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Dead Space Wants To Scare You
Kotaku recently ran a story questioning whether the survival-horror genre still exists, and how Dead Space may or may not fit into it. With reviews for the game starting to come in, Ars Technica reports that the game is, indeed, both scary and good. Gamespy wrote up a Dead Space survival guide, and Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with the game's senior producer. In the production of the game, the developers studied things like car wrecks and war scenes to increase the level of realism. They also want the game's sounds to terrify players, including appropriately timed silence. The launch trailer is also available, though it does contain spoilers.
I haven't gotten the chills from a game since Doom2. Thinking back, I wonder if now I would get the same feeling. I guess part of it's realism, but as/more important is the immersion. I've not been able to turn up the volume, shit the door and leave the real world in a while.
Another important thing in scaring someone is that there has to be some negative outcome that they are genuinely concerned about. A game can look as creepy as Hell, and the sound can be spot on. But, if I am not afraid to die, to lose something I've worked for, I'll just think it's cool.
Give me that tension. Make losing my character be a significant loss. Then, those dark rooms, eerie creeks and nervous silences just might make a bit uncomfortable.
The problem in making a good survival horror game is that people just aren't scared anymore. We are used to movies with blood everywhere and body parts flying in every direction. Mix that in with the current technology of load times and lag and a survival horror game just isn't going to work. Granted, you can make a fairly good and creepy game, but the tactics that worked in the past aren't going to work today.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Some idiot called this a "space shooter". If this is a space shooter then so was Doom 2.
Freelancer is a space shooter.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sudden appearances and loud noises do. I've seen all the car wrecks and war images you can see, but loud noises and mixed with strobe lights can get me every time. If Dead Space relies on Gore to scare people, it just won't. On the other hand, if they are using lighting and sound to scare you, then, from my perspective, they're doing their job right.
Eat sleep die
Dead Space I can handle.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Silent Hill 2 ... its weakness was that it sprawled thematically, leaving many loose ends, unanswered questions, unclear conclusions and unrelated elements.
That was not a weakness, it was one of its main strengths! The ambiguity of the story makes the viewer think and wonder about just what was it that was seen. And it does so in a masterful way, provoking interesting thoughts and interpretations on the part of the viewer. Not to mention that uncertainty is a key element of suspense and fear.
On a side note, this kind of attitude of wanting everything spoon-fed and explained is very lazy and too typical of people who just want to sit in front of a box to be entertained for a set amount of time. That's entirely different to wanting a piece of art that lingers in the mind long after experienced.
Remember fighting those green spider things in the dark by throwing flares around and lighting up little areas?
Let's not confuse that with "suddenly make a loud noise in a quiet bit".
No sig today...
Here's a nice 10 minute video that gives you the general feeling of the whole game. (minus the 320x240 resolution and lossy quality of course). If you get bored skip to the middle.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vs-7_JlzJg
I liked this game better when it was called Doom 3.
At least then the graphics were cutting edge, instead of 3-4 years out of date.
Not that graphics are the end all, be all of a game. But this game has the same plot as every doom (and doom clone) ever made.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
how would you like it living in the ghetto and all
While I admit I never finished the first one, System Shock 2 grabbed by the throat and never let go. How can you match playing a whole game working for an insane computer who wants nothing more than to rip you apart and remake you "in her own glorious image."
And don't try to sell me that BioShock nonsense, that game was easier than WiiSports and about as "scary."
But I hope that when I do the game isn't Resident Evil. Tactical shooting and whatever... Nifty but not that well done in RE. Not to mention the "horror" you face in RE wasn't really horror, it was stress. The stress of conserving ammo and hoping your luck is good enough that if you run out that last head you blew off isn't going to turn into a giant biological scythe whip. If that scenario scares you, you're a lightweight. If it pisses you off and frustrates you, join the club.
Nobody in their right mind should like a "scary" game where the idea of scary is having to load your last save.
...that I got from playing the original Doom and other FPS's with tons of blood and gore after that. I wish I had never played those games beyond the first menu screen, because I'll never get that time back. And there's a part of my mind that will always know what dismemberment looks like from 30 different angles (or in the case of Doom, one very pixelated angle). I just don't think that's very cool anymore...too much crap happens while people sit by an accept it without doing anything positive or optimistic.
Once after playing a marathon weekend-long LAN party of Counter-Strike, a group of us went to get milkshakes before heading our respective ways. When we got there, there was someone on the other side of the lot who looked familiar. My first instinct was to raise my rife to my eye and scope out who it was. I knew that I'd been playing way too many video games at that point.
"including appropriately timed silence"... I guess the guy who made TFT didn`t know that, they change the scene every 300ms... or maybe they thought headaches make people want to buy a game... somehow.
...you are in danger of being eaten by a grue.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Good thing you didn't see the sequels. Creepy to a certain degree but repetitive too. Also no one's mentioned "condemned" which ran on the same engine as F.E.A.R..
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
...because they're interviewing "producers", not "game designers." Yeah, I've been there before. 'nuff said.
Still, looks like a good game. I'll never buy it on the PC, of course. I'll have to think hard about whether I want to support them by purchasing the Xbox game.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I mean it was so bad I fell asleep halfway through it.
The only game that really scared me was the original Aliens Vs Predator game. Playing as a marine in those dark corridors, hearing hissing, and seeing/hearing the blips on the radar gun just freaked me out.
Super Mario. When they play that sound that shows you are running out of time to complete the level and then the music plays fast, rushing you and you know you're nowhere near the end of the level. I can't go on.
I'm actually watching a special on this game on the Sci-Fi channel right now. This game actually looks very intense and looks promising. Can't wait.
but scenes that created an air of foreboding. For instance, you walk down a dark hallway and see a vague shape jump around the corner. Go around the corner, and there's nothing there. *That* is what creates the feeling of impending doom
You are spot on. Horror is foreboding, knowing that something bad is going to happen, just not knowing exactly how or when.
I'll make a reference to H.P.Lovecraft. Arguably the most famous horror author, and basically all his stories starts with telling you how awful everything went in the end. Then he starts describing exactly how it happened and why it couldn't be avoided.
I lost my sig.
Hey, face? You know what? Fuck you, I'm going to cut my nose off, how you like THEM apples?!?!
The tags about DRM, defective by design, don't buy it... It's an important issue that needs to be adressed, but for the love of God, this is not the way to do it. If you're going to boycott, then boycott, don't just go online and rant about how people shouldn't buy it. Get organized. As such, you're at best going to annoy a PR grunt, not get one of the decisionmakers at the top of EA to quit using DRM. If you're just upset at DRM and are personally not buying the game and that's all, then all you're doing is denying yourself what are otherwise great games.
Unfortunately, I also think that more attention being called to DRM issues means more gamers AND developers saying "screw it, consoles don't have these problems." That has certaintly been my reaction. Rock and a hard place. I'm not saying live with DRM and be happy, don't misinterpret, just speculating.
If you see someone talking about SS2, well that is just because they are to young to know better.
The trick for me to make a scary game is NOT darkness or making the player helpless but rather to give him just enough power to be cautious. Give me a grenade that I can use to clear a room, killing everything in sight, but I got ONE grenade, and there are 5 rooms. When do I use it. Now, in the first room or save it for monsters yet to come. Are there monsters beyond this room. Do I use the health potion now or later?
Call of Chutulu starts you off being chases by monsters with no way to defend. That ain't scary. I know what this levels is, a timed puzzle. Just got to do the puzzles in the right order quickly enough and I know the level designer wouldn't make the puzzles impossible or allow me to get stuck because I used up my tools at the wrong time.
For me to be scared I must be afraid that what I am going to do next is going to get me killed. Not that what the game throws at me is going to get me killed. I must feel in control over my actions, the illusion that I can affect my own destiny in the game but that it could so easily go wrong.
This is hard to pull off. Most Doom clones fail for me because your weapons just ain't powerful enough. A shotgun blast should always kill instantly. Then I can count my bullets and worry about wether I have enough. But if every critter needs three shot gun blats anywhere on its bodies, well, then it just seems silly and I know I am just playing a game, not fighting for my life. The more powerful you are, the weaker you are.
Outlaws, an ancient FPS set in the west had scary moments. 1 bullet left, 3 enemies. If I kill one I can take its ammo, but can I popup and hit him dead center quickly enough before the others start blasting away at me? There was little doubt that if I pulled off the shot the enemy would be down, but what if I missed. That is scary. Being afraid to fail BUT that only works if there is a guarantee of success.
That is why 10 little indian movies no longer scare me. I know they are going to die one by one, so I no longer care, just want to see who is going to bite the dust first. That was why Doom the movie was so bad. You knew they were all doing to die and none of them were likable so who the fuck gave a damn.
Give me the tools to fight the game, but limit them and make my own actions cause my success or failure. At no point make me completely powerless or force me to butcher my way through waves of enemies that don't die quickly. Doom style enemies that need 3 rocket blasts to the head are not SCARY.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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Left 4 Dead, Valve's latest creation, is being marketed as a survival horror co-op FPS. With zombies. Does that count? It looks good, but we'll see.
More importantly, what DRM will be stealthily included when you install this EA game?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
As with most recent EA games, remember that Dead Space will probably have the same Sony SecuROM DRM rootkit on it that Spore had, limiting what you can install on. Just something to keep in mind.
Last game that really scared me was AVP2 playing as the marine. You never know when or from where some aliens will come out. Every blip on your radar makes you jump and aim towards it, even when its just a bug or something moving because of the wind or w.e. Even in my second playthrough i unloaded a clip into a falling pipe that i swear was a xenomorph head.
If you want scary games, here's a few (not entirely today, but relatively recent) titles.
And no, I'm not meaning the "shit will jump out of windows" stuff.
Grab your Gamecube or Wii and play "Eternal Darkness." With the lights off. And let your sanity meter get a little low, just to have some more fun.
Go into Thief 3 and play the "Cradle" stage. THAT was fucking scary. Not only that, it did it with ATMOSPHERE and not just "OMG ammo starvation and stuff jumping through windows."
If you want to make a horror game, that's how you do it. Make the game's atmosphere stand out, give players a LOT of bits and pieces for their mind to chew on. Save your surprises and "stuff jumping from shadows" and use them sparingly... make people THINK there could be something in any shadow, but don't let them "know" that there is... when only 1 out of every 10 shadows has something to it, or 1 out of 20, THEN you have the chance to get them when they're complacent. Games that do THAT will scare you... games like Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi, intending to be "scary", simply throw waves on waves of enemies at you. That's not scary.
This holds true for other genres, too. I played Keepsake (yeah I know, I play adventure titles) and it blew me away to find a game that could actually make me afraid for a character I barely knew... the ending REALLY got me simply because I sat back thinking "this isn't how these type of games are supposed to end."
There's nothing wrong with a beatfest. There's actually nothing terribly wrong with a "shit jumps out of windows" game if you're in the mood for one. They're just not scary and they're not good story. Atmosphere's the key, and I think most game publishers have simply forgotten that and spend too little time on it.
Hell, the movie industry's that way too. Think about movies that really get you - all of them spend plenty of time building up their characters and story. If you want a great recent example of this, go see City of Ember. They get halfway through the movie before the "plot" really begins... but because they spend so much time on the characters and the "main character" (the city itself), once they DO have the plot running, nothing seems unbelievable within the setting and the story works.
dark hallway and see a vague shape jump around the corner.
Somewhere in Myst IV i saw Sirrus or Achenar walk by on the other side of a window. That scared the shit of out me.
"he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
I'm kind of surprised that the Kotaku story didn't mention Left4Dead, which I have the impression will be a really good survival horror game.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Watch Alien, then Aliens then try playing AvP (Aliens vs Predator) as a Marine.
The first 5 minutes, all you're doing is walking around thinking "please don't kill me, please don't kill me".
Then you get into the game, and for a while it's fun. Right until the motion detector starts up with it's "blip.... blip.... blip.. blip.bip.bip". I defy anybody to hear that without thinking "SHIT, I'M GONNA DIE..."
Great game. More fun as the Alien though :->
for scary.
If it surpasses the scariness of undying I suspect people will be found dead at the keyboard. their face frozen with a horrifying rictor, Their heart having burst through their chest and it's remnants splattered against the monitor.
Yeah, scary as hell, and not just the jump out of nowhere scary. I mean there is a scene where you are looking down a hall way, several sets of gossamer curtains billowing, and just being creeped out at the thought of having to go down there.
This game couldn't be more scary if it had sprung from the bosom of Deimos.
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The "master of horror" has dubbed the Italian version of the game. So dunno if it's scary in EN, but the localized version has got this really nice bonus of scariness that no other version will have... http://kingofgng.com/eng/2008/09/26/dario-argento-involved-in-videogames/
It's about killing the resale market. You can get pirate copies for PC & 360 regardless of any protection they put on. I don't know about PS3 but I expect it will be forthcoming.
Nick
one stroke from the oval office, who's to say he hasn't already had it given his choice of Her?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMyNk8J1c8g
Some of the scarier games I have played leave obscene amounts of gore from every hit in the background and instead focus on getting under the player's skin. One of the sudden shudder moments I clearly remember is playing "Eternal Darkness" and suddenly have my character fall to pieces while trying to open a door. The game hinges on a "sanity" concept, the more scared your character is the more strange things will happen to you, i.e. suddenly looking back at the tub that was empty a second ago and seeing your deadbody. I think the key here is that the game is played from a 3rd person perspective, yet the player still identifies the PC as "them". Playing along and exploring than suddenly seeing myself fall to pieces certainly made my heart skip a beat.
The shining. Still scaring the bejeesus out of me.