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Hakkesshu posted:If you like lovely-looking scary games you should play Ecstatica. It's a pre-Resident Evil fixed camera angle/tank control adventure game where you run around a deserted village and are being hunted by this werewolf through large stretches of the game. You can die right the start by tripping over a rock running away from it, it's awesome. It's based on spheroids rather than polygons, so it looks bizarre, an I believe it's done by some of the guys who did the original Alone in the Dark. I haven't played it, so I can't speak too authoritatively about it. I hear the controls might be a bit funky? I love Alone in the Dark, though, I've been thinking of playing Ecstatica at some point.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:08
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Excellent thread. I am a newcomer to this genre, and it is great to hear about these classics I never knew about. Are there any specific classics/remakes that are exclusive to specific systems?
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Jul 12, 2014 01:13
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catlord posted:It's based on spheroids rather than polygons, so it looks bizarre, an I believe it's done by some of the guys who did the original Alone in the Dark. I haven't played it, so I can't speak too authoritatively about it. I hear the controls might be a bit funky? The controls are very funky as it's a tank control game played with the arrow keys. I do think it's a really cool game though, it reminds me of  ANOTHER WORLD a lot in that it just throws you into this world and tells you to go without any direction. It's kind of non-linear, too, and you can beat it in like 20 minutes if you know the correct route. Tons of custom animations, too.It's maybe hard to go back to because of the controls/graphics, but it's one of those games that was so way ahead of its time it's pretty crazy to look at now, and the atmosphere is stilll kind of awesome. It makes Alone in the Dark look like a completely primitive piece of poo poo. Finally getting the upper hand on that loving werewolf is one of my most satisfying gaming moments ever. I couldn't play it for the longest time because of how much of a relentless gently caress you the first 5 minutes of that game are. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 01:15
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DoctorOfLawls posted:Excellent thread. I am a newcomer to this genre, and it is great to hear about these classics I never knew about. Are there any specific classics/remakes that are exclusive to specific systems? 3DO was being embraced by Japan as a system to make interactive CD quality games but unfortunately that system tanked. It did leave us with D's Diner, an enhanced version of D, and Dr. Hauzer which had the unique ability to switch between first, third, and top down cameras. I want to talk more about Japanese horror games because they're another world entirely. Their computers were super popular in the 80s but consoles dominated the market so the computer technology stagnated. With technically inferior computers that limited gameplay mechanics, the visual novel genre boomed which lead to some of the best sprite art from the era. I wish people would put to rest all the Japanese SNES games and start translating some PC-98 stuff because it's a gold mine of untapped potential. If you can, track down Cosmology of Kyoto. It's an adventure game for Win95 with dual English/japanese text. The graphics are some of the most disturbing sprite art I've ever seen.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:47
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Hakkesshu posted:I'd definitely classify Demon's Souls as a survival horror game as much it is an RPG. Dark Souls not as much, but there's still great levels of tension there, and it has a pretty thick atmosphere based around death and decay. Yeah, while Demon's Souls might drift closer to a "survival horror" game than Dark Souls, there are still things about Dark Souls that are really eerie and off-putting. Like others have mentioned, the game makes only a minimal effort explaining the world to you, which leaves your imagination to fill in most of the blanks about this inconsistent, otherworldly place. It definitely enhances the feeling that you're in some sort of nightmare, hell, or limbo. From the very beginning: Are you really "dead"? And why are people imprisoning the dead (or "hollow") in this bizarre asylum-prison that is guarded by gargantuan demons? There's even something sort of menacing about the other human "knight" who drops a corpse into your cell at the very beginning of the game, and then just sort of looms over the pit's opening, staring at you. Maybe he's trying to help you? Or maybe he's wondering if he should put an arrow in you? Who would have thought that in a world that is populated almost exclusively by monsters, ghosts, and demons, it would be the handful of human NPCs that feel especially off-putting. Maybe it's because there are so few of them, and their very presence invites a lot of questions. For instance, a few of them seem imprisoned in strange places, with no attempts to explain how they got there, while others seem to be carrying on relatively normal lives without bothering to acknowledge how hosed their surroundings are. "Yeah, I'm a smith...no, I don't think there's anything note-worthy about me keeping a gigantic metal monster in my basement, so I won't even bother mentioning it." Okay. A few of the locations resemble ordinary places...but even then, there are things that are wrong about them. You may be walking through a city, but you're left wondering if these places were ever really inhabited by people, and who built them, and did these rooms ever house happy and normal people? They just feel like imitations of real places. Like a town in a dream--only a facade. And those are the more normal places. There's another "city" built in a gargantuan underground cavern, partially submerged in a lake, and existing almost entirely in darkness. As you explore the place, you don't find any furniture or evidence that people once lived there...just erratic hallways and bare, windowless rooms in nonsensical arrangements. Oh, and across the lake, there's an entire gaggle of undead on the pitch black underground shoreline, all of whom are staring at the city while in various states of worship and admiration. It's as if they see something glorious that you don't, or they're waiting for something to happen. It's especially weird because undead are usually hostile to the player. But this particular group is transfixed and completely ignores you. Anyway, I could go on and on, but yeah, Dark Souls' setting is definitely unsettling and horrific at times.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:28
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 Yeah real horrific... that's a texture mod for those who don't know
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Jul 12, 2014 07:37
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Genocyber posted:
Custom textures or no, I'm not seeing how that isn't horrific. 
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Jul 12, 2014 08:28
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This thread just made me remember when I played the RE2 demo as a kid. Having grown up on Nintendo games, I can't really blame myself for being scared as hell from that first zombie walking towards you. 
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Jul 12, 2014 08:48
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The sound of Silent Hill 4 really was terrible. It doesn't make sense because the sound director/music guy Yamaoka was a producer, maybe even the EP I can't exactly recall. Like, why did he allow the sound to be so lovely? It wasn't just weird choices like belching nurses it was bad and cheap sounds for ~everything and very lazy sound direction or design or whatever, compared to his work on the first 3 games. Just... what happened. The game has other problems too. But one of the things that I did like is how the enemies would attack each other in SH4. The dogs would fight, or if you killed a dog and another dog was nearby but not aggro'd yet, it would go up to the dead one and suck its guts out; and Walter would shoot at those bee-bat things. Again, though, problems. Enemies interacting with each other was a nice touch, but everything still had severely retarded AI.
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Jul 12, 2014 09:49
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Custom textures or no, I'm not seeing how that isn't horrific. Timeless, yes. :bigtran:
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Jul 12, 2014 09:51
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Honestly, I always thought about Silent Hill as a mediocre series with one breakaway success. I was around to see basically the whole series happen and people have been saying "worst game yet" for every game after Silent Hill 2, only to amend later "okay, maybe it wasn't all that bad" because the newest one was even worse. It's probably best to just think of SH2 as one accidental piece of genius and stop mourning the wasted potential of the rest of the series. al-azad posted:I wish people would put to rest all the Japanese SNES games and start translating some PC-98 stuff because it's a gold mine of untapped potential. If you can, track down Cosmology of Kyoto. It's an adventure game for Win95 with dual English/japanese text. The graphics are some of the most disturbing sprite art I've ever seen.
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Jul 12, 2014 11:34
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Cardiovorax posted:It's probably best to just think of SH2 as one accidental piece of genius and stop mourning the wasted potential of the rest of the series. Nah, sorry, 1-3 and Shattered Memories are really great, and 4 is half-good. The rest of the series can go to hell though.
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Jul 12, 2014 12:38
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How about Dying Light? The world is open now to zombie apocalypse. And these walkers can climb up the roof top.
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Jul 12, 2014 12:52
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Cardiovorax posted:Honestly, I always thought about Silent Hill as a mediocre series with one breakaway success. I was around to see basically the whole series happen and people have been saying "worst game yet" for every game after Silent Hill 2, only to amend later "okay, maybe it wasn't all that bad" because the newest one was even worse. 1-3 were fine. Maybe not to everyone's taste but that's not the same as bad.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:25
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Hakkesshu posted:Nah, sorry, 1-3 and Shattered Memories are really great, and 4 is half-good. The rest of the series can go to hell though. I totally agree with Shattered Memories, it gets unfairly shat on. It can have some really laughably bad writing (Mainly Kauffman) but what it does right it does it quite well. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 14:42
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Origins is an okay game but it's a very bad Silent Hill game.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:44
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JordanKai posted:Origins is an okay game but it's a very bad Silent Hill game. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 14:52
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The absolute worst part of Dark Souls is after you open the gate and drain the flooded city to access the boss, you run around the newly opened paths and the ground is pale and lumpy. It took me a little too long to realize it was all the corpses of the people living there when it flooded. When it finally hit me, I was so shocked I couldn't play the rest of the night. Not that it was scary but I was startled at how callous I had been to my surroundings. I blame Blight Town.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:53
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Well heck, if we're talking about horror games, let's look at the game that the sort of person who fancies himself a game historian would probably say invented the whole survival horror genre: Sweet Home A group of documentarians enter a famous abandoned mansion to photograph the frescoes, but are trapped inside by an evil spirit and its monster minions. They must explore the house, solve puzzles, fight monsters, watch doors open, and face down the evil master of the house in order to escape. Each character has a particular tool they carry, in addition to a couple of inventory slots and a weapon slot, and each tool has a use. The nurse character, for example, can cure poison, while the character with a vacuum cleaner can clear away broken glass debris. Characters who die are no longer available, though the house contains a substitute item that can be picked up by another character to fulfill their function- of course, this is at the cost of half of their inventory capacity.  The game prefigures Resident Evil, and a line in one of the notes you find lying around the mansion (see? totes survival horror) describes the mansion as a house of "residing evil", providing the later series its American name. It was never ported to the US, and English-language screenshots of the game are due to a fanpatch that came out... oh, maybe ten years ago? I remember originally you had to download the Sweet Home ROM, download the translation patch, and download a program to apply the patch. Major pain in the rear end. Nowadays I think you can just get the ROM prepatched.  As to why it never came to the US, well, aside from its being a film tie in for a cheap Japanese horror movie, there's also the graphics:   Nintendo wasn't ever going to let that poo poo get published for the American NES. So basically it's a game you probably never played, but the folks who made the 90's survival horror games, particularly Resident Evil, did. Even if the JRPG style isn't your thing, it's still very worth taking a gander at. If you're not up to playing it, there's a goon screenshot LP. There's also some Youtube Let's Plays, but they've all got some rear end in a top hat nattering on over them.
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Jul 12, 2014 15:08
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Mindblast posted:1-3 were fine. Maybe not to everyone's taste but that's not the same as bad.
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Jul 12, 2014 19:29
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Sweet home has some incredibly gory scenes - and several of them are based on scenes from the movie it's attached to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMcxSasGAM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6_452KYaNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvliWq1XKcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0BR-9FEWIM In particular, Sweet Home's 'melting scene' is famous among hardcore horror fans and special effects people. The game actually did a pretty elaborate re-creation of it. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 19:40
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Cardiovorax posted:I don't mean to say they're bad, just a lot more mediocre than people want to admit. Everybody really wants to judge the series by its high point, but the rest just doesn't really measure up to it. Not really. 2 is the worst playing of the three, easily. Each game of that original trilogy does something better than the others. 1 has the most satisfying structure/progression and is more focused on exploration, 2 has the best story and atmosphere, 3 has the best gameplay, art design and (arguably) soundtrack. I love 2 a lot, but it's the last one I would want to replay anytime soon. I don't think it's fair to use phrasing like "more than people want to admit". I know full well what my opinion on those games are. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 19:54
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Doctor Bishop posted:The long and short of SOMA's setting is that it's basically a professionally-written (and thus actually decent) take on the SCP Foundation, an amateur collaberative writing project that's meant to be a distillation of the "warehouse full of crazy poo poo the world shouldn't know about" fiction setting, but, since it's a collaborative writing project on the Internet, is 90% crap at best. Those videos are basically just the video accompaniment of SOMA's equivalent of the SCP Foundation's "containment document" articles. It isn't. It's nothing like this at all, I can see why you'd make that comparison from the videos but you're making it up. It's going to have a lot more in common with Bladerunner than SCP.
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Jul 12, 2014 20:34
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Hakkesshu posted:Not really. 2 is the worst playing of the three, easily. Each game of that original trilogy does something better than the others. 1 has the most satisfying structure/progression and is more focused on exploration, 2 has the best story and atmosphere, 3 has the best gameplay, art design and (arguably) soundtrack.
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Jul 12, 2014 21:38
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I played SH2 long after the game had been discussed to death, so I don't really have the same love for it as others. On the other hand, I played SH3 not long after release, and it's somehow become my favourite of the series. I don't know how true that is for everyone, but I can imagine it being the case for a lot of people who have come to the game late. 2 has the best overall soundtrack of the series though, no question.
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Jul 12, 2014 21:45
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Hello maybe it's because I'm watching it in LP format (Hell, that's definitely why) but Fatal Frame doesn't seem anywhere near as scary as I remember people saying it was like 8 years ago. The first one almost hit it, but now there's something about 2 that feels even less scary. Maybe it's having a sidekick with you...Maybe I should just play them myself.
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Jul 12, 2014 21:48
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Cardiovorax posted:I couldn't play this game when it came out. It was just too unsettling to deal with at that age. I wish there was a youtube video where people DIDN'T TALK OVER THE loving GAMEPLAY but the tortures of hell are seriously some hosed up poo poo. This game makes Dante's description of hell look loving tame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrW54npKP0w&t=160s
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Jul 12, 2014 21:54
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Volt Catfish posted:Hello maybe it's because I'm watching it in LP format (Hell, that's definitely why) but Fatal Frame doesn't seem anywhere near as scary as I remember people saying it was like 8 years ago. Yeah, you should. Obviously there's no tension when you aren't playing it. For my money the Fatal Frames are the scariest games ever made. There's just something about the feudal Japanese setting combined with the very unpredictable behaviour of the enemies that makes them super harrowing. I thought being chased by Calamity was much more terrifying than Nemesis, Pyramid Head or the ghosts in SH 4. I think each game has a section where you have to enter a crawlspace and it always sets my hair on end like nothing else.
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Jul 12, 2014 22:00
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Volt Catfish posted:Hello maybe it's because I'm watching it in LP format (Hell, that's definitely why) but Fatal Frame doesn't seem anywhere near as scary as I remember people saying it was like 8 years ago. A lot of the impact of fatal Frame comes from being the person who's doing the thing. I hate to babble about immersion, but it's really about getting part of your brain to forget that you're not really standing in a haunted house letting a ghost rush you to get a better shot of it.
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Jul 12, 2014 22:01
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al-azad posted:I wish there was a youtube video where people DIDN'T TALK OVER THE loving GAMEPLAY but the tortures of hell are seriously some hosed up poo poo. This game makes Dante's description of hell look loving tame.
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Jul 12, 2014 22:04
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Accordion Man posted:
I reeally hated Shattered Memories. After playing through Homecoming and Origins, Shattered Memories is what convinced me to stop buying any more Silent Hill games (at least not until I start hearing some really good reviews or Team Silent gets back together). Enough people seem to like it thought that I must admit that I may lack objectivity here. I had really high hopes going into Shattered Memories and I was hoping that it would be the game that would revive the series for me. I was really interested to hear about the supposed psychological profiling and the lack of any form of combat. These made the game sound super-appealing and it very quickly became clear that it was nothing at all like what I hoped it would be. Perhaps if it was a standalone horror game or if I had gone into it with a better understanding of what sort of game it actually was I might feel more charitably towards it. As it is the entire experience was just a big, rage-inducing disappointment. The game basically stripped away all the elements that I enjoyed most about Silent Hill and the supposed "this game plays you" aspect was basically non-existent.
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Jul 13, 2014 10:27
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What's the best way to play silent hill 2 these days? I love horror games but I've never played it.
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Jul 13, 2014 10:41
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Tgent posted:What's the best way to play silent hill 2 these days? I love horror games but I've never played it. Probably the original. There was a Silent Hill HD collection thing but everything I've heard about it said it was a buggy, cash in piece of garbage which is really loving sad 
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Jul 13, 2014 10:42
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Tgent posted:What's the best way to play silent hill 2 these days? I love horror games but I've never played it.
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Jul 13, 2014 10:49
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Tgent posted:What's the best way to play silent hill 2 these days? I love horror games but I've never played it. The director's cut on PC, follow this guide: http://www.play-old-pc-games.com/2014/02/06/silent-hill-directors/
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Jul 13, 2014 12:04
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Emulation also works. There's no console game that isn't made better by save states.
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Jul 13, 2014 15:33
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Cardiovorax posted:Emulation also works. There's no console game that isn't made better by save states. Nah it's wank mate. The games not hard.
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Jul 13, 2014 16:05
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Jimbo Jaggins posted:The director's cut on PC, follow this guide: This looks perfect, thanks!
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Jul 13, 2014 16:14
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Jimbo Jaggins posted:Nah it's wank mate. The games not hard.
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Jul 13, 2014 16:19
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Volt Catfish posted:Probably the original. There was a Silent Hill HD collection thing but everything I've heard about it said it was a buggy, cash in piece of garbage which is really loving sad It has its problems, but, unsurprisingly, everyone blew them out of proportion. I think people were more sore about the VAs being changed (despite the fact that the new guys are perfectly fine and you can use the original voices with SH2 if it really disturbs you that much) than anything, but for what it's worth, I've played both games - original and HD - and never found much to complain about.
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Jul 13, 2014 16:28
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