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Too Shy Guy posted:Going beyond that, there's a lot of horror potential in examinations of free will and causality. The ending where you throw yourself off the stairs over and over was straight-up horrifying to me, to the point that I questioned if I really wanted to finish it. Oh good god, I'll have to look that one up on youtube. I got the ending where Stanley goes completely insane after going down stairs and breaking reality and wasn't enthused about continuing as it was very creepy, so I went through one more time and did everything the narrator wanted me to, and.... It was a fake ending, kind of, where you know that happy ending is just some weird put together dream, but it was so pleasant I stopped playing entirely after that. So now I'm working on the "don't play the game for x years" cheevo 
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Oct 17, 2016 21:45
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Also, plot twists only work if you don't tell people there will be a twist Jesus Christ Oh right, the notes spoiling everything ahead of you for 10-15 minutes, yeah sorry there were two things I really hated about Alan wake.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:48
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Len posted:They're on the ps3 as ps2 classics. I think $10 regularly? They also show up in PSN sales sometimes, I believe I got all 3 for $1 each earlier this year.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:06
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Safari Disco Lion posted:Oh right, the notes spoiling everything ahead of you for 10-15 minutes, yeah sorry there were two things I really hated about Alan wake. At least Wake was vaguely subtle about it and it fit the story. Then there are games like the shooter Haze who treated the fact that you went to the rebels as this huge secret plot twist despite the fact that it was literally on the box.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:10
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Ye gods, this ending - Too Shy Guy posted:Going beyond that, there's a lot of horror potential in examinations of free will and causality. The ending where you throw yourself off the stairs over and over was straight-up horrifying to me, to the point that I questioned if I really wanted to finish it. - was just as horrible as advertised.  It was somehow even worse through watching it via youtube. Watching this willful, defiant player do something horrible, just to defy the narrator. I imagine that playing it myself would have been....easier? Curiosity would have compelled me, and I could have stopped....hopefully.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:12
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Lord Zedd posted:They also show up in PSN sales sometimes, I believe I got all 3 for $1 each earlier this year. Yeah I grabbed them on sale because I'd always wanted to play them. I didn't get very far into 1 because I'm a coward and it was too spooky for me ):
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Oct 17, 2016 22:13
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This talk of aborted horror game projects reminds me of Korsakovia, a HL2 mod The Chinese Room did between the original mod version of Dear Esther and the standalone remake. The basic idea was idea was that you were playing as Christopher, a man with a whole mess of mental disorders, chief among them Korsakoff's Syndrome, a condition that fosters amnesia and false memories. You spent the game wandering around Christopher's delusional apocalypse scenario, platforming and whacking dust clouds with a crowbar. While all this is going on, the action is narrated by snippets of counseling sessions between Christopher and his psychiatrist, who was assigned to him after Christopher was institutionalized after severely harming himself. None of this is made secret; indeed the best thing about the mod is the uneasy disconnected feeling that arises as you realize that what you're playing is not "real" in the context of the story, and you have no reliable way of understanding what exactly is happening to Christopher, particularly after the psychiatrist is also incorporated into Christopher's delusions. (The writing is also incredible. I don't really like The Chinese Room's work all that much, but Dan Pinchbeck has a way of channeling the broken prose of the mentally ill I've seen few healthy writers master.) Unfortunately, the mod is horrifically buggy, to the point that The Chinese Room abandoned it entirely. I struggled through endless crashes until the whole thing simply refused to work one day. I think the only way to actually get through the game reliably is to just load the maps in Source SDK. On top of that, it's a mod built around platforming in the Source Engine, which goes about as well as you'd expect.
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Oct 18, 2016 04:35
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joylessdivision posted:This is a good post. the stroggification in Quake 4 was pretty great though the rest of the game wasn't really horror
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Oct 18, 2016 04:44
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thanks everyone, not just for the feedback but what matters (to you) in horror games. it can be done differently, but what really shines are the unique experiences each player feels w/r/t whatever game they're playing
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Oct 18, 2016 05:05
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My biggest fear is weird things invading my personal space and strangely horror games don't do that enough. All the first person games have the monster grab you then fade to black, there's no lingering sensation of this thing invading your privacy just "BOO YOU FAILED *death*". Some of the most intense moments for me in games were like Dark Messiah of Might & Magic where the spiders drop from the ceiling directly in front of your face or Anna (which I unfortunately can't recommend anymore because of new terrible DRM) where a creature silently appears behind you in random places. Even Bioshock had a great moment where you get a gun, all the lights go off like it's preparing you for a scare, then nothing... until you turn around and there's a non-hostile splicer 2 feet away just standing there. I don't think he even attacks until you do but oh he glares. And don't get me started on the headcrabs, their concept might be the coolest/creepiest enemy design being this thing that zombifies you while you're still alive yet you retain some part of your mentality as your body transforms into a mutated corpse thing. If that poo poo existed in real life and someone weaponized it I would shoot myself. And lastly in Breakdown there's a great endgame sequence where you're in this strange idealized illusion and the final boss is an orb that floats behind you. Every time you whip around it quickly floats away and you don't quite understand what it is yet except that there's something sinister about it. So yeah, get up in my face with stuff other than immediate danger. If there's anything I'm interested in VR it's having my personal bubble burst. e: Ooh forgot about my favorite scene in The Darkness you're captured by the evil officer and in a first person torture scene he drills through your teeth. Revisiting it it's kind of cheesy but what a great scene it was! So everything that scares me isn't even in horror games.
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Oct 18, 2016 05:45
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al-azad posted:... until you turn around and there's a non-hostile splicer 2 feet away just standing there. I don't think he even attacks until you do but oh he glares. Repeated kinda in Infinite with the Boy of Silence just standing right behind you. Didn't even realise the first time I played that every button and movement bar rotating is disabled so you're corralled into the scare! Also I see "Cry of Fear" lauded as a terrifying game but the Lowtax LP made it look like dumb garbage. Are people saying it's good just trolling?
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Oct 18, 2016 15:16
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Marshal Radisic posted:This talk of aborted horror game projects reminds me of Korsakovia, a HL2 mod The Chinese Room did between the original mod version of Dear Esther and the standalone remake. The basic idea was idea was that you were playing as Christopher, a man with a whole mess of mental disorders, chief among them Korsakoff's Syndrome, a condition that fosters amnesia and false memories. You spent the game wandering around Christopher's delusional apocalypse scenario, platforming and whacking dust clouds with a crowbar. While all this is going on, the action is narrated by snippets of counseling sessions between Christopher and his psychiatrist, who was assigned to him after Christopher was institutionalized after severely harming himself. None of this is made secret; indeed the best thing about the mod is the uneasy disconnected feeling that arises as you realize that what you're playing is not "real" in the context of the story, and you have no reliable way of understanding what exactly is happening to Christopher, particularly after the psychiatrist is also incorporated into Christopher's delusions. (The writing is also incredible. I don't really like The Chinese Room's work all that much, but Dan Pinchbeck has a way of channeling the broken prose of the mentally ill I've seen few healthy writers master.) I played this, and I don't think it delivered even a little on Korsakoff's syndrome beyond just starting the player in the middle of this world with no context. It does have some really amazing and out-there delusions, and like you said, the narrated prose is really fantastic. I didn't have any bug problems back when I played it, but I can see why it could be really buggy. Drunken Baker posted:Also I see "Cry of Fear" lauded as a terrifying game but the Lowtax LP made it look like dumb garbage. Are people saying it's good just trolling? al-azad posted:And lastly in Breakdown there's a great endgame sequence where you're in this strange idealized illusion and the final boss is an orb that floats behind you. Every time you whip around it quickly floats away and you don't quite understand what it is yet except that there's something sinister about it. Skyscraper fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 16:11
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Drunken Baker posted:Repeated kinda in Infinite with the Boy of Silence just standing right behind you. Didn't even realise the first time I played that every button and movement bar rotating is disabled so you're corralled into the scare! Cry of Fear is a cheap haunted house game that relies predominately on jump scares. They do have some legitimately creepy environments and lighting in places, but almost all the fear you get is from an overdose of loud jump scares. The game even begins with one. It also suffers from some awful gameplay. There's a ton of backtracking and unclear paths and objectives that make the game far longer than it really should be.
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Oct 18, 2016 16:16
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chitoryu12 posted:Cry of Fear is a cheap haunted house game that relies predominately on jump scares. They do have some legitimately creepy environments and lighting in places, but almost all the fear you get is from an overdose of loud jump scares. The game even begins with one. It's also straight-up broken in a lot of ways. Apparently the multiplayer is even more busted.
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Oct 18, 2016 16:25
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Cry of Fear had multiplayer? What, like deathmatch?
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Oct 18, 2016 16:57
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Cry of Fear is like the SCP game where it's more famous for its memes than gameplay and it also came out during the streamer boom. It's a bad game but it does a lot with very little. The monster designs are straight out that "bonsai head man" concept art (ooh a tall bloody guy named Taller woooh) but it's actually kind of effective precisely because it's built on the original Source engine so everything is ugly and jerky. I think a good horror game needs to limit itself to be successful.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:04
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Cry of Fear had multiplayer? What, like deathmatch? https://youtu.be/DaRqDtFpuBM
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Oct 18, 2016 17:05
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And here I am missing out on such a beautiful pile of garbage.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:25
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Should I review Cry of Fear? I have space in my schedule and most of the Steam reviews are "need new underwear 10/10" garbage. 1. DISTRAINT 2. Shadowgate 3. Miasmata 4. SOMA 5. Haunt the House: Terrortown 6. Oxenfree 7. Vlad the Impaler 8. Condemned: Criminal Origins 9. The Last Door: Season 2 10. Shadowgrounds 11. The Last NightMary 12. Kholat 13. Fran Bow 14. TRAUMA 15. Alan Wake 16. Dark Fall 1: The Journal 17. Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart 18. Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition    I missed out on a lot of classic adventure games by not returning to PC gaming until the late 90s. The Gabriel Knight series was one that I missed completely, which makes me doubly thankful for remake efforts such as this. Through a fresh layer of polish, it's very clear to see why Gabriel and his cohorts were so widely acclaimed in the genre. However, it's also clear that this remake might not be the best way to experience the series. Gabriel Knight, if you've never met him, is a bookseller and aspiring novelist in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He's a listless Lothario, a fact that his charming assistant Grace and punchy police pal Mosely are not hesitant to harp on. Despite his appearances he soon becomes entangled in a murder investigation that leads into the darkest corners of New Orleans, where voodoo and ancient curses hold sway. There's an interesting mix of historical and kitschy voodoo to delve into, which helps give the game a more grounded feel even when things start getting crazy. Unraveling this mystery is done in the grand old tradition of classic point-and-click adventures. You can travel by map to a number of hotspots around the city, each with features to examine, items to pocket, and colorful characters to question. It's important to note, though, that this being a traditional adventure means there's some antiquated design to contend with. Puzzles are logical and items have real-world uses, for the most part, but identifying exactly where or when to do something isn't always clear. In fact there are more than a few points where you'll find yourself wandering aimlessly because you need to stumble across an unforeseen event to progress. The remake does try to punch up the gameplay past traditional pace, though. There's not a lot of clutter in these scenes so important elements are usually easy to pick out, and dialog options that move the plot forward are highlighted for uncultured knuckle-draggers who don't want to bask in the game's fully-voiced dialog. I'll be honest, I wasn't sold on the voice acting at first. It's a big deal for Gabriel Knight; even without playing any of the originals myself I was aware that the cast was remarkable. Whereas OG Gabriel was voiced by Tim Curry, remake Gabriel is someone I've never heard of, who effects a ridiculously thick Louisiana accent for every line. But it wasn't long before he and the rest of the cast grew on me, assisted by the excellent script. Grace gets some vicious burns on Gabe throughout the game, Mosely pals around like a dopey high-schooler, and even some of the minor characters like Hartridge get incredibly memorable lines. Between the entertaining dialog and the gripping story that steadily builds in intensity, there's plenty of reason to work your way through the old-school puzzles. However, the remake is marred in a few ways that sometimes make it feel like a step even further back. The 3D models for characters are attractive but suffer from stiff animations, making them look more like Sims than people. You'll also spot a number of glaring (and sometimes hilarious) bugs like heads spinning like tops and torsos contorting wildly. In dialogue both parties get animated portraits that are detailed, but move like rigged portraits... the effect is a little creepy and reminds me of the Begun of Tigtone, if you've seen that. You can skip dialogue by clicking but sometimes it only drops the voices, and continues animating silently. And if all that wasn't enough, the thing has crashed on me a few times during long play sessions. The bottom line is that Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers is an excellent game that isn't particularly well-served by this remake. And it isn't in the ways you might expect, because the new voiceovers are great in their own way and the modern amenities really do help with the pacing. No, it's just a technically weak product, beset by rough animations, visual glitches galore, and general instability. You absolutely should experience the game for its story, its moments of horror, and its contributions to the adventure genre. But as long as you're not put off by pixel art and slower pacing, you might just be better off with the original. Too Shy Guy fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 18:35
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Too Shy Guy posted:Should I review Cry of Fear? I have space in my schedule and most of the Steam reviews are "need new underwear 10/10" garbage. Yes.
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Oct 18, 2016 19:00
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All I know about Cry of Fear is from the Giant Bomb and Criken videos. I understand the single player component is significantly different from the multiplayer coop, which involves Swedish Cops.
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Oct 18, 2016 19:24
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Bogart posted:All I know about Cry of Fear is from the Giant Bomb and Criken videos. I understand the single player component is significantly different from the multiplayer coop, which involves Swedish Cops. The lovely games LP thread had one of our own do a subtitle LP of the whole game (minus the co-op).
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Oct 18, 2016 19:28
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Cry of Fear had multiplayer? What, like deathmatch? Incredibly broken co-op cop campaign
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Oct 18, 2016 19:37
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I played the Swedish cop coop and it felt very barebones and frustrating. Single player can be scary but as previously stated has an over-reliance on loud noises
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Oct 19, 2016 15:37
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Too Shy Guy posted:I'll be honest, I wasn't sold on the voice acting at first. It's a big deal for Gabriel Knight; even without playing any of the originals myself I was aware that the cast was remarkable. Whereas OG Gabriel was voiced by Tim Curry, remake Gabriel is someone I've never heard of, who effects a ridiculously thick Louisiana accent for every line. But it wasn't long before he and the rest of the cast grew on me, assisted by the excellent script. Grace gets some vicious burns on Gabe throughout the game, Mosely pals around like a dopey high-schooler, and even some of the minor characters like Hartridge get incredibly memorable lines. The original Mosley was voiced by Mark Hamill, also Michael Dorn as Dr John. It's a shame that they recast, really.
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Oct 19, 2016 15:54
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Lifeglug posted:The original Mosley was voiced by Mark Hamill, also Michael Dorn as Dr John. Michael Dorn was really good as Dr. John.
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Oct 19, 2016 15:58
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They're porting the amnesia games to the ps4. I already played them on pc but I don't have a gaming machine now so it'll be nice to have it on my ps4.
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Oct 19, 2016 17:18
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I got really confused because I had confused Cry of Fear with Afraid of Monsters. Was Afraid of Monsters any good?
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Oct 19, 2016 17:37
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FirstAidKite posted:I got really confused because I had confused Cry of Fear with Afraid of Monsters. I haven't played it, but it's by the same creator so I'd imagine a lot of the same design.
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Oct 19, 2016 17:45
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afraid of monsters works better than cry of fear i think, but it feels similar enough that you'd be forgiven for mistaking the two
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Oct 19, 2016 17:48
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On the off chance you've never heard of it, today's game is FREE. So I'm going to tell you how good it is, but you don't have to take MY word for it! *doo-doot DOOT* 1. DISTRAINT 2. Shadowgate 3. Miasmata 4. SOMA 5. Haunt the House: Terrortown 6. Oxenfree 7. Vlad the Impaler 8. Condemned: Criminal Origins 9. The Last Door: Season 2 10. Shadowgrounds 11. The Last NightMary 12. Kholat 13. Fran Bow 14. TRAUMA 15. Alan Wake 16. Dark Fall 1: The Journal 17. Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart 18. Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition 19. Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion    I'm so annoyed at how effective this game is. I'm so annoyed that a stupid cardboard bat popping out of a wall can make me jump. I'm so annoyed that just hearing the music change can make my heart race. But maybe what annoys me most is how much this goofy, free game gets right about horror, when so many others can barely inspire a gasp. Spooky's House of Jump Scare Mansion or whatever you know it as is a journey through 1000 rooms of a haunted/cursed/infected/infested mansion. Each journey is broken into blocks of 50 rooms, with a save point and an elevator at the end to give you a breather. Everything in between is randomized, meaning rooms 1-50 will never be the same sequence or contain the same elements for anyone. All you have to do is get to the end of each room, but you'll soon find that isn't always as easy as it sounds. The interface is as simple as can be, with mouse/keyboard movement, a sprint button, and a use button. You have regenerating health and stamina, the latter of which is spent to sprint (and do other things much later). That's all you need to progress through the mostly barren rooms at breakneck speed, which is what you'll be doing most of the time. The vast majority of rooms are simple and featureless, with only a few turns to take or a single fork to pass. Larger rooms can have more complex layouts or puzzle elements, but are broken up by vast expanses of randomized hallways. Some of them get a little tiresome in how long they take to navigate and how often they're used, but in general you can clear a 50-room block in about 10 minutes. This probably sounds like garbage, but there's a method to the monotony. There are things in Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, you see, things that will jumpscare you. At first they're literally cardboard cutouts that spring from the walls when you least expect them. Later you'll find yourself pursued by far more lethal things, and your attention will be focused entirely on how to escape them. Those same dumb cutouts will still be around, though, and the first time you yelp at a smiling cartoon spider while fleeing a psychotic, faceless thing will make you curse yourself. But it works. The pacing of the game is one element of its brilliance, and this is buoyed by the special rooms and encounters sprinkled through the halls. You'll come across certain threats and their unique lairs around certain level bands but there are other events like the looping hallway (and the thing living in it) that can show up at any time to ruin your day. You'll start to feel out the rhythm of the game in your first hundred rooms, identifying when you're safe and when you need to run... and then a hundred rooms later all that goes out the window. You never really feel fully safe here, thanks to how Spooky's plays with the expectations of the genre. No matter what horror game you're coming here from, there will be something familiar that plays on your fears. Everything from Resident Evil to Five Nights at Freddy's is represented, with scares designed around what you know about the genre. Much of the terror is tied up in how much you fear being chased, as the graphics don't allow for much beyond pixellated monsters trailing you. The sound design deserves special mention here, though, because it is some of the most effective, oppressive ambiance to grace a horror title. Taking clear inspiration from Silent Hill and otherworldly experiences, the Spooky's soundtrack is full of industrial pounding and dissonant chords to keep the hairs on the back of your neck up. It's something worth experiencing, because until you do you can't ever fully understand how aggravatingly well Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion can inspire terror.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:20
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Spooky's is really cool and the DLC is also worth checking out.
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Oct 20, 2016 08:32
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I didn't realize they had to change the name from Spooky's House of Jump Scares because of a pointless c&d How unfortunate
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Oct 20, 2016 08:42
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Just going back to Alan Wake quickly, one thing I really loved only occurred to me after the fact: after you realise he's basically been rewriting reality to ensure the Dark Presence will fail, you realise it's entirely likely he set things up for Barry to be the Eye of Sauron. He not only put everything in place to keep his best friend safe, he made sure that he'd be able to save the day if he was up to it. It's a stupid thing, but even though I've forgotten about 90% of the stuff that happens in the game, that's the one thing that sticks with me.
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Oct 20, 2016 09:03
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One thing that really sucked about Alan Wake's narrative is that they put in the revelation that Agent Nightingale is the only person that realizes that Alan's been controlling everyone through the story in a easily missed collectible. It explains why he despises Alan so much and really humanizes him but most people miss it.
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Oct 20, 2016 09:09
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There's some kind of reality-warping monster in town, responsible for countless deaths. Only one man understands the truth, but no one believes him. Did I just describe Agent Nightingale or
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Oct 20, 2016 09:28
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Accordion Man posted:One thing that really sucked about Alan Wake's narrative is that they put in the revelation that Agent Nightingale is the only person that realizes that Alan's been controlling everyone through the story in a easily missed collectible. The book that came with the collector's edition also explains it. (That isn't much better admittedly.)
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Oct 20, 2016 12:40
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Accordion Man posted:One thing that really sucked about Alan Wake's narrative is that they put in the revelation that Agent Nightingale is the only person that realizes that Alan's been controlling everyone through the story in a easily missed collectible. I have been through the game multiple times and I don't even remember this. There was the one in the jail cell where he realizes things last second, but other than that I was always assuming he was just a dick because he was an alcoholic and hated Alan's success
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Oct 20, 2016 14:39
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DreamShipWrecked posted:I have been through the game multiple times and I don't even remember this. There was the one in the jail cell where he realizes things last second, but other than that I was always assuming he was just a dick because he was an alcoholic and hated Alan's success Probably this. Page 1: Nightingale Reads the Manuscript Nightingale tried to make sense of the manuscript. It was disjointed and strange. He didn't understand half of it, but it all rang true, impossibly true. He took out his hip flask when he reached the page that described how he reached the page that made him take out his hip flask. It wasn't the booze that made his mind reel.
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Oct 20, 2016 14:57
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Len posted:Probably this. I think its one of those pages that you only see on the highest difficulty, which is why most people don't see it
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Oct 20, 2016 15:12
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