The Escapist Presents: Escapist On: Horror in Games

[Onyx Oblivion]

I'll tell you what's scary to me...Condemned 1, as Susan said.

FEAR? Ha! It's just creepy.

Dead Space! That's startle scares!

Bioshock! It's just creepy.

Condemned 2 is only scare in the factory level...with the exploding you-know-whats.

 

[Mewick_Alex]

So thats what Susan looks like. I'd always pictured some kind of omnipotent machine, like HAL from space odyssey.

OT: Mannequins.... Brrrr.

 

[Circusfreak]

i thought that the "we don't go to ravenholm" chapter of Half-Life 2 was really scary

 

[Casual Shinji]

This was nice, you guys should do this more often.

OT: I could never play a Silent Hill game with the music on, atleast during the nightmare areas. The puzzles were hard enough to solve on there own, but with that creepy background music it became impossible for me.

 

[Halfang]

Eternal Darkness all the way.

However, once you get the regenerate sanity spell, it became a fun fair.

 

[Adventurer2626]

Rock music? What's this you were saying about atmosphere? Otherwise I think you went over the basics and genre in general pretty well.

 

[flabslapper]

Rock music? What's this you were saying about atmosphere? Otherwise I think you went over the basics and genre in general pretty well.

I was going to say the same thing, the music was a bad choice, but the video and the people were great!

Horror has always been my favorite genre ever since the second video game I ever played, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.

I was getting worried by the recent action horror games, and that we would lose the creepy atmospheric survivor horror games, but Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and to a lesser extent Cursed Mountain have ironically put my mind at ease.

 

[Kiminality]

*Was distracted by the way they apparently blue-screened after compression, so the artefacts made for wonky outlines*

No "horror" game in itself has particularly scared me.
For me, the creepiest/scariest scenes in any game have been horror-esque scenes within games that aren't primarily horror.
An example being an area in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R, where there was just the sense that the building hated me. Largely down to the unseen forces that kept throwing stuff at me, admittedly.
Or, the scariest scene I can remember in any game - The haunted hotel in Vampire: Bloodlines.

 

[Therumancer]

Strictly speaking I maintain that horror/fear is inherarly a negative emotion that people tend to enjoy retroactively. I do not think we have seen much really done with REAL horror for decades, because of political correctness and so many subjects being "taboo". In general anything that is going to get a real rise out of someone is something they are going to tend to avoid or otherwise actively try and prevent the representation of. Rape is a key example of this, it can be mentioned, implied, but never really shown or brought to the forefront. I think the so called "torture porn" genere has come close to being real horror in cases, but usually it stops short of going the extra mile. What's more even with violence you rarely see an effective "Sweet spot" created, everything is either implied or so over the top as to be unbelievable.

I'd really like to see a true horror genere (re)appear but it would require fighting battles I don't think many creators are willing to engage in, and when it comes to gaming in paticular I just don't see much movement in that direction. The gaming industry having trouble getting assertive over thinhs like the "Modern Warfare 2" terrorism scene, never mind worring about pushing things further which is where horror games would need to go. Strictly speaking you need to be able to shock and scare an increasingly jaded audience. Keeping that in mind, the genere has become nothing but a bunch of jump out startles and trite cliques that are recycled because they are cliques and seen as being safe for that reason.

Not perfectly articulated, but I REALLY would like to see more in the way of criticism of the horror genere (especially in regards to games) and what it should be doing, rather than praise for games that in most cases stopped a bit short of ever realizing their potential.


Maybe one day I'll have a perfect storm of resources and oppertunity and get to take a shot at showing the world how it's done.

 

[mechanixis]

Russ Pitts you have perfectly expressed my reason for revulsion at low fat ice cream.

 

[mesoforte]

Bioshock's atmosphere always creeped me out, though part of it was because it had been forever since I played an FPS. I could only play it for a few maybe an hour max when I first started because I had to break the atmosphere.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

I like how they used some of the Half Life soundtrack for thier intro. Also, I always found that F.E.A.R and it's sequel weren't very scary because nothing ever happens in your encounters with Alma, she just kind of explodes when she gets close to you, or tries to hug you, which promtly mashing X fixes straight away.

 

[rddj623]

Nice to hear your thoughts on this. Great work as usual escapist team.

 

[kawaiiamethist]

But if I have the lights down low, how can I read my walkthrough...?

Excellent video, and yes, I am a bad gamer! Kutos to Susan for mentioning Project Zero (Fatal Frame)! I have yet to come across a more chilling experience from a game. Even Bioshock couldn't do what a few ghosts could. Silent Hill 2 sadly didn't scare me, though it intrigued me and remains one of my most treasured games.

 

[Sjakie]

No one mentions FEAR? im suprised by that, i couldn't go down a ladder after 'that' incident. Even if it was a shock-horror game. I could not go down a ladder after that without holding my breath.

As for Bioshock 1 scary: nope, not at all, knowing there is a vitro chamber around the corner, nothing gets me scared anymore.

I prefer dread over shock. so System Shock 2 is still top of my list when it comes to horror in games. And going down the sewers in the Marine campaign in AvP 2 is a good winner when it comes to shock horror.

 

[JakobBloch]

I have discovered that the most important thing to remember when playing horror or thriller games is: Do not play them while drunk or tipsy. You are not going to get them. You might play fine but all the scares, spooks and tension passes you by completely.

I did it once in Doom. All the "gotcha"-scares that the game held suddenly had no effect so I decided to go to bed instead of playing.

 

[De Ronneman]

Great vid people!

It's kind of cool everyone has their answer along the same lines, you know, what makes a game good-scary. Also, Silent Hill 2 gets a lot of mention...

But, one very scary thing in the vid...

The bandaid on Russ Pitts' left indexfinger? Why!!?

 

[Lex Darko]

The way they talk about atmospheric scary games I can't help but think about Demon's Souls.

With that game no matter how many times you play it will always have the player feeling tense, most likely because there is always the chance you may die or get invaded and die or take a wrong turn and die.

 

[Jaranja]

I'll tell you what scares me, crying of unseen babies. So makes me uneasy

That, and women's screams.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

For me the most effective kind of horror is the feeling that everything that's out to get you cannot be fought against. To have a game put me into a constant state of paranoia from the mere thought of your pursuers seeing you and coming for you is way more effective than any cheap jump scare or slightly creepy atmosphere. Few games have really achieved giving me this kind of fear with only the fatal frame series (i know the camera can exorcise ghosts but they usually come back), siren, silent hill and call of cthulhu: dark corners of the earth. Any other game I can think of that might sort of create this fear usually abandons it fairly soon by giving you weapons or spells to fairly combat whatever harasses you.

All of these games (from what I remember) pretty much held up the monsters being out of your league scenario until pretty much the end. I guess this seems like the best kind of horror because I've actually felt this way in real life situations. From being attacked by a large dog that I could really only flee from (I was little when it attacked me) to even being stalked by an alligator in a swampy area. The feeling these games create make me relive these moments, making them scarier to me.