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Cthulhu isn't scary because he's a teenager that woke up 30 minutes before school and decided to smash the snooze button.
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Oct 29, 2020 18:14
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Morpheus posted:And nowadays he's so played out that he's more a mascot. Yeah, fair. I was more using Cthulhu as an illustrative example. My point is more like, the monster doesn't actually matter, what matters is themes and presentation, the story told in the build up or that surrounds the cosmic horror mystery, how it's presented, etc. You probably couldn't make a literal Call of Cthulhu adaptation work today, because everybody knows the big green lad already, but the very basics of the plot still work as cosmic horror structure - the slow reveal of investigative clues, the strange rites and impossible connections between different occult traditions, the unreliable nature of old sailor's tales, and a journey off to some forgotten corner of the planet. A lot of games that draw on cosmic horror miss the affect part of this process and either jump straight to tentacles and fishmen, or just swerve into a totally different kind of horror.
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Oct 29, 2020 18:29
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Cosmic horror ends at the monster. The after effects of humanity interacting with the cosmic unknown is the bulk of the story, the human element is the backbone the climax is the monster which promptly destroys the hero or checks the time and realizes they're too early to eat the earth but the process of stirring causes deep ripples in the earth that fucks everything up. And that doesn't make for an exciting traditional video game.
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Oct 29, 2020 18:39
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al-azad posted:Cosmic horror ends at the monster. The after effects of humanity interacting with the cosmic unknown is the bulk of the story, the human element is the backbone the climax is the monster which promptly destroys the hero or checks the time and realizes they're too early to eat the earth but the process of stirring causes deep ripples in the earth that fucks everything up. Though this is why Eternal Darkness was one of the best cosmic horror games: everyone's story either ended with the people investigating the horror dead, entombed, or changed fundamentally from the experience, all while the main character pieces together the terrifying threads through history. I'm pretty sure only one other person than the protagonist makes it without dying or committed (though pretty sure it was implied that he'd be hunted down by monstrosities). Edit: Actually a couple more than that, but...still good. Morpheus fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 19:00
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If the demo is any indication Bandai Namco sent out to youtubers is any indication of the overall game I'm really looking forward to Little Nightmares 2
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Oct 29, 2020 19:42
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Why is there not a sincere horror DLC for House Flipper?
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Oct 29, 2020 19:43
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Manager Hoyden posted:Why is there not a sincere horror DLC for House Flipper? Phasmophobia, but you're trying to clean up the house while checking out the ghost. And the ghost is leaving handprints and throwing poo poo around which doesn't help.
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Oct 29, 2020 20:07
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al-azad posted:Cosmic horror ends at the monster. The after effects of humanity interacting with the cosmic unknown is the bulk of the story, the human element is the backbone the climax is the monster which promptly destroys the hero or checks the time and realizes they're too early to eat the earth but the process of stirring causes deep ripples in the earth that fucks everything up. I think I post this every few years but The Last Door completely understands this and handles it better than any other cosmic horror game I've played.
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Oct 29, 2020 20:18
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Too Shy Guy posted:I think I post this every few years but The Last Door completely understands this and handles it better than any other cosmic horror game I've played. Hell yeah. I think I reviewed the first chapter, and wasn't expecting much, but was completely enthralled. My only complaint is that the last episode feels directionless in a not-very-good way, but everything else about the game was awesome and, like you said, a great example of cosmic horror, not just 'ooh big monster on earth'.
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Oct 29, 2020 20:24
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X-COM Terror from the Deep nailed the horror of Cthulhu-style stuff pretty well imo even if the actual game design was piss e: and while not a horror game, Tales of Maj'Eyal definitely has some lore pieces that flesh out the world and do a pretty good job imo of detailing all of the horrific things going on, such as the whole thing with the Spellblaze (an event where magic went real bad and basically blew up everything and created all kinds of horrible aftereffects and was basically like a combination of a nuke, cancer, plague, and permanent scar infesting the land, but magic) such as the note from the astronomer who noticed that stars were disappearing from the sky at a rate that meant that the Spellblaze was still spreading out from the planet and was actively destroying other solar systems all this time later. That game has a lot of little lore bits like that. A lot of it comes down to "things sure are fine" followed with "things are not fine, I'm writing this note to say I'm dead now" but the kinds of things you go up against are all kinds of horrifying in a variety of ways. FirstAidKite fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 05:18
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I'm about to get either SOMA or Darkwood. Two vastly different games it seems. Any votes for either?
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Oct 30, 2020 12:17
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That’s a tough one. Personally I’d say dark wood but it’s not for everyone. SOMA is more ‘accessible’ to most people but wasn’t as interesting as a story to me.
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Oct 30, 2020 12:21
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huh posted:I'm about to get either SOMA or Darkwood. Vote for both of them. I really enjoyed SOMA, and while I've never been able to really get into Darkwood all that much, it has a great atmosphere and art and there's others in this thread who will sing it's praises.
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Oct 30, 2020 12:22
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I'd personally suggest Darkwood simply because I didn't like SOMA all that much, but otherwise I don't really have any strong feelings about it.
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Oct 30, 2020 12:34
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Soma is the best first-person-hide-from-monsters game I’ve played. Darkwood has aesthetics for days but gets mad repetitive being a survival game.
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Oct 30, 2020 13:20
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Thanks all. I bought them both - SOMA for xbox and Darkwood for Switch. $25 for both. I couldn't resist.
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Oct 30, 2020 13:27
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Morpheus posted:The problem with Cthulhu is that it's just a real big guy with an octopus head. Hell you can drive through him with a boat. Like, sure, he's scary, but not because of cosmic horror, but because he's a big monster that can, like, smoosh you. The worst part about him is that he's understandable. And nowadays he's so played out that he's more a mascot. Nah, what's really scary about Cthulhu has nothing to do with being a huge green monster that could eat you, though of course that's scary if you're right in front of him. What's scary about Cthulhu is that he's the leader and representative of an older order to the world, in which our values and civilization and lives mean nothing whatsoever, a being that loves reveling and shouting and killing, and so are we. Cthulhu isn't actually the threat! The story specifies that the way you can tell the stars are coming right is that humanity will become like the Old Ones: The Call of Cthulhu posted:That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. That was written and published ten years after the conclusion of World War I, which had senselessly killed millions and laid waste to huge swaths of Europe. The true horror of Cthulhu isn't that he'll rise up and destroy civilization, it's that we're already doing it, that order is already collapsing into violence and madness and chaos; Cthulhu rising doesn't bring the end so much as it's something that happens once humanity does it to each other. He only rises to rule the world once humanity becomes like him. I don't know how you actually communicate that in a video game; you can easily extract the racist parts and the tentacle aesthetics and slap them on 3D models and point the player at them, but I don't know how you make "society breaks down into chaos and violence" into game mechanics. e: Basically the horror of Cthulhu is "What if Thomas Hobbes was right, except even his solution doesn't work?" Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 14:07
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Hungry posted:Yeah, fair. I was more using Cthulhu as an illustrative example. My point is more like, the monster doesn't actually matter, what matters is themes and presentation, the story told in the build up or that surrounds the cosmic horror mystery, how it's presented, etc. You probably couldn't make a literal Call of Cthulhu adaptation work today, because everybody knows the big green lad already, but the very basics of the plot still work as cosmic horror structure - the slow reveal of investigative clues, the strange rites and impossible connections between different occult traditions, the unreliable nature of old sailor's tales, and a journey off to some forgotten corner of the planet. Amusingly Dark Corners of the Earth both did and didn't fall into this trap. They leaned into the fishmen super early, but you also never even saw any trace of Cthulhu until near the end of the game (where just being near a statue of him makes your sanity meter go kerplunk with no explanation offered)
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Oct 30, 2020 14:29
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huh posted:I'm about to get either SOMA or Darkwood. Soma is fantastic, it’s become one of my favorite games of all time (although a big part of that is I love undersea thriller/horror stuff, and I’m a philosophy nerd). The game has spooky monsters, but the bulk of the horror is the ethical/philosophical/existential ramifications of what’s going on; the game goes to some truly hosed up headspaces. Edit— bought House on the Hill and The Last Door on sale. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 17:35
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House on the Hill has some issues, but is overall a very solid game, so that was a good purchase.
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Oct 30, 2020 17:47
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huh posted:I'm about to get either SOMA or Darkwood. Soma Darkwood was so tedious to play that I gave up after Chapter 1 and only got that far with an invincibility cheat. Soma remains tense and interesting the whole way through
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Oct 30, 2020 18:04
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Enjoyment of Soma is more or less directly correlative to how much you love or fear big pulsing buttholes. They’re plot critical
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Oct 30, 2020 19:25
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I wouldn't really call it a scary game, but The Shrouded Isles is a pretty good lovecraftian game. It captures the "you have to do whatever it takes to not piss off this almighty god" aspect well. Re: SOMA, I disagree that the hiding from monsters was good. They had the issue that they were either way too easy to avoid or so difficult that you just had to run for it and hope for the best.
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Oct 30, 2020 19:43
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Speaking of Soma, the game Narcosis is 75% off on Steam right now, making it $3.75. It’s a fun “walking simulator”-ish game with VR support set around an undersea disaster, the voice acting is great, and under $4 is a great price for it. the ending “twist” is really well executed and a hell of a gut-punch, too.
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Oct 30, 2020 20:05
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Xenomrph posted:the ending “twist” is really well executed and a hell of a gut-punch, too. What is it?
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Oct 30, 2020 21:10
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FirstAidKite posted:What is it? the narrator is established as being the only survivor of the undersea disaster. At the very end of the game, you learn that you (the player character) are not the narrator 
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Oct 30, 2020 21:38
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Visage is now complete and released. It does delete your old saves but considering the missing content in EA that's understandable. Lost Hope is better than Man Of Medan so far. Not a feat though...
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Oct 30, 2020 21:58
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I've never been much for horror but I thought I'd give this Amnesia game that's been sitting in my steam library for 10 years a go. Pretty decent, couple bits that got my heart going pretty good, but as the game progresses and it becomes darker and more monster filled it's actually getting less scary. The Storage area with just one monster was super spooky, even that earlier chase in the water was scary in a 'being chased in a dream' kind of way, but having just gotten through the prison area into the cistern I'm finding that I'm just running everywhere and am not super spooked out by the monster anymore. Does this game have any more tricks to throw at me or should I move on to something newer?
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Oct 30, 2020 22:14
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Play Soma, it is cool and good. 
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Oct 30, 2020 22:17
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You've seen all the monsters at that point, the second half of the game is largely a puzzle adventure game with scant encounters so if you're only in it for scares there's little left to offer you.
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Oct 30, 2020 22:19
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The Walrus posted:Does this game have any more tricks to throw at me or should I move on to something newer?
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Oct 30, 2020 22:21
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Any word on whether Visage is good? I'd really like to pick it up for Halloween, but I can't find any recent reviews and I'm incredibly wary of first person indie horror
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Oct 30, 2020 22:44
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Does Little Hope have your characters hallucinating for the scares again?
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Oct 31, 2020 04:44
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I am playing the scariest game of all this Halloween: 15 - 20 more hours of AC:Odyssey (on top of my existing 160) to finish the last 3 DLC.
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Oct 31, 2020 04:46
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Xenomrph posted:Play Soma, it is cool and good.
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Oct 31, 2020 05:18
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Xenomrph posted:Play Soma, it is cool and good.
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Oct 31, 2020 05:24
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Done that several times!
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Oct 31, 2020 05:48
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Soma is really good. It's definitely a top tier sad-horror game. Its got your standard horror monsters but the real core of the game is the insanely bleak and depressing narrative with tons of existential horror.
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Oct 31, 2020 06:06
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My real question with soma is how many millions of copies of simon woke up in various circumstances before the game began? His mind was basically a training tool for designing AI so he has probably been created and killed so many times even before the WAU decided to use him.
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Oct 31, 2020 06:12
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Also another Soma question... Is there an ending where you are the version of yourself who leaves on the ship? I never played it through a second time to find out.
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Oct 31, 2020 06:21
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