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dogstile posted:I dunno, people loved Alien Isolation, which is basically The flamethrower is one of the most effective pieces of horror I've encountered in a video game. You don't get it until hours and hours into the game, after being hunted by the alien, like really loving hunted. You've probably died, a lot. You can't deal with this thing, at all. You can't even get close to it or you're dead, and that noise it makes when it sees prey sets your teeth on edge. You've probably had at least one awful minutes-long sequence of hiding around corners, trying to avoid its line of sight. And then the game hands you an instant gently caress off button! You can make the bastard squeal and run, and that rush of power is sweet. And then you do it again, and again, and you realise it takes more flame each time to make the alien go away. It's learning that fire doesn't actually hurt it. Experiencing that arc of powerlessness, relief, and then horrified realisation, in real time, as you play the game, really works on some people.
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Aug 15, 2020 20:34
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Hungry posted:The flamethrower is one of the most effective pieces of horror I've encountered in a video game. You don't get it until hours and hours into the game, after being hunted by the alien, like really loving hunted. You've probably died, a lot. You can't deal with this thing, at all. You can't even get close to it or you're dead, and that noise it makes when it sees prey sets your teeth on edge. You've probably had at least one awful minutes-long sequence of hiding around corners, trying to avoid its line of sight. That *is* cool, but I never got there. I didn't use it that many times; it always did what I needed it to do in getting me through the encounter alive. That is a cool feature that I did not know about. edit: it seems like there are a lot of things like that that I just never picked up on, and watching the AI videos and stuff about the game and so on--I learn all this new stuff. Like that the Alien can get you on the train station. Makes me wonder what else I missed. Danknificent fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Aug 15, 2020 21:05
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I've had Alien: Isolation in my backlog ever since they gave it away for free, but I can't muster playing it just yet because it's supposed to be an 8 hour game that lasts 15 hours.
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Aug 15, 2020 21:18
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More like a fifteen hour game that lasts nearly thirty.
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Aug 15, 2020 21:22
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al-azad posted:You shouldn’t want to see the spook That depends on the game and person, I go into horror looking to see what grotesque things are behind the corner as do most horror fans. Cardiovorax posted:More like a fifteen hour game that lasts nearly thirty. A:I is not thirty hours long.
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Aug 15, 2020 22:37
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sigher posted:A:I is not thirty hours long.
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Aug 15, 2020 22:53
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sigher posted:That depends on the game and person, I go into horror looking to see what grotesque things are behind the corner as do most horror fans. I’ll rephrase and say you should be discouraged from looking and I like mechanics in non-action games that have it. Even better if its something unique like Siren letting you sight jack monsters but it got bad in the ps3 sequel when monsters could just be shot effectively making them cameras you have to punch. I kind of want to experiment with monsters that are just glitches, like there’s a tangible form but there’s a “cloud” of glitchy particles because you can’t fathom their true form. And you could stand and fight but you’re probably going to miss as this shifting mass of pixels oscillates back and forth. Idk I’m conflicted that the kind of horror I expect can’t translate to a game with satisfying agency. I’m currently working on an adaption of In the Walls of Eryx where a man is trapped in an invisible maze as monsters descend on him. And it’s really hard to make a scenario like that scary but I am finding an interest in the juxtaposition of the player being an efficient video game killer with a handheld flamethrower but he’s completely helpless in a shifting invisible death trap while enemies throb on the periphery.
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Aug 15, 2020 22:58
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Prey kind of has monsters that are just inhuman shapes with kind of eyes maybe? Its def not a full on horror game exactly.
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Aug 16, 2020 00:11
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Mimics were definitely one of the better aliens I've seen in a long time. The way they move is just vaguely unsettling.
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Aug 16, 2020 00:24
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The Chad Jihad posted:And anyway, It's always Cthulhu makes you insane or eats you but like, it seems like this part always gets skipped Yeah. That quote is a huge deal to me. The true horror I glean from cosmic horror as a genre isn't that humanity is doomed and weak and pointless- it's much more frightening to think that we are doomed, weak, and pointless as we are, and one day we'll achieve a midnight-black apotheosis into divinity that'll be heralded by so much violence and loss of emotion as to be truly alien. If you decide to treat corporations as humanity creating their own Great Old Ones, then you're already halfway to a modern flavor of the Mythos.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:04
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The Chad Jihad posted:The Shore is pretty interesting, I think a somber and melancholy take more focused on personal traumas than the eldritch horrors is unexplored ground in video games. Are you kidding, there are a fuckton of horror games where the real monster is emotional trauma. If anything I’d like to see more games where no it’s just a loving monster that hates you
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Aug 16, 2020 02:10
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Black August posted:Yeah. That quote is a huge deal to me. The true horror I glean from cosmic horror as a genre isn't that humanity is doomed and weak and pointless- it's much more frightening to think that we are doomed, weak, and pointless as we are, and one day we'll achieve a midnight-black apotheosis into divinity that'll be heralded by so much violence and loss of emotion as to be truly alien.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:13
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Hakkesshu posted:Are you kidding, there are a fuckton of horror games where the real monster is emotional trauma. If anything I’d like to see more games where no it’s just a loving monster that hates you Sorry I meant in a cosmic horror setting
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Aug 16, 2020 02:17
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If you want to tie Mythos horror to trauma horror, you can treat the collective mass (and now terminal) trauma of mankind as its own potential old one. The collective self-loathing, suicidal ideation, dehumanization, and mad wounded animal fear would make for a hell of a Godhead entity being born.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:19
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Hakkesshu posted:Are you kidding, there are a fuckton of horror games where the real monster is emotional trauma. If anything I’d like to see more games where no it’s just a loving monster that hates you Sorry all I’ve got for you is a hundred metaphors for domestic abuse
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Aug 16, 2020 02:20
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Black August posted:If you want to tie Mythos horror to trauma horror, you can treat the collective mass (and now terminal) trauma of mankind as its own potential old one. The collective self-loathing, suicidal ideation, dehumanization, and mad wounded animal fear would make for a hell of a Godhead entity being born.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:27
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Also lots of the MegaTen stuff, especially Persona 3.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:57
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Cardiovorax posted:Howlongtobeat tells me that a completionist run is 33 hours long, so I think I probably mixed those up in my head. My mistake. I can see that being a thing going after all of the achievements, especially getting all of the Nostromo logs because those required an annoying amount of backtracking. al-azad posted:I kind of want to experiment with monsters that are just glitches, like there’s a tangible form but there’s a “cloud” of glitchy particles because you can’t fathom their true form. And you could stand and fight but you’re probably going to miss as this shifting mass of pixels oscillates back and forth. I swear I've seen something like this in a game... was it Observer... or maybe in Prey the enemies did that? I know something did this and it's killing me that I can't pinpoint it.
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Aug 16, 2020 03:10
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Not Prey, I've played that game to death and it doesn't have any enemies that do this.
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Aug 16, 2020 03:12
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Important to note which Prey you might be talking about. Also, the previously mentioned Control has an enemy that's basically a mass of glitched out polygons, explicitly stated to be an unknown being from a barely known universe that subsists on human thought, and will destroy the body to get to it.
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Aug 16, 2020 03:16
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Speaking of Control, I'm hella excited that its final DLC tying into Alan Wake is out in a few weeks. Neither game is outright horror, but they both do a real good job tying in a bunch of unsettling ideas with various levels of action-y gameplay.
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Aug 16, 2020 03:23
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The thing in Observer is probably the closest to what encountering a truly alien intelligence night be like, that game is super great but also not horror. More like a really superb Outer Limits/Twilight Zone. Dreadwroth2 fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 05:42
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Just finished The Shore demo. Really, it's more of a proof of concept than a real demo because I think it's design to give you an idea of the concept, and not how the first 20 minutes of the game itself will play. As such I think it's pretty difficult to judge the game too harshly. The combat wasn't as bad as I was afraid, but it was also very limited. The one time you do "battle" a real eldritch creature, all you can really do is stun it. The more humanoid creatures can be dispatched with an axe, and as was discussed elsewhere that isn't too out of place in the mythos. I gave the development team some feedback, but I'm not sure how much of it they can really implement. The demo is a step up from a simple walking sim, but I think it needs to be more than Dear Esther with Cthulhu. If you're going to create a game based on Lovecraft's universe, I feel like you need to pay attention to the exploration and discovery elements of his stories. The Sinking City made a real attempt at this aspect of the lore. Many of Lovecraft's stories are centered around the pursuit of forbidden knowledge by people who are actively seeking it out. As flawed as the Sinking City was, it was a great mechanic to play as a detective. The Shore seems to follow a character who is thrown into the middle of the mythos and gains insights into the forbidden knowledge that they never intended to seek out, or even knew existed beforehand. I suggested that a simple fix would be to redevelop the main character as a scientist who was drawn to the island because of its reputation, and gets in over his head almost immediately. It would at least keep the theme consistent with many of Lovecraft's best known works where the protagonist has (at least) a passing knowledge of the Necronomicon and/or actively seek out adventure that goes too far. I think The Shore would work better with more exploration and puzzle elements that flesh the gameplay out and allow for development of the mythos. Exploring an abandoned city like that from The Mountains of Madness would seem like an excellent location for a game. You could do all sorts of creepy things, while building the mythos. You could even make much of it optional material for players really interested in exploring the story. Hell, you could just make a game called Escape from Innsmouth and make it a stealth based action game where you have to navigate your way out of the city using a hand drawn map. That could be awesome and cheap to produce.
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Aug 16, 2020 07:43
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SpitztheGreat posted:Hell, you could just make a game called Escape from Innsmouth and make it a stealth based action game where you have to navigate your way out of the city using a hand drawn map. That could be awesome and cheap to produce. Escape from Innsmouth also happens to be the title of a Call of Cthulhu RPG campaign! You know what campaign would make a great video game? Beyond the Mountains of Madness.
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Aug 16, 2020 11:15
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Kite Pride Worldwide posted:On that tangent, remember that The Grudge flash game? That was the ultimate scariest thing to a bunch of 11 year olds. I remember the billions of flash games like it such as The House. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjHitZrp8M0 In hindsight I kinda miss those early flash photoshop scare games.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:04
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Some of those newgrounds horror flash games were pretty neat back then, jumpscares or not I still remember a couple of them, while the names get away from me.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:31
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Comedy test for your horror game that probably only comes to mind because I have not gotten much sleep. If you can flip the scenario and realize you are playing a walking simulator for the monster, something may have gone wrong in the design process. Though I guess with the nature of progress and casual information even on accident, it's harder to surprised people with "Eh I'm in a space horror game, mutants begging me to kill them whatever... Is that a loving monkey-JESUS CHRIST!" lasting first impressions with easily dispatched monsters. I can never remember they dump monster closet turbo spiders on me in that one part. I will always remember that goddamned first monkey in system shock 2. Not that being spoilered to hell and back on the immortal representation of being a drunken father seems to stop people from going to bat for it as scary because... Well, you can't kill it. Checkmate, horror haters.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:49
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Dreadwroth2 posted:The thing in Observer is probably the closest to what encountering a truly alien intelligence night be like, that game is super great but also not horror. Yeah it gets real Solaris towards the end. Neat game.
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Aug 17, 2020 06:52
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Hanging non to the monsters as glitches thing, is there any game that makes monsters or things seem off by having them animate at different frame rates than the rest of the game? Would that even work without gamers complain about it being buggy?
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Aug 17, 2020 08:19
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I think it sounds a lot better on paper than it would actually work in practice. Unless you're willing to go down really far, like "far distance animation downscale" far, most people wouldn't notice the difference between a monster moving at 30 FPS versus a game that is moving at 60 FPS. Not enough for it to matter to the horror factor, anyway. But if you do that, then you have the problem that it looks like poo poo completely independently of whether people think it looks like a bug or not. lovely, low-FPS animations are lovely, low-FPS animations even when you're doing them intentionally rather than through incompetence. Incongruousness does not just automatically translate to scariness. Sometimes, it just looks bad. I personally tend to think that the whole idea of glitches as a monster design appeals mostly to people who grew with a certain type of "cyber space" flavoured 90s media like Re-Boot, but more out of nostalgia and niche interest than because it's really all that effective as an aesthetic for a horror game.
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Aug 17, 2020 08:26
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Cardiovorax posted:Kinda both. you're misreading the story, he didn't go back to sleep because he head got rammed, it just wasn't quite time yet. The ship was utterly irrelevant
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Aug 17, 2020 08:54
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You are so loving lucky the stars are not aligned or I totally would have kicked your rear end dude. Come back when at the foretold time of my rebirth in another thousand years and it'll be a whole different story I swear to god.
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Aug 17, 2020 09:18
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Cardiovorax posted:I think it sounds a lot better on paper than it would actually work in practice. Unless you're willing to go down really far, like "far distance animation downscale" far, most people wouldn't notice the difference between a monster moving at 30 FPS versus a game that is moving at 60 FPS. Not enough for it to matter to the horror factor, anyway. Don't know if I agree with most people not noticing. Into the Spider-verse has Miles animate on 2s until he gets his confidence and animates on 1s, and while the other four people I saw the movie with have zero vocabulary for animation they immediately asked "why does Miles look so jerky compared to everyone else?" and by the end the change was noticeable enough that they at least understood it was supposed to be a metaphor for his personal growth. And hell, I will fight anyone who says they prefer AI interpolation in their Quake ports or smooth animations for Doom. I wouldn't attribute the aesthetic to anything in particular, just a visual shorthand for processing something that should not be. A trendy equivalent to something like "this monster is vibrating really fast" from Jacob's Ladder or something. There's also the super iconic suit effect of Predator which was achieved by inverting a matte outlining technique and it looking so creepy is why it's such an iconic monster.
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Aug 17, 2020 09:20
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multijoe posted:You are so loving lucky the stars are not aligned or I totally would have kicked your rear end dude. Come back when at the foretold time of my rebirth in another thousand years and it'll be a whole different story I swear to god. come to r'lyeh in the next stellar epoch if u want an rear end kicking
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Aug 17, 2020 09:23
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I was actually considering the opposite, like you have most of the game animating at 30 FPS but the monster and other wrong stuff animates at 60, so it's otherworldly because it's "better".
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Aug 17, 2020 10:07
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multijoe posted:You are so loving lucky the stars are not aligned or I totally would have kicked your rear end dude. Come back when at the foretold time of my rebirth in another thousand years and it'll be a whole different story I swear to god. Look if you woke up and the first thing that happened was someone hit you with a boat you would hit the snooze alarm too
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Aug 17, 2020 10:19
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Hel posted:I was actually considering the opposite, like you have most of the game animating at 30 FPS but the monster and other wrong stuff animates at 60, so it's otherworldly because it's "better". It's only during cutscenes, but the monsters and such in Faith are rotoscoped animations which really clash with the games' super lofi asthetic and its disconcerting as hell.
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Aug 17, 2020 12:16
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al-azad posted:Don't know if I agree with most people not noticing. Into the Spider-verse has Miles animate on 2s until he gets his confidence and animates on 1s, and while the other four people I saw the movie with have zero vocabulary for animation they immediately asked "why does Miles look so jerky compared to everyone else?" and by the end the change was noticeable enough that they at least understood it was supposed to be a metaphor for his personal growth. And hell, I will fight anyone who says they prefer AI interpolation in their Quake ports or smooth animations for Doom.
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Aug 17, 2020 12:23
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A game that's hyper realistic Unreal Engine 6 type poo poo except the monsters are low-poly sprites.
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Aug 17, 2020 13:06
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Piss Meridian posted:you're misreading the story, he didn't go back to sleep because he head got rammed, it just wasn't quite time yet. The ship was utterly irrelevant That's what the shark said too. Speaking of horror games where the enemies have weird frames of animation did we already talk about this FPS? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVBR1U623as Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 13:33
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