ammunition would be difficult to find and would depend highly on your weapon of choice (good luck finding .50AE rounds for your Desert Eagle just lying around). The sound of a gunshot is going to draw all sorts of attention. And considering that it takes a lot of strength to swing a baseball bat or fire axe hard enough to decapitate or smash the brain of a human body, you'd only be able to bring down a few before you'd risk making yourself too tired to run... never mind that, while you're standing there swinging, you've got zombies trying to grab your arms and immobilize you.
DayZ does a lot of this right, but it does quite a few things wrong as well, which is why I can't quite recommend it as the "gold standard".
Combat cant be sluggish on purpose, Resident Evil 5 (and 4 for fuck sakes) has terrible movement that doesnt even make sense, since when cant a person move multiple directions while facing forward?
Make good level design and make the reticle sway while moving (they made the player to be able to move and aim at the same time in RE6 but the accuracy is always high so it defeats the whole point and instead of being hard for the wrong reasons it becomes easy for the wrong reasons, its CAPCOM after all).
Give a pistol to the player from time to time with a few rounds, use the "stress" system from Amnesia, the longer you aim at the monster the more you shake the weapon (the weapon it self not being all that easy to aim due to a decent amount of sway). Make it hard as balls to be accurate while moving and there you go, a gun that needs skill and patience to be usefull instead of turning you into a "zombie slayer" the moment you pick it up.
To use a pistol properly the player would have to aproach the monster carefully and aim quickly and effectively at the weak point (head). From far away it would be likely to miss and if it took too much time the character would start to flip out. Bonus for making the character more nervous (shakey) if the monster is aware of his presence.
Shit, even a shotgun can be used, just give it some limitations like:
-only two bullets when found (not much ammo lying around, so dont expect more)
-cant store it in the inventory (either carry it on your hands and use it or drop it)
-gunshots are loud and atract monsters
-more sway then usual due to being heavier
-slows speed of player
Basicly the shotgun is now a weapon to use on the moment if shit gets real and one is lying around instead of being a weapon that the player takes to blow shit up and store it for latter.
Amnesia is cool but the whole gameplay is summed up with puzzles and hiding in closets, there isnt much more to into gameplay wise.
Make good level design and make the reticle sway while moving (they made the player to be able to move and aim at the same time in RE6 but the accuracy is always high so it defeats the whole point and instead of being hard for the wrong reasons it becomes easy for the wrong reasons, its CAPCOM after all).
Give a pistol to the player from time to time with a few rounds, use the "stress" system from Amnesia, the longer you aim at the monster the more you shake the weapon (the weapon it self not being all that easy to aim due to a decent amount of sway). Make it hard as balls to be accurate while moving and there you go, a gun that needs skill and patience to be usefull instead of turning you into a "zombie slayer" the moment you pick it up.
To use a pistol properly the player would have to aproach the monster carefully and aim quickly and effectively at the weak point (head). From far away it would be likely to miss and if it took too much time the character would start to flip out. Bonus for making the character more nervous (shakey) if the monster is aware of his presence.
Shit, even a shotgun can be used, just give it some limitations like:
-only two bullets when found (not much ammo lying around, so dont expect more)
-cant store it in the inventory (either carry it on your hands and use it or drop it)
-gunshots are loud and atract monsters
-more sway then usual due to being heavier
-slows speed of player
Basicly the shotgun is now a weapon to use on the moment if shit gets real and one is lying around instead of being a weapon that the player takes to blow shit up and store it for latter.
Amnesia is cool but the whole gameplay is summed up with puzzles and hiding in closets, there isnt much more to into gameplay wise.