The Common Mistakes of Horror Games

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

The Common Mistakes of Horror Games

Alan Wake wasn't completely awful, but it did showcase some of the most common mistakes in horror games.

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[JackRyan64]

Great article. I loved Alan Wake to bits, but everything you said here would've made it better.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Yes, our almighty Yahurer! Tell us the ways, and give us your wisdom! We are not worthy!

All hail Yahtapia!

 

[gjendemsjo]

Great Article Yahtzee. Agreed with everything you said.

 

[Artemus_Cain]

God, how badly do I suck at games? I was playing Alan Wake on easy and I was still getting killed at least 3 times a chapter.

 

[Brainst0rm]

With regards to slow-motion headshots - it's silly, but a lot of people like it. There's a whole honkin' demographic of people that play games just to shoot stuff, and they get a thrill when said shooting gets highlighted. It's like a sticker on an A+ quiz. The sticker isn't good for anything, and might even be said to be a waste of perfectly good paper and adhesive. But we like it anyway.

 

[Binerexis]

With regards to slow-motion headshots - it's silly, but a lot of people like it. There's a whole honkin' demographic of people that play games just to shoot stuff, and they get a thrill when said shooting gets highlighted. It's like a sticker on an A+ quiz. The sticker isn't good for anything, and might even be said to be a waste of perfectly good paper and adhesive. But we like it anyway.

But is such an attitude really appropriate in a horror or survival game?

 

[thethingthatlurks]

I haven't played Alan Wake yet (on account of having no xbox), but I agree when it comes to music and horror games. Slow and "unnatural" music heightens the tension immeasurably. Picking up something fast paced for combat might be cool for a boss, or for the first enemy you fight, but it will remove a good chunk of the atmosphere. There is no longer dread, but adrenaline. I guess the Serious Sam analogy fits perfectly, because that is what I always picture with action music: me mowing down about 50000 abominations with a minigun.

 

[sooperman]

You know, I think there is a pretty easy fix to make quick-time event suck less; use the actual command. Using Yahtzee's example of the cops shooting at you, a perfectly good quick-time event would have been you pressing L1 + Left, to dodge the bullets. Or in Resident Evil 5, when the zombies are on motorcycles in that arena. Instead of pressing square to shoot the chain, it could have you press the in-game fire button.

Cinematic games are generally always going to have these kinds of problems, but I don't see why QTEs use such flow-breaking button.

 

[Dave1985]

Agreed on the wrestling-the-camera-away-from-the-player issue, I find it really annoying (not just in horror games) when it's done often.

Not sure about keeping the scary music playing would be favourable though, I'd probably find that tiresome after a while, although I do agree that suddenly changing tracks can break immersion. Perhaps slowly fading back to normal music with a little delay after the last baddie has been taken care of would be a better choice. If memory serves right, I think it might have been Deus Ex that had this context-sensitive music feature and it worked well there. Then again, in that game it was supposed to be you that everyone was afraid of.

 

[MisterColeman]

Honestly I think developers should consider hiring or contracting Yahtzee for stuff like this. He is 100% correct on all points and has proven it in his own work (especially Trilby's Notes which is beyond amazing) and I highly recomend any fan of his play through his John DeFoe series (even if you have to use walkthroughs) because the pacing and use of sound is brilliant (and brutaly efficient from a programing perspective, not that most of you would care about that).

I have no doubt Alan Wake would have been a much better game if they had done all this; Dead Space also. Still wish someone was making good horror games...

 

[SilverUchiha]

"Whenever a film has been adapted from a game, it has, without exception, resulted in something so hideous that only rampant fun-haters from the planet Puritan could tolerate it to exist."

Didn't you once say in a review way back that you liked Spiderman 2: the Movie: the Game? And what about all the various Star Wars games that people seem to be crazy for? I'm not saying all movie-based games are great (in fact, I'm inclined to agree with the above statement that almost all of them suck). But to say 100% of them are awful is a bit much.

 

[hawk533]

I think there are many other why reasons movies based on video games generally suck. And from what I hear of the Prince of Persia movie, it is no longer true that there are no good movies based on video games.

 

[zjspeed]

Yahtopia sounds just wonderful!

I've not played Alan Wake, but I agree with your criticism of Dead Space's music. In a horror game the music can ruin suspense rather than heighten it.

I have been impressed with the dynamic music in Red Dead Redemption and especially the Left 4 Dead games. L4D is definately survival, but not really horror. RDR telegraphs its action from quite a ways off in other ways besides musical crescendo too: distant gun shot sounds, and most-obviously its minimap dots.

 

[Edward123454321]

It seems irrelevant to reference an action game when talking about Horror games to me.

He's also contracdicted himself a bit by saying that the idea of a headshot being slow-mo everytime is ridiculous, but then he praised the Fallout 3 VATs, where in you watch mutant brains fly everywhere in slow-mo.

So yeah, funny article, but once again it was just a bit of an incoherent rant that didn't really conclude to anything productive.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

There's a simple reason why horror games are less prevalent.

Horror builds as the story ends. In a game we expect, nay demand, a building hero who defeats the bad guy - and the few horror games that have been done - Space Gun, Beast Busters, Darkseed all use either: the ticking clock to death, the big twist reveal or the "it was only the baby/scout, here's the mother"; and then end.

In a good horror, you need to be isolated, alone and scared - while sitting on Steam/PSN/Xbox live, in a bright room drinking beer. The two areas aren't really conducive.

And if you up the stakes, "This time your save file is on the line", people will go nuts because "THIS ISN'T WHAT I PAID FOR."

Either way, you'll lose trying to write a horror game.

So, don't write a horror game : Instead write I Wanna Be The Guy, Alien Versus Predator, MarioKart and all those other games that horrify rather than terrify. Because even John Carpenter can tell you stories of the "one hit kill that you ALWAYS know is coming".

Horror can't be scary unless it attacks the fundamentals of what you trust. A horror game has to be break one rule, but keep to all the rest - and that's pretty tough to do.

 

[RTR]

I hear Yahtopia has great weather around Christmas.

 

[pneuma08]

I still maintain that the slo-mo enemies popping up is moderately necessary. It solves the problem of enemies completely sneaking up on you, something that happens often and something that can easily lead to death (with even greater risk on the harder difficulties). I'd rather have slo-mo than a serious case of axe-to-head and subsequently a loading screen.

That isn't to say that there aren't other solutions to this problem, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

 

[hermes]

I grow spoiled by Uncharted 2 when it comes to cutscenes. That game's cutscenes usually have some interactivity, and it didn't fall into the "press x not to die" syndrome. Then again, most of the game was like an interactive cutscene.

After that, everytime I see a game with long action cutscenes, I keep asking myself "this is cool, but why is it happening if the controller is on the floor"