Horror in Games

[Acier]

So the fairly recent thread about what people's favorite scary scenes in combination with a personal interest of mine sparked the idea for a delightful non-Mass Effect discussion (a bit late for that joke? TOUGH)

Basically, instead of just saying what scurred you the most and posting a youtube link, let's talk about why those things scared us mechanically and atmospherically speaking. Though "atmospherically" is probably obvious I'll give an example of mechanically since it's a tad more obtuse.
The jump scares in Clock Tower for the SNES were effective throughout multiple playthroughs because they were randomized and sometimes delayed, so you could hardly "expect" them. And you were forced to run and hide from enemies rather than engage them in combat. Though I was not in danger for very much of the game, the illusion of danger kept me on edge. (Apart from randomized jumpscares, Amnesia works on very similar principles)

So yeah, I just think it would be interesting to talk about what mechanics succeed at scaring us since play mechanics are unique to games (which is one of the problems I think horror games have been suffering recently, is trying to operate like horror films, which use a different set of "rules" to scare us)

 

[Zhukov]

And you were forced to run and hide from enemies rather than engage them in combat.

This.

This right here.

I think that making the protagonist mechanically weaker than whatever nasties populate the game is a crucial part of making a horror game scary and it's something that a lot of games get wrong.

For example, this is one of my big problems with Dead Space as a horror game. No matter how dangerous the enemies are or how gross they look or how close they are when the jump out of a vent, I'm never scared of them because I have more than adequate means to fight back. When a mutilated mockery of the human form comes charging at me I'm not think "Oh shit, this is so scary, what do I do?". Instead I'm thinking, "Hmm, should I cut his legs off? Nah, I've done that loads of times, maybe I should blast this one into the wall. Ohh, hey how about impaling him...?"

 

[Acier]

And you were forced to run and hide from enemies rather than engage them in combat.

This.

This right here.

I think that making the protagonist mechanically weaker than whatever nasties populate the game is a crucial part of making a horror game scary and it's something that a lot of games get wrong.

For example, this is one of my big problems with Dead Space as a horror game. No matter how dangerous the enemies are or how gross they look or how close they are when the jump out of a vent, I'm never scared of them because I have more than adequate means to fight back. When a mutilated mockery of the human form comes charging at me I'm not think "Oh shit, this is so scary, what do I do?". Instead I'm thinking, "Hmm, should I cut his legs off? Nah, I've done that loads of times, maybe I should blast this one into the wall. Ohh, hey how about impaling him...?"

Question if you've played Silent Hill Shattered Memories or Downpour...if not proceed to ignore

But would you say that broadcasting the chasing dampens the experience somewhat? In both Clock Tower and Amnesia, you had to run from fairly random (or sudden) encounter, whereas in those games, you were chased and defenseless, but the shift to other world made it quite obvious it was about to happen. Were they less scary? Or did the shift to the otherworld immediately induce you with dread because you knew what was happening?

 

[BreakfastMan]

For me, atmosphere is the king of all scares. Specifically, stuff that looks like it could have been brought from a nightmare. Strange, perhaps disgusting, and most certainly disquieting. It also if it is built up to in a decent way. Take, for example, Silent Hill 4. One of the "hauntings" one could experience in the game was a mound of babies faces coming out of the wall in your living room. This was built up to by waking up in bed to hear the screams of babies where there was none before. When you go into the living room (which is entirely optional), you see the mound on the wall. Or, for something a bit more... subtle, sometimes when you look out of the windows in your apartment, you see a ghostly face fall down the corner of the window. That is some good scares right there. Mechanics don't matter so much as atmosphere, to me.

 

[Zhukov]

And you were forced to run and hide from enemies rather than engage them in combat.

This.

This right here.

I think that making the protagonist mechanically weaker than whatever nasties populate the game is a crucial part of making a horror game scary and it's something that a lot of games get wrong.

For example, this is one of my big problems with Dead Space as a horror game. No matter how dangerous the enemies are or how gross they look or how close they are when the jump out of a vent, I'm never scared of them because I have more than adequate means to fight back. When a mutilated mockery of the human form comes charging at me I'm not think "Oh shit, this is so scary, what do I do?". Instead I'm thinking, "Hmm, should I cut his legs off? Nah, I've done that loads of times, maybe I should blast this one into the wall. Ohh, hey how about impaling him...?"

Question if you've played Silent Hill Shattered Memories or Downpour...if not proceed to ignore

But would you say that broadcasting the chasing dampens the experience somewhat? In both Clock Tower and Amnesia, you had to run from fairly random (or sudden) encounter, whereas in those games, you were chased and defenseless, but the shift to other world made it quite obvious it was about to happen. Were they less scary? Or did the shift to the otherworld immediately induce you with dread because you knew what was happening?

Ehhhh... hard to say.

I think broadcasting, as you call it, can work depending on the game. One of the things I loved about Amnesia was that you often heard the monsters long before you see each other. Knowing that there was something horrible out there looking for you was a lot more scary than having it suddenly pop out and start chasing you, or at least scary in a different way. It would increase the tension and therefore increase the scariness factor if it spotted you.

Thing is, in Amnesia (and presumably Clock Tower - I haven't played it) the chases were unscripted. They could happen at any time you encounter an enemy and there was no guarantee of you surviving.

Games like the more recent Silent Hill titles, you can usually kill your enemies. So when a chase sequence does come up, broadcasted or otherwise, I don't react with fear. Instead I just think, "Oh right, a chase sequence with an invincible enemy. Gotcha." Because the event is scripted I know I will be able to survive it.

Umm... does that make sense? I'm kinda rambling here.

 

[krazykidd]

I slightly disagree with the fact that you have to be weaker than your enemies . Take resident evil 2 for example . Yes there were jump scares in that game .. But most of my fear came from knowing , i had a limited amount of health , health items , bullets and saved . If you haven't played that game basically , theres no "buying" ammo or health kits( herbs in this game) meaning you HAD to use them wisely and/or avoid taking as much damage as possible and/or not waste your precious bullets . Nothing is worst than havinf to knife your way through things . As for the saves well . At each save point (typewritter) you got 2 typewritter inks . Which means you could save twice for every save point you found . Meaning you had to make sure to not be one of those guys that save evey single time you run across a save point , because you might end up not beig able to save when you really need to ( if you aren't careful).

Basically in that game , you have limited resources that you have to use wisely .

 

[CrazyBlaze]

I don't play horror games but I do understand what makes people frightened in them or at least I think I do

#1. Being at a disadvantage. This could range from the player not being able to fight very well and enemies over powering them. To limited ammo and health that every shot counts. Both put players in a situation where they have to think on what do and how to deal with each encounter.

#2. An unknown enemy. The thing with Deadspace not being scary is that you know what the enemies are. You see them and can understand what they look like. That's boring. You lose fear when you know what you are facing. If I can stare something straight in its face it starts to lose its affect of fear. The greatest Human fear is that of the unknown. I mean a common fear is that of the dark because we don't know what is in it. So when we come to face an enemy in a game knowing all about kills a lot of the fear we had of it.

#3. Atmosphere. A game that is all sunshine and daisy isn't really scary. It can be creepy but not scary. But if its all darkness and dead flowers than it becomes scary. Back to the darkness and night. Even if we know that something is say a cat clock in the dark it can become something else even if we rationally know what it is. So obscuring enemies and the environment can make something scary. We may know what Pyramid Head is up close but when its obscured by darkness he becomes much scarier. That's why games that give you an easy to see environment are rarely scary. Because you can see what something is and that is all it is. Your mind doesn't make up things that are worse or more than what a skeleton really is if you can see it clearly.

 

[The Madman]

Despite not actually being a proper horror series, I always refer to the Thief games when it comes to doing horror right.

Thief is a game where you're always at a disadvantage, even against regular folk. You're a thief, not a fighter or warrior. Sure you *can* fight but chances are unless you've played the game to the point of mastering its mechanics, it's pretty heavily discouraged simply by merit of half a dozen guards pounding you into a red mushy pulp. The entire point of the game is sticking to the shadows, hiding in the darkness to try and avoid conflict. This makes it all the more intense when later in the games (Each of the three games has at least one horror level!) you end up facing more... supernatural foes.

In most games as with movies and books even, the light is your friend if only because then you can see what's coming. Not so with thief, when facing deadlier and stranger enemies the darkness becomes all the more important of a tool, as does patience. As a result you're sitting there in the shadows, waiting and listening as enemies capable of destroying you in a heartbeat pass nearby, barely able to see their silhouette even but unwilling to move while they're so close for fear of making a sound and alerting them to your presence.

Doesn't help that there's ambient sound like this playing in the background, making you wonder whether what you just heard was merely ambient or some lurking terror nearby.


Damned good games. Close to perfect mix, in my mind, of gameplay and ambience working together.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Building up tensision and implement the fear of dying into the gameplay is important. I was very carefull at my first 5 hours in dead island. After my first deaths i realised i`m only losing money and the appeal of a horror game was a bit lost. I was just playing Diablo with zombies.
I still got nervous with the screams of infected and running around in builings with a flashlight. Having crappy weapons and limited ammo helps too.
Resident evil 4 killed the genre a bit with it`s sucess. To many "horror" games try to be like that nowadays and turn into action games with horror creatures.

@ the Madman
I think manhunt pulled this of well too (at least the first half of the game). A unknown voice telling you about suprises and letting you know that you`re being watched all the time was really creepy. The only thing you could do was run and hide.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think that being "horror-themed" (oh no, creepy music! Blood and guts everywhere! How will my fully loaded shotgun and I ever make it through this level?) is given too much emphasis. You know what's scarier than literally everything in dead space? Minecraft creepers. Because they are dangerous and most importantly unpredictable.

The unpredictability is particularly important because it makes players paranoid. It would, for this reason, be interesting to see a horror game fully tackle procedural generation as a design element. If I can get inside the level designer's head and figure out where a jump scare will be, the game isn't a good horror game.

 

[Iron Criterion]

I don't play horror games but I do understand what makes people frightened in them or at least I think I do

#1. Being at a disadvantage. This could range from the player not being able to fight very well and enemies over powering them. To limited ammo and health that every shot counts. Both put players in a situation where they have to think on what do and how to deal with each encounter.

#2. An unknown enemy. The thing with Deadspace not being scary is that you know what the enemies are. You see them and can understand what they look like. That's boring. You lose fear when you know what you are facing. If I can stare something straight in its face it starts to lose its affect of fear. The greatest Human fear is that of the unknown. I mean a common fear is that of the dark because we don't know what is in it. So when we come to face an enemy in a game knowing all about kills a lot of the fear we had of it.

#3. Atmosphere. A game that is all sunshine and daisy isn't really scary. It can be creepy but not scary. But if its all darkness and dead flowers than it becomes scary. Back to the darkness and night. Even if we know that something is say a cat clock in the dark it can become something else even if we rationally know what it is. So obscuring enemies and the environment can make something scary. We may know what Pyramid Head is up close but when its obscured by darkness he becomes much scarier. That's why games that give you an easy to see environment are rarely scary. Because you can see what something is and that is all it is. Your mind doesn't make up things that are worse or more than what a skeleton really is if you can see it clearly.

I think Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is one of few games to meet all these requirements. For 3/4 of that game you didn't even have an adequate weapon to fight off your attackers.

 

[Iron Criterion]

For me, atmosphere is the king of all scares. Specifically, stuff that looks like it could have been brought from a nightmare. Strange, perhaps disgusting, and most certainly disquieting. It also if it is built up to in a decent way. Take, for example, Silent Hill 4. One of the "hauntings" one could experience in the game was a mound of babies faces coming out of the wall in your living room. This was built up to by waking up in bed to hear the screams of babies where there was none before. When you go into the living room (which is entirely optional), you see the mound on the wall. Or, for something a bit more... subtle, sometimes when you look out of the windows in your apartment, you see a ghostly face fall down the corner of the window. That is some good scares right there. Mechanics don't matter so much as atmosphere, to me.

For all of the game's flaws, SH4 was probably one of the scariest and strangest Silent Hills.

 

[paislyabmj]

Resident evil 4 killed the genre a bit with it`s sucess. To many "horror" games try to be like that nowadays and turn into action games with horror creatures.

seconded.resi 4 was fucking awesome.army of darkness with Spaniards and emo cops but all the subsequent rip ofs (i am including resi 5 in that) didn't get it and therefore fucked it up.resident evil 4 was a fun/funny campy b movie with cheap thrills and scares retaining juuuuust enough subltey to be unnerving on some level.evil dead 2 to silent hill 2's the exorcist.
but as much as I love resident evil 4 I can not deny that its legacy has crippled the horror genre.

 

[Rawne1980]

Silent Hill 1 got it perfect for me. The one and only game to get me on edge.

Ordinary guy, mist filled streets, radio crackle ... shit self.

Resi Evil wasn't too bad but the atmosphere was wrong. It was a bit colourful and bright and apart from that scene when the Licker drops from the roof in Resi 2 it never managed the slightest bit of tension.

Dead Space tried far too hard to be a horror game that it became the exact opposite. You knew what was coming and when, it got predictable.