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Red Mundus posted:Watching that Until Dawn LP posted earlier and man they really love shoving jump scares everywhere. TWO raccoon jumpscares right next to each other? Pace yourself game. At least give the squirrel some screen time. Baby wolverine, actually. I just beat it for the first time. I agree that the jump scares are overdone, but I was mostly playing for the story and atmosphere anyway. I think the actors started off a little weak but got really strong toward the end of the game. I managed to make it out with all but one character (and the one I lost was a stupid decision that actually went against my earlier thoughts, so entirely my fault), so it's fully possible to get the best ending on your first playthrough unless you have bad luck. The Don't Move QTEs are also way harder than they look because the PS4 controller is so sensitive to movement that even breathing too hard can give it away, and the end of the game has some really long ones and does stuff to intentionally make you jump or squirm while you do it. Dr. Hill is a pretty cool narrative device and Peter Stormare was having the time of his life playing him. My one major criticism is that some characters feel underused. Matt is the least seen out of all the major characters and disappears for a huge chunk of the game, almost as long as Jessica does, and they both reappear and leave the game in the same segment. But other than that, it juggled them decently well and it felt like they got pretty equal screentime. Also, I really liked the complexity given to the characters. It looks at first like they're playing into stereotypes, but as the game goes on they unveil some real depth. Mike and Chris probably make the biggest changes, as they both start off a little douchey (with Chris in particular coming off as a tryhard joker) but when things get serious they both buckle down and become pretty heroic. Mike, in particular, goes full blown action hero as soon as he gets pressed and ended up becoming one of my favorite characters. Mike and Jessica's relationship got a little criticism as "cliched", but I think those people just haven't seen much of it. The beginning of the game especially takes a lot of time to explore their chemistry together. But gently caress Emily.
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Aug 30, 2015 05:45
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Not gonna lie, I intentionally chose a path that looked like it would kill Emily because she was being so loving awful. Even when her life is in danger she kept insulting and abusing Matt, after having spent their whole time openly vocalizing her beliefs that Matt is just a dumb meathead who should just listen to her because she's always right. It got to the point where I think I started feeling a lot like Matt probably was right there and took a choice that would kill her. I was legitimately disappointed to find out that she was still alive. Edit: I do know that the relationship stats affect some things like dialogue, but the actual choices you make affect things like the scripted decisions made by characters. Like if you have Chris fail to save Ashley and/or try to shoot her to save himself, she leaves him locked outside for a wendigo to kill. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Aug 30, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 06:21
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Horns posted:Wasn't the big final twist like the President of the United States was somehow involved in the main character being a hobo-murdering screaming death cannon? That's some Metal Gear levels of stupid. There's great potential for an extremely dumb final game to wrap all that up. It absolutely was. I think Condemned 2 also went the classic "bad horror sequel plot" route of taking all of the creepy, mostly unexplained supernatural poo poo and explaining it all as an Ancient Conspiracy involving pseudoscience. It immediately eliminates much of the suspense and horror by giving away the whole deal and turning it from a creepy supernatural horror game into a thriller with vestigial horror elements.
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Aug 30, 2015 08:17
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QuoProQuid posted:It's really a shame how minor Jessica is to the plot, because I really liked what little I saw of her. Even if she survives her initial encounter, she wakes in an almost catatonic state. Honestly, I liked Jessica and the extra layers they put to her character. It looked at first like Jessica and Mike's relationship was going to be a fairly cliche "Jerk Jock and slutty blonde girlfriend get sent to the cabin for sexy times and end up getting killed", but the game actually takes the time to show how all of the "cliche" characters behave out of sight of the camera in a typical horror movie. So when we see Mike and Jessica meet, they actually do cute couple things and have chemistry together. Emily tries to make it seem like they're both just easy lays getting together (because Emily is a terrible person), but they clearly have an interest in each other outside of just banging in a cabin alone. They're both playful and funny on the way to the cabin and depending on how you make your choices, Mike can repeatedly make an effort to save her and help her out on their journey. If she's not totally willing to succumb to his advances in the cabin, they can have a serious talk about her insecurities as Mike tries to make her more comfortable. They did the same thing with just about everyone, really. Chris starts out as the Class Clown archetype and a bit of a prick, but immediately recognizes the severity of the situation even if he won't immediately believe in the supernatural and sympathizes with how uncomfortable Ashley is, and depending on how you play him he can become a heroic and self-sacrificing character. Ashley doesn't have much characterization at the start, but depending on your choices she can become a bitch on par with Emily who has no remorse at all for being responsible for the prank on Hannah last year who leaves Chris to die for trying to sacrifice her for himself and Josh, or she can be extremely remorseful about the part she played in the prank and try to help Chris when he's in danger or hurt.
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Aug 30, 2015 19:20
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Yardbomb posted:If you're fine with them blabbing over a bunch of it, Best Friends did as well and it's pretty great so far to hear their genuine startled moments. Matt's reaction to (Super early silly scare) well, Matt popping up in front of the binoculars was fantastic. One major criticism I have of Until Dawn is that it emulates modern horror movies too well, overemphasizing jump scares and even including tons of fakeouts in the beginning of the game just to gently caress with you. I'm pretty immune to all but the most extreme jump scares (even ones done on me in person barely get a reaction), so it just ends up being an annoyance. I've also consumed enough horror and walked through enough haunted attractions around the country to be able to tell when a jump scare is coming, so stuff like the binoculars stuff was predictable. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2015 06:03
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BlackFrost posted:Speaking of the binoculars, the (minor jumpscare spoiler) jumpscare through those as Mike is probably the only jumpscare in the game that just feels really fake and dumb? Like it just throws a spooky thing in your face and the character doesn't react at all. It reminded me of one of those awful Newgrounds games at the time but I completely forgot about it until just now. They do a similar one later (minor spoiler) with Chris and Ashley during their Spooky Ghost Adventure where it just throws a face on the screen, but at least the characters acknowledge that they saw something. I had the same thing happen and it went away so fast that I didn't even see what it was. It feels like it was actually a glitch, like the game accidentally played the "Pull away from binoculars and walk off" scene instead of the "React to scare" scene. quote:e: I just realized that the bear trap with the human arm waving on it is The Stranger setting a trap for Wendigo, that's pretty neat. I think the clue menu in the game updates to reflect that. That reminds me, one thing I really like about Until Dawn is that not only do you have a menu that consolidates all of the clues you find (and even lists what they mean in plain English in case you're having trouble figuring out the connection), they update when new information is acquired to help connect the dots. Like after the big mid-game reveal, a bunch of the Mystery Man clues update to reflect how they were stuff planted by Josh for his prank.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:01
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The totems are entirely optional collectibles that just give hints at future timelines. Death totems obviously show a potential death for the character who picks them up and Loss totems show the potential death of another character, but the others all just show potential paths that may occur depending on your actions. Some are hints (like one Fortune totem shows Mike unable to bring up the nerve to shoot someone, which hints that you may not want to shoot Emily when he's pointing a gun at her), but even then you may never see the scene that the hint is relevant to. In that particular scene, Matt fired the flare gun for help but I had him jump to the platform because Emily wouldn't stop insulting him and I got so fed up that I legitimately wanted to leave her to die. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 21:57
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UnlimitedSpessmans posted:other than that gently caress Emily. This might be the one thing the thread can agree on.
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Sep 1, 2015 04:13
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I'm watching the first 2 hours of Phantom Pain before deciding to buy it. He's not lying.
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Sep 2, 2015 00:04
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Scariest part so far is the camera in one cutscene zooming in to focus on Ishmael's hospital gown rear end for no discernible reason, complete with a musical sting.
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Sep 2, 2015 00:24
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Professor of Cats posted:no joke, that was pretty visceral. It's a physical psychic projection.
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Sep 2, 2015 03:54
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Also, allowing for any of the 8 teens to die or survive in any combination allows for a lot more control over the outcome. There's not a ton of ending variation, but it means that you don't get the issue from other narrative games where major character deaths are inevitable and your choices are all for naught.
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Sep 2, 2015 21:44
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Yodzilla posted:The cutscene at the end of Where Do The Bees Sleep is great too. That's the mission I'm about to do!
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Sep 3, 2015 17:16
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Rikimaru posted:Go ride a bicycle. Use that bicycle to play Ingress at 2:00 AM and trespass for portals to have the most immersive horror game experience.
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Sep 14, 2015 06:50
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Wanderer posted:I'm pretty sure it plays into a couple of conversations, and into how much Jessica is actually into Mike. It does seem like a mostly vestigial mechanic, though, like it was much more of a factor in an earlier version. I think Chris choosing to kill Ashley is the only thing that can result in another character actually being responsible for another character's death. The rest of the rear end in a top hat options just cause changes in how the characters act toward each other.
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Sep 14, 2015 21:46
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MGS V can do some really great horror stuff because it improved the AI a ton to make hiding more realistic. It's even got a variant of the "Last known position" mechanic from games like Splinter Cell, just without a visible silhouette to let you know where the enemies are going to be attacking. Hiding even during a gunfight feels natural and makes you really feel like a badass when you give a whole army the slip. I definitely didn't expect them to expand it even to the biggest boss fights, which often have forced arena battles in the series.
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Sep 15, 2015 17:40
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Kojima isn't a hack. He's just not a very good writer. The Metal Gear games that most people commonly agree to be well written had Tomokazu Fukushima as co-writer but he kind of disappeared after MGS 3 so you ended up with the stories of MGS 4 and MGS V. He is a fantastic game designer and director though, one with a good attention to detail and I hope for that alone, he gets picked up or goes freelance to do what he wants to do. If I remember, Kojima really wanted MGS4 to be the final game for him so he could move on. So he just made 4 wrap up every single plot point he could think of, no matter how long it took. Then came Peace Walker, and then he was supposed to really end the series with V and wrap up Big Boss's final chapter. It all ended up becoming inadvertently prescient, as Konami dumped Kojima Productions and will probably keep producing Metal Gear Solid games (and pachinko machines) without him.
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Sep 16, 2015 00:14
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WatermelonGun posted:Good golly what the gently caress is going on in here. It's made by the guys who made Pathologic, right? You're lucky it's even in English at all.
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Sep 16, 2015 06:26
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Fojar38 posted:I like FNAF as a horror game, not as a furry RPG. Not a sentence one expects to type.
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Sep 17, 2015 02:26
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I only played a little of Machine For Pigs, but yeah I did notice the graphics are pretty awful for something of its age, especially coming off a prequel that actually looked like it was expected to in 2010.
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Sep 22, 2015 07:11
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Phobophilia posted:Is there a good SOMA LP where the LPer isn't in the corner of the screen and constantly talking? This isn't much of an LP, but this guy plays the entire game with no commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfkpxJmSk_E His channel also has it in more divided videos, but they're still an hour or more each.
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Sep 23, 2015 14:28
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I think I might be getting a little tired of the "This place used to be full of life, but is now wrecked and has a bunch of monsters that you have to hide from" type of game. I think there's an inherent idea in horror that something can only truly be scary if you're alone virtually all the time, and that having companions or other people around would ruin any sense of tension. I'd be more impressed with a horror game that somehow managed to work well in a populated area, or at least allowing you to deal with more NPCs than three or four survivors (who may or may not permanently be hidden behind bulletproof glass and speaking over a radio for the rest of their lives). Something I'm thinking of is It Follows. The movie is about being hunted by a supernatural entity, like pretty much every horror film with a single villain. But rather than stalking the protagonists in an abandoned area and popping out from behind walls for loud jump scares, it simply appears wherever and begins casually walking toward you. It can take on the look of almost anyone it wants, depending on how disturbing it wants to be to the victim, and nobody but its intended victim can see it (though it does have a physical presence, it's merely invisible to bystanders). It allows for tension even in populated areas in the daytime, as it can be anyone in a crowd or appear regardless of what's going on. You can be sitting in class or in the hospital and look at the window and bam, it's outside just walking toward you. I think it would be an accomplishment to make a horror game that effectively allows for that kind of tension without needing to resort to putting the protagonist alone in a dark area full of monsters. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2015 16:33
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Orikaeshigitae posted:sure, but an essential part of terror is isolation. humans are social creatures and it's not as bad if people are around to share the load, so to speak. cf. the ending of Until Dawn. It depends on exactly what kind of power the player has. The antagonist in It Follows can be hurt and even dispelled in some manner (it's ambiguous as to whether or not it can be killed by anything), but without the right stuff to hurt it you can't do anything except run or put physical barriers in its way (which it can always break down). If it catches you, unless you have active help from other people, you're dead. Even if you're in a crowded mall it'll just walk up and messily kill you without a second thought, and nobody else can see it coming for you. It's a similar kind of horror as Slenderman, as DreamShipWrecked said. You don't have a monster that actively hunts for you and can be fooled or hidden from. It simply knows where you are, appears whenever it wants, and casually walks toward you. Easy to avoid at first, but get into a confined space or get fatigued and it becomes incredibly dangerous. You can't safely sleep or eat or go to the bathroom or anything except be constantly vigilant until you can figure out how to get it to stop following you. You may find yourself staying awake for days, dealing with the mental breakdown on top of the stress, because you can't risk being vulnerable. Or you may only get sleep by sleeping in the back seat of a car while a friend who actually believes you drives you around and you suddenly find yourself in an unfamiliar area late at night with the monster pounding at the window because oops, your buddy stopped for a bathroom break at a rest stop. So imagine a game with a similar premise, a monster that only you can see that doesn't run after you because it supernaturally knows where you are at all times. You first see it somewhere like in class or at a movie theater. Later you're trying to explain to your best friend at his house why you're so jumpy, and it just loving walks into the living room mid-sentence. You start trying to research the creature and recruit people to help you, constantly looking over your shoulder in case it appears. You could even add an extra threat to the game in people who don't understand what's going on and can't see the monster. They just think you're having a psychotic breakdown and need to be restrained for your own safety. So on top of fleeing from the monster, you may have people physically try to stop you from running away and need to be shaken off or maybe even fought to keep them from inadvertently killing you. Imagine seeing the monster walk in while you're trying to explain your supernatural enemy to your best friend, and when you try to run he grabs you by the wrist and tries to haul you back into danger. Well-meaning but ignorant, and you're left struggling with him as the monster gets ever closer over his shoulder. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Sep 24, 2015 |
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Sep 24, 2015 19:49
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Orikaeshigitae posted:Here's something I've always wondered about : what do you think of when you think of the concept 'scary'? What I'm looking for from horror games is something more akin to tension + foreboding - you're unsettled by the thematics of the game & you are dreading what is coming up next. But people post about game X being scarier than game Y, and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a Frictional game or Five Nights at Freddie's, it all seems to be different definitions of the same word. Tension is the big thing for me. A good horror story should make you uneasy. Novels tend to make you overthink things (Stephen King's "The Jaunt" is actually my personal scariest story, as I start thinking too much about what an awake jaunt entails and it plays into a very large fear of mine), but visual media is about making you afraid of what's about to appear on the screen. Bad horror tends to overuse jump scares for the tension, which is kinda cheating. It's not making you feel tension for anything except the knowledge that at any given time the movie could suddenly start screaming in your face for no good reason. Good horror can achieve the same tension with simply atmosphere. You make the audience await the same kind of shock as a jump scare, but don't actually go for one. Any image and loud noise can be used for a jump scare. This is a very famous horror scene from Mulholland Drive. It's basically what I'm going for. I'll include it behind this link as the thumbnail image spoils it. This is the setup to the scene, which you should watch first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yusKlHgtvIE
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Sep 24, 2015 22:20
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Wanton Spoon posted:You can feel isolated in a group of people, if there's reason to believe none of them are capable of helping you, or willing to help you. This is why I find the Slenderman web series like Marble Hornets much better as horror than the Slender games or glut of imitations. Slender and its sequels and clones is the classic example of horror that relies on isolation and jump scares, with loud musical stings and distortion when the villain appears and a huge jump scare if they catch you. Marble Hornets makes greater use of tension-building like glimpses of Slenderman and the masked people in the background or around a corner, or doing things like having a camera turn on while someone is asleep to show what terrifying things go on in their room at night. They don't need to end every episode with a jump scare because they successfully get your brain working, making you wonder about what could happen until you're making yourself anxious.
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Sep 24, 2015 22:28
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papasyhotcakes posted:Didn't someone already post a story in this thread about a changeling that somehow also got the captain's job in the game, and proceeded to do such a good job that people were defending him/her when it came out that the player was a changeling and the station descended in a civil war between the people wanting to kill it and the people wanting to save it? Yeah, and that's not even the weirdest thing to happen. People love subverting villainous roles in SS13 to see what happens, like playing a good guy changeling who just helps people. I'm envisioning a situation where a changeling gets hired by the security staff as their new means of execution.
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Sep 26, 2015 06:50
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al-azad posted:Then there's Until Dawn where 90% of items have stuff written on the back to the point where the subtitles will point it out but you won't get "clue found" or whatever until you physically look. Really clunky in that aspect. I don't mind that by itself because it was a core part of the game from the beginning, so you went in knowing that turning stuff around in your hand was important instead of just having a bunch of objects that you pick up to look at and then suddenly there's a crucial clue on the back unlike everything else. My problem was that twice with the totems, the vision failed to trigger unless I put it down and picked it back up.
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Sep 27, 2015 08:38
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Speaking of inspecting things, is there a way to zoom on things you pick up aside from the little zoom you get from spinning it? (PS4) Edit: Wrong game, carry on.
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Sep 28, 2015 05:43
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I don't think they'll be able to get the rights to make a Silent Hill game, but I could see Kojima, Del Toro, and Ito all trying to band together again to make their own independent horror game.
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Sep 28, 2015 17:33
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RightClickSaveAs posted:I rewatch this every time it's posted. It pretty much perfectly summarizes what works and doesn't work in horror games, it's done for comedy but it's an honest impression from the perspective of someone who doesn't have a bunch of preconceptions about the genre. I think a lot of horror games are built specifically for people who approach them expecting to be scared. They're not inherently scary, at least no more than jump scares can be. But people approach with the mindset of "I'm gonna get so scared OMG" and flip out at every little thing. Or, more cynically, "My viewers on YouTube really like when I scream like a girl and fall out of my chair so HERE I GO BOYS" I should actually start writing a treatment of that horror game idea I thought up earlier, the one based on It Follows. I got some ideas for it that I want to get down before they disappear.
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Sep 30, 2015 06:03
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Relin posted:alone in the dark (the original). get some history Not scares or good gameplay. Just history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mz58SFm4Y
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Sep 30, 2015 19:53
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Jmcrofts posted:Already played both amnesias, heavy rain (lol), and condemned. Scratches was pretty fun when I played it. It's a slow paced point-and-click game totally devoid of jump scares, so it relies entirely on atmosphere and story to get through. I was able to beat almost the whole game without a guide, so it's not really hard or stupid for the most part. The game is suspenseful horror rather than "Screaming face jumping out of a closet" horror.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:05
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Gann Jerrod posted:That reminds me, I've been meaning to play Alone in the Dark 2008 for ages. What is the the best console to play it on, performance wise? Thirding, get it on the PS3. The PS3 edition was heavily revamped in terms of gameplay and bug fixes and is basically the definitive edition. Honestly, it's not a bad game and I can't hate it. It's buggy and clunky (I played it on the 360 so I had it even worse) but it just tries really hard to make an immersive and unique experience. As someone who's spent over a month since 2008 in New York City and actually walked through Central Park late at night this summer, they captured the feel of its real life locations extremely well.
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Oct 1, 2015 05:59
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The last update to Routine was in March, where they confirmed that they were still working on the game and won't be switching to Unreal 4 because they're too deep into development to change engines. The last release date estimation I saw was February 2016.
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Oct 2, 2015 19:23
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Ibram Gaunt posted:It could have just been bullshit made up by people but I thought the Routine devs whined that the reason why its taking so long to come out was because Alien: Isolation "stole" their idea and now they have to change things. I can't find any source for that.
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Oct 2, 2015 21:03
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ayn rand hand job posted:You should do Murdered: Soul Suspect This was kind of an odd game for me. Objectively, there's a lot of reasons not to like it: extremely limited combat and stealth segments (with stealth that's either difficult to perform adequately or pathetically easy), surprisingly short length, and almost zero challenge. At the same time, it's unusually engrossing. Salem is really atmospheric and built well and there's a lot of detail to look for. I beat it over about two days of play, and I can't even explain what made it so enjoyable. I think my biggest complaint is the length. It seriously feels 1/3 or 1/4 as long as it was meant to be, like you're just completing one chapter of a larger story. I would have been happy to see more plot with it.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:26
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Niggurath posted:Well if you really want to extend the length, and torture yourself, there were like a billion useless collectibles in the game. I mean some of them were cool and interesting, but a lot were not. I actually got at least half of the collectibles on my run. The game is pretty short even if you 100% it, unless you decide to do it without a guide and are left wandering for that last gas can or something.
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Oct 5, 2015 22:23
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The Vosgian Beast posted:It should probably be noted that this is not the re-make of Pathologic Icepick Lounge are doing, it's the old game with a comprehensible translation and bugfixes. The new Icepick version is going to have a proper translation, right? That was always the big thing keeping me from getting into it.
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Oct 7, 2015 21:06
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Faffel posted:It's not like asymmetric multiplayer doesn't work. The Hidden was fan-loving-tastic and amazing fun with really simple mechanics. But the non-Hidden team had guns, which makes it easier to balance a murder-machine single enemy. The guns were necessary because the Hidden was otherwise incredibly overpowered. Near-invisible by default, able to charge up for a one-hit kill, able to cling to walls and hurl pipe bombs, and can see everyone's aura through walls. Since Slasher sounds like it's emphasizing stealth and improvised weapons, I'm guessing the player-controlled killer is going to have pretty limited powers. Probably able to take and deal more damage and maybe one or two unique abilities to even the odds, but otherwise the player has to use their own wits to locate and kill their prey. He probably won't be invisibly hiding in the corner of a room waiting to drop down and decapitate three people before sprinting away.
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Oct 7, 2015 22:38
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al-azad posted:Jason better have a teleport ability that's active so long as he isn't in someone's cone of sight. I don't know about outright free teleportation (since that could break the game), but maybe give him access to secret passageways or set destination teleporters (like a "Go from Room A to Room B and back again") that he can use when out of sight. So he can't just cheat and teleport right behind you for a kill, but he can reach your destination faster than you if he's in the right area or mysteriously disappear when being pursued.
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Oct 14, 2015 00:08
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