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Yeah, I started playing Painscreek. I suspect I'll never actually finish this as I'm really good at overlooking minute clues, but it's already proving to be an interesting mystery. Just found the kid's trashed room in the hospital and the bloody note to her friend, which was like...goddammit, where is this going. Also it's a drat pretty game.
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Oct 25, 2018 01:49
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alien isolation is good right? kinda want to get it but know i should wait for the sale
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Oct 25, 2018 02:35
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Agent Escalus posted:Denis Dyack debuts Deadhaus Sonata. This is the second time he's tried to make a game riding on the coattails of the one good game Silicon Knights made, isn't it?
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Oct 25, 2018 02:37
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1stGear posted:This is the second time he's tried to make a game riding on the coattails of the one good game Silicon Knights made, isn't it? Hey, Blood Omen was good! Wouldn't mind an HD remake with actual readable graphics and being able to get to the pause menu in less than 10 seconds, but it was the first Zelda-like that really caught my attention.
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Oct 25, 2018 02:51
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1stGear posted:This is the second time he's tried to make a game riding on the coattails of the one good game Silicon Knights made, isn't it? Yeah, the last one was openly marketed as a "spiritual successor to ED" called Shadow of the Eternals. There was a thread about it and if I could still access archives I'd link it. Anyway: he put it up for Kickstarting to be released on the WiiU, but in the immediate aftermath of Too Human, the lawsuit they (he) filed and lost against Epic, which led to the recall-and-destroy court order for TH and X-Men Destiny you can guess how well THAT went...and then the other poo poo went down. Seriously, if you like developing drama (pun intended), dig up that thread. It was an unintentional hoot reading it getting updated with the continuing curveballs that torpedoed the project. (The paedo scandal wasn't the only factor, but I recall it was the last one since that guy was also the co-creator of ED and SotE).
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Oct 25, 2018 05:13
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StashAugustine posted:alien isolation is good right? kinda want to get it but know i should wait for the sale It’s excellent, but wait for the sale
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Oct 25, 2018 06:55
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DeathChicken posted:Yeah, I started playing Painscreek. I suspect I'll never actually finish this as I'm really good at overlooking minute clues, but it's already proving to be an interesting mystery. Just found the kid's trashed room in the hospital and the bloody note to her friend, which was like...goddammit, where is this going. Also it's a drat pretty game. I marathoned it for the past few days, after it sat it my Steam library for a while. Dutifully kept notes as I played, by the end I felt like Charlie chasing Pepe Silvia, but the story's extremely good. Has a couple of extremely rare scares too.
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Oct 25, 2018 07:20
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I mentioned this before but painscreek managed to scare me because the lack of clear game rules/explanations made it unclear to me if I was ever actually in danger or not. And since you quickly find you're not there alone, well...
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Oct 25, 2018 09:36
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StashAugustine posted:alien isolation is good right? kinda want to get it but know i should wait for the sale It's very cool for the first 10 hours, and then there's another 10.
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Oct 25, 2018 11:07
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What are the expectations for Call of Cthulhu next week? Not seeing much about it in terms of previews/videos etc but what is out looks alright. Dev hasn't ever made a horror game before it looks like but that doesn't mean much really.
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Oct 25, 2018 11:45
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exquisite tea posted:It's very cool for the first 10 hours, and then there's another 10. I tried playing it with friends recently and i'd forgotten how long the intro was. One hour in, no alien...
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Oct 25, 2018 12:06
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al-azad posted:Hey, Blood Omen was good! Wouldn't mind an HD remake with actual readable graphics and being able to get to the pause menu in less than 10 seconds, but it was the first Zelda-like that really caught my attention.
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Oct 25, 2018 12:14
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Blood Omen was one of my favourite games of the PSx era, and it's a shame we'll probably never see an updated/remastered version of it.
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Oct 25, 2018 13:54
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dogstile posted:I tried playing it with friends recently and i'd forgotten how long the intro was. One hour in, no alien... Have you seen the movie it's based off of? Also, you're moving through the game Exceptionally slowly if you haven't had your first encounter yet. Not that I'm judging, take your time.
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Oct 25, 2018 14:05
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A.o.D. posted:Have you seen the movie it's based off of? Also, you're moving through the game Exceptionally slowly if you haven't had your first encounter yet. Not that I'm judging, take your time. Oh i have, but bare in mind "exceptionally slowly" is me going through, skipping all the terminals, etc etc. I've played through this before and i think the only hiccups was picking up the document on the ship (took me a couple minutes to find it) and the same with the first power thing (took me a couple minutes to go oh hey, terminal). The intro is actually really long.
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Oct 25, 2018 14:20
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thebardyspoon posted:What are the expectations for Call of Cthulhu next week? Not seeing much about it in terms of previews/videos etc but what is out looks alright. Dev hasn't ever made a horror game before it looks like but that doesn't mean much really. I actually have press access for this right now, but everything is embargoed until launch on the 30th which is why you're not seeing much coverage. I'll have a review of it to share on the day of or the day after, at least.  1. Little Nightmares 2. OK/NORMAL 3. Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn 4. Rise of Insanity 5. Paratopic 6. Rusty Lake Paradise 7. Cube Escape: Paradox 8. INFERNIUM 9. Dead Secret 10. All Haze Eve 11. Welcome to Hanwell 12. Gray Dawn 13. The Last Cargo 14. Observer 15. Dark Deception 16. Cultist Simulator 17. House of Evil 18. Nevermind 19. CONCLUSE 20. Sagebrush 21. The Painscreek Killings 22. A Room Beyond 23. The Evil Within 24. Yomawari: Midnight Shadows 25. Dead Secret Circle    Dead Secret was a pleasant surprise, a solid murder mystery that managed to ramp up the creeps despite a touchy interface and simple graphics. It was the kind of one-off game you wouldn’t really expect to get a sequel, much less one that improves the formula as much as this one does. Indeed, Dead Secret Circle takes the most interesting parts of the first game’s plot and builds a new mystery around them, as well as refining the systems that allow you to unravel the tale. If not for some bugs and a weaker ending this would be an ideal follow-up, but even those small points leave it a big improvement over the original. Patricia Gable’s part in revealing the truth behind Harris Bullard’s death got her the ticket out of small-time reporting she wanted, landing her in Chicago at a major newspaper. But her adventure at that remote homestead changed her in some very dramatic ways, and we catch up to her in 1971 during a leave of absence from her gainful employment. She’s having trouble sleeping, haunted by visions of the Laughing Man, the current serial killer du jour in town. Realizing her dreams may have a tangible connection to the case, she begins investigating a condemned apartment building at the center of the grisly murders and quickly finds herself caught up in a new conspiracy tied to her old terrors. Dead Secret Circle is very much a continuation of Dead Secret, so much so that the first scene will spoil the murderer’s reveal from the original just a matter of minutes in. If you want the full experience, by all means put this one aside until you finish Dead Secret because I can assure you it will be worth it. This sequel gets a lot of mileage out of Patricia’s traumas and the peculiarities of the original case, and you’ll get plenty of big, revelatory moments if you’re equally familiar. It’ll also help you appreciate the growth in design shown here, because the comparison between how the two play is stark. Dead Secret was a first-person point-and-click adventure on rails, heavy on puzzles and reading but less so on exploration. The biggest step Dead Secret Circle takes away from that is making the game freely first-person, allowing you to explore the apartment building at your leisure. The other big innovation is the presence of NPCs to interview and negotiate with, something the the first game didn’t need but feels like a welcome addition here. Those folks foolish enough to inhabit a condemned building with a serial killer are colorful indeed, with larger-than-life personalities and plenty of secrets to uncover. The conspiracies run deep, and you’ll be unearthing loads of details that aren’t even needed to nail the killer. Speaking with the cast takes up a significant portion of the game, enough that I think the puzzling may have suffered as a result. You’ll still have plenty of brain-teasers to get past, but they’ve definitely been de-emphasized compared to the first. Instead there are loads of absolutely charming collectibles to find, most parodies of 70s-era pulp novels and magazines. These provide extra incentive to explore and make the game world feel more lived-in. It’s not a perfect facade though, mainly because of some major graphical issues that pop up from time to time. It’s not uncommon for ceilings to vanish and reveal the shapes beyond, or interaction points to get impossibly finicky. At least one scripted sequence broke for me and had to be reloaded, and the sound would cut out every once in awhile. Stability’s really the only big gripe against the game, except maybe words about the ending being a little too jarring and concise. I thoroughly enjoyed my investigations here from start to finish, wandering the decidedly 70s halls and piecing together clues. Don’t misunderstand, it’s not a serious detective title like The Painscreek Killings or something, but it’s absolutely a fun journey to work through. With improved graphics and voice acting, wonderfully creepy NPCs, and a solid story to tie it all together, Dead Secret Circle is a great choice for a thriller with plenty of lore and scares to bounce between.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:38
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thebardyspoon posted:What are the expectations for Call of Cthulhu next week? Not seeing much about it in terms of previews/videos etc but what is out looks alright. Dev hasn't ever made a horror game before it looks like but that doesn't mean much really. I'm on the fence. I like that they're going for more of an adventure game direction but the adventure aspects look as complex as Murdered: Soul Suspect which is to say you click on all highlighted objects until you have enough to move the story along. The thing I'm holding out for is that they're basing the game on the tabletop RPG rules which means it should be a little more robust than candid interactions and the environments look decently large to reward exploration. I'm definitely not rushing to spend $60 but I'll get it at the inevitable holiday sale.
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Oct 25, 2018 20:52
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Just finished Infliction and may have missed the conversation about it, but I absolutely hated how the ghost could kill you and the whole death/checkpoint mechanic. The game had it's real spooky moments, but none of them revolved around the ghost running around randomly killing you. Those parts were simply annoying. Turning on the lights to "kill" her was impossible too because you needed to be able to see her to time it properly but the light switches had such a small hit box, it just didn't work.
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Oct 25, 2018 21:07
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don't ever get your hopes up about a Call of Cthulhu game before you can get your hands on it, imo. lovecraft made the entire niche out of making really disturbing implications and then leaving the details up to your imagination. words are great at that but a visual medium like a game really struggles to get that balance right. i love the mythos but it's kind of the prime example of how hard it is to get a horror game right.
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Oct 25, 2018 21:25
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Too Shy Guy posted:I actually have press access for this right now, but everything is embargoed until launch on the 30th which is why you're not seeing much coverage. I'll have a review of it to share on the day of or the day after, at least. I assumed it'd be embargoed but usually there's a little more out there for a game this close to release than just a couple trailers. Will look forward to your impressions, I've bought two of the games in your big halloween playthrough list and enjoyed them. al-azad posted:I'm on the fence. I like that they're going for more of an adventure game direction but the adventure aspects look as complex as Murdered: Soul Suspect which is to say you click on all highlighted objects until you have enough to move the story along. The thing I'm holding out for is that they're basing the game on the tabletop RPG rules which means it should be a little more robust than candid interactions and the environments look decently large to reward exploration. It's pretty cheap on Steam in the UK so if it sounds even slightly good I'll probably grab it as a halloween game. Spent more on less interesting games (potentially, obviously, could be complete poo poo).
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Oct 25, 2018 21:47
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Coolguye posted:don't ever get your hopes up about a Call of Cthulhu game before you can get your hands on it, imo. lovecraft made the entire niche out of making really disturbing implications and then leaving the details up to your imagination. words are great at that but a visual medium like a game really struggles to get that balance right. The only thing keeping me interested is that it's a game coming from one of those PC prominent European developers. Ideally there'll be a balance between awful jank, because it's a European PC developer, and good atmosphere necessary for a horror game. Talking Pathalogic/Dark Corners here.
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Oct 25, 2018 21:55
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The one coming out soon is based on some pen and paper Cthulu rpg I think so hopefully it's enough of its own thing to be interesting. I'm more interested in the one coming next year by the people who make those Sherlock games but definitely curious to hear more about this other one
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Oct 25, 2018 22:01
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Coolguye posted:i love the mythos but it's kind of the prime example of how hard it is to get a horror game right. Then, you get to the end of the story, and it turns out that Cthulhu is a green squidman-dragon... which is distinctly imaginable and really not that hard to put into words at all, which leaves many first-time readers with a distinct sense of "that's it?!" There are certain types of horror that work better the less they actually tell you about what's going on. I couldn't tell you where I read it, but I saw it summed up once as "no matter what the writer comes up with, it will never live up to the shadow of your own imagination" and it really does a great job of explaining why so many horror stories have very weak endings: the fear of the unknown and unseen is always greater than the fear of that which clearly seen and understood. No matter what it is about, once it's all laid out and dissected for the reader to pick apart, it just doesn't feel half as threatening anymore. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Oct 25, 2018 |
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Oct 25, 2018 22:48
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Just a heads up to everyone that Alan Wake (which I like very much) is back on Steam (and on sale for $3). It got pulled a year ago because the music liscensing expired.
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Oct 25, 2018 22:55
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basically, if your eldritch horror beyond definition doesn't look like this, at bare minimum you need to try harder
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Oct 26, 2018 00:08
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That's too cute to be horrific
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Oct 26, 2018 00:11
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Oct 26, 2018 00:12
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Agent Escalus posted:That's too cute to be horrific look, the cosmic horror is trying his wittle bitty best please don't make the monster from beyond the stars feel bad about its diminutive size and highly scritchable (albeit constantly shifting) head-like zone
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Oct 26, 2018 00:14
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Cthulhu gets knocked out by a boat motor, I literally cannot think of a less scary monster.
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Oct 26, 2018 00:25
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Bloodborne is far and away the best Lovecraft game and a great deal of that is because it didn't use any of the Mythos.
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Oct 26, 2018 00:31
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1stGear posted:Bloodborne is far and away the best Lovecraft game and a great deal of that is because it didn't use any of the Mythos. The Mythos is funny because it's so saturated at this point that it can't actually surprise any of the people consuming Mythos related media. When you know it's always coming up fishmen or whatever it's hard to be scared.
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Oct 26, 2018 00:34
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1stGear posted:Bloodborne is far and away the best Lovecraft game and a great deal of that is because it didn't use any of the Mythos. that, and the poo poo you do run into is appropriately horrifying and hard to describe "it's a... huge brain man... with arms where they shouldn't be. Like, too many arms. And eyes. I think." "it's a massive rear end dog-deer that's really shaggy in some places but like a gaunt human in others? No eyes I can see but way too much loving mouth. The... deer antlers actually kind of look like a tree or something, now that I'm getting a better look--" Lunatic Sledge fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 00:35
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1stGear posted:Bloodborne is far and away the best Lovecraft game and a great deal of that is because it didn't use any of the Mythos. Yeah, I think I agree. Lovecraft's (extended) Cthulhu Mythos has become so popular that creatures like the Deep Ones and Dagon and Cthulhu lose almost all of their shock & horror value. Cthulhu's a stuffed plushy now...a chibi keychain. I haven't actually played Bloodborne but I'm still pretty familiar with it, and it seems like it taps into that same flavor of cosmic, mind-melting horror...but because the characters and creatures are original creations, they still have a distinct otherworldliness and unfamiliarity about them.
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Oct 26, 2018 00:36
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Coolguye posted:don't ever get your hopes up about a Call of Cthulhu game before you can get your hands on it, imo. lovecraft made the entire niche out of making really disturbing implications and then leaving the details up to your imagination. words are great at that but a visual medium like a game really struggles to get that balance right. The new game also seems to be combining the "squid" and "space" elements in a way that's a little weird. It's pretty rare to see the more visceral (and racist-y) squid-horror like the deep ones and innsmouth used in combination with doors through time and space and reality warping...at most you get some mention of places like Ryleh with impossible geometries, but it's rarely in your face. It's "Great Old One" stuff, that's ultimately a little more down-to-earth and physical. When that happens it's more related to weirder things like the Yithians or hounds of Tindalos, "outer god" stuff instead of "great old one" stuff, to use distinctions from the tabletop game. So seeing space-portals or temporal entrapment in the innsmouth setting is a bit weird...doesn't mean it's bad...just weird. Could be that they're taking a more creative approach and are trying to mix elements in a way that hasn't been done before...or it could be that they're just mashing stuff together without thinking about it. Looks pretty at least. Even if it just turns out to be bioshock with squids, that could be fun.
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Oct 26, 2018 01:00
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:I haven't actually played Bloodborne Do yourself a favor and play it because it really is the greatest game ever created.
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Oct 26, 2018 01:37
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Cardiovorax posted:Lovecraft is the best example of it himself. For the majority of The Call of Cthulhu, the story that introduced the eponymous Cthulhu of the Cthulhu Mythos into setting, the creature was actually given no real, defined appearance. The story builds up a great tension by only vaguely describing it as monstrous, cyclopean and horrible beyond human imagination. And don't forget that he's beaten. They run a boat into him and he realizes the stars weren't actually right my bad going back to sleep. And it's not at all he's running away because he got beat
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Oct 26, 2018 01:46
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I don't know why the whole thing got named the Cthulhu mythos, Cthulhu itself is decidedly not that big of a deal within the universe. Yog-sothoth, Shub-nigurrath, and Azathoth are the real heavy hitters, right? e: so admittedly its been a real long time since i read the stories, but the two main sources of horror for Lovecraft wasn't something indescribable or beyond understanding so much that it causes madness. I'm pretty sure the things that scared good old howard were: 1. A loss of control over himself 2. Corruption of his very identity (Miscegenation) A bunch of his stories have the protagonist discovering "no john you are the demons" as the twist, obviously in Innsmouth the final piece of horror is the protagonist himself listening to Dagon's call, and in the Shadow out of Time (or was it Mountains of Madness) the protag is trying to pick up the pieces of his life after he'd been body-jacked by Granted, that's based on a hugely spotty memory (I legit can't remember anything that happens in the Colour Out of Space except for a phonograph being involved somehow). A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 02:08
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A big flaming stink posted:I don't know why the whole thing got named the Cthulhu mythos, Cthulhu itself is decidedly not that big of a deal within the universe. Yog-sothoth, Shub-nigurrath, and Azathoth are the real heavy hitters, right? The Call of Cthulhu story is the most well known and iconic of Lovecraft's stories and very few of the greater entities actually make an appearance or have an impact on the plot. They're mostly used as a collection of names that get thrown around with only modest consistency. Azathoth might be mentioned as one of the dread names in the dread book of what-have-you, or seen in someone's drug-fueled fever dream. But Cthulhu's the guy who's actually going to end the planet when the Stars Be Right (if there isn't a boat). He's the one on earth, waiting to drive psychics mad and eat everyone else when he wakes up. Azathoth may be the cosmic demon sultan, but he's basically just floating in space listening to his ipod on repeat and not bothering anyone. Even in cases where the outer gods get summoned or get involved with humans, it's rarely very direct.
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Oct 26, 2018 02:15
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Nyarlothep is the only god-rear end god that's loving around with people. Azazoth is basically braindead, but if you piss him off enough, he'll destroy everything iin the universe n a blind response to the stimuli. That's based on my very vague memory.
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Oct 26, 2018 02:19
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Yeah, I think I agree. Lovecraft's (extended) Cthulhu Mythos has become so popular that creatures like the Deep Ones and Dagon and Cthulhu lose almost all of their shock & horror value. Cthulhu's a stuffed plushy now...a chibi keychain. I haven't actually played Bloodborne but I'm still pretty familiar with it, and it seems like it taps into that same flavor of cosmic, mind-melting horror...but because the characters and creatures are original creations, they still have a distinct otherworldliness and unfamiliarity about them. I think having a Japanese dev helped too. I don't know if it's culture or design philosophy or what, but they have way more luck intersecting "unsettlingly weird" and "a budget".
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Oct 26, 2018 02:44
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