The best Horror game of all time is not belong to resident evil or silent hills imo but..

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BloatedGuppy

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The Madman said:
Unless you're a Thief fan, in which case you're already familiar with the idea that though not strictly a horror series the Thief franchise has always had heavy horror influences and tended to include at least one horror level. The Haunted Cathedral in Thief 1, the Pagan Forest in Thief 2, then the Shalebridge Cradle in Thief 3.

Such a damned good series, I still get irrationally spiteful just thinking about the 'new' game that came out. Which also incidentally included a horror level just, like everything else about that game, shittily.
Ah, yes, this is true, but Thief 3 had ALREADY included a horror level, in the form of the plague ship full of zombies. Previous Thief horror levels had also featured zombies, and it seemed to be a logical continuation of form.

I'd also argue that Shalebridge Cradle turned the normal "horror level" concept right on its ear, moving past scurry critters and eerie levels and going into full out psychological assault.

And yeah. They really don't make em like Thief anymore. Dishonored with all quest objective helpers turned off was kind of like a "Thief Lite". Got the general tone down. Not the same, though.
 

Spider RedNight

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A. Fear is subjective (-looks over at Scarecrow-) - I got stuck in Res-E 4 (which isn't scary) by Del Lago because I'm terrified of giant video game fish/monsters. It's not scary but it scared ME

B. I dunno, scariest game I think I ever played was the first half of Alien: Isolation. Now, granted, it gets much less scary when the game gives you a shotgun and flamethrower but man, I spent so long on the first half of that game because the atmosphere was terrifying. And I loved it. The first Bioshock is up there, too
 

The Madman

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BloatedGuppy said:
Ah, yes, this is true, but Thief 3 had ALREADY included a horror level, in the form of the plague ship full of zombies. Previous Thief horror levels had also featured zombies, and it seemed to be a logical continuation of form.

I'd also argue that Shalebridge Cradle turned the normal "horror level" concept right on its ear, moving past scurry critters and eerie levels and going into full out psychological assault.

And yeah. They really don't make em like Thief anymore. Dishonored with all quest objective helpers turned off was kind of like a "Thief Lite". Got the general tone down. Not the same, though.
Oh I agree fully, Shalebridge Cradle was definitely the best of the Thief series horror levels.

Incidentally I'm pretty excited for Dishonored 2 considering it's gone from homage to the Thief series to having outright cast the voice of Garrett as Corvo for the sequel. With a few tweaks to how the stealth works and some improvements every here and there it's got a tone of potential... plus again, Garrett's back. Sorta. Kinda. Closer to Thief than the last Thief game anyway.
 

BloatedGuppy

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The Madman said:
Oh I agree fully, Shalebridge Cradle was definitely the best of the Thief series horror levels.

Incidentally I'm pretty excited for Dishonored 2 considering it's gone from homage to the Thief series to having outright cast the voice of Garrett as Corvo for the sequel. With a few tweaks to how the stealth works and some improvements every here and there it's got a tone of potential... plus again, Garrett's back. Sorta. Kinda. Closer to Thief than the last Thief game anyway.
I did not know that. Sounds like the Dishonored people got wind of their "spiritual successor to Thief" status and decided to go ham with it. I hope the second game lives up to the promise of the first.
 

Fiz_The_Toaster

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Eh, FEAR kinda bored me and the floating girl annoyed me after a while.

It had some moments of potential to be scary/creepy, but they really didn't go anywhere. I really don't find jump scares that interesting to begin with so FEAR using them did nothing for me. I wouldn't consider FEAR a horror game, but that's just me.

I think Alien: Isolation did a better job at blending fighting and scaring you.
 

B-Cell_v1legacy

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Ezekiel said:
ZombieProof said:
FEAR is phenomenal. The action is visceral, the environmental damage is dope, and the enemy ai still hasn't been matched to this day. A great game indeed but I can only classify it as a great fps with horror elements. The reason being is that all of the horror is passive. None of it ever hurts you and you never engage it so it presents no danger. In fact when you think about it, every time the horror rears its head in FEAR, the game becomes somewhat of a...
That's a really good point. I always return to FEAR for the action, not the horror. I also have to agree with what Zhukov said about the slow motion. The game is way too easy because of it. If I ever play it again, I'm gonna not use the feature at all.
slo mo is what make game unique and is design with slo mo in mind
 

happyninja42

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Ezekiel said:
ZombieProof said:
FEAR is phenomenal. The action is visceral, the environmental damage is dope, and the enemy ai still hasn't been matched to this day. A great game indeed but I can only classify it as a great fps with horror elements. The reason being is that all of the horror is passive. None of it ever hurts you and you never engage it so it presents no danger. In fact when you think about it, every time the horror rears its head in FEAR, the game becomes somewhat of a...
That's a really good point. I always return to FEAR for the action, not the horror. I also have to agree with what Zhukov said about the slow motion. The game is way too easy because of it. If I ever play it again, I'm gonna not use the feature at all.
That's not entirely true with FEAR. I know at least 1 time (possibly more but I never had it happen), if Samara actually gets to you, you're dead, and the game ends, forcing you to reload. So the horror can effect you at least some, though I do agree for the most part it is atmospheric.
 

ScrabbitRabbit

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I kinda like FEAR as a shooter but it's probably the least scary "horror" game ever made. It's about as far from unsettling as you can get and it's never even tense, except those moments I had low health in a shootout with some soldiers. I mean, fuck, it never even got me to jump and that's about the easiest thing you can do!

The horror bits are just a bunch of "spooky" clich?s that anybody with a passing familiarity with horror has seen about 14 billion times. It's difficult to be unnerved by the familiar and FEAR is just far too tropey to be frightening. Some horror media can take the things we're all familiar with and make them creepy again but the developers of FEAR just weren't good enough at horror to do that.

FEAR is a good shooter and a shitty, shitty horror.
 

happyninja42

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Ezekiel said:
Happyninja42 said:
Ezekiel said:
ZombieProof said:
FEAR is phenomenal. The action is visceral, the environmental damage is dope, and the enemy ai still hasn't been matched to this day. A great game indeed but I can only classify it as a great fps with horror elements. The reason being is that all of the horror is passive. None of it ever hurts you and you never engage it so it presents no danger. In fact when you think about it, every time the horror rears its head in FEAR, the game becomes somewhat of a...
That's a really good point. I always return to FEAR for the action, not the horror. I also have to agree with what Zhukov said about the slow motion. The game is way too easy because of it. If I ever play it again, I'm gonna not use the feature at all.
That's not entirely true with FEAR. I know at least 1 time (possibly more but I never had it happen), if Samara actually gets to you, you're dead, and the game ends, forcing you to reload. So the horror can effect you at least some, though I do agree for the most part it is atmospheric.
That's nearly at the end of the game, if I remember correctly. There are ghosts too, who can harm you, but they don't make an appearance until the last chapters and can be defeated with one bullet.
But that's still not passive. If they can kill you, then they do pose a threat. It might be a miniscule threat sure, but it's a threat. I don't remember exactly where in the game it starts being lethal, I just remember experiencing it face first. In fact, making it not be a threat for most of the game, does make it more of a surprise later on, when you then do have to actually treat them as a real threat, and not just mood lighting.
 

Shoggoth2588

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I'm sorry but any game that gives you a high powered assault rifle and riot gear just isn't something that I would consider to be all that scary. There was some tension in F.E.A.R. and there were some jump scares but it's damn-near impossible for me to truly feel fear in a game that gives you a freaking mech. I don't really have a good answer when it comes to what games are actually the scariest since fear is such a subjective thing...there are people who likely can't play Deadly Creatures on the Wii for example because of respective fears of snakes and spiders.
 

Xerosch

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Depends. If you understand horror as building tension and release it with jump scares (which is perfectly fine), then I can see you get a kick out of FEAR. I found it quite entertaining, but it didn't scare me. The industrial site and enemies weren't very inspired and got very repetetive. And once I realized that the best way to combat the cever AI is to run straight at them (when they were still deciding for a tactic), it became quite easy.

The things that makes horror work for me is more psychologically themed. Where FEAR usually surprises you with a scary moment or an eery scene, I find the things in the darkness that you only see in the end very scary. My mind makes up scenarios that usually are much more frightening than what you're shown and as long as you feel like a playball in the hands of a mysterious, evil force, I get a kick out of it. Then again, I quite enjoy the first Blair Witch Project movie and Paranormal Activity.

I'm with you on 'Soma', though. Man, that was a huuuuge disappointment. The story was utterly stupid and the 'conclusion' an insult. Ended the second it went off the predictable way and didn't dare to question the real interesting things that would come up after that shit ending.
 

Zombie Proof

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Happyninja42 said:
Ezekiel said:
Happyninja42 said:
Ezekiel said:
ZombieProof said:
FEAR is phenomenal. The action is visceral, the environmental damage is dope, and the enemy ai still hasn't been matched to this day. A great game indeed but I can only classify it as a great fps with horror elements. The reason being is that all of the horror is passive. None of it ever hurts you and you never engage it so it presents no danger. In fact when you think about it, every time the horror rears its head in FEAR, the game becomes somewhat of a...
That's a really good point. I always return to FEAR for the action, not the horror. I also have to agree with what Zhukov said about the slow motion. The game is way too easy because of it. If I ever play it again, I'm gonna not use the feature at all.
That's not entirely true with FEAR. I know at least 1 time (possibly more but I never had it happen), if Samara actually gets to you, you're dead, and the game ends, forcing you to reload. So the horror can effect you at least some, though I do agree for the most part it is atmospheric.
That's nearly at the end of the game, if I remember correctly. There are ghosts too, who can harm you, but they don't make an appearance until the last chapters and can be defeated with one bullet.
But that's still not passive. If they can kill you, then they do pose a threat. It might be a miniscule threat sure, but it's a threat. I don't remember exactly where in the game it starts being lethal, I just remember experiencing it face first. In fact, making it not be a threat for most of the game, does make it more of a surprise later on, when you then do have to actually treat them as a real threat, and not just mood lighting.
C'mon man, you know what I mean. If all my statemement needed for your argument to be absolete was for me to include "...until the very end" or "for 98% of the game" then I'd have to say you're just mincing words here lol. You know what I mean.

...and from what I can remember, the end is a looooooooong time coming so yeah, the fear factor is passive until you get to the very end but at that point, since the ghost visions are your only threat, do they still carry the same fear factor as they did when juxtaposed with normalcy for the other 98% of the game?
 

snekadid

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RaikuFA said:
That's a weird way to spell Rule of Rose.
except rule of rose isnt scary.... its creepy, yes. frustrating, yes. confusing, yes. But it's not scary in the least.

OT: I'm with MysticSlayer on this. Silent hill and resident evil, i enjoyed, theyre great series with a few exception title which are god awful, but they never scared me. Bioshock and FEAR? I jumped, and not at jump scares. Both games reached points of paranoia and tension where I would huddle in a dark corner and wait for something to move.

They did this through atmosphere and small, almost unnoticeable sounds and movements. None of the big stuff bothered me, the burning room hallucinations or cutscenes where a splicer would grab you and jerk the camera. it was always the quiet sections, where youre moving carefully, looking for the next fight and hearing enemies in the distance, when something suddenly makes a slight noise and I spin like a top looking for the enemy that spawned behind me, only to see there was nothing there. FEAR was great for that, but limited tech wise, Bioshock improved on it immensely.
 

Zhukov

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BloatedGuppy said:
Shalebridge Cradle arglblarrgh...
Y'know, I never quite got people's love of that level.

I didn't actively dislike it. I thought it had some nice touches, like how the lights start acting up when certain enemies get close. The various inmate backgrounds were pretty creepy too. I vaguely remember the sound design and music being good. The final escape was a really cool moment.

But as a scary experience it fell a bit flat for me. The inmate enemies looked like they were glitching out. The warden enemies looked like they were missing their textures. Having a perky ghost kid buddy chatting in your ear didn't help the atmosphere.

It probably didn't help that I'd heard of it long before I played it. So when I got to that stage I was all, "Ohhh, this is that one level everyone talks about!"
 

Vigormortis

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Were they ever?

I mean, by rights, a 'horror game' is one that actually scares you. Makes you feel uncomfortable, paranoid, afraid, or puts you on edge. Those games were spooky, even grotesque, but not really 'horrific'. They weren't really true horror. However, by that metric, David Cage games are in the upper echelons of horror.

From Heavy Rain onward, we are given a peek, a glimpse, into the 'creative' mind of David Cage. We get a view of how he sees the world, how he views women, how he views children, and how he views human interactions.

And, it creeps me the fuck out.

Your Resident Evils, your Silent Hills, your F.E.A.R.s, your Amnesias, your...whatever, simply do not compare to the absolute terror one gets from playing a Quantic Dreams / David Cage game.

David Cage has literally adorned the walls of his development studio with posters and lettering that say "Emotion".


I'm not sure it gets any creepier.

Well, at least, not until you watch video of his interactions with Ellen Page, or almost any of his interviews. Then your skin crawls.

AccursedTheory said:
FEAR was a good game, but I wouldn't call it the best horror game.

Horror, as others have said, is highly subjective. One man's shit generating freak show is another man's yawn fest, and so on. So for everyone it's different.

Personally, my favorite horror game is Eternal Darkness. It's wasn't particularly scary, but it had an atmosphere that I adored, and the insanity effects were always fun. Except for the blue screen, that one actually got me (Hit the reset button just as the screen was going back to the game).

Too bad Denis Dyack is an insane jackass and Silicon Knights is dead.
Agreed.

Eternal Darkness is one of the only games whose horror stuck with me long after I was done playing. The atmosphere was so thick, so fully realized, that it just creeped its way into you. It stuck in the back of your mind and would bring a mild sense of unease when you least expected it.

It was certainly one of the only games that legitimately gave me nightmares after I had finished the game.

Granted, one of my fears is of losing my mind. The notion of losing touch with reality so profoundly that even the mundane takes on a distorted, terrifying shape strikes my instinctive fear mechanism. So the core of the game essentially played on that fear.

Shame we never got a sequel. I should try to find a copy and play through it again.
 

Fox12

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Oh, it's a B-cell thread. In that case It's super overrated and not manly at all.

But seriously, that game bored me to tears. I wouldn't even call it survival horror. It was a dull shooter with some bad jump scares. It certainly can't touch the deep horror of Silent Hill 2.

RaikuFA said:
That's a weird way to spell Rule of Rose.
Also, fuck yes. That's probably the only game that contends with SH in terms of quality. The horror kind of creeps on you over time. What an emotional roller coaster.
 

DarthCoercis

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The Ocean House Hotel level from Vampire: Bloodlines scared me a lot more than FEAR, RE or Silent Hills did. Heck, Clive Barker's Undying and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth were scarier.
 

RaikuFA

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snekadid said:
RaikuFA said:
That's a weird way to spell Rule of Rose.
except rule of rose isnt scary.... its creepy, yes. frustrating, yes. confusing, yes. But it's not scary in the least.

OT: I'm with MysticSlayer on this. Silent hill and resident evil, i enjoyed, theyre great series with a few exception title which are god awful, but they never scared me. Bioshock and FEAR? I jumped, and not at jump scares. Both games reached points of paranoia and tension where I would huddle in a dark corner and wait for something to move.

They did this through atmosphere and small, almost unnoticeable sounds and movements. None of the big stuff bothered me, the burning room hallucinations or cutscenes where a splicer would grab you and jerk the camera. it was always the quiet sections, where youre moving carefully, looking for the next fight and hearing enemies in the distance, when something suddenly makes a slight noise and I spin like a top looking for the enemy that spawned behind me, only to see there was nothing there. FEAR was great for that, but limited tech wise, Bioshock improved on it immensely.
To me, horror, like humor, is subjective. What you might find scary another person might not and vice versa.