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Fraidy Cat Gamer
Allen Cook, over at Gamers With Jobs, talks about the problems of being a 'fraidy cat gamer'. Horror games are awesome, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to actually play through one if your fear takes hold of you. From the article: "I can watch most horror movies without any problem. The trick has nothing to do with my horror movie constitution but simply knowing the formula. At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead. Probably at the hands of some supernatural force, a mask-wearing psychopath or some otherworldly parasitic infestation. It's a given part of the formula that most of these characters will die. When it happens, I may be surprised by how they die, but it doesn't emotionally scar me. With horror games though, there's no switch I can pull to stop caring about my character. That's me in there in the inexplicably short mini skirt and tall boots, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Why the hell did I wear that anyway? Is that standard issue zombie hunting gear where I'm from? It doesn't matter, a zombie just tore a chunk out of my skull."
At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead.
Simple solution:
Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.
I find that breaking the connection from Player to Character helps.
If the character in the game is wearing a short skirt and tall boots, I wear a tutu and clown shoes.
Also, the lines at the arcade seem to be quite short in this attire.
The fact you can load/reset/restart, and get a second ending or a win makes even horror games tame. Don't know which game he's refering too, but a lot of the horror games we have now are like that jerk who jumps out and shouts boo, they'll scare you only if you don't know what to expect.
Personally I don't have many games that really terrify me, maybe I just am not playing the right games, but even back in the day, the resident evils just were annoyingly hard, not exactly "scary".
Doom 3 stopped being scary as soon as I learned to walk into rooms backwards.
I've never been too terrified to play a game...Aliens vs. Predator 2 had some nice surprise moments that made me jump in my seat..but that's about it. Besides, any horror video game or movie can be ruined/de-scarified by simply turning the lights on and having some background noise, like a TV or screaming children neighbors, etc.
I have the same problem, and my solution is to play frightening games in small doses. 10-15 minutes here and there, and eventually I make my way through it. It took me almost a week to get through Ravenholm the first time, just because I needed to take so many breaks and go play Civ.
As an alternate solution, I will just blast through such a scene quickly, letting whatever baddies reveal their locations, then I go back to my save point and do it again with full knowledge of just what nastiness is going to jump out at me and when.
I feel the same kind of intensity from other emotions in games, not only fear. It's just much easier to deal with the other emotions, as they don't come with a built-in fight-or-flight response the way anxiety and fear do.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
The Marine campaign tended to be quite scary- especially if you played in the harder modes. Nothing like limited saving and inifinitly spawning enemies to heighten the suspense (and make your death much more painful). Eventually I had to give up and beat the Marine campaign in an easier mode- I just couldn't beat one level in hard difficulty, much less hardcore mode.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The only video game that truly good and frightened me was the original Silent Hill. That game was freaky not because of *insert random horror* jumping out at you from the darkness. Silent Hill was scary because it had an amazinly well done soundtrack. If i played that game for more than an hour in the dark, i had trouble sleeping. The sequals haven't done it justice and are turning into blatant gore/scare fests. The first Silent Hill wasn't so simple.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
...just imagine if this happened to you. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-768895638 9104405762
I don't know whether to be envious of this guy or not.
Agreed. The level design was ass.
"Oh, a new room. Let's see--there's a pillar over there, so there's a zombie behind it. And some other kind of monster will undoubtably spawn or appear from a monster closet behind me when I enter the room."
Splash damage shot next to the pillar... oh, what do you know, there was a zombie behind it! Step in slowly, look to my immediate left... look, a wall opening up to reveal a room that has no business being there, and another zombie! Wow, so surprised.
The original doom games are scarier. At least they had that frantic thing going for them. Doom III fired one arrow while aiming simultaneously at both the "frantic horror" and the "suspense horror with a storyline" targets, and of course missed both of them. What a dull game.
Sure, there's dozens of zombies trying to eat me but guess what's between me and the zombies? A game can't be scary if I'm the guy holding the big ass cannons. Oooh, an imp tried to jump me, how cute. Here, have some hot plasma death! What's there to be afraid of if you've got the Big Fucking Gun?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Wait... am I misreading you or do you think that Doom 3 was _less_ formulaic than F.E.A.R.?
I had my problems with the latter, but I count it radically higher on the creepy-coolness scale, if lower on the imps-constantly-jumping-out-of-invisible-closets scale.
Though both have anemic storylines, which I think we've all just come to accept from action games, and movies for that matter ("Must serve the evil god Momentum!" As Joss Whedon almost said).
After all, Doom 3 was about a mute space marine who possesses the only flashlight on Mars and uses it as a club. And who walks outside the dome in a short-sleeved t-shirt. And who can't jump more that 1 foot in the air.
I got all excited in one of the D3 complexes when there are strange lights and whispers, but then nothing else happened and I didn't get more.
I like the creepy more than the gore or constant sneak attacks.
from the first time that you look in a mirror and see a zombie behind you, i knew doom 3 was a bad choice to play at night. I've got nothing better to do tonight, maybe I'll start Sweet Home.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
I was playing Half Life 2 earlier today, and there is a section where you travel under a bridge and do stuff. Well, I'm incredibly afraid of heights and nearly tossed my lunch. I ended up having my friend do that section for me, not because I suck (well, I do, but that section isn't hard at all) but because I couldn't watch the screen.
I love the survival horror genre, as well as the horror themed action genre. Most of the games aren't really anything like what I would call scary though. The first two Resident Evils made me jump every so often- but they never really terrified me. Interestingly enough, I found Resident Evil 4 to be one of the most terrifying games, even though it was certainly more action focused - mostly because the enemies are smarter and vastly more numerous.
I would say that really, although I love the horror games for their atmosphere, a lot of the most tense and creepy games I have played haven't been horror games at all. Metal Gear Solid always creeped me out, simply because the tension would really build up- especially playing it on the hardest difficulty setting.
I think that games can really be a better platform for horror than movies, since movies are fundamentally a passive experience, whereas games are imersive.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I spent my time in Doom 3 wishing there was more creepy.
It was too close to the earlier Dooms, which were great in their time but no longer.
Maybe I'm spoiled.
(that was my 14, 20, 4 "extended mix" doom 3 haiku)
This brings back memories of my first night playing Doom at a friends house. I'd never played an id game before. The first time those demons/imps popped up I nearlly fell out of the chair. I think that my friends offered for me to play the most just to laugh at me that night. ;) After a few nights, you get used to it. Of course what really helped was just turning off the sound. That helped a lot for me.
what's not scary is the monsters. It's the lighting and atmospherics. On a decent system with headphones, you can get very disoriented and twitchy.
You hear clanking and you don't know if it was a wrench you accidentally knocked off a ledge, a door closing, or a Commando kneeling down to chaingun you from a catwalk above.
And at first monster spawns were kinda scary, but once you got used to where you think they should be, it became routine. And I think that might have been intentional.
You'll notice later on they don't bother to teleport in most enemies anymore, they're either silent-spawned after a trigger, walking a beat, or just hiding somewhere before getting aggro'd.
They save the spawn for locations where it's difficult to set up the "intended" firefight otherwise.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
How can you be afraid of a moment in a videogame?
By getting into the moment.
Though simple, my first run through of Diablo was horrifying. I played at night, with no lights, and with the music and sound volumes fairly high. After a while, I was actually looking over my shoulder while playing the game. It was great but I almost didn't finish the game.
Fast forward to today and only recently are we seeing better controls for survival horror games. The camera no longer screws people over. You can actually SEE the monsters, not a unclear blob of brown and red pixels against a brown and red background. Level designs are no longer tight hallways that make it impossible to run past enemies if they come at you in numbers larger than 1.
Obviously hardware can only do so much (I think we hit the critical point with Resident Evil 4), but in retrospect, games like Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill 1 were scary because controls blew. Modern camera angles make it a joke to aim, especially if you've played FPSes in the past. Even with a bad TV you can still see the monsters limping towards you. Running away is so commonplace that many survival horror games now include scenarios where the player is REQUIRED to fight.
I was expecting this to be more of an article about people who were afraid to play games the way they were intended. (intention in the eye of the beholder)
I have several friends who play StarCraft completely defensively. On team games a couple of us will completely destroy the enemy while these RTS campers build base defenses the entire time. Highly frustrating.
Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?
I also play Travian, a stupid web based RTS, and people constantly bitch and moan about being attacked. Hello! It's a war game.
As far as the subject, I don't really understand horror in any medium. But why seek out the best horror game and then try to find ways to get through it? You're just watering it down! Take it like a man, you pussies! (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"
That IS real combat. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, and you never, ever, give your opponent an even break. Unless you think of combat being the way the British fought the revolutionaries, or how the Civil war was fought where people just stand out in the open blatantly shooting each other.
If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
When you willingly put yourself into a game that would not normally scare you, your imagination can eventually take over and make the game a whole lot more enjoyable then it otherwise would have been. :)
Um, the original dooms were scarier. Especially the resurrection demons. The only thing that creeped me out in D3 were the damned flying babies. Not to mention I never once had an "Oh shit I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die" feeling from D3, while in almost every big monster infested room you got that feeling with the original dooms.
"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"
;)
I used to hate players like that, but then I realised that is all they know how to do, so they are actually easier to beat than someone who is always changing their position, strategy, etc...
So when i enter a room I throw a frag grenade under the stairs or a rocket that way (ala quake3) or throw a flash bang into the nest then spam as i come up the ramp (ala CS on de_dust).. these players are the most predictable and also the easiest to beat.
They might get me once by surprise, but then I know to watch out for them and send some hot death their way automatically
Apparently he's never heard of a grenade.
No Comment.
Spoilers ROT13ed below:
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What, me worry?
"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?" Real combat is about maximizing enemy losses and minimizing personal risk. They're playing the game like Ghost Recon, not like Doom. Try leaning around the corner to see if they're waiting for you. Tossing a grenade. Not being able to play the game flexibly reveals your own weaknesses.
The main reason you don't have that feeling anymore is because of the strafe command. If you played Doom as your first video game today (after having a friend give you a crash course in game configuration), the fear will be significantly cut down because you can sidestep fireball attacks with ease.
In this kind of action game, fear only works once. Once you learn the "pattern", you are no longer really afraid. However, games can still make the player feel a bit uneasy - especially with something similar to "trigger_random" where something happens only half the time.
I can agree that Silent Hill and Resident Evil are scary. I scream like a schoolgirl when those things come out of the car in Silent Hill 2 or when a zombie bites your leg in Resident Evil.
I've played Resident Evil, Resident Evil 3, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2 Alone in the Dark, and Dino Crisis.
What I don't get is what makes these games fun to play to people. I feel like I've tried the survival horror thing, but it's just not very fun.
First of all, what's with the controls in these games? I'd much rather be able to walk/jog/sprint in any direction than have to slowly turn around or slowly back up. To me, it just makes these games frustrating.
The puzzles. Why do all the puzzles involve some sort of gem or emblem or key card? There are thousands of examples in classic adventure games of interesting problem-solving. Why does it always have to involve some dumb statue?
The ability to fight back. Every survival horror game I've ever played has extremely limited ammo. They do this so that you'll have to run away from conflicts. Fair enough. But it's not fair when the controls suck so bad that you can't move anywhere, and the environments are so poorly-designed and cluttered that you can't flee. If there was a "jump-over-the-desk" button, then it'd be fair to make you run.
The saving. Most of these games try to limit your ability to save, or at least discourage it. That's lame. The games should be designed so that you clear several obstacles, and then get a chance to save. Nobody wants to go back and look for more lame keycards because they couldn't save because they haven't found a typewriter ribbon in the last two hours.
Can someone explain this to me? Why are these games fun to people? Is there just something I'm missing? I appreciate the ambiance, but why can't the games themselves be fun to play?
Yeah... hand grenades need to be nerfed. Their AOE instant kill area is overpowered.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I hate to tell you this, but there was a strafe in DOOM and DOOM 2 - and I used it to "pwn" many a fellow player.
And I myself generally don't play the same scene over and over and over again - I guess I have ADD or something - I tend to play it cautious and take more time getting through the game with minimal reloads.
I hate doing the same thing over and over and over. Probably why I was never a good guitar player.
On reflection it seems strange to admit how completely some of these scenarioes get under my skin. I have never been in a fight for my life, or even a really bad fight but I guess that something along these lines would occur. To survive anger must trump fright.
When all else fails blame game mechanics. Damn camera angle.
Played all the Res Evil games except 4 (on my to-do list) and of all of them do have issues with camera angle at some time. I am not sure of 4 since I think you can control the camera. It can be very annoying when the camera angle is wrong although in the majority of cases the fix is to stick in the middle (if you can) of the area you are exploring.
I think that the idea of finding and using items even though they may seem silly is to distinguish the game from the first person shooter (FPS) and provide an simple RPG challenge (puzzle solving) as is the limited ammo and weapon types which IMHO is much more realistic (hence survival) than some FPS's (floating and/or spinning ammo and guns - how real is that). As for horror and survival I think the best one was were you as Jill (RE3) had to keep running from the monster which would keep following you and would even open closed doors which always stopped other monsters that were chasing you. As for the short skirt and boots (not exactly practical) well I prefer looking at a girl dressed like that than with practical armor on (call me sexist but I would think most males prefer this).
In all the RE games I never had any issues with limited typewriter ribbons but basically this is another aspect of game play (similar to the crystals in Tomb Raider) which can be an interesting challenge or make game-play more difficult. IMHO saving anywhere detracts and dumbs down the game-play, I prefer save-points or at least recovery points (example God of War) since this makes for a more challenging game although I can see were it can be very frustrating when a game with limited save points may require one to three hours of work before saving and should you die between them!!.
Actually the original RE1 game was a parody/salute based on the old 1950's B horror movies along with the deliberate bad voice acting. You can play the guy but I always recommend the girl first since the game is easier and you get to know the mansion first. If you have a Gamecube I do reccommend RE1 since the graphics are fantastic and the story was different (sort off) although you still don't have any control of the camera.
As far as the Silent Hill series. Liked SH1 and SH3 but not SH2 (not exactly sure why but possibly I did not like the character) although IMHO the RE series was better since I actually got to like the characters even though the voice acting was cheesy.
The problem in gaming is that just because a person likes or hates a particular game or game style does not necessary mean that everyone else will agree with them. That is why we have so many different styles of games and are better off for it. I myself like console RPG's (played PC ones but lost interest) and action adventure games, however some games which I thought I would like I have found tedious and annoying, while others I have loved because I found them fun and challenging. Personally the most interesting game I have played is Metroid 3 on the Gamecube because this game went from originally an action/adventure, sidescroller/platformer game to a first person perspective game with all the above (except sidescrolling since it was 3D) and I found it more fun to play than many FPS games. Metroid 3 was not survival horror but sometimes your heart would beat a little faster when you went into a room or area and something huge and ugly would attack you and if you did not have the right equipment you died quickly.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
In short it address all the issues you have ith the previous resident evil games and maintain the ambiance. Sofar it's the only single player game I've completed more than twice.
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
I think you're just playing the wrong survival horror games, those are all good games but they all use the same formula. Its like only ever watching the Friday the 13th movies and claming that you know horror movies.
Some more modern takes on the formula are Resident Evil 4 - no zombies, rebuilt control system from the ground up, it plays more like a 3rd person shooter (think Ghost Recon or Splinter Cell) then any of the old Resident Evil games. Condemned: Criminal Origins - IMO one of the best adventure horror games availble today, I've played through it 3 times and the sense of fear from the atmosphere alone is still very real even when I know what's around the corner, this game has FPS style controlls (but NOT an FPS), more often then not you wont have a weapon and when confronted you'll have to find something near buy to to use, like an exposed pipe off of the wall, a chair, desk drawer, etc. graphics are awesome, atmosphere is awesome and the storyline is top notch. F.E.A.R. is another one, based on the same engine as Condemned, this one IS actually an FPS, basically imagine a less stealthy Sam Fisher or Solid Snake who when going about their regular work run into creapy poltergeist level paranormal stuff. Then there is Dead Rising, which is honestly more of Survival aspect then the horror aspect. The game is basically a Grand Theft Audo in a Zombie infested mall, the kind of open ended go anywhere, do-anything environment. If Resident Evil can be related to your typicall Zombie game, then Dead Rising is the video game equivalent of Shaun of the Dead. The game will definitly test your skills, become resourseful in stocking up food and weapons so you can tread across large areas filled litterally with 100s, probably 1000s of zombies as you unfold the story, and countless sub stories.
None of these games have stupid gems to unlock doors or elaborate puzzles to solve to make it into the next area. With the exception of the supernatural element these games are for the most part believable in their setting, atmosphere, character personalities, plots. If a door is locked, you'll have to find the key, and the key will be in a believeable location, most of the puzzles aren't blatent "figure this out to open the door" but they're based in skillfully crafted level designs, that feel more like a real world solution to getting around a blocked path.
Check these games out... don't think you know Survival Horror until you've played them.
Collector's Edition
You are a highly trained marine with enough firepower to outfit an entire platoon and a nervous twitch in your trigger finger stalking around the map. My gods man if your scared the zombie must be s@#%ing themselves! They got nothing but a speach impedamentand and a lack of muscel control.
I don't typically play survival horror, but one I did get creeped out by KOTOR. In the Sith Academy, there is a constant background noise of people whispering. This didn't bother me. However, there is a part where everyone in the Academy attacks you, and you kill them. But the whispering is still there. So you're walking down empty corridors, and the whispering is still going on, and that unnerved me.
If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.
I'm still waiting for Mattel to Licence the Barbie Deathmatch Adventure FPS with the pink BFG-2000. The only title I want more is the Barbie Sex Worker Adventure!
It wasn't configured well - by default, it was ',' and '.' for strafe and arrow keys for walking/turning.
A better configuration is the classic 'w', 'a', 's', 'd' and mouse movement, or using 'e' and 'r' as strafe. However, since keyboard configuration had to be performed in an external setup program, it is generally a trial-and-error to find out how you like your keyboard configuation (and you might not necessarly notice between reconfigurations.) In addition, you had to be careful not to have your keybindings conflict with hard-coded Doom commands (e.g. talking with other players.)
There's also Strafe50 implemented with Doom - for thatn you need to optimize your config, especially with keyboards behaving differently when you press too many keys at once.
Jayne: "Wouldn't this be a lot easier if we had grenades?"
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.