I feel the game Call of Chtulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is very well done and successful in instilling psychological horror to the players as well as atmospheric environment and the setting it provides.

 

Maybe Obs could take some pointers from it.

I believe you since fear is such a personal thing, but indulge me, would you kindly?

The Resident Evil games. Everyone jumped at the dogs crashing through those windows. Well, the first two. The action elements they started introducing made them easier to cope with after that.

The Silent Hill games. Pyramid Head, RUN! JESUS FUDGE!

Well, I only got scared in the fmv's, otherwise they were pretty stale.

 

Now, Condemned is freaking intense at parts.

See, Condemned didn't scare me nearly as much as the games I mentioned. Condemned was made to give the player better notification of enemies and no worries about conservation. I've never scared, in a game, by what's in front of me, I'm always scared by what might be next and what might be after that.

 

Resident Evil and Silent Hill's ammo management and limited viewing made it so I didn't know what was around the next corner. Not only might something be there, I was never sure if I would be able to handle it too easily. I might waste a lot of ammo, I might have to waste some healing herbs. Condemned? If an enemy was ahead I either saw him, heard him, or can see his arm around the corner. I have the taser with unlimited ammo and the main type of combat doesn't even use ammo. Plus health shows up around every other encounter. You could just bash and kill anyone who's there, reheal and move on. Resident Evil? You're better off running. But if you do that, they'll still be there when you come back this way and you might have to do that at the worst time for a fight.

I have trouble imaging it working.. especially in evoking a creepy feeling. But I remembered playing a game where I got that feeling despite the fact that was it isometric view and that was

 

in a later stage of Starcraft, I forgot the exact level but it involved you going into an infested terran base with a small squad and I forget the goal- but you encountered a ton of zerg (popping out left and right). The fact that your characters were dying left and right helped amp up the stakes.

 

I think they should have a system where any npc can die- but at the same time add tons of little things that make you care for them. It won't be the horror of jumping out of your seat , but the fear of what will happen to those you care about. Even if it is that they just seem like good people- and you don't know there whole life story as in other Bioware/Black Isle games.

 

Agreed. Nothing will kill the atmosphere faster than an invincible plot important NPC that wonders into a swarm of aliens and kicks their asses with a pistol 'cause they can't damage him.

Achieving horror in the Alien franchise seems to me to be as much about the times when you can't see and can't fight the alien as the times when you can. Horror through copious amounts of blood is just dull and this game should aspire to more. A different approach is found in Dark Seed and Shadow of the Comet, two games that really creeped me out with no fighting at all.

I agree about scary being hard to kill. But it's got to be fast and always just behind you. Those houdini splicers in Bioshock are like that. Its also a fundamental part of aliens that you are backing up into a corner waving a gun in front of you ...and the alien is in the corner.

Hmm fear?

 

System Shock 2 - the brain monkeys. Those things would pop out of nowhere and zap you... and they made the chitter sound... I dunno they scared the **** out of me... possibly because they respawned.

System Shock 2 - the zombies obviously... but also partly because when you're going down a corridor there is always the possibility that one will be just around the corner because of respawning

Half-Life 1 - the head crabs. There's just so many of them that you never know if you've killed them all and then suddenly one jumps up at your face and you're unloading a clip into the lightbulb accidentally.

Half-Life 1 - the zombies... the moaning which gives them away as the walk inevitably towards you... and often ambush you from all sides

Half-Life 2 - the headcrabs/zombies in darkly lit places with respawning... ravenholm, that elevator bit in Episode 1... perfect

Vampire: Bloodlines: the zombies anywhere. They respawn so fast and numerously that regardless of how easy they are to kill, you've ALWAYS got to be watching your back because they WILL be around every corner possible... it helps that if they eat your brains it's instantaneous death.

Deus Ex: the spider bots scared me... they were small, fast and in cramped areas where explosions would kill you too and where you NEEDED to crawl through to continue... their scurrying sound was also scary - it was a signal you were about to receive a bunch of electric shocks then die, but you didn't know from where.

Lots of games: if there is an underwater predator of some sort, even if fairly weak, I freak out when I'm underwater... I try to get out as soon as possible. Half-Life 1 nearly killed me with it's sharks.

AvP2: The scripted sequences of spawning aliens worked fairly well... similar to the above games.

 

I think part of the key to fear like this is some combination of: respawning, high dmg, melee, slow hitting, semi-silent or hard to detect monsters

Headcrabs are small so hard to see... they also jump at you.

Headcrab zombies take massive swipes at you which do high dmg... but they take ages to get to you, giving you plenty of time to freak out and wildly unload your clip at them

Brain monkeys just give me the he-be-je-bees.

Vampire's Zombies could kill you in one attack if they got a chance, which meant no matter how easy they were to kill, you had to make sure you DID kill every one of them that got remotely close... which was very often... so often you'd inevitably miss one, discover it directly behind you and freak out with your clip again.

I like your reasoning, krezack. And fortunately our xenos obey most of those rules.

 

EDIT: to put it another way we are NOT scared by things that are huge, easily spotted, unique, predictable, and ineffective.

The question isn't how, but why?

 

And about "fear" in video games, I don't know about you, but fighting rotting corpses infected by an alien parasite through the halls of a dark "library" and having them constantly coming out of everywhere while some disturbing AI floating ball leads teh way, at the same time running out of ammo, not knowing if you'd have the time to refill or even be able to refill before the zombies start pouring out again was pretty damn tense.

Edited September 17, 200718 yr by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

Personally, I hope they do it in a manner similar to the recent hit Puzzle Quest.

AvP2: The scripted sequences of spawning aliens worked fairly well... similar to the above games.

 

Scripted sequences? Screw that. The scariest moments are in Multiplayer, playing that game type where you start as a marine but become an alien if you die. After the first alien spawns, the marines would generally attempt travel to the most well-fortified piece of the map and just wait for the onslaught. And as more marines would die, more aliens would appear. It gave a feel remarkably similar to Aliens.

The question isn't how, but why?

 

And about "fear" in video games, I don't know about you, but fighting rotting corpses infected by an alien parasite through the halls of a dark "library" and having them constantly coming out of everywhere while some disturbing AI floating ball leads teh way, at the same time running out of ammo, not knowing if you'd have the time to refill or even be able to refill before the zombies start pouring out again was pretty damn tense.

 

That bit was OK... it had all the elements - respawning, easy to kill, also easy to die, low ammo, attacks from all sides... but... I personally found it lacked something... but I felt like that for the entire game I guess.

The "Cortana" Level is a lot creepier... probably since the entire ship is made of flood-like flesh. And the flood is now a lot more twisted and disgusting, especially the pure-forms... and the live infecting of allies... which is almost painful to watch.

Half-Life 1 - the head crabs. There's just so many of them that you never know if you've killed them all and then suddenly one jumps up at your face and you're unloading a clip into the lightbulb accidentally.

 

i'll admit, those damn little things did scare me at first, but only until i discovered the joy of Headcrab Baseball

 

let them jump, then SMACK with the crowbar

Edited October 5, 200718 yr by Shryke

You want fear?

 

Just play F.E.A.R. in the dark, at midnight.

FEAR was far from scary.

 

I don't get particularly scared in Half-Life games, either. But when a group of headcrabs pop out of nowhere and all start attacking you, some panic is incurred.

Edited October 6, 200718 yr by Tale

FEAR had a healthy amount of creepiness. The gameplay followed a simple yet effective pattern: Alternation between creepy ghost-scenes, and gory, kinetic combat. Engaging combat always felt fresh and welcoming after the stressful ghost scenes.

 

If you want something that really stretches your nerves constantly, then play Condemned: Criminal Origins.

FEAR had a healthy amount of creepiness. The gameplay followed a simple yet effective pattern: Alternation between creepy ghost-scenes, and gory, kinetic combat. Engaging combat always felt fresh and welcoming after the stressful ghost scenes.

FEAR is only scary if you'd been living under a soundproof rock for the entirety of the J-Horror craze, and had never seen or heard of Akira or its inbred cousin, Elfin Lied.

 

If you want something that really stretches your nerves constantly, then play Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Condemned is only scary if you've never seen any of the important David Fincher movies (not including Zodiac), particularly Se7en. Still, the department store level with the living mannequins was pretty good. The atmosphere (which, while sometimes effective, was still too grimey and one-note) wasn't enough to save that one, however.

 

If they're going to look for an archetype, SS2 is as good as they're going to get. Personally I'd prefer something along the lines of a Lovecraft book or even Dead Rising: The source of tension comes from the fact that the character is always underprepared, constantly losing and seemingly doomed, right up until that instant when they win. That's what horror should be.

Edited October 6, 200718 yr by Pop

FEAR is only scary if you'd been living under a soundproof rock for the entirety of the J-Horror craze, and had never seen or heard of Akira or its inbred cousin, Elfin Lied.

I watched Akira. What's so scary about it?

Nothing, but the manga set the archetype for the mad psychic scare genre. It wasn't horror precisely, at least not after album 5(of 12, IIRC), but it did introduce a lot of thematic elements of which FEAR uses many, if not all. They just churned in the whole Ju-On-aspect of little girl ghost to attract Ringu-fans.

Edited October 6, 200718 yr by Musopticon?

Hmm fear?

 

System Shock 2 - the brain monkeys. Those things would pop out of nowhere and zap you... and they made the chitter sound... I dunno they scared the **** out of me... possibly because they respawned.

System Shock 2 - the zombies obviously... but also partly because when you're going down a corridor there is always the possibility that one will be just around the corner because of respawning

Half-Life 1 - the head crabs. There's just so many of them that you never know if you've killed them all and then suddenly one jumps up at your face and you're unloading a clip into the lightbulb accidentally.

Half-Life 1 - the zombies... the moaning which gives them away as the walk inevitably towards you... and often ambush you from all sides

Half-Life 2 - the headcrabs/zombies in darkly lit places with respawning... ravenholm, that elevator bit in Episode 1... perfect

Vampire: Bloodlines: the zombies anywhere. They respawn so fast and numerously that regardless of how easy they are to kill, you've ALWAYS got to be watching your back because they WILL be around every corner possible... it helps that if they eat your brains it's instantaneous death.

Deus Ex: the spider bots scared me... they were small, fast and in cramped areas where explosions would kill you too and where you NEEDED to crawl through to continue... their scurrying sound was also scary - it was a signal you were about to receive a bunch of electric shocks then die, but you didn't know from where.

Lots of games: if there is an underwater predator of some sort, even if fairly weak, I freak out when I'm underwater... I try to get out as soon as possible. Half-Life 1 nearly killed me with it's sharks.

AvP2: The scripted sequences of spawning aliens worked fairly well... similar to the above games.

 

I think part of the key to fear like this is some combination of: respawning, high dmg, melee, slow hitting, semi-silent or hard to detect monsters

Headcrabs are small so hard to see... they also jump at you.

Headcrab zombies take massive swipes at you which do high dmg... but they take ages to get to you, giving you plenty of time to freak out and wildly unload your clip at them

Brain monkeys just give me the he-be-je-bees.

Vampire's Zombies could kill you in one attack if they got a chance, which meant no matter how easy they were to kill, you had to make sure you DID kill every one of them that got remotely close... which was very often... so often you'd inevitably miss one, discover it directly behind you and freak out with your clip again.

 

 

I agree with your end statement. But I have to wonder how well these enemies would work in evoking fear in a non- First Person Perspective view... I think that helps a lot. And I'm not sure but I got the feeling this game wasn't going to be...

 

The only non-FPS game I can think of that kinda freaked me out was the original Resident Evil, but I think that was because of the crappy controls mixed with the creepy atmosphere . Once you had control in Resident Evil 4 though; it wasn't all that scary. Much more fun, but not scary.

Edited October 8, 200718 yr by Zero

My laptop scares the **** out of me... it runs windows vista!

 

But a memorial scene/sequence; in Aliens where ripley and the marines have made it back to the "hq" after a failed scouting mission. Where they build up fortification to ward of the xenomorphs, that build up to the attack by the aliens and kills the almost the rest of the team... Its just perfect example of how you scare the **** out of people (that experience it).

 

Always killing the enemy leaves you a bit jaded on the horror side of things. There will be time for fighting, but you have to run from it most of the time (survivel and GET THE [Fornicate Under the Command of the King] OUT OF THERE)

Thinking back to one of the few games (ever) that managed to give me goose bumps, I think it was a combination of the right pacing and visual/audio effects that did the trick.

 

Frst off, the music was awesome. That is always important when setting a mood.

 

The game was called "Forbidden Forest" and featured some rather ugly, blocky graphics by todays standards.

 

Anyway, as the game progressed, the scene grew darker as the moon started setting, the visibility dropped and the opposition got tougher.

 

The final challenge was an endboss that you could only see (and hurt him) for a fraction of second, every time lightning lit up the night sky. When not lit up, you could just glimps small changes in the landscape and guess if it was caused by something leaving that spot or occupying it. Every time he got visible, you could see that he got closer to you. If you didn't, often rather frantically, get him in time, you lost the game.

 

It was really some simple means and tricks, but the overall effect was just pure adrenaline rush for something that wasn't really an action game.

When I was a kid... I dunno maybe 10, I played the game Blood, based off the Duke 3D engine. It scared the pants off me in parts, but I guess it helped that it featured zombies, pitchforks, dark rituals, cloaked figures spouting strange words and haunted forests.

haha Blood was awesome

 

kicking severed heads around. good wholesome fun

Blood 2:

*Cabel looks into a mirror*

 

"aaah, what the ****!"

"....."

"oh, it's just me"