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The G&T Spooktacular 2013: Scary Times With Games
Sterica
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
Fall is officially here. The days are getting colder, the daylight shorter lived, and frightening software plays on our consoles.
It's October, Halloween rapidly approaches, and there are more ways than ever to mix the hobby and holiday.
Two major releases came out in September for horror games.
The sequel to the original, this time around I'm hearing that it is not as terrifying as the first, but your mileage will vary. The crux of Amnesia is that you are a poor defenseless bastard that gets chased by all sorts of creepy monsters while trying to figure out what's going on.
Outlast is a new entry, and it's in a similar vein to Amnesia where you get chased around by crazy shit in an asylum where everything has gone to hell. One twist is that you have night vision via your camera, and you can also look behind you when running (presumably from whatever the fuck is chasing you). I've heard some say it's actually better than Machine for Pigs, but nothing universal on that opinion.
Old favorites include...
This is where Resident Evil last peaked as a franchise, switching from the slower and methodical style to a very action-based and strategic style. Ammo is much more abundant, and survival is more about intelligently blasting your way through the monstrous hordes than quietly sneaking by zombies to conserve ammo. The game is one large escort quest, which some complained about, but it's largely a lot better than you'd expect. Originally on Gamecube, the Wii re-release is probably the definitive version. The game is scary in a "I have firepower, but can I kill them all before they overwhelm me?" way as opposed to most horror games where you have like five bullets or a camera.
Despite its age, System Shock 2 still delivers an impressive experience in terms of atmosphere and creepy tone. The granddaddy to Bioshock Infinite, you'll find a very sophisticated horror game here if you can get over the rough edges that age tends to bring out in older titles. It's available on Steam among other places, and there's probably no end to the various mods you can slap on to tweak your experience.
Last year I talked about Slender, and in between then and now the game has gotten a full-on commercial release. The opening of the game is still the same: grab eight pages in a darkass forest while avoiding Slendy. Without giving away anything, there's much more to the game now and it's been fairly well-received. It's never got as hugely popular as the original free version of the game (which still exists for you cheapskates), but having actual money pumped into the title does give it a lot more atmosphere.
I mentioned cameras earlier, so I guess this was inevitable. Fatal Frame has earned its place in history by making your one weapon something you'd rather not use, as it's a camera that requires going into first person view and getting a clear shot of whatever is spooking you. There's quite a few of these games, and I won't try to pretend I know enough about them to recommend one over any others.
Actually, I have no idea what this game is about. I just know that people go nuts over it, and it clearly has a dedicated cult following. Honestly, it's just nice to fill this section out with stuff that isn't the same RE/Silent Hill/etc. every year.
Sweet Home never got a release in North America, so you may have to resort to Let's Plays or shelling out some bucks for a legit copy online. There is a translation done for the game, and I hear some people even sell modded copies of the Famicom carts for English-speaking players. While an NES horror JRPG may not sound scary, the game gets a lot of praise from people for being one of the first video games to make a really earnest effort at horror.
What? Typing is pretty damn scary. I had a typing class in grade school so horrifying that my words per minute remains under 40 to this day.
ANOTHER rpg, only made via RPG Maker by some french guy!? Yeah, but OFF is still one of the creepier games out there. It's more unsettling than terrifying, but it has a memorable cast and the title sums up the feel of the game perfectly. It's out there, but grounded just enough in reality by the dialogue to not feel too surreal. Everything is just...off. I believe this one is free and can be found online with an English translation.
There's also game-related stuff to watch (if you're a giant chicken).
Every year James Rolfe dedicates at least one show to a horror-themed game like Castlevania. Rolfe also covers a lot of old horror movies on his Cinemasscre website.
While AVGN spawned scores of terrible imitators, one of them turned out to be pretty entertaining. Derek Alexander essentially does the exact opposite of Rolfe, spending his episodes extolling the virtues of a particular classic. He loves a lot of niche games out there, and is willing to put up with a fair amount of faults if something in a title really grabs. Like Rolfe, Alexander features Halloween episodes that a video love letters to some horrific retro gem. I mean, who else dedicates an episode to Illbleed?
Giant Bomb has a series called "Spookin with Scoops" where Patrick Klepek plays scary video games. I think just about every video in the series requires a subscription to Giant Bomb, but the Outlast Quick Look is essentially a free episode for anyone interested.
Just about every YouTube personality plays Amnesia or something. I could also include TwitchTV in here. From Day9 to the billionth person doing a Minecraft Let's Play, you have enough Halloween-themed content to last you until October 2014. Also, user Helloween is well-known for doing horror game Let's Plays over the years, and it would be remiss of me to not offer a link to the channel. Of course, the Let's Play Thread has a thorough archive of everyone's LP contributions.
Now go and make scary!
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While the Bioshocks haven't quite matched the overall experience of SS2, they all share a great sense of atmosphere - and SS2 is still the best of them when it comes to building out that horrible moment of realization.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Also Two Best Friends are re-doing the SHitstorm of Scariness this year, which is funny because they are enormous babies about even mildly scary games.
I should warn people, however, that nothing makes a horror game less scary than a thorough exploitation of every glitch and quirk it has to offer. You'll see the saddest Amnesia monsters.
in fact they are basically the only thing that scares me, that and weird japanese girls with their heads on sideways and black eyeballs and gaping mouths
This thread is reminding me that I started Dead Space II for... Halloween last year... and never finished it. Jesus Christ. I need to restart that and play it through at some point.
Interestingly I just bought Teleglitch, which is not at all a horror game in any traditional sense, but the backstory is pretty horrifying in its own way and that game does isolation and tense trepidation extremely well, and I feel like those are the kinds of emotions that, although they're not spooooooky ghost scary, are definitely in the realm of "oh god."
One of my favorite scary games is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. That game did chase sequences in a way that very few other games can lay claim to.
Boy, do I have a shitty great movie series for you.
(Spoilers)
http://knock.ice-pick.com/index.html
Trailer:
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Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
They don't scare you. They startle you and make you tense because you expect them afterwards. They're the cheapest, laziest scare there are and they absolutely suck.
Google is dumb then.
Startled is anything from Paranormal Activity 3. Scared is Michael Myers sitting up in the background.
I can startle you with a handful of gravel. Is gravel scarey?
I mean, there's a dark, spooky wooded area just over there, that I think would be a great place to set up camp.
edit: personally, I might go for something like Limbo or Time Fcuk on Halloween because they both give me that cold, unsettled feeling that I enjoy far more than spook scares. I also can suggest Spec Ops: The Line if people are looking for a different idea of 'horror'. It is absolutely terrific.
You know what makes it so great? There are different scares throughout. It doesn't rely on one "style" of scary. It switches it up. Sometimes nothing happens, and that's when you get really nervous, because the game gets you used to something horrible being behind a door and then nothing is. Where is it?
But I have to say the crowning achievement are the mental patients.
Without giving away spoilers, some of the mental patients want to harm you in horrible ways. Some of them are near-catatonic and do nothing. How do you tell the difference between the two?
You can't.
There is no guarantee that a seemingly docile patient will remain that way. It makes you super paranoid anytime you're around them, especially when they aren't actively coming for you.
It's brilliant and creepy and horrifying.
The one with the ravens?
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Yeah there was a bunch of them in the outside screen. I can remember exactly what it looked like but GB doesn't play nicely on work PCs so can't look it up.
I think it's called The Last Door.
https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Last+Door&rlz=1C1SAVU_enUS552US552&oq=The+Last+Door&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64&sourceid=chrome&espvd=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/spookin-with-scoops-07-25-2013/2300-7732/
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I bought a copy a few weeks ago but haven't had a chance to try it. My teenage niece liked it though. I'll have to give it a try soon. I still have to muster up the courage to play through Amnesia too.
I've been watching Youtube videos of some scary games on the Oculus Rift and honestly I can't say for sure whether or not I'll have the courage to even try them when my headset arrives.
Outlast + A Machine For Pigs are a must obviously. Knock-Knock I've got already. Any other sort of Slender/Whatever ones where you're forced to go look around and all of your friends can make fun of you for being so frightened because it's obviously not even a big deal?
I think Routine is supposed to have OR support, which would just be a holy crap sandwich
http://www.gabrielknight20th.com/
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Only if you find zombies scaryBAH DUMM TISHH!
Get Dean Erickson on the phone! He's a real estate agent now, I know he's not busy!
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It is not necessarily a scary game. In fact, often it is a humorous game. But it is also an unsettling and very weird game.
It's a bit like Earthbound, only more drug-induced and with gore. If you can see why Earthbound might be kind of creepy at times, then you get what I mean.
It is also a free game and only 2-3 hours long!
Here it is.
Somehow, my brother managed to play it to completion after about a dozen attempts that ending in quitting out due to being too scared. He must have nerves of steel. I could barely get into the game without nopeing the fuck right out of there.
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I meant in the OP, but I'm glad someone else on this board is following it, too.
How weird is Cold Fear, huh?