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the original jacob's ladder movie is the only place where that twist is acceptable. and silent hill 2, but the early SH games especially just want to be jacob's ladder anyway.
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Sep 16, 2019 01:29
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Something I never understood about Jacob's Ladder is how did Tim Robbins perfectly predict what everybody and everything was going to look like in the 1980s? Talk about a good imagination!
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Sep 16, 2019 01:35
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Oh, are we talking Hillchat again? I say that 4 is good, very good soundtrack and good concept. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even with the escort part.
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Sep 16, 2019 01:39
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Spite posted:the original jacob's ladder movie is the only place where that twist is acceptable. I'd say it still doesn't apply to 2 because like a game discussed earlier (Blair Witch) the "it's all in your head!" parts are also combined with a real actual supernatural murder threat The fact that James' sexual frustration was manifested into a walking penis that vomits acid doesn't make it any less real that there's a ambulatory dick that wants to melt his face off
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Sep 16, 2019 04:29
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Anyone got any impressions of Lost In Vivo? It looks interesting and has decent reviews but I'm always cautious with horror purchases these days. Been burned too many times. And just to add to the SH conversation and annoy people who are tired of hearing about how Silent Hill used to be great and has fallen from grace and how badly we all felt after Silent Hills was canceled... My take on the SH franchise is, of course, objectively correct and without question so these are the best and true summaries of the games. *From the perspective of horror craftsmanship, Silent Hill 1 is unmatched. The fact that a game that ugly and that awkward where you fight pterodactyls and giant moths could still be utterly terrifying is insane. While some of the later games may be a better experience due to higher budget and better hardware, what Team Silent did with the first game is astounding. *Silent Hill 2 is the Watchmen of horror games: original, well crafted, terrific storytelling...and directly influencing some of the absolute worst trends in its genre. Attempts to be the next SH2 have tainted dozens of games, cramming tortured protags with a dark past into everything. You can't blame SH2 for the sins of those it emulates, but it's difficult to forget it. *Silent Hill 3 had great design and the symbolism hit better than either 1 or 2's. It also had solid gameplay and was a great follow-up to 1 for those who don't have a knee-jerk aversion to anything involving the words "mystical cult". It's biggest problem is that it was a solid, all-around horror game which couldn't be as fresh as the first and didn't have the captivating story of the second. *Silent Hill 4 was a...good try. It dared to break the mold of its series in a way that deserves applause and when it leaned into its surrealist elements it could really do something cool. It could have been the best in the series if it weren't for some truly mind-boggling mistakes in game design. It simultaneously has some of the best ideas and the absolute worst execution. It gets credit for trying to blaze a new trail, even if it didn't really do a good job at it. *Silent Hill Origins was pointless and dumb, but I like listening to the soundtrack. *Silent Hill Homecoming seemed to be exceptionally good at taking the elements of the other games and completely missing the appeal. Uninspired is certainly the best way to put it. *Silent Hill Shattered Memories may be okay (although like 4 it has some really bad design elements), but it was so completely not what I wanted it to be that I can feel nothing but burning hatred for it. *Silent Hill Downpour may not actually exist. I've never played it, so...are you sure it's real at all? *Silent Hills is... *Silent Hills is... I'm sorry, I have to go cry now.
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Sep 16, 2019 05:18
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oriongates posted:*Silent Hills is... silent hills was not
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Sep 16, 2019 05:21
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oriongates posted:Anyone got any impressions of Lost In Vivo? It looks interesting and has decent reviews but I'm always cautious with horror purchases these days. Been burned too many times. Lost in Vivo is great. I would even go so far as to say it's the best indie horror game available. It starts a little slow and off putting as the first area is essentially a shout out to horror streamers but within 10 minutes the real game begins and drat is spooky. Excellent creature design, legitimate scares, an atmosphere that's like PS1 style low-fi but doesn't look cheap, and a tooooon of easter eggs and secrets to find. It's weirdly off putting that feels like a game out of time: there's combat but sometimes you have to run, there are puzzles but it's not a puzzle heavy game, and there aren't any real cutscenes but also you're not hunting for notes. If I could give an elevator pitch it's like "what if Frictional Games remade Cry of Fear in the Amnesia engine" and I don't think that would be too far off. It automatically rises above 90% of the market because it's a horror game made in the past 5 years that isn't trying to be P.T. It's also a psychological horror game but instead of "YOU ARE THE MONSTER" you're trying to overcome your trauma by facing it directly and rescuing your service animal hence the title.
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Sep 16, 2019 06:02
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One of the only good spooks in the house area is when you walk into a room and if you look up (totally unprompted) you see a soldier standing in a doorframe with their back to you. I really liked that. It's a shame about literally everything else in that last section.mysterious frankie posted:Same goes for horror movies. When in a “twist” the monsters/supernatural were all in the head of the protagonist and represent guilt, fear of death, trauma, etc it nearly always elicits a groan from me. It’s almost like the person writing it doesn’t think the genre is really interesting or respectable, , so they make what nigh-universally feels contrived, lazy and insulting. Silent Hill 2 continues to be a black mark on the horror genre.
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Sep 16, 2019 06:08
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al-azad posted:Lost in Vivo is great. I would even go so far as to say it's the best indie horror game available. It starts a little slow and off putting as the first area is essentially a shout out to horror streamers but within 10 minutes the real game begins and drat is spooky. Excellent creature design, legitimate scares, an atmosphere that's like PS1 style low-fi but doesn't look cheap, and a tooooon of easter eggs and secrets to find. I'm a big fan of Cry of Fear, so that sounds very appealing.
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Sep 16, 2019 06:20
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Grapplejack posted:Silent Hill 2 continues to be a black mark on the horror genre. The monsters in Silent Hill 2 aren't in James' head! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!
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Sep 16, 2019 07:05
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Spite posted:the original jacob's ladder movie is the only place where that twist is acceptable. The new Jacob's Ladder seems so bad, anyone seen it ?
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Sep 16, 2019 07:18
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I’m pretty sure no one has
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Sep 16, 2019 07:32
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It's dreadful.
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Sep 16, 2019 07:36
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Blockhouse posted:The monsters in Silent Hill 2 aren't in James' head! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here! Yeah SH2 is definitely not "it was all a dream." James did indeed feel and experience everything he saw on his journey.
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Sep 16, 2019 07:51
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wasn't sh2 less it was all a dream and more it's your personal nightmare, like really, this whole town is out to get specifically you
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Sep 16, 2019 08:04
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It's not an "all a dream" twist because there is a physical place called Silent Hill where James was seeing and experiencing the events of the game, even if some parts were altered by his own mental state. Everything he heard and felt actually happened, they weren't negated by the game's ending.
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Sep 16, 2019 08:09
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In fact, in one section of the game, you accidentally stumble into someone else's personal nightmare... which then also tries to kill you. For the purposes of Silent Hill 2 alone, it's best to think of the Fog World as psychoreactive: it's partially shaped by your own mind, but that doesn't mean the monsters can't eat your goolies.
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Sep 16, 2019 09:03
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My favorite ending of SH2 was rebirth, imo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guaTsprIuZg The old gods haven't left this place. Ah... Mary.
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Sep 16, 2019 09:50
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oriongates posted:I'm a big fan of Cry of Fear, so that sounds very appealing. I spent so long in cry of fear just trying to figure out where the gently caress i was supposed to go in the early game than I gave up on it.
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Sep 16, 2019 09:58
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Why is he flying away in a boat?
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Sep 16, 2019 09:58
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oriongates posted:Anyone got any impressions of Lost In Vivo? It looks interesting and has decent reviews but I'm always cautious with horror purchases these days. Been burned too many times. I haven't played it but it is made by one of the Spooky's House of Jumpscares devs, so if you liked the more overt horror parts of that then go for it. Make sure to keep whistling in the sewers 
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Sep 16, 2019 11:57
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I wasn't fond of it. Spooky's House of Jumpscares was funny and got you with the slow ramp-up to genuine horror and with how much it screwed with your own expectations. Lost in Vivo is just... lo-fi and weird. A lot of the game felt just too empty to me.
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Sep 16, 2019 12:00
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Spooky's has too much padding inbetween the expertly crafted horror segments. Sometimes it works when the bosses bleed into the random rooms but mostly it's just a waste of time. Lost in Vivo is like those boss moments with the fat trimmed down. Looking over Cry of Fear again the comparison is really accurate as that is also a game with a lot of wandering and shooting then really tightly scripted scares.
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Sep 16, 2019 12:20
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I think the in-between sections are what allow Spooky's to really work - by the end of the game, you legit start flinching every time one of those stupid plyboard ghosts pops out of the wall, which is one hell of an achievement. If the boss sections are the only part that appeals to you, however, then I can see why you would like Lost in Vivo better. It is kind of that.
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Sep 16, 2019 12:44
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It goes back to my Silent Hill 4 dilemma. One element only works with the other but I just don’t think it justifies how long it is.
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Sep 16, 2019 12:57
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I loved Spooky's, but I also came into it just expecting a doofy comedy game and so I was very, very pleasantly surprised at the increasingly effective horror set-pieces. Probably a case of the game meeting and then exceeding my expectations rather than coming just for the horror.
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Sep 16, 2019 13:49
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Artelier posted:wasn't sh2 less it was all a dream and more it's your personal nightmare, like really, this whole town is out to get specifically you Yeah, there is something there and it is also shaped by what the experiencer brings with them. It works because all the teams involved threaded the needle really well in terms of presenting the existential and the visceral without reducing the impact of either. Also it was novel for a game to pull something like that at the time of release, especially if you’re like me and were a teenager when it came out, were inexperienced enough that poo poo like Tool was still blowing your mind
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Sep 16, 2019 14:35
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I think SH2 legitimately was one of the first examples of a game where the twist is that all the horror is your sins coming back to haunt you, so you were all means not alone in that.
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Sep 16, 2019 14:56
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The SH2 copycats also tend to fail to capture the murkiness of what James did too. Copycats just have your protag just be a unambiguous piece of poo poo and don't have something as complex where James murdered Mary out of a mix of the selfish desire of finally being free of her and his love for her because he didn't want her to suffer from a disease that was going to kill her no matter what.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:13
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Convincing moral ambiguity is surprisingly hard. Straightforward villain protagonists are not.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:29
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It’s a writing shortcut that needs to be put back in the stable for a while, for sure. More people than just the Slavic game companies need to start mining that good, good psychological horror of (not Lovecraft) cosmic absurdity. Is Ice-Pick Lodge the only studio that reads Ligotti or what? Seriously, any team that wants to make a horror game needs to sit down and read In The Dust of This Planet by Eugene Thacker & get some more interesting ideas about what horror can be than Bad Dad/Husband/Brother/Son confronts past via gooey walls and spookemups.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:13
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Still pretty sure Vincent was just loving with Heather with the 'they look like monsters to you?' line. He says it's "just a joke," but any other interpretation (save that Vincent himself was seeing something completely different) doesn't gel well with SH1, or even 3, lest you feel inclined to believe that Harry really was running around a school, killing kids with impunity.Accordion Man posted:The SH2 copycats also tend to fail to capture the murkiness of what James did too. Copycats just have your protag just be a unambiguous piece of poo poo and don't have something as complex where James murdered Mary out of a mix of the selfish desire of finally being free of her and his love for her because he didn't want her to suffer from a disease that was going to kill her no matter what. I have a hard time buying that 'didn't want her to suffer' weighed all that heavily on him, at that point. The lion's share of his actions went towards 'you're a burden, I'm seeing you as a burden. I hate that about myself, and I hate you, too.' It's still murky, but the love he felt for her was for what she used to be. Judging by the theme that went into the other two characters, I get the sense that what broke him most was that the percentage of 'benevolence' that went into the action was abysmally low. But we could probably talk in circles about it, and still not be in total agreement.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:34
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Old Boot posted:Still pretty sure Vincent was just loving with Heather with the 'they look like monsters to you?' line. He says it's "just a joke," but any other interpretation (save that Vincent himself was seeing something completely different) doesn't gel well with SH1, or even 3, lest you feel inclined to believe that Harry really was running around a school, killing kids with impunity. Silent Hill's whole shtick is that it can make you see whatever the hell. Vincent is part of the cult, so it's not surprising if he sees the monsters in non-monstrous forms.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:50
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chitoryu12 posted:Silent Hill's whole shtick is that it can make you see whatever the hell. Vincent is part of the cult, so it's not surprising if he sees the monsters in non-monstrous forms. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 17:00
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It's also implied that the Missionary/Scrapers are actual cultists, so Vincent may have been somewhat had a point aside from trolling Heather.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:08
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The nurses and doctors in SH1 are said by Lisa to be real people, too, or at least to appear like them - she says something about "understanding now why she didn't change like the others." Then again she isn't in a position to really know what is actually going on, or why. She just knows what she sees.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:18
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Yeah, the nurses/doctors are controlled by parasites, the same ones take over Cybil.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:24
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Still don't fully get what Lisa was but I guess that is part of the mystery. She was a real person at some point but whatever the gently caress was happening to her in the end suggested she was bound/controlled by the otherworld.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:37
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Lisa was the nurse whose specific job was to take care of the burnt body of Alessa. She was also addicted to the cult-made White Claudia drug and coerced into telling no-one what was going on in the basement of the hospital as a consequence. Since she was really wracked by guilt over the whole thing and always treated Alessa well, Alessa basically gave her a free pass for her involvement in the whole thing and simply left her stuck in a room instead of a parasite-infested zombie.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:41
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After watching a playthrough of Blair Witch, I'm avoiding any modern psychological horror game.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:19
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