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I lost my desire to play it when the killer got spoiled for me (funnily enough exactly like Twin Peaks) I still appreciate it though.
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Oct 31, 2017 01:25
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Much like Twin Peaks, it's the journey not the destination. Dark Dreams Don't Die
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Oct 31, 2017 01:28
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wait does a Chinaman really not feature anywhere in Deadly Premonition?
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Oct 31, 2017 01:32
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Looks like Remothered is going to be out in early access tomorrow, so fingers crossed that it isn't horrible. A bit surprised that it's only 12.99 though....that makes me think it'll be a super short game.
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Oct 31, 2017 03:09
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goferchan posted:wait does a Chinaman really not feature anywhere in Deadly Premonition? Not to my knowledge.
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Oct 31, 2017 03:24
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It kind of sucks that more horror games don't try to go the David Lynch route of being just loving weird and sort of campy. Somewhere out there is a Stranger Things variant of video games that could be made, but its just too easy to go the jumpscares and something-guy commin ta get ya route. That or I assume the next stage of nostalgia via games is resurrecting the Hot topic and Nightmare before Christmas Age. Crabtree fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 03:24
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A lot of great games have been inspired by David Lynch but most of them don't attempt to be all that scary. Silent Hill 2 is probably the quintessential example.
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Oct 31, 2017 10:00
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Played Doki Doki Literature Club last night and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Despite the game technically having jumpscares they managed to avoid making them screamers and spooky faces. I was actually jumpscared by text on a page when the game started veering into horror mode on me, and I give the dev a lot of credit for setting the atmosphere so well.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:35
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goferchan posted:wait does a Chinaman really not feature anywhere in Deadly Premonition? The rest of the cast acts as the inscrutable ones.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:16
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Bogart posted:I dunno. If you ignore the 'rule' that the supernatural is ignored as a matter of course, since York clearly is aware of it, the other rules can fit.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:54
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Here it is, the last game of Spooktober. Much like yesterday, a buddy on Steam gifted me this and it was... I mean... it's the thought that counts, I guess. The user ratings for this one are absolutely absurd for what it is, and I can only assume it's just fans being fans. SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 17. Bloody Streets 18. Layers of Fear 19. Dark Fall 2: Lights Out 20. Painkiller: Black Edition 21. Doorways: The Underworld 22. Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh 23. Yomawari: Night Alone 24. IMSCARED 25. Detention 26. Coma: Mortuary 27. Disturbed 28. CAYNE 29. Blameless 30. Firewood 31. Slender: The Arrival    I’m not really a Slender guy, and no I’m not talking about my unfortunate dad bod. I enjoyed the great white hype when he was a creepy photoshop insert but lost interest in his multimedia exploits. And so it is with idle curiosity that I turn to his Arrival here, in the hopes that he makes a compelling and terrifying antagonist to escape from. It turns out he really doesn’t, though, and after a good hour or so in his domain I feel more like a forgetful secretary or a handyman than a horror protagonist. I’m going to explain this disappointment in detail but that’s going to take spoilers, so if you really want to experience the yawns yourself, stop reading here and get to it. I usually open these things with a plot synopsis but Slender: The Arrival makes the unfortunate choice to provide absolutely NO narrative outside of its customary horror notes. I’ve found maybe half the ones laid in my path so far and have only gleaned enough of the story to know that I don’t care about it. There’s a guy and a lady and they found Slenderman and the guy ran off and the lady followed him and I’m following them, I think? Whatever the story is it’s a serious let-down in that nothing you do seems to affect it or even reveal much of it, leaving you to just escape certain death because you were stupid enough to wander into it in the first place. The opening level has you wandering down a country road to a brand new house, seemingly the first of a new subdivision. The place has been tossed and someone scribbled spooky things on the walls, so after unlocking some doors you wander off into the woods. Along the way I found a burned-out house with a shy zombie inside, something unexpectedly benign and (as far as I know) entirely unrelated to the Slenderman. There’s literally nothing threatening in this first chapter and even for someone as jumpy as me, the dark woods and low soundtrack and poofing zombie failed to put me on edge. But maybe once I was in some actual danger it’ll get scary, I thought. I thought wrong, because Slenderman is about as threatening as a coat rack and escaping him is more a clerical matter than a horror one. The second level sticks you in a pitch-black wilderness park with a flashlight and instructions to collect eight pages. Your start point, the landmarks, and the pages are randomly placed every time so exploring is both essential and infuriating because you can’t hardly see a godddamned thing and there’s no map. Every page you pick up makes the Slenderman come after you harder but he doesn’t move. The dude just teleports around and then stands there, and if you get too close or stare too long you go nuts. Collecting pages and running from a scarecrow in a suit got so tedious I eventually gave up and embraced death with 6 of 8 pages collected. Apparently that was enough to get me a pass on Easy mode, which took me to a mine where I had to activate 6 generators before a zombie in a hoodie ate me. This one actually runs after you but you can lose it by waving your flashlight in its face. After that is a pastoral walk around a mountain with a teddy bear who flashes you back to the abduction of the dumbest kid on Earth, and then an old tube TV you can play through other flashbacks on via the magic of VHS. Slender: The Arrival has a severe problem with building tension, in that it can’t be scary without being tedious. The only reason Slenderman is any threat at all is because you’re stuck running around the same places looking for things. It’s up to the story then to convince me he’s some kind of all-powerful existential threat but the story is obscured behind notes and is limited to the ravings of two people you never meet. And he’s only really present for the middle 20-30 minutes of the game, because before that it’s just dark and after that you’re playing through empty areas that really should have been cutscenes. Add to that the unexplained zombies who manage to be more of a threat than the tall skinny fellow and I have to wonder why anyone takes him seriously at all. Even the art has trouble keeping up with the atmosphere, opening up right from the beginning with some glaringly misbalanced light levels and low-effort furniture. The mine doesn’t look like any sort of place actual humans would work, and the mountaintop has you following improbably steep paths around dirty, blurry lumps of rock. I’ll give the sound design credit for including some jarring tracks and effects, but that’s really the only kudos the game gets. For a monster so celebrated and storied, Slender: The Arrival fails to make Slenderman interesting, frightening, or much of a presence at all. If I wanted to wander around and be harassed by some dude, I’d much rather play Dear Esther. I'll be back in a few hours with a proper wrap-up for the month.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:46
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So the "zombies" aren't zombies. One thing with Slender: The Arrival is that it plays heavily on the existing Slenderman mythos created by series like Marble Hornets, and if you aren't familiar with the Slenderman "canon" (so to speak) you'll end up totally lost. My understanding is that Slenderman can drive people insane and turn them into proxies who do his bidding, and one of the most constant threats in Marble Hornets is mask-wearing proxies who physically attack the protagonists. The crazy person in the hoodie from the game is one of those.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:00
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I seem to recall that one of Arrival's selling points was that it was, uh, written by VictorSurge himself. Which doesn't seem to have done much for it.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:04
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I still don't get why Slenderman turned into a spooky chase monster, he was just a creepy figure you'd put out of focus and in the back of pictures and it worked.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:36
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Yardbomb posted:I still don't get why Slenderman turned into a spooky chase monster, he was just a creepy figure you'd put out of focus and in the back of pictures and it worked. Because people can't do Lovecraftian nightmare horror monsters as well as BOOGA BOOGA mans.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:38
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Yardbomb posted:I still don't get why Slenderman turned into a spooky chase monster, he was just a creepy figure you'd put out of focus and in the back of pictures and it worked. I was dismayed and yet unsurprised to find that the Slenderman wiki has a whole page on "Surgism", the fandom movement in which only the original canon created by Victor Surge is appropriate and series like Marble Hornets and games like Slender have distorted the original intentions behind the character.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:39
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Marble Hornets is more or less responsible for transforming the whole "spooky weird thing in the background" Slenderman mythos into "walking in woods simulator, occassionally running in woods."
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Oct 31, 2017 19:42
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I'd say one of the biggest faults of Slender: The Arrival is that it's very clearly written for existing fans of the Slenderman mythos. Things like the proxies are barely or never explained, because it's assumed that anyone buying the game would be a fan who knows all about what they are and doesn't need to be told "This crazy chick in a hoodie is Slenderman's insane slave".
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Oct 31, 2017 19:44
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Slenderman is so weird. I think it's the only time I've ever witnessed the conception of a horror icon and watched as it's just grown huge based on a single post in some 'spooky pictures' thread. Like, the fact that I can remember the post where that came from when people think it came from reddit or 4chan or something. Edit: I attended Slenderman's gigs before he made it big.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:49
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SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension FINAL CUT 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 17. Bloody Streets 18. Layers of Fear 19. Dark Fall 2: Lights Out 20. Painkiller: Black Edition 21. Doorways: The Underworld 22. Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh 23. Yomawari: Night Alone 24. IMSCARED 25. Detention 26. Coma: Mortuary 27. Disturbed 28. CAYNE 29. Blameless 30. Firewood 31. Slender: The Arrival Compared to previous years, I went hard on indie games this time and it shows. Horror is a notoriously hard formula to get right and many titles default to low lighting or obnoxious jumpscares to make up for tension and atmosphere. Walking sims like the Doorways series or Slender are perfect examples of this, completely ignoring key elements of narrative and game design in favor of dark halls and stiff enemies. The stand-outs this year were the ones that forged their own paths, either by reinventing their genres like Daily Chthonicle or Dead End Road did, or going deep into their symbolism as Detention and Yomawari did. Formatting this list is a huge pain in the rear end so hit up the website for the full breakdown of good/ehhh/bad. I'll pull out my top five for you right here though, if you want quick recommendations. 5. Dead End Road – It’s short and simple, but the creativity of a roguelike driving sim can’t be denied and goes a long way towards keeping it interesting 4. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition – Seeing what craziness the game throws at your intrepid reporters is half the fun, and figuring out how to best it is the other half 3. Yomawari: Night Alone – I’m a huge fan of Japanese horror and the mix of cute and utterly bizarre here was more than enough to get me past the annoying parts 2. IMSCARED – This thing is absolutely terrifying, and an incredible accomplishment for managing that with low-res graphics and a simple premise 1. Detention – Dark, beautiful, and different, this horror adventure can only be faulted for not being longer so there’s more to enjoy Alright, I'm done until the next holiday... which is like a month away. Hopefully you enjoyed another year of deep-diving the bleak, maze-like world of indie horror games. Thanks for reading, and happy Halloween!
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Oct 31, 2017 21:04
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Too Shy Guy posted:
Fantastic job!!
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Oct 31, 2017 22:37
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Thanks Too Shy Guy.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:42
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Too Shy Guy posted:Alright, I'm done until the next holiday... which is like a month away. Hopefully you enjoyed another year of deep-diving the bleak, maze-like world of indie horror games. Thanks for reading, and happy Halloween!  I look forward to this list every year and once again you smashed it out of the park!Thanks so much! I especially want to give Detention a look now...
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Nov 1, 2017 04:35
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I should give Yomawari another go, the combination of not really knowing where to go, having to use coins to save and the lack of checkpoints put me off first time.
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Nov 1, 2017 04:41
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Thanks for the kind words, folks!Sakurazuka posted:I should give Yomawari another go, the combination of not really knowing where to go, having to use coins to save and the lack of checkpoints put me off first time. The thing about coins is that they're not actually a limited resource; they all respawn every time you load the game. There's no reason not to save at every shrine you pass, especially since you only have to do it once; you don't have to save again after picking up an item or doing something, all your progress is saved automatically. Shrines just work as, well, checkpoints. You can also fast travel between them, even without spending a coin.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:58
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Oh huh, that would have been useful to know first time, thanks!
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Nov 1, 2017 06:04
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Just got around to replaying Layers of Fear and boy. I remember it being much better. 
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Nov 1, 2017 06:38
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Bogart posted:Just got around to replaying Layers of Fear and boy. I remember it being much better. it does have one of the funniest scares of all time
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Nov 1, 2017 07:15
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Bogart posted:Just got around to replaying Layers of Fear and boy. I remember it being much better. It's probably just a case of knowing what's coming ruining it. With certain games, they're so beloved but also so heavily scripted that revisiting it ends up showing just how scripted it is and how little input you actually had. It's like those telltale walking dead games where the first time through you're thinking hard about what decision to make but then if you play it again you find out most of your choices don't actually matter and the story progresses the same way.
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Nov 1, 2017 07:27
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Crabtree posted:It kind of sucks that more horror games don't try to go the David Lynch route What are you talking about, most horror game are garbage! 
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Nov 1, 2017 17:43
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I did a little victory lap last night with a free indie horror game on itch.io called FAITH. I think it was mentioned here sometime last month but it's really worth a try.   Low-resolution games catch a lot of flak for being ugly or low-effort, but there’s artistry to even simple looks like that. Beauty isn’t why I’m a big fan of the look, though. It’s common knowledge in entertainment that the less you show your audience, the more their imagination can fill in the gaps. This can be a huge boon to horror in particular if the scene can be set to pique the imagination in just the right way, and it’s why games like The Last Door and IMSCARED work so well. It’s why FAITH works at all, in fact, because a more grounded or serious look might not sell the grim events quite as well. You play a Catholic priest one year out from a fateful exorcism in the wilds of rural Connecticut. There were only two survivors of that horrible ordeal, and your guilt compels you to drive back out and finish what you started. You’ll do some snooping around in the woods to reveal some backstory on the place, then once you’re in the house it’s up to you to put an end to what you find there. All you have to carry you through is, well, your faith. That’s not just poetic license, either. Aside from movement you have one action button, and it’s pray. Holding your crucifix aloft you can pray souls out of ominous objects like stones and graves and rubber duckies, leaving behind notes that reveal the aforementioned backstory. Prayer also dissuades or damages the more aggressive presences you’ll encounter, so long as you’re actually facing the threat. It almost feels a bit like a spiritual horror take on the hunting minigame from Oregon Trail, thanks in no small part to the similarly chunky aesthetic. The look of the game is what I really want to focus on, though, because without it I’m not sure it would work as well. Early on, during your forest sojourn, you’re going to be accosted by something. It’s just a blocky critter on the scan-lined screen but the way it moves and the shape it takes are likely to trigger that primal terror part of your brain that keys off of something being very, very wrong. Were it a fully-modeled and textured creature it would fall prey to more scrutiny from players, surely appearing horrifying to some but silly or nonthreatening to others. It works because it’s a blocky mess, because your brain fills in the rest based on that primal lizard reaction you have to it ambling towards you. The sound design deserve significant credit here as well for picking up with the static-strained synthesized voice that screeches near-incoherently at you. That jarring audio along with the unsettling imagery help turn a white blob chasing your blue blob into nightmare fuel that’ll make you jump even after the twentieth time it screams out of the woods at you. And the same is true for scares throughout the game; every fright gives you just enough visual clues to know what the threat is, but enough vagueness to make it something personally afflicting in your mind. There’s barely anything more to the gameplay than exploring the house and its environs to find the next spooky happening, and I admit the glacial pace your character moves at can make this tedious. Some of the clues don’t follow clearly from one part to another, making progression possible more through lack of options than a defined path. It fits with the ancient Atari look and feel, though, right down to those lovely, familiar scan lines. Presentation can go a long way in any game and it does significant work here, both in making you comfortable and creeping you out. FAITH is an excellent example of doing so much more with less, turning the most basic graphics and sounds into something thrilling and engrossing.
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Nov 1, 2017 20:35
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Does anyone have any experience with the Black Mirror video games? Because the upcoming Remake(?) has me interested.
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Nov 2, 2017 02:20
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GulagDolls posted:it does have one of the funniest scares of all time My personal vote goes to this (video timestamped at the relevant part) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmbrEknVZu8&t=215s
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Nov 2, 2017 02:29
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man nurse posted:My personal vote goes to this (video timestamped at the relevant part) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0fm2lRrEg0
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Nov 2, 2017 02:50
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Mr. Fortitude posted:I doubt it was a bug, because it kept chanting something resembling "ritual" and was the only monster in the game known to do that. Given how much of things in Silent Hill 2 seems deliberate and full of symbolism, I have trouble believing it was just an unintended bug. Yeah this wasn't a bug at all, IIRC it was a subtle hint at that point towards what to do to get the ending where you make a deal with Samael to resurrect Mary. But that ended up being a bonus ending you get automatically if you have a few new items that pop up in the game on a second playthrough so it was out of place for being a hint that didn't really lead to anything special requirements or whatever to do in that area. But it still sort of works to look at it as a subtle hint to James from the "old gods" he mentions that are still present in the ending rather than something for us to really get on a first time play.
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Nov 2, 2017 03:09
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Crabtree posted:Does anyone have any experience with the Black Mirror video games? Because the upcoming Remake(?) has me interested. I adore them, and I'm pretty stoked for the new one. It's a pretty unique trilogy in that the first one was good, if rough, and then a totally different developer took over and made the next two even better. The original is some solid British gothic horror but is glacial in its pacing and has a really weird interface. The sequels take that as a jumping-off point and correct those problems, making a much cleaner and more interesting narrative at the cost of some of that gothic horror. Overall they're a lot of fun and I'd recommend them to any adventure fan, though I wouldn't blame you if you skipped the first one.
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Nov 2, 2017 04:10
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I've considered playing Black Mirror, but god drat I can't get past the fact that it's made by the people who made loving Next Life.
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Nov 2, 2017 04:11
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Am I the only one who likes to turn the brightness up in a lot of games? I tried moving the brightness in Get Even to the recommended setting so you couldn't see the left symbol and could barely see the middle one, but it became really hard to see where a lot of stuff was as a result - the collectibles glow, but with the screen as dark as it was most of it was obscured by the light in my living room playing off the TV making it almost a uniform black at times. Turning up the brightness may have blown out a few shadows but it at least was more comfortable to play so I guess I'll try to find a decent middle ground.
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Nov 2, 2017 06:50
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BioEnchanted posted:Am I the only one who likes to turn the brightness up in a lot of games? I tried moving the brightness in Get Even to the recommended setting so you couldn't see the left symbol and could barely see the middle one, but it became really hard to see where a lot of stuff was as a result - the collectibles glow, but with the screen as dark as it was most of it was obscured by the light in my living room playing off the TV making it almost a uniform black at times. Turning up the brightness may have blown out a few shadows but it at least was more comfortable to play so I guess I'll try to find a decent middle ground. The recommended brightness setting is pretty much always garbage in my experience, so unless you are suffering from photosensitive epilepsy you almost always want to have it at close to maximum if you actually want to see what you are doing. Every so often devs get really into the idea of emulating "true darkness" instead of the brighter filtered stuff and it always sucks. Hel fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Nov 2, 2017 |
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Nov 2, 2017 07:52
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Hel posted:Every so often devs get really into the idea of emulating "true darkness" instead of the brighter filtered stuff and it always sucks. So after Ansem failed his plans in Kingdom Hearts he became a game dev?
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Nov 2, 2017 08:44
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