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Too Shy Guy posted:I see what y'all are saying about Silent Hill, but what about Siren? I feel like the source of the curse there would be right at home as the reveal in a Lovecraft short story.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:15
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Too Shy Guy posted:I see what y'all are saying about Silent Hill, but what about Siren? I feel like the source of the curse there would be right at home as the reveal in a Lovecraft short story.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:15
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dogstile posted:At this point i've still never played a silent hill game and i'm worried playing one will make me argue about it like this. Your version of Silent Hill would be The horror games thread on the SA forums. Do not repress that desire embrace it.  Discendo Vox posted:The only potential exception is Valtiel. Word of god on that character is that a bunch of other cult behaviors and activities, including the appearance of Pyramid Head's robes, were originally based on Valtiel. We don't have as clear an explanation of that figure's role, origin, or importance, or if its origins are rooted in even earlier beliefs. I always thought it was a background creature that existed for a very specific purpose and has no greater meaning. What we never get to find out is what Silent Hill really is and what runs it (the dog does of course). I want to say it's always existed but there's no mention of Native Americans that I recall so Silent Hill is not timeless but stared in the 17th/18th century.  In terms of just Silent Hill 2 I view as an unknowable entity. Otherwise cult magic created it but that's very boring so I don't accept that explanation.
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Sep 27, 2018 05:49
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DropsySufferer posted:What we never get to find out is what Silent Hill really is and what runs it (the dog does of course). I want to say it's always existed but there's no mention of Native Americans that I recall so Silent Hill is not timeless but stared in the 17th/18th century.
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Sep 27, 2018 06:10
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It's implied to a degree, but it's ambiguous.Discendo Vox posted:The flowers are generally tangential- they're used in ceremonies by the cult, but the location itself appears to be the source of power. As far as the town, it's portrayed very inconsistently. The most recent entries like downpour play up the idea of the location itself having sentience, a framing that gained popularity after SH2. In the original game, the town didn't have any power and it was all Alessa's psychic abilities doing the work.
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Sep 27, 2018 06:24
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Which reminds me of one of the subtler scary bits in SH2. That thing you read about the lake where the dead are supposed to rise up and grab passing sailors to their doom. Then they make you rowboat it for what feels like years, and *nothing* happens. drat you, game
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Sep 27, 2018 06:38
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Silent Hill
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Sep 27, 2018 09:23
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I hear it's a spooky place
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Sep 27, 2018 09:58
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Silent Hill$
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Sep 27, 2018 11:02
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Accordion Man posted:3 and The Book of Lost Memories mention that Silent Hill was always a spiritual place long before the Europeans arrived and the local native tribes considered it sacred. It's implied that the settlers and eventually the cult corrupted the area with their actions and beliefs and Alessa's powers strengthened the power of the town immensely. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 11:25
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Going back a couple of pages, but the wax puzzle clicked and made perfect sense to me too. Its a very "Point and click" kinda puzzle in my mind. Could easily have seen that in a Monkey Island game and I loving love me some Point and Click games.
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Sep 27, 2018 11:51
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Near as I can tell, there's three stories you could pull out of Silent Hill. First is the 'people want to be punished' genius loci town that pulls in the guilty and forces them to move past it / accept it / die in the process. That's 2, that's Downpour. Second is the cult angle. There's this crazy powerful THING in Silent Hill, and we don't know nearly enough about what it is but a butt-ton of people worship it. People in this cult are obsessed with suffering and rebirth and its cycle; they'll torture kids (1, 4) or entrap young women (3) to their ends. This horror can even escape Silent Hill and entrap individuals in other places, as happens in the third kind of story. Which is: wrong place, wrong time, some dude just gets involved incidentally and their own personal neuroses are minimally inflicted on the town (Origins, 4.) Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, there is a cycle of 'rebirth' in the first kind of Silent Hill story, wherein someone emerges from the town new or dies in the attempt, and in the second, which is all about the cult / god. apparently there's mobile games too but whatever. i was being generous including origins / homecoming in the first place, gently caress that. Bogart fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 23:20
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Can you ever get to the island on Toluca lake? I always got too creeped out to attempt rowing out there (or I thought the boat rowing time was tied to an ending condition, either or).
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Sep 28, 2018 00:23
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DrSnakeLaser posted:Can you ever get to the island on Toluca lake? I always got too creeped out to attempt rowing out there (or I thought the boat rowing time was tied to an ending condition, either or).
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Sep 28, 2018 00:29
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I'm gone for a week only to discover that THQ's rescued Alone in the Dark from Atari? I can think of no better outcome for that, or any, franchise than ripping it from Atari's mouldering grasp.
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Sep 28, 2018 00:33
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Cardiovorax posted:I mean, kinda yes and kinda no. When you look at the Silent Hill 2 artbook, nearly every creature is described or taglines with some variation on "this here thingie represents James frustrated libido/rage against the world/potty training" or something that nature. Yeah, the other two bring their own monsters with them, but the only time you actually see them is when you run into the woman's "Abstract Daddy" that represents how he molested her. The rest of the time, it's almost solipsistic in how completely it focuses on James and his personal concerns. It would certainly be bullshit to say that about the other games, but for Silent Hill 2 alone? It's really tight writing and right on the money. People call the Silent Hill series psychological horror, but Silent Hill 2 is the only one that actually is. It's why, even here, people either like it the most or the least: it's actually very different from the rest of the series. Surely this demon born from a nightmare realm of infinite suffering and abuse will help us
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Sep 28, 2018 00:41
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I started mulling over statements of Silent Hill being a bad series, based on the majority of its games being bad I realized Resident Evil has probably reached this point, as well, or is getting dangerously close and that since those comprise the majority of horror games (well, those and tacky Steam games)... horror might, mathematically, be a bad genre but then I thought about it more, and with all the shovelware and lovely cash ins and everything else in existence, if you measure something by the majority of its entries I think, statistically, video games might just be bad in general the truth has been revealed, my third eye has opened, and I now see the real horror was here the whole time
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Sep 28, 2018 00:57
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Lunatic Sledge posted:I started mulling over statements of Silent Hill being a bad series, based on the majority of its games being bad I gaze upon you with my fourth eye wide and open, its noxious light burning heinous knowledge into your mind. "Almost everything is garbage. Books, movies, music, paintings, all of it. Everything is garbage. Turn your face to the sky and laugh."
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Sep 28, 2018 01:11
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Improbable Lobster posted:Surely this demon born from a nightmare realm of infinite suffering and abuse will help us but enough about our president
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Sep 28, 2018 01:23
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Eh, it seems like 1/2/3 are all considered good and 4/5/Shattered Memories usually fall under the internet thing of "This is either an okay thing buried under unfortunate problems or a terrible abomination that kicked my dog and cut off a part of my penis, there is no in-between" syndrome.
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Sep 28, 2018 03:39
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"Okay thing buried under unfortunate problems" turns out to run a really broad spectrum.
Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Sep 28, 2018 |
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Sep 28, 2018 05:21
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In my restless dreams, I see that town.
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Sep 28, 2018 05:35
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Toluca Lake always seemed weird to me, because that was where you were supposed to mail your submissions for America’s Funniest Home Videos
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Sep 28, 2018 06:17
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el oso posted:In my restless dreams, I see that town. cleveland.
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Sep 28, 2018 07:22
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CommunityEdition posted:Toluca Lake always seemed weird to me, because that was where you were supposed to mail your submissions for America’s Funniest Home Videos
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Sep 28, 2018 14:18
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Horror games are notoriously hard to get right because everybody reacts very differently to the concepts they try to bring forth. Concepts that cannot be repeated too often or they lose their impact. We all remember how popular P.T was when this kind of approach to horror was not oversaturated. But even P.T bounced off some people. With books and movies, you control 100% of the experience for the viewer/reader so you can deal with some of these challenges, when you add gameplay elements, if you are not careful, you can cheapen or kill certain elements of the horror you are trying to convey. It's a constant act of balancing and it's very easy to gently caress everything up. A good example I can think of is the enemies facing the player. Make encounters with them too hard and you cheapen the "death" by having it happen way too often. Make it too easy and the player doesn't feel threatened / scared by the enemies. After the 30th death to the Alien in Alien: Isolation, it kinda loses it's bang and the only terrifying thing about it is that your last save point was 20 minutes ago. Jump scares are the same, overuse them and tension turns into anger/frustration.
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Sep 28, 2018 15:57
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Horror games tend to have a lot more low budget games, so its harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. (Not that all low budget games are bad)
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Sep 28, 2018 16:01
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Horror is particularly conducive to low-budget productions because it heavily runs on what you don't see. Your imagination can fill in the blanks much better than in pure action titles that run on visible spectacle, so you can do more with less simply by being clever and anticipating how the player will react to and feel about the glimpses that you do show.
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Sep 28, 2018 16:33
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I like every Silent Hill game
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Sep 28, 2018 16:45
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voltcatfish posted:I like every Silent Hill game Downpour? Really?
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Sep 28, 2018 16:46
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Downpour is fine. Certainly much better than the cargo cult M Night Shymalan flick that was Homecoming.
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Sep 28, 2018 16:47
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I'm going to try another thread question: Which Silent Hill game after 4 had the best approach to combat? And Why? This is basically to figure out what role agency and combat agency specifically should have in horror games- plus broader questions about good or bad combat design.
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Sep 28, 2018 16:50
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Sakurazuka posted:Downpour? Really? To be honest I'm surprised you're not more outraged at me loving Shattered Memories
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Sep 28, 2018 16:52
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voltcatfish posted:To be honest I'm surprised you're not more outraged at me loving Shattered Memories I know what I'm upset about
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Sep 28, 2018 16:58
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voltcatfish posted:To be honest I'm surprised you're not more outraged at me loving Shattered Memories Shattered Memories is fine if uninspired, I tried playing Downpour last year and it was physically painful
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Sep 28, 2018 17:04
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Discendo Vox posted:Which Silent Hill game after 4 had the best approach to combat? And Why? The monsters are less scary because they're not really monsters. They're like... reskinned, roving pillars of flame, or rows of spikes coming after you. That's something you avoid, yes, something that's even scary, but at the same time, it feels less like a hostile living creature that's after you personally. You can't fight back against a pillar of fire, but you can, always, fight back against something that's alive, even if the power difference is so great that fighting is fruitless. It takes away a bit of the tension because there's no internal "fight or flight" conflict anymore - you must default to flight, every time, which is maybe more intense, but also less tense on an emotional level. You know what to expect, which is rather bad for the mental state horror seeks to induce. voltcatfish posted:To be honest I'm surprised you're not more outraged at me loving Shattered Memories
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Sep 28, 2018 17:14
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I'm a rather casual gamer, and in my experience, the major point of argument I've had with friends about horror games is the idea that few gameplay options and limited, frustrating controls actually makes for a better horror game. I didn't like Resident Evil until RE4 came out; make of that what you will.
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Sep 28, 2018 17:20
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Downpour was one of those games for me where almost *all* of my problems with it came from the combat. Fix that and it's an entirely different game. I was okay with the story, I thought the environments ranged from okay to pretty good. None of it matters much since that kind of game shouldn't be throwing a parade of monsters that can stunlock you from a mile off and none of your weapons can do much against, yet you're usually required to fight them anyway.
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Sep 28, 2018 17:26
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm a rather casual gamer, and in my experience, the major point of argument I've had with friends about horror games is the idea that few gameplay options and limited, frustrating controls actually makes for a better horror game. The real question here is, in a lot of ways, what would make you more scared while you're playing the game? Being powerful and competent and treating enemies as only so much mildly inconvenient chaff to overcome, or struggling with controls and gameplay options that make you only barely capable of surviving at all and turn every enemy into a serious threat? In a lot of ways, RE4 isn't horror, because you never feel powerless or out of options. Alien: Isolation managed to cross that particular tightrope really well. You never feel powerful and in control of the situation, but it's also basically an FPS in terms of controls, so it more or less has the best of both worlds. The price for that, however, is to have only a single immortal enemy that you never can defeat no matter how much you fight, which would annoy a completely different demography from yourself. In the end, it's not an easy thing to deal with.
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Sep 28, 2018 17:27
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DeathChicken posted:Downpour was one of those games for me where almost *all* of my problems with it came from the combat. Fix that and it's an entirely different game. I was okay with the story, I thought the environments ranged from okay to pretty good. None of it matters much since that kind of game shouldn't be throwing a parade of monsters that can stunlock you from a mile off and none of your weapons can do much against, yet you're usually required to fight them anyway. That's my problem too, they somehow managed to make the combat worse than any of the previous games under the guise of 'fixing' it.
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Sep 28, 2018 17:29
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