Poll: Was Dead Space scary?

[IanBrazen]

I never played so I'll ask you guys.

Resident Evil 4 was a great thiller/scary game for me. Would Dead Space give me the same experience? If so, then I really should look into buying it.

it follows RE4 formula to the letter but it dose it so well that I say you should go get it.
And if you want a game that will scar your soul go get Silent Hill 4: The Room.
Fuck SH2, SH2 had the best story by far, but SH4 was the scariest.
Its the only game that I could not finish, and I dont scare easily.

 

[Exocet]

It was stressing for the first hour or so because you were getting used to controls and were trying to kill enemies correctly with your pistol by aiming for legs/arms.
Then I got the line gun.
A zombie?
*fires line gun*
What zombie?
Also,giving you the oportunity to make weapns even more powerful with upgrades didn't help the atmosphere.
What was supposed to be an epic battle against a huge monster became a more gory version of duck hunt with the light gun replaced with a pistol probably capable of shooting through the hull of the fucking ship.

 

[Jumplion]

For a professional horror-playing gamer, no I suppose it wouldn't be genuinely scary.

But for people who very rarely play horror games (IE Me), Dead Space is definitely a good start for most people into the genre. It's a very enjoyable horror game that you can really get into if you're just starting the genre, and I'm just a sucker for games that have upgrade trees/branches like getting powernodes and upgrading the tree trying to find the most resourcefull branch to use or decide to save it for a door that might need it.

Overall, I personally found it to be quite tense and only played it a little at a time, but for more experienced horror players I could see why it would feel less scary and not horror-y as some other games like Silent Hill.

EDIT: And I must agree with some poster here, the parts where you're in the vacuum of space and all you can hear is your breathing becoming more labored the longer you stay out there can be extremely intense in itself. Those parts, I thought, were damn fine.

 

[captain wow]

Wasn't the scariest game in the world but it had its moments, not a patch on the old Resident Evils or Silent Hills. Great atmosphere though, thought the sound design and the music were very effective. especially the high pitched string pieces that slowly fade out just after enemy encounters. kind of like a rapid heart beat returning to normal. Or something.

 

[Raptorace18]

Now I know for sure that as a credible authority on this game I'm somewhere between that video game hating monitor (you know who I'm talkin bout) and Caitlin Gorden King, owing to the fact that I have never actually played this game because I was so entrenched in Fallout 3 they needed the silver spade to unearth me. If I were to say one thing however, I'd say that the deaths are pretty blood filled and violent and so over done that it would make you want to have Issac get killed by every monster in the game just to see what happens.

 

[deleted20220820]

DELETED

 

[Ruagh]

I didn't think it was that scary. At the start of the game, yeah, it's creepy, but once you get severing monster limbs down to a fine art, the fear kind of dies with all those poor monsters.

Although I will admit, anytime that regenerating monster showed up I'd shit a brick and run across half the level in a blind panic.

That thing REALLY scared me.

 

[duchaked]

I'm not one for horror or scary elements in games and movies

lol I mean it shouldn't make anyone feel less about themselves (or better)
seriously

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

This is kinda funny I only got scared of the same bit as OP but seriously that bit and sometimes the bit with the Hunter or Brute was scary if you weren't expecting them as once you got a gun you were set.

 

[Mr.Black]

I'm still shitting my pants. Not desensitised to these games yet.

 

[internetzealot1]

I've beaten it about four times, and I know most of the pop-out moments. But the atmosphere is still scary.

 

[Sephychu]

I jumped at a couple of bits where the aliens poped out of nowhere and shit myself when undead Nicola jumps you at the end but apart from that it wasn't scary as such

Thank you. Thank you very much.

 

[Asymptote Angel]

At first it was, but it didn't really get inside my head. It only had a few tricks for getting you to jump, and they started repeating around two hours in. The monsters, for all their grotesquery, kind of lost their shock value too. The game wasn't badly designed, but it seemed to tire out after the first half.

 

[Jaranja]

Not at all. Jumpy at times, but not scared.

Absolute rubbish. How about when you first come onto the ship and you're chased by the Necromorph and it claws open the lift doors to eat you?

 

[Sephychu]

I do find the game scary. Not only the 'morphs themselves, but also the oft unnoticed psychological aspect of it all. The unexplained parts. The bits which are just damn weird.

Chapter 2? The Crazy bloody lady sawing that live, skinless guy?

 

[Flour]

Edit: Hm, I already suggested above that a bit of subtle mindfuckery would work, but let me give an idea. How about leading the player to a monster without any kind of fanfare and without any kind of lighting? As the player tries to restore the lights to the place or find some lighting equipment, the monster attacks him/her every once in a while and the player will have no idea where it came from and will either run like a scared little girl or shoot the shit out of everything like he/she is Rambo or sth. And then, just like Rambo, he runs out of ammo! Oops!

The problem with that is that it isn't scary, annoying.
If the player got a short-range motion tracker like the one in the AvP2 expansion [http://i45.tinypic.com/5ufn7k.jpg], then it could work. The reason for this is that the motion tracker acts as a sonar that goes through walls but is never accurate enough to completely depend on it. The sound of the motion tracker is just background noise but it's also important enough that you will focus on it and hearing that change is a lot scarier than any monster jumping out of the darkness. The changed sound doesn't even have to be from an enemy, it could just be a door opening/closing or something falling down.

On-topic: no it wasn't scary and my suggestion is right above this part of my post. My explanation isn't great but it doesn't have to be because it's basically the "low health effect". You can't ignore it and it makes you more aware of your surroundings, especially when the motion tracker shows there is some movement about ten meters to your right(this video of Aliens(Alien 2) shows what I mean about 1 minute in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E5D3OCJn-Y])

 

[TimeLord]

I jumped at a couple of bits where the aliens poped out of nowhere and shit myself when undead Nicola jumps you at the end but apart from that it wasn't scary as such

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Your welcome

 

[Deathman101]

My issue with horror games is, as a mapper myself, I can predict where enemies will be placed. That coupled with predictable and easy enemies makes it even worse.

Even at those rare moments where the game was genuinely well made, I still had trouble with immersion. The weapons in that game seemed impractical and the whole Resident Evilish 3rd person view feels sluggish, even if I'm allowed to move in it (thank god).
Although...immersion has been an issue for me for a few years now, I can't attach myself to a game character like I used to.

 

[Resonantscythe]

It wasn't scary to me. Just a bunch of "OH ****" moments from the pop-outs.

 

[Sephychu]

I jumped at a couple of bits where the aliens poped out of nowhere and shit myself when undead Nicola jumps you at the end but apart from that it wasn't scary as such

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Your welcome

...meanie.