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Posted By Shaun K. about 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Thumb Wars: Episode 14: Video Game Horror – (Un)Dead or Alive?,
Episode 14: Video Game Horror – (Un)Dead or Alive?
Welcome back to the show where we introduce the debate and you continue it. This week’s topic: Shaun & Austin celebrate Halloween by looking at where the genre of Video Game Horror currently stands (or lurches as the case may be).
Thumb Wars is a weekly show hosted/produced by Shaun Kronenfeld dedicated to starting and encouraging dialogue and debate on a wide variety of topics within the video game industry. Look for a new Thumbs Wars every Sunday. Comments, opinions, and thoughts are not only welcome, they are the entire point. Feel free to follow Shaun on Twitter @bigred_13 if you feel so inclined.
I would like to see more survival horror games with ‘realistic’ puzzles, where people do things that people would actually have to do to survive. The problem with Silent Hill games and Resident Evil were the inane sorts of puzzles where you have to go on a key hunt or a coin hunt. Why not some ‘realistic’ puzzles, like find the key to that car by finding the body of the man who owns it, or something like that. It wouldn’t be too terrible to actually have a little education mixed in.
Regarding zombies, I am waiting for a first person shooter Ghost Recon style game mixed with free-moving zombies. Put in some breakable walls, movable furniture, and some stuff like that, and it would be awesome.
on the subject of horror games, i am not very biased and have been dedicated and loyal to silent hill and resident evil.
and i mainly loved the resident evil games because they all had original ideas with plot’s that expanded farther than you could imagine,i loved resident evil 6 because it might be a weak survival horror game and an action game but that is only two things wrong about it, the story is much more thought out and interesting than 5, and i personally think five is the worst game i ever played… but it is not even a zombie shooter, i wish it would at least just have zombies as enemy’s, but i digress.
resident evil needs to find it’s calling and really reinvent the way the games are made 4&5 where laughable and silly a lot of the time and six just does not know what it wants to be, and it still needs to be a zombie game at it’s core.
silent hill are the staple of survival horror and i love silent hill more than resident evil because it has a mythos it explores and expands on and no matter how bad the games get (homecoming and origins) they still add more mysteries that have been going stale and bring in even bigger and scarier questions to the table.
silent hill 1 2&3 are the best games ever made because of they got horror right, sure there were some cheap scares, but it did not rely on them (like resident evil) and the fear came from what enemy is going to be behind the door, how many of them, how strong are they, how big is it, and is there something i need in here that i need to get? and it was unsettling and scary because you did not wanna go inside the room but you had to and it forces you to keep pushing frying out your nerves because you are worried and frightened the entire time.
and therefore by the time 4 came out they were having financial problems and needed a game to try and keep silent hill alive, so konami gave them a game that was already in production and told them to work along the lines and story to try and make it a silent hill game, so therefore the game was very rushed and felt unfinished with bugs, and very vague character development (henry townshend) and this game had glitches and annoying enemies that do not really bring fear… just frustration, and the weapons are very shallow and are not very interesting to use, but it is still a silent hill game and had a very original and interesting plot that toyed around with the mythos of silent hill.
then we got origins… not much to say, frustrating enemies, and a plot that does not really come full circle, but origins was a blessing compared to homecoming…
homecoming was the first silent hill game to come out on the next gen consoles and this is after team silent disbanded and the silent hill product was handed to the north american division and what did we do
we cashed in on the hype of all the little teenie boppers who liked the movie… taking enemies from silent hill 2 (right down to the fucking sexy nurses)the story was half assed and felt unfinished, actually… this entire game feels unfinished. i mean you can carry around the starting combat knife and beat the game with it, there where more bugs in this game than origins, alex has no real development (but to be fair no other characters did) the combat is terrible, the melee system is way to action based and if you are familiar with the combo system you can take on 5 enemies and not get hit once when in the other silent hill game you would get you’re ass handed to you taking on two enemies with a melee weapon, and the firearms suck, instead of a equipping it and using a quick aim mode before an enemy is to close, when you equip a handgun it takes you into a free aim mode and goes over the shoulder cam and it always throws the crosshairs a mile away from the target giving the monster enough time to get off one hit and then there is no reason to not engage in melee combat. the monster design is lazy and boring, the monsters are either reused from better games or just silly and out of place, the soundtrack and graphics are nice but that is about it…
then we got shattered memories, lots of people hate this game (for no reason) and i love it, i think the otherworld and non-combat mechanics were handled better but it is a great game in all other categories and… it was the last soundtrack akira yamaoka (last member of team silent that stuck with the games)composed before leaving.
and i think akira yamaoka hurt downpour a lot more than people realize, because before when you would hear that terrifying music blaring at you it got your adrenaline pumping and you know some bad shit is going to happen, but with the game having a out of place soundtrack or just nothing playing while engaged in combat does suck you out of the atmosphere, and the monsters are even more lazy than homecoming, they do not try to reuse monsters but they are either humanoid or silly and deformed, and the graphics and story were great, the combat and gameplay mechanics is frustrating at points… but downpour was a step in the right direction and deserves more praise for innovating the series…
horror games of this generation are not that great, i like dead space but it is not scary (mainly it relies on jump scares) and i played slender and it was stupid, it was nothing but a overrated jump scare, i did not mind it i am just sick of people thinking it is so scary, i have not played amnesia and it actually looks pretty good and i hope it is good i just hope it gets back on track with more original concepts and not have all the pressure be set on silent hill (mainly because resident evil is dead, and dead space is going to be)
but to me horror games are dead and do not seem to be coming back… at least from what i have seen in gaming recently
The thing that makes Silent Hill 2, specifically, such a benchmark in the series, such a well-known and well-beloved horror game, and such a monument to horror gaming in general is the fact that not only did it unsettle you, and it had this wonderful execution of psychological horror, but it had a certain depth to it as well, and that is really a good part of what contributed to the psychological aspect. One of the biggest things about the game is that Pyramid Head isn’t just remembered because he’s so freakishly scary and enigmatic, though he is, it’s the TRUE MEANING of Pyramid Head in the end that makes it so memorable and so meaningful, and so I tend to get a little upset when I see Pyramid Head in any other Silent Hill game (and the movies) because it loses that meaning completely when it’s present anywhere but Silent Hill 2.
There is a lot of potential and enjoyment in the horror industry as it stands right now. I mean, the makers of Amnesia started out with Penumbra which, while the Penumbra series was good, Amnesia (being the spiritual successor) is definitely superior in storytelling and true elements of horror. I feel Amnesia did something to the same effect that Silent Hill 2 did, in taking the best elements of its predecessor, the elements that worked and just running with them and improving on the things that maybe weren’t the best, either by adding to them (e.g.: more character depth and full exploration of everyone in Silent Hill 2) or taking them out(removing the “combat” aspect Penumbra had completely in Amnesia). But, more importantly than anything these two games kept those things that made them what they were, but also did new things, just as you were saying with Book Of Memories. Silent Hill 2 wasn’t about the occult anymore, the creatures were different, the horror came more from the atmosphere than the enemies and the darkness, but it still worked and still felt like a sequel to Silent Hill.
As far as the subject of horror currently, I’ve noticed someone mentioned Yume Nikki, and that is an interesting game to try too as far as something that can really be horrifying while still being within the realm of 16-bits. There are plenty of good examples of games that maintain this. Corpse Party was also mentioned I notice, and that’s quite a good game to try too. Horror as a genre is not dead, it’s just taking new directions, and I think those directions should be fully explored, for better or for worse.
In the subject of new directions though, the game modification scene has been extremely popular in the past 5 or 6 years, or maybe even more. People have been releasing lots of mods for games, especially with more options becoming available, such as Valve keeping their SDK engine open for modding. There’s a horror mod for Half-Life 2 that really captures my interest, and that I quite enjoy. It’s called Flesh. I highly recommend that anyone who owns that game for the PC look it up on moddb.com and give it a try. It’s well worth the time.
I absolutely love the story to Silent Hill 2. But I absolutely hate the gameplay mechanics. It seems like 75% of my deaths occurred because the game put me in a position where I as the player couldn’t see the monsters, even though the character was looking straight at them. I also didn’t like that, at least occasionally, the game would just make me miss my targets just so they could get in a hit. Now, I’m all for making the combat difficult in order to better frighten the player, but it shouldn’t do that by hamstringing the player; there has to be some fairness to it, otherwise the prevailing emotion isn’t fear but frustration. Bottom line: excellent story, terrible gameplay mechanics.
Yeah, I thought Amnesia looked pretty good. It has an awesome mechanic where there isn’t as much combat and instead is running and hiding.
Personally, though, and I know this will not be agreed upon perhaps, but I thought the first Aliens vs. Predator games qualified as terrifying horror. Playing as the alien, one ran across helpless humans who could only cower in fear, and one could choose whether or not to bite their heads off, and that was a truly horrifying thing in my opinion. To force the player to choose to be monstrous or not can be very effective horror. I agree that SH2 was horrifying, and this largely because you play someone who is a horrible person who made such terrible choices. I think making a player confront parts of themselves that are frightening is a very good thing to do in horror gaming.
Yes, that’s something I really like to see in a horror game. What you do and/or the ending you get (or prefer, anyways), especially in games like Silent Hill 2, can say a lot about not just the game in its characters, but you as a person. It’s always a fascinating, but sometimes frightening, idea to delve into, and that’s what makes it scarier. What is your ideal ending? What is the ending you get? How do you personally play this game and what’s the end result?
The horror genre has stagnated a lot lately. My immediate reaction to Dead Space was “Hey, this is Doom 3: Limb Chopper edition.” Not really something I haven’t seen before.
For me, horror is all about pushing the player’s humanity to the edge until you get a thoughtless, emotional, animal-like reaction that’s born of an instinct. Think of a full 20-60 hour S-H game is the equivalent of a Stephen King novel, and something like Slender as like a short story. They get the same reaction, but have different ways to get there dictated by length more than anything else.
And, like the prose, it’s easy to get the horrific reaction by splattering the walls with gore, but then it diminishes with every rehash. The best horror is not made by having potent visuals, but by creating ideas and then drawing out implications which hit you in the gut.
14:00 I agree wholeheartedly with this. True horror is about making the player uncomfortable with what’s going on, making the player hesitant to proceed, even though he knows he has to.
Frankly, I would prefer a lot fewer zombies and a lot more monsters of the “mind”, things that just should not be, that can only exist within a twisted imagination or a horribly disfigured memory. That’s what I liked about the Silent Hill games I’ve played; the monsters leave the player to question whether the character they are playing is completely insane, questioning reality.
I recently saw Lotus Prince’s commentary on Jacob’s Ladder, and frankly, I would love to see more movies like this. Granted, I’m not really a horror fan, but to me, true horror should have the viewer/player asking questions and thinking about the situations, and not just jumping because a cat jumps out at them with a loud musical sting. Frankly, I think that’s why Lovecraft’s works are so enduring, because, if the reader does put himself in the shoes of the stories’ protagonists, he is left to question the nature of reality and perception.
My input: zombies are fun to kill, but horror should not be fun. Gore is overrated; it should exist only to disturb the mind of the player, not to make him go, “Sweet! Gore!”
But I will say this about gameplay mechanics in horror: there are certain tropes to survival horror that don’t so much accentuate the horror as they do to frustrate the player and pull him out of the gaming environment. Constantly-shifting camera angles, clunky controls – these, to me, don’t contribute to the horror; quite the opposite, they pull me into frustration. Darkness, shadows, corners, objects – these things can do wonders in allowing monsters to hide without making the player feel cheated.
What happened to Fatal Frame?
At one time, it was considered the scariest game series because of the subject matter, the sound design, and how creative all the ghosts and locations were. However, while the series has gotten better overall, it’s never making it to the US anymore. The recent Remake of Fatal Frame Crimson Butterfly on the Wii was at least released in Europe, but Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse never made it out of Japan despite the series now being co-owned by Nintendo. The only way to play these games is to have a Region-free console and, for Fatal Frame 4, the English translation patch via SD card.
These games are fantastic and one of the last remaining true atmospheric horror experiences left on console. Why is Nintendo so reluctant to release these titles in the USA?
The Fatal Frame team recently did a 3DS game called Spirit Camera. In it it has 3 different modes, and one of them is a short but still full fledged Fatal Frame game. It seemed to get a lot of mixed reviews, but even JewWario admits that it’s actually pretty fun and he hates how the FF games scare him! One of the main complaints is that you have to play it in a brightly lit room… but that’s not true at all!. The only thing you need to have lit is a light above the enclosed diary, (which provides augmented reality experiences as you play) but otherwise you can play in the middle of the night in complete darkness if you wished! Everybody should check out this game, and if you think Nintendo has abandoned the series… tell them about it! Write to them and join Operation Zero on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-Zero/131582506953973
Well as far as i’m concerned you guys pretty much covered all the bases when it comes to the old franchises, how Capcom just made the RE franchise a bloated thing that has to appeal to the masses. Though I would disagree with the practice itself since RE is a big franchise that was usually regarded as the go to fun horror game to play. Which is a shame that RE6 just about dropped the horror aspect, you got monsters but that’s about it.
Just about anyone I know who owned a Playstation 1 bought at least one of the games and remembers them fondly for some of the scares even if it was a cheap jump-scare.
This is why i’m more forgiving of SH most of them under the new direction has some redeeming qualities and still try to work out with what made the series good mostly the suspense and psychological horror (Though Origin and Homecoming were pretty weak), i’ve yet to try Downpour though i’ve heard mixed feelings about it.
But yeah I agree that the indie scene is thriving on the genre with Amnesia and Lone Survivor, those two are very good games. Oddly enough there’s not much I can say about them but they got it right.
Horror games never really appeal to me in the first place, so I don’t have much to say in the regard. I’ve got Amnesia on my computer but I haven’t played that yet. Main one I’ve played the most has to be Binding of Isaac, and I play that more for it’s Roguelike Zelda gameplay than the horror element.
I know there is a market out there for Horror, but maybe the developers think the FPS market just has more pontential buyers in it? Maybe the Small Slice of the ever fought over FPS Pie is still worth more than the grape sized Horror market, I dunno. Just looking at sales though, the over bloated CoD seems to sell in bucketloads, but that’s affecting every franchise, not just shooters. That’s more of the problem that most AAA titles are becoming homongenized into the same thing.
Supposably we may see another Eternal Darkness on the Wii U, Nintendo is flip-flopping in saying if it’s happening or not. Zombi U is certainly going to be the next big test for Horror now when it comes out, but I’m thinking it will suffer Red Steel syndrome and Zombi U 2 will be the much better game.
Oh, and did you know Nintendo has a patent on the Sanity meter? Since I think the best horror is Psycological, this really does limit the genre a bit. C’mon nintendo. Let some other games use Psyche in it’s horror based settings.
“8- and 16-bit aesthetics are no barrier to horror”… yet no mention of Corpse Party?
I’m a bit biased, obviously… but I genuinely do consider Corpse Party to be one of the most successful works of horror gaming I’ve encountered in a long, long time. Along with other similar titles, like the freeware Japanese game “Ib,” as well as the recent cult classic “Yumi Nikki.”
I just downloaded Corpse Party! I’m pretty excited.