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When Will Games Disturb Us?
Game Girl Advance brings up the subject of emotion in games, again, by going to the dark places. Jane talks about movies that are just plain uncomfortable to watch (shades of Donnie Darko), and wonders why when games will have the same effect. From the article: "Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of 'fun.' You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is."
Until that damn kid turns that Godawful noise down, that's when!
And get off my lawn!
A: August 2, 2004
Sorry doom 3 was creepy as hell (bad pun) when i frirst started.. then again i did start at night with the lights off and hifi audio going - the random people screeming through the walls really got me
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
to the tune of 50 bux down the drain. No movie ever cost me that much, though I would've paid close to that to escape the Twin Peaks movie some years back.
Lots of games already disturb me. In fact half of the games I've got I can't play after the sun goes down :P And some titles I pass by because I find the content offensive, and I'm not very conservative!
F.E.A.R. is the only game I have ever played where I was literally scared to play any further...especially since i was playing during nighttime.
It would seem that the author's never played a Silent Hill game before. Or System Shock 2. Or Eternal Darkness.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
The first game that disturbed me in a good way was the original Doom... even low res, those weird textures that seemed to be based on skinned flesh was just creepy.
The first game that disturbed me in a bad way was the first Duke Nukem, where if you shot the strippers, they turned into piles of money. That's just mysogonystic. Yes, in theory the strippers were taken over by aliens, but that's wasn't the primary reason strippers were shootable. Someone on the team just wanted to be able to shoot woman (and let's face it, if you listen to the guys at the top of 3D Realms, they strike me as men with serious psych issues with women).
Even games like GTA didn't give me a sick feeling like that did. The violence in GTA is in the context of the world. The Duke Nukem thing felt like it was someone's sick fantasy that they thought was funny.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I think when games have the emotional power to push on peoples sensibilities, they will finally have become a true form of art -- just as all great art does. It makes people respond in different ways emotionally. I look forward to killing hookers with a whole new realism and excitement.
The mood of a game is a result of its story-telling. If the underlying story isn't disturbing, putting more special effects isn't going to change anything, either. But if we assume there are books that can be disturbing to read, then certainly any game has at least as much access to present information as well as a book, so of course they can be, too.
For the past few years I've been waiting for someone to come out with a serial killer game, where the player takes the role of the serial killer trying to outwit the FBI and continue his crime spree and trophy collection. When that game arrives, I'll know the moral decay of modern society is complete and irreversible.
(only half joking)
And I don't think mass audience interactive entertainment (a.k.a. Video Games) will cross into truly disturbing Territory anytime soon. There's a difference between being a passive observer to something disturbing such as all the many movies already mention and being an active participant. And I think that the mental and emotional consequences of crossing that line are going to be too high for the majority of people to accept.
Granted, there's games out there with downright creepy premise, but they don't tackle such socially disturbing topics as movies because movies don't require that you project yourself as an active participant. The mental and emotional toll required to do that would, I think, force 99%+ of people to abandon such a game only a few minutes in.
If it's a game, there's an implied sense of humor about the content. You can have hitler chopping up baby bunnies and if its supposed to be a game, it becomes funny no matter how ridiculously bad taste it is.
stuff |
Yep. I meaa, tell me that scary little acid-rabbit thing that answers your mail for you isn't disturbing...
"Takeshi's Challenge", the 1986 NES game by Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano (who later went on to create the tv show we know as MXC). The game begins with a screen saying "This game is made by a man who hates videogames" and is designed to make the player as miserable as possible. The game includes such gems as a sequence where the player is forced to continuously sing karaoke for one hour without pressing any buttons; a gap which appears to be jumpable but is exactly one pixel too short to jump across, forcing the player to try and fail several hundred times until after several hundred deaths the game suddenly announces that the gap was actually impossible and lets you to the next screen; and a final boss that must be hit 50,000 times to defeat it.
Games can't ever be truly disturbing because disturbing is a subjective, personal quality; what one person finds disturbing another will find really neat, and vice versa. But Takeshi's Challenge, by abandoning the idea of shocking the player and actually moving into the region of purposefully causing them pain, was outside the possible comfort zone of anyone.
The original Diablo in all its 640x480 glory.
Maybe it was the soft string instruments in the background.
The intro movie was pretty good too.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.
Such as Infocom's Trinity (about time travel and nuclear war), and A Mind Forever Voyaging: Starts off with the mildly disturbing premise of what it's like to be a "brain in a vat, experiencing a computer simulation". Continues with the extremely disturbing unfolding of what happens when (because reality's just a computer simulation), the simulation extrapolates social/political consequences of what happens when one plugs in a certain Senator's "plan" to save the economy... and what happens to the brain in the vat when it starts to learn things about the "plan" that the dear Senator might not like.
AMFV was probably the most disturbing interactive fiction title that Infocom ever released. (Because we're arguably still playing it - you and me reading this - today.)
I'm a player of EVE-ONLINE. It didn't take long for the PvP aspects to have real effect. (Consequently, they have much less effect now; perhaps an end all be all definition of pirate depending on why?) Early, my heart beat would raise, adrenaline rush and all of a sudden I would get a real feeling of fight or flight mentality whenever a 'flasher' would warp in. That "oh shit" feeling, that even if kept silent is obvious to any onlookers. The effect is so strong, from myriad accounts not just my own, that I have often pondered if CCP will eventually have some sort of medical warning to those with heart conditions while starting to play the game. Not only does the game genuinely enduce physical and emotional characteristics of imminent hostile danger, but if you get to see your opponent pop you get a genuine sense of gain or power, if you die, you have a genuine sense of loss.
From these effects, they enduce real emotion as well. For example, hate mail or something within EVE known as 'smack talk', there has even been situations where the sentiment has been extended into real life threats and harrassment. Usually, becuase someone was attacked and killed by another pilot, but as involved as the game is, there are many ways to 'screw' over another player; such as undercutting their business stealing their customers or sabotaging political ties with alliances/corporations for your interest, or internal disloyalty and corp theft/betrayal.
This is all on account of game structure and mechanics. And, if this much can be enduced simply by interactive 'situational' analysis, then any other game could be developed to target a particular effect just by building up all the variables to justify the reaction whenever something happens. One of the chief causes for the seriousness of EVE, is that you do encur real loss and actual gain. If you die, you lose what you had and have to work towards acquiring it again, if you win, you may loot your victims wreckage for items valuable to you (that, and you get the killmail to further insult them by posting it on public forums.)
You haven't played Prey enough yet. I can assure you, that game is quite disturbing.
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's siter?
Here's a GREAT game idea: It's called "Ichi the Killer: The Game".
...on second thought, I think I'll stick with creepy games.
You play a guy named "Kakihara," and you're in possession of some very long, sharp needles and...
When did Diakatana come out? Seriously though, System Shock 2 and Undying may be a bit dated now, but they certainly were unnverving.
Whenever I think that EA games could eventually buyout and control ALL game development....
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
/catches breath
Man, that is truly disturbing.
I remember the first time I played through the Seventh Guest... and then not long later Phantasmagoria.
I dare you to find anyone that played those late at night that wasn't at least a little scared. The environment on those two games... especially with the sound was just creepy.
Even some of the Myst ones had some creepy moments in them. Not near those other two though.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
A lot of games, and movies for that matter rely on suprise and gore as substitutes for any actual emotional depth. You'll be watching some nice peaceful scene with flowsers and soft music, and all of a sudden some decapitated zombie spewing blood from its neck falls into the frame, and everybody in the theater screams. That's about as subtle and emotional as a joy buzzer.
Now on the other side, movies like City of God or Lord of War engage the viewer's emotions in a completely different way and leave a different and more lasting brand of disturbedness on the viewer. This sort of deep story is sadly lacking in most games even more than it is lacking in most movies.
There is one shining example to the contrary, and in a quite unexpected place: from the dark reaches of the Japanese Hentai/Bishoju industry came a game called "Kana, Little Sister". Amazingly this game, unlike most western "hentai" (liteally, "perversion") has a solid emotional story base that really engages, and disturbs the player. There was supposed to be a remake for X-Box with the few H-scenes removed, leaving just the story, but having not played that version, I can't comment on how well the story survived. I think that is the sort of emotionally engaging and disturbing game the OP is referring to, even without knowing it.
The first XCOM had some creepy bits. I remember the first time I found an "examination room" in a UFO.
The general ambience was just plain spooky, especially the night terror missions.
I read a lot of books and play a lot of games. Neither of them are disturbing, because they aren't real. The news can be genuinely horrible, so can the videos on stileproject, but it's very hard for fiction to move me at all and I don't think any of it is as disturbing as a real life car crash video.
No current games are disturbing in the "keep you up at night thinking, appear in pathologically terrifying nightmares, make you think twice about telling people about it" sense. They're scary and shock in the same way a slasher movie will, but ultimately they're shallow in the same way, lacking in depth and development. Nothing 'horrific' in that sense happens in films like Donnie Darko, Jacob's Ladder, Requiem for a Dream or Silkwood, but they're far more emotionally disturbing than, say, Doom or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They express a deep, complex and gut-wrenching fear of the real and utterly tragic rather than simplistic caricatures of brutal violence. No game has ever made me rethink my attitudes to nuclear energy, phone up an old friend just to see if they're still alive or toss and turn for days.
If you haven't played Star Control 2, (now available for PC as The Ur-Quan Masters), you ought to check it out. The action gameplay is every bit as fun as in SC1, but there's an incredible plot this time around.
As you work through the game, meeting new alien species and trying to free Earth from its enslavement, you meet the two subspecies of Ur-Quan, locked in eternal war. The Kzer-Za want merely to dominate all species in the galaxy. The Kohr-Ah, on the other hand, will stop at nothing short of total extermination.
Their horrible story, and uncannily sympathizable justification for their "path", still unnerves me. I can't blame them. All I can do is fight back, and hope I don't meet too many of them at once. (The story in TOPNaF isn't complete, you have to play the game to get the whole background.)
Disturbing? Not really. They're aliens, after all. And that means none of it applies to the way we think about abused humans and their relations to society. Naah.
... but I bet it's been more than 5 years since I started not playing certain games because the title was just "too much".
Demographics: 35 year old male, married, 3 kids. Gamer since Atari 2600 and Asteroids, played most every FPS starting with Wolfenstien (downloaded from a BBS at 2400 baud) and currently (still) playing Call of Duty, so I don't mind killing virual bad guys, even realistic ones. I like Fakey horror films (Sean of the Dead), Monster horror films (Alien), but not Freaky horror films (Saw). Probably explains a lot, in this context.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I don't know about anyone else, but I thought eternal darkness did a good job of disturbing people. The insanity effects were subtle as opposed to jump out and scare you because you weren't expecting it.
Doom 3 was kinda uncomfortable for the first 5 minutes or so, but then became just plain predictable and boring. The games that have disturbed me most are System Shock 2 and - somewhat surprisingly - Sentinel Returns.
F.E.A.R. followed the Hitchcock principle of "less is more", and "anticipation".
Now.
I have to admit that the original Half Life and Return to Castle Wolfenstein both freaked me out, playing at night when I'm the only one in the house.
I remember picking up Silent Hill: The Room. Under the rating it mentioned sexual content of some sort, which i thought was interesting -- the other Silent Hill games had impressed me, and I was looking forward to seeing what they could do with more than just violence in the way of disturbing storylines. Unfortunately, most of the supposed content is just being able to unlock more interesting (sic) outfits for the female characters.
It's one of the odd weaknesses in the ones I've played so far (2, 3, and 4) as well as in Eternal Darkness. The games keep trying to be disturbing with violence or gore, but I can't recall any that managed to be disturbing about temptation. The Silent Hill games (2 and some of 4) manage to suggest some underlying tensions in that area, but not fully bring them to the foreground.
Sex is a powerful subject, yet I've not seen a game that really tries to use it in anything more than titillation -- trivializing the whole matter.
"Will Wii games disturb us". Wiierd.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
That game disturbed the heck out of me. Specially after I had to kill Cybil. I felt like sh*t afterwards. That night I had a nightmare. Equally disturbing was when I played SH2 and I realized that James had murdered Mary.
This isn't like GTA because you really get to empathize with the characters and get into their minds. And then, wham! You're a murderer.
Those games are really screwed up. If you want my advice, don't play them and go to sleep afterwards.
When I played the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Omaha Beach level (aka "D-Day"), it was the first of it's kind (before 8 zillion clones), and it was simply... disturbing. It was produced by Steven Spielberg and was definately in the tradition of Saving Private Ryna. I was 22 at the time, so I thought first off that every boy there was my age. I'd die immediately when the boats opened the first 10 times or so. I died tons more on the way up. You'd look over and see other soldiers, grown men and ppl your age kneeling under a bunker and crying. Others mortally injured and screaming for mommy simply made the game "How would you have done if you were at this event in history" (answer: I would have *died*) rather than "Enjoy this video game level."
Sephiroth killing Aeris in FFVII. In fact that game was full of disturbing moments: seeing Jenova for the first time, Cloud's flashbacks, and more.
I had for sometime was a game based loosely on the old RPG (boardgame) Orgre. The thing that was appealing was that you were being hunted relentlessly by a (virtually) unstoppable (technological) force. I always thought if you removed the "virtually", you could really have something.
I've yet to see a game that presents an undefeatable boss. The idea being how long you survive IS the game. The environment could be anything but you could slowly ramp up the pace and create traps that would confound the player as they're being pursed. Sometimes slowly - sometimes quickly - but never stopping. You could slow the "ogre" down, even delay it - but never stop it. You would die - and then the game would end. When you would die was up to you. How you would die was up to IT.
It could even be done in a multiplayer deathmatch environ where you would watch all the other players get destroyed one by one. You could gang up - and perhaps really delay things - but never defeat it. Even being reduced to a spectator when you die could be fun - watching each player be killed one by one until the end of the round. You do see this in deathmatch shooters, but that's just a gaggle of humans whacking each other. Man vs. unstoppable machine would be - or could be - much more fun.
Most good horror films have this in some shape or form but in video games today - you always "beat" the protagonist. Take THAT element away - and you could have something very-very disturbing. It's what made the zombies (initally) scary in Resident Evil. The idea that you only were putting them down for a while - and that they could get back up and pursue you. Until you killed them again which suddenly didn't make them nearly as much fun.
Just email me for the royalties - or hire me, I'm a freelancer (mgabrys@netherworld.com).
...it just pissed me off!
...because he was supposed to die all along.
I sat 2 hours of this movie and he just dies at the end anyways so that nothing changes?
I mean he could have died at the begining of the movie and everything would have been peachy because none of the things he did mattered...
The only other game that has disturbed me was those "You win!" ending screens on the NES after 36 hours of game play.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Games have been disturbing us since 1982.
And it doesn't stop there. The various body parts acting as part of the machinery are everywhere, complete with vaguely humanoid pumping noises. Some of the bodies are missing most of their limbs, others are fairly complete but are attached in cruciform positions and writhing in response to various stimuli.
And Quake 4 is not the only one out there in that genre. System Shock 2 (especially with the enhanced graphics mods) gets right inside your psyche and keeps hitting. To say that there are no disturbing games out there either indicates that the reviewer hasn't played many games or is remarkably blind to the horrors around.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
"No game has ever made me rethink my attitudes to nuclear energy, phone up an old friend just to see if they're still alive or toss and turn for days."
Try playing Life: The Deluxe Edition.
The first that comes to mind is Alone in the Dark, that game had real atmosfear. Doom is another that was in your face..
I found the game Sanitarium fairly disturbing at some points. Incase anyone missed it, it was a point and click adventure where the player assumes the role of a mental patient. You drift between fantasy and reality and try to sort out your memories, and save the world or something. I forget.
It's disturbing not because it tries to shock you with weird stuff, which it certainly tries to do and doesn't do that well. It's disturbing because as you play through the fantasy worlds you get the impression that something very wrong is going on in the real world that you are powerless to stop.
The answer to how to keep players playing disturbing games is so simple that it's sort of depressing that people get mystified and ask if it is even possible in games. Give the game a compelling story, what they are going through now may be disturbing but maybe the characters and scenario will develop. You could also, like, make the game fun to play. Worth a try.
... when killing off people in Knighs of the Old Republic when you decide to play dark side, I think tha qualfies pretty much. I had really hard time playing nasty at first. I felt bad for the lives I was ruining, even though they are artificial lives.
have you played daikatana?
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
I don't know about you, but my twelve-year-old self et. al were terrified.
There's a bit of a cyclic model at play here: Games will have emotional power once they are taken seriously, and they'll be taken seriously once they have emotional power. Because games aren't widely respected as an art form, lots of people have difficulty engaging with them in a way that would foster an emotional experience. Even if the game is the same story as a movie, the fact that it's a game is a stigma.
I also think few games have managed to capture a feeling beyond toying with our survival instincts. I think that the two sides will slowly slide together, however. Games will improve their emotional content bit by bit, and people who would previously have been turned off by a video game will warm up to them slowly.
It would be interesting to take a look at the social history of movies. They, too, were once shallow and flashy, something no respectable adult would pay to see.
Kingpin: Life of Crime was a disturbing game back in the late nineties. I really should check it out again, but I remember it had cool melee weapons and gore.
Hey guys! Yeah you, the ones with mod points. Why are you modding up all these posts about being scared or "creeped out" by a video game? That's not disturbing, anymore than riding a roller-coaster is disturbing.
Storylines that pull back the fascia of society to reveal ugly truths about the nature of man are disturbing. Hotel Rwanda is disturbing. A love story like Oasis where one social outcast rapes another and yet the two are able to develop a relationship that is 100x more healthy than the "normal" society around them is disturbing (just read the comment from the woman who naively rented the movie for valentines day).
The point of the articles is that movies like those are the level of story-telling to which video games should be striving. What the article doesn't really discuss is just how to motivate someone to continue interacting with a game when the story hits them with such a huge emotional wallop. When it happens in a movie, the audience can just sit there, stunned into immobility (and often tears) and let the experience flow over them. But that's not what games are about. Perhaps it is just not possible for a game to evoke the kind of strong, personally felt, emotions that a movie or book can. Or perhaps the genius who will figure out a way just hasn't been born yet.
First game to affect me at any emotional level was Suspend by Infocom. Since I'm a terrible coward I usually spend a long time exploring the first few areas/levels of a game to get my footing.
:-)). Then I sent Aura (the one that hears) into a room and she reported a hissing sound, and then crackling and static and then her signal started breaking up and I tried to get her out of there but couldn't and then I sent Iris (the one who sees) to look for her and Iris reported Aura destroyed and then died herself, and then I couldn't take it anymore... (still hurts as I write this).
In Suspended, I really got to know my robots (loved Poet
Never finished the game...
Did the submitter really mean that Donnie Darko makes you uncomfortable? I think it's one of the most touching movies I've ever seen.
I remember this one piece of software. At random, stark blue screens fill the desktop with ominous messages about illegalities and other such. Damn near jump out of my chair every time. Dire monsters with names like Bonzo Buddy and X-10 Camera crowd the screen, defying all attempts to get rid of them. Tens of thousands of virtual entities called "viruses" haunt you at every turn. Grisly scenarios like "shock the monkey and win a free iPod" are common. The more you play, the less secure you feel.
I don't play this game anymore. I'm not sure I even miss it, although it gave me the most frights I ever had on a computer. I ended up loading Red Hat Linux on the box, and the scary game software (with the innocuous name of "Windows ME"...made me think of the plant monster saying FEED ME!!!") does not seem to be Linux compatible, so I could not load it. Oh well, on to other things.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Are you talking about scary? Because there are some reasonably scary games. F.E.A.R. is the first that comes to my mind, especially when you play at night.
Now, if by disturbing you mean like something extremely sadistic like children being torn apart in a cutscene or in game, or something to that nature, I doubt it will ever reach that level. I doubt the game industry will ever go as far as torturting children in a game, and that is something I think is distburbing.
For a game to really disturb you, it needs to strike a fear in all of us. It needs to take something that could happen and explore that and expand on those ideas. A lot of people found The Ring scary, I didn't, but that's not the point. The way it ended was pretty good and I'm sure a lot of people were frightened by us. If a game was made that was similar in nature, and left the person thinking.... Could this really happen? That's when a game is disturbing. Currently games leave just glimpses of fear that fade in a few days, and only return when they go back to the game. A game needs to leave a lasting impression with the player that they will remember for the rest of their lives.
I found the transdimensional Orz to be much more disturbing. I remember having it dawn on me that there was something much more sinister about these beings after they made some strange comment. I couldn't quite place it as a lot of what they said made no sense, and you could never be quite sure if it wasn't just a miscommunication, but it sure sent shivers down my spine. I absolutely didn't want to *jump in front*, which would probably have led to *dancing*.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Seriously, you don't need amazing graphics powers to have disturbing subject matter.
Hmmm...I thin I found those weird women's legs upside down on another pair of women's legs creatures in Silent Hill 2 as disturbing as they were creepy.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If you want to understand the difference between elemental horror and the fun-house shocks of Doom there is no better place to begin than with H.P. Lovecraft: Tales, in The Library of America series.
Lovecraft's best effects are achieved through suggestion.
You never see anything clearly or fully but you are left with the conviction of having encountered something profoundly alien.
If you want the original commercial versions, you are probably going to be bin diving at whatever game stores there are near you, raiding Ebay or cruising the darker side of the web.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I'm not sure it's "disturbing" in the way that, say, A Clockwork Orange was, but Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube was a very freaky experience for me.
For those who aren't familiar (shame on you) the game used so-called "Insanity Effects" which were basically designed to make your character think they were going crazy - except they also applied to you. You would walk into a room and be immediately decapitated. Then the screen would flash, your character would scream a bit, and you could continue playing the game. Other effects included rooms appearing completely upside-down, invincible monsters, and ever-present whispering that really freaked me out the first time I heard some of them.
ED was fantastic at really working the psyche and trying to make a real "Horror" game that didn't involve things randomly jumping through windows at you.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Deer Hunter was less about hunting deer and more about POW's in Vietnam forced to play Russian Roulette and going nuts.
If there was a game like that, it would fuck me up for a loooonngnnnnggggg time just like the movie did. I couldn't get it out of my head.
James Taylor
(No, I'm not related. However, I am on the no-fly list)
1. Less 'personal space.' Face it, every good gamer knows how to use every little bit of space, environment and layout of an area to avoid enemy attacks. If I want to be scared I don't want to be able to dodge fireballs and pouncing imps just by moving three feet to the side.
2. Weaker weapons. Unless I'm going up against hordes of enemies Doom 1 or Serious Sam-style, I should NEVER EVER get a one-hit kill weapon (with the possible exception being a sniper rifle). Face it, its hard to be scared of a zombie when you have a shotgun that can decapitate them in one shot. Rocket launchers? BFGs? Wth?! Why not just give me a nuke and be done with it?
3. No truely scary monsters. Face it, with the exception of next to/completely impossible to kill monsters (the spirits in Silent Hill 4 come to mind) horror games have not delivered in the monster department. Sure, some monsters (usually bosses) come to mind but compared to the great horror characters of cinema (the Alien, Dracula, even The Thing) nothing comes to mind. Silent Hill's Pyramid Head was easy to deal with for its slow speed, every enemy in Doom 3 was a joke for gamers with years of FPS experience under their belt and Half-Life 2's enemies were overly predictable with poor AI or were artifically difficult (Combine soldiers were a joke as long as you didn't run in guns blazing and fighting an helicopter or strider was difficult simply because you didn't recieve the necessary weapon needed to defeat it until you simply ran past it to progress through the game.)
Course the problem with these ideas is the more you apply them, the less they remain games and more they become movies..
Warning: You will be disturbed if you click this link! You have been warned!
n tures/default.htm
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/b/barbiehorseadve
I'm suprised no one mentioned this series.
first time I played it I was using a stereo to play it so every sound was amplified, I still remember seeing one of the ghosts and went to pull up the camera only to have it staring me right in the face when I did. That scared the shit out of me cause it was right there.
The other time was near the end of the game where there was a ghost you could faighntly hear saying "My eyes" well when you went down into this pit she was suddenly RIGHT behind you and screaming "MY EYES!".
it's not as freaky as Silent hill (I doubt ANY series will top that one) but it did have the scare factor that got to you. I know I kept looking over my shoulder and freaked out a couple of times when I woke up thinking there was a ghost staring right at me while I was asleep or sitting in a chair.
Alien VS Predator was frickin' creepy. Especially the first one, which was ahead for its time
The most disturbing gameplay moment I've ever had, bar none, was over a series of RP sessions where my character's actions were drawn inexorably towards darker and more heinous acts. I was RPing with out-of-character friends of mine who were perfectly fine with that and actually enjoyed his darker side, but I eventually just found myself not enjoying it at all. I looked back at what had played out and was struck with how fucked up it was, and then thought to myself, "Shit, I came up with that?" I ended up abandoning the plotline and the character because it was just too much for me.
I think the greatest potential for a disturbing game comes in one where the character's thoughts aren't filled in for you. Things other people do don't disturb you unless you relate to them. Actually, one of the more recent games that... well, I wouldn't call it disturbing, but a game that made me think, was Shadow of the Colossus. The basic plot is that a boy rides into a temple carrying a dead girl on the back of his horse. He lays her down on an altar and is told by the resident god that if he goes out and slays sixteen giant colossi that roam the otherwise-barren land, the girl can be revived. That's it. But when you go to kill a colossus, first thing is that they're just such well-rendered, graceful creatures. When you climb up their backs to kill them, they start bucking and screaming trying to throw you off. Then when you stab your sword into them, a big black stream of blood comes flying out. And finally they come crashing to the ground, accompanied by somber music. You have control over your character (this is very important) while black tendrils snake out from the colossus towards him, but no matter how fast and what direction you run, they'll end up impaling him. He wakes up back in the temple where he started, worse for the wear -- the in-game avatar is actually visibly decaying in terms of appearance. Perhaps this is part of the price that the temple god said that he would pay.
Over the sixteen times you repeat this pattern, with plenty of time allowed for introspection as you travel across the landscape, you get to thinking that these colossi are really just trying to defend themselves. Your character seems to be paying a price as well. Is it really worth all those deaths and the hero's soul (figuratively, and perhaps even literally -- you don't know the price that will be exacted until the finale) to revive this girl?
I know this is somewhat off-point, but it proves that it's possible to make an enjoyable game that still carries a bit of philosophical weight. Truly disturbing? I'm not sure that this can be accomplished and still be commercially successful, unless the plot that makes it disturbing is carefully separated from the gameplay. Once players start actually enacting disturbing events through the guise of their character, it becomes easier to set down the game as being too disturbing. Of course there's games out there like Vice City where your main character does some pretty fucked up shit, but it's also clear from square one that it's overblown, over-the-top parody.
Two words: Chou Aniki (1992).
Actually, practically anything that the Japanese do that crosses sexual themes with games makes me want to put my head under a pillow and cry myself to sleep.
Also: Boong-Ga Boong-Ga. Enjoy your new view of humanity.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm not sure why no one has mentioned Killer 7. It's probably the best example ever of a game designed to "disturb" the player. Not in a "horror" way, the game isn't scary - but truly disturbing. Watching a girl slit her wrists, seeing some of the end bosses, and generally the whole game just makes my skin crawl. Has anyone else played this game and want to back me up?
Born to Play
Snatcher for the Sega CD was a lot of fun.
I can't believe this game hasn't come up yet. It gave me nightmares for years. It wasn't just scary--I've been known to laugh at "scary" movies. It was downright disturbing
For those of you who don't know, Parasite Eve is a 1999 Playstation Game that was developed by Squaresoft. It was based on a novel by Hideaki Sena. The premise of the game was that the mitochondria were taking over New York City by turning living creatures into monsters or lighting them on fire, and the player character, a detective who is mysteriously immune to these effects, has to stop them and the woman they chose as their avatar.
Now, maybe it's just becuase I was twelve years old when I played it, or maybe it's because the woman the mitochondria possessed (Melissa) looks vaguely like me. Maybe it's becuase as a budding actress in high school, I tried to play the game again and was disturbed by how similar Melissa's attitudes about her role in an opera were like my own jealousy and desperation in my high school acting. But something about that game gave me nightmares, and I took it much better than my stepsister, who played with me.
I still find it disturbing. I still freak out every time I get a burning sensation in my hands.
It wasn't the gore so much, or the monsters taking over New York City. It was the very premise--that a vital part of every human being, something without which we cannot live, is not only conscious in spite of us, but completely indifferent to us. The idea that something from the inside would destroy humanity--not a human being, but something that lies within the very body of every human being. As wild as the game premise is, doesn't it just reflect the nature of human experience? That is, when something is destroyed, it tends to happen from within? It's so cynical, and so dark, that to this day it frightens me.
Crimsonland is a recent endless, undefeatable game, in which a series of ever-more powerful aliens are coming in on you from all directions. Another poster has pointed out that most early video games were endless, too. I'm not sure if I agree with the poster who mentions Nethack, though - Nethack is definitely defeatable, and all the monsters in it can be killed (even the dread Demogorgon). Nethack's just very difficult.
I for one treat Manhunt as a serious piece of culture. Sure it is sick as hell, but it ties very well with the movies of Lynch and others, the mythical snuff scene and closedness and unlawfulness of backwater places (or the fantasy of them that floats around). It is a game that needed to be made.
Kudos to Rockstar for making it.
It is in line with their other titles, like GTAs, being well researched and therefore believable and immersive, playable history.
I can't believe no one mentioned it yet but having to "sacrifice" a soldier to unlock a door was pretty disturbing for me. Especially as he couldn't stop screaming "don't kill me !" all the way up to the sacrifice room.
My personal beef with F.E.A.R. was that it was scary during the opening sequence & the last 20-odd minutes of gameplay. In the middle, there were a few scares here and there, but for the most part the gameplay degraded to "run into room. get pwned. reload. run into room in slow motion. drool at pretty graphics. walk all over enemies. repeat."
A game called "F.E.A.R." should have been scary the WHOLE way through.
Stop reading if you havent't seen Terminator 2 or played Half Life: spoilers ahead.
UK movie critic Jim McClellan wrote about his wife watching Terminator 2 without having seen any trailer or advance warning. She thought Arine was still the baddie, and saw the scene at the mall (with the flowers and the shotgun and the second Terminator) the way it had been scripted: as a surprise, and as a revealing of a key plot element: namely that Arnie was this time a good "guy".
I experienced the same surprise in Half Life, as I went in and played it without reading much abut it first. About 1/5th into the game, when a scientist came to me and said "at last, the army is here!", I went down a staircase, and lo and behold, there was a soldier! Good news! And then he shot. A. Scientst. OMFG.
Call me naive, but I had read nothing about the game, and I did not expect that. "Abuse of power comes as no surprise", they say, and less of all in a fucking action movie^W videogame, but hey, I was playing, I was kinda distracted (or well immersed into the suspension of incredulity), and it felt like it was happening to *me*. Not to Gordon Freeman, but to me. It really shocked me, unnerved me, and I felt the blood abandoning my skin. The definition of"disturbing".
Half Life is that good a game.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
What I found most disturbing in Star Control 2 was the size of the pkunk's heads compared to their necks
I wholeheartedly agree. I always found the Orz the most frightening aspect of the game due to their unknown origin, as well as their reluctance to release any such information. Also, the Androsynth were consumed by these inter-dimensional beings and the fact that the Orz tend to get a little bit hot under the collar when you question them speaks for itself! Who's *frumple* now, eh? However, their dislike of the Arilou Lalee'Lay also carried a burden for the humans. Apparently, the Arilou had known the first humans, which suggests that they have taken a great interest in us for a long time and I don't believe they are so incredibly pure that they haven't got a vested interest in human beings whether it be domination or cross-breeding. The Arilou and Orz both dislike each other. The Arilou appear to protect us from our own curiosity, but it may also be for their own good. The Orz dislike the ARilou because they "jumped in front", meaning they managed to establish relations with humans before the Orz were able to. The Orz come from "below" while the Arilou come form "above". I feel that the Arilou appear to be pure due to their involvement in the Alliance of Free Stars as well as their calm appearance. Inversely, the Orz speak a whole heap of *juice*...oops, I mean, garbage! They hide their motives openly which does not bode well, and are also responsible for the elimination of a cyborg race. Both these races have hidden agendas which always worried me. I also found the Vux Admiral, Zex a pretty disgusting character who appeared to be into bestiality. What freaked me out most was that his ultimate aim was to engage in it with you (being the human captain). Yech! The Ur-Quan do not freak me out at all. Their story is simple one of self-preservation, as well as one of great sadness. They were a peaceful race in the past, if not overly tribal as reflected in their initial fights with the peaceful Taalo, whom they would eventually call "friend" (no other race would)." If the Ur-Quan never met the Dynarri, there would be no problem. The Umgah are an interesting mob. They take their jokes too far. Pkunk died as the Ilwrath gorged on them on the commands of Dogar and Kazon, an Umgah joke. The Umgah, although very good friends with the Arilou joined the Ur-Quan Hierachy as battle thralls as "The Ultimate Joke". Then to finish it off, look at Umgah controls. They resemble breasts and penises. (That is offical as well!) But the Orz are by far the most disturbing, with the Arilou a close second.
And the realization that some burly fucker with a huge hunk of metal on his head and a huge Guts Sword named Trianglehead was the realization of your character's sins (killing his wife). That one kinda...left me disturbed to say the least. The thing is with videogames the player doesn't necicarily "get" the overtones like with a movie. Most are paying attention as to "what do I do next" and not "what does this mean" like with movies. As such...not a whole lot of people know the meaning to something like Trianglehead other than "OH S#!T!!! KILL IT!!! KILL IT!!! Fsk it!!! RUN!!!"
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The Manhunt speed-run will show you what the hell the deal is with Manhunt, if you've never played it. The video detail is kind of poor because of the contrast wipe-out during encoding, but it's good enough to get a full gist of the game. It's disturbing -- even moreso than CJ screwing bitches and hos in San Andreas.
The guy is also wiping out gangs. Lord knows we need something like that for the Crips, Bloods, and MS-13. And from another aspect, if I was a jihadist, I'd probably see the game (Manhunt)as a good training aid. Kill the kuffar however you can -- Praise be to the ayatollahs and mullahs! (and allah)
It's disturbing, but there are a lot of disturbing movies as well. That's why the "mature" rating exists: over in Palestine, news "reporters" are asking 6-year-old boys if they are ready to die for Allah (making sure to nod their head "yes" so the boy knows the right answer to give to the question), but here in America, we're worried about the moral and psychological effects that an abstract video game would have on that same 6-year-old.
Donnie Darko is pretty much the best depressing movie ever. I don't even know what it is about it that makes it so fricken depressing, I think I remember it just being very true. It kind of showed a world that we live in, but from a scewed perspective.
God, that ending, that damn song... THAT GOD DAMN SONG! I am going to listen to it right now, it's on my iPod.
"And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i've ever had"
THAT GOD DAMN SONG!
You take it, I don't want it...
Honestly, if you were disturbed by the strippers being shot, I am suprised you weren't disturbed by that whole game.
As a kid playing that game, it totally disturbed me a few times, the hours spent in that strip club. The whole dystopian atmosphere was pretty strange and new to me at the time. Remember the church scene? I don't remember exactly what it was like, if anyone can remind me, that's cool. I think it had some kind of weird noise, a red screen, and someone crucified on an upside-down cross. I mean, as a young boy who had been taught to love Jesus, that was pretty fucked up.
Of course, now I don't think twice about that shit. Just goes to show, disturbing is all a part of perspective.
This article premise "when will games be disturbing" is actually pretty silly. Some people think George Carlin is disturbing, I understand that, but making those people disturbed is really fun to me. Does that mean i'm disturbed? Maybe. I like to think I just have a great sense of humor.
I don't think the guys at 3D realms were that messed up, they were probably just a bunch of guys who were making a game and really weren't thinking about it like that.
"Dude, look at this?!"
"What's up?"
"You can see their tits, pretty hot eh?"
"cool man, what about when you shoot them"
Pow!
"Kick ass!"
"Let's go hit women and eat babies"
"Hell yeah!"
You take it, I don't want it...
Oh sure, bring up Miike(you're talking about the movie, right, not the comic?). Way to go.
And scarily enough I swear I heard something about them spinning off a game from the same source material the movie used.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
As with so many other posters, I feel it is dependent on the player what they find disturbing versus scary.
Example: Alone in the Dark 1/2 and the original Resident Evil had (for me) some scary moments. Silent Hill 2 (which I never finished) and System Shock 2 disturbed me.
Scare as in horror is fleeting. Sure, you'll remember the dogs leaping suddenly from the windows in RE1, but it was a brief fleeting moment. Where as the whole premise and executition of Silent Hill 2 was just disturbing. The idea and it's delivery was disturbing.
The original X-COM: UFO Defense had a number of both scary and disturbing moments in it for me. The scares came in the battlescape, hunting down the last few Sectoids or Mutons or (god help you) Cryssalids, watching as they emerge from the corner of the one building you didn't throughly check. The disturbing part was after the mission was over, returning to base and knowing that things are only getting worse...that these were the good days.
I've often found small bits and pieces from games to be disturbing rather than the whole game itself. Example: In Chrono Trigger, there's a point in 2300 AD where you're inside the Keeper's Dome, with Balthazar and a Nu (with, might I add, the creepy "Keeper's Dome" music playing). You do what you have to do, and then you go talk to the Nu. It says "This creature sleeps beyond the flow of time", which still to this day disturbs the hell out of me. Now if CT as a whole disturbing? No, far from it.
Over doing it is one thing, but splashing enough of it in there to keep things lively is great.
And, for the record, as a huuge film dork...I think Donnie Darko (released in '01) is the greatest American film since Pulp Fiction (in '94). It was intelligent, funny, scary, suspenseful, uplifting, depressing and just such a good movie. Go out now and get both versions (the theatrical and the "It all makes sense!" director's cut) and just accept the greatness that is Donnie Darko.
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
People keep mentioning this game series, but I think it deserves more specific attention. The recent film only half-heartedly captured the essence of the franchise; to truly understand why Silent Hill will be considered groundbreaking in the future, you have to play the games. The entire series borrows heavily from other surrealist and/or horror authors, particularly David Lynch. Further references can be found to the film Jacob's Ladder, Stephen King, and the works of John Carpenter. Unlike other survial horror games, Silent Hill has an intricately crafted storyline that is nearly impossible to grasp within one playing. Far from relying on the immediate shock value of gore or surprise, Silent Hill deals with most of the themes we associate with psychological horror. For example, it becomes apparent in the first game that most of the monsters you encounter are actually hellish dream-like manifestations of what frightens a little girl (bugs, schoolchildren, lizards, etc., and obvious reference to Stephen King's The Regulators). This is a far cry from the standard sci-fi zombie banality or mundane hauntings we get from certain other survival horror franchises. Every aspect of Silent Hill seems to have significance and symbolic purpose, especially your physical enviroment (a mere canvas upon which to paint variety in other games of the same genre). Furthermore, the primary themes of Silent Hill are not survival and exploration, but instead religous zealotry, anguish and despair, psychosis, and the heartbreak of missplaced love/power. Like most good film/literature, you can get what you want to out of the game, as none of this is readily spelled out per se. Silent Hill, however, is interactive; so this element allows the player to "dig" for more of the town's mythos in way that is impossible in other media. So I disagree, video games do have one serious redeeming title that definately trumps most of the fare we get at the cinema in terms of immersion, even if it's no Eraserhead.
The only thing that disturbs me about Donnie Darko is how overratted it is.....
hellboy1975 http://www.foutheye.net
You didn't want to be a *silly cow* or a *sad animal*?
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
[more spoilers:]
I thought the most disturbing part of the game is when you find out that the Kzer-Za are not your real enemies, and that, in their own twisted way were actually trying to protect humanity and the other sentient species, and that, worst of all, you've been undermining their struggle with the Kohr-Ah. It's worst the first time you play, because if you've taken too many years in the game, that realization will hit you right before the Kzer-Za begin to lose the war, and the Kohr-Ah begin to annihilate every sentient species one by one...
But, yeah... the Orz and the Arilou were pretty damn creepy, too. And the neo-Dynarri...
That creepy little girl crab walking out of the office cubicle did it for me...
I agree that there is a distinction between startling/creepy elements in video games and disturbing moments in film. I would say the drug-induced nightmare sequence in Max Payne, in which you travel through a distorted version of your home, reliving the murder of your wife and child is pretty disturbing in the intended sense. Furthermore it isn't an extended cutscene but an interactive part of the game where you have to figure out the rules of a surreal environment.
Gabriel Knight: SotF was the first game that gave me the willies enough that I had to run around the house turning all the lights on and had trouble sleeping that night.
Vermifax
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I was pretty creeped out by C&C back when I was a little kid. The movie where the camera slowly moves through the ghost town and finally stops at the cemetery where tiberium is growing from people's graves was bloody freaky. I had nightmares at one point about tiberium growing out of my skin. Then of course they had it actually happen to people in Tiberian Sun.
* Spoilers if you haven't done it yet *
The last quest in a faction of the latest elder scrolls game has you looking for a traitor within the ranks. You find his lair -- containing several corpses, his diary and the severed head of his mother.
What's disturbing is the diary. Reading it, it gives insight into what happened... The traitor (as a toddler) hiding under the bed as his mother is murdered, her severed head hitting the floor and locking eyes with him, vowing revenge against the killer.
It disturbed me, at least.
The creature's name is Pyramid Head.
Ooops my bad. Can you tell it's been a while since I've played the game?