Jimquisition: Scare Tactics

O maestre

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Hmmm I just realized Jim would make a great starscream/chris latta impersonator. Yes, that fascinating fact was embedded in my mind the entire review and will continue to do so the rest of the day... man i am such a nerd
 

Arnoxthe1

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Dec 25, 2010
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Yeah, except for one thing there, Jimbo...

Doom ISN'T A HORROR GAME FRANCHISE. Doom 3 should have been THIS. V

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHZJ0de_I4Q

If they wanted to do a horror game, they should have just made a new IP. So yes, I will call it a bad game because it didn't do what it was supposed to be doing. Nevertheless, it's definitely not a horrible game by any stretch. It just went in the wrong direction.
 

TitanAura

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Before I watch... I'm gonna guess from the description that this is about.... jump scares.... *watches first minute* OH GOODY JIM IS A SCARECROW FAN *SQUEEEEEE* Anyways, yep. Jump scares. Pretty much as with all tropes, it's not an inherently bad thing to use them, but you have to know HOW to use them. More often than not, the best way to make jump scares scary.... is to not have them. The fear of knowing they're just around the corner is far scarier than actually seeing them happen.... because we EXPECT them to happen. So they don't scare us. It's when they don't happen and we stop expecting them to happen that *BOO* FUCKING CUNTING CHRIST!
 

ThunderCavalier

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Kane and Lynch III: Drug Gun Gun Drugs

THERE IS NO GAME ONLY SCARECROW.



... Whelp, I'm gonna go hide under the bed now.
 

kburns10

You Gots to Chill
Sep 10, 2012
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Jim mentioned Jack in the Boxes. That actually makes a lot of sense. Games like Slender and the one he showed with the endless staircase seem like modern extensions of Jack in the Boxes. Interaction, but the point is you will jump and you know the jump scare is coming.
 

Jimothy Sterling

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Arnoxthe1 said:
So yes, I will call it a bad game because it didn't do what it was supposed to be doing. Nevertheless, it's definitely not a horrible game by any stretch. It just went in the wrong direction.
Not doing what you want it to do is not the same thing as not doing what it was supposed to be doing. It wanted to be horror. It achieved it. It was a good game.
 

Jimothy Sterling

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O maestre said:
Hmmm I just realized Jim would make a great starscream/chris latta impersonator. Yes, that fascinating fact was embedded in my mind the entire review and will continue to do so the rest of the day... man i am such a nerd
I've actually done him a little bit.

http://youtu.be/8er83h9Bbn8

I wasn't the main Starscream voice. I was the voice of his spark at the end.
 

teh_Canape

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Akalabeth said:
Yeah for Doom 3. Though he failed to mention the bit in hell, that had some well-crafted openings that I'll always remember.
that and the praelanthor ruins in both DOom 3 and Resurrection of Evil were badass looking
so much so that I now wish they made an RPG where you could explore them XD
speaking of it, many people say that one of the main reasons that Doom 3 isn't scary is because you're always packing high power weaponry
I personally think that those weapons help a lot, since the 3 most powerful weapons* (BFG, Rocket Launcher and Grenades) are AoE, and in closed quarters AND panic reactions, they fuck you over too
and let's not forget that there really are a lot of explosives hanging around the place, so you're always too in risk of accidentally a fuel tank with your shotgun, because no matter how powerful your weapons are, a jump scare will still make you panic 90% of the times

*I count the Soul Cube as a tool, since it requires special parameters to be used, such as the demon heart
 

CardinalPiggles

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Best Jimquisition to date.

Anyway, I'm not really into "scary" games myself, but one game that did jump scares right is Bioshock; because it really set the mood even when there wasn't a jump scare on the way. And when there was? Shit got real.

My god, the morgue section literally made me quit the game for a year, because it set you up for a jump scare, then let you relax for a second, and then BOOM! Guy with scythe blades for hands jumps out of the dead guy freezer in your face.
 

beniki

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Hyper-space said:
So...the show is called JimCrow now?

The Crowquisition?
To be honest I was thinking more like 'Burlap the Hutt'.

But anyway...

I like a good jump scare every now and then, but they never leave me awake at night. Like Jim says, they're the theme park ride version of horror, where you're scared but it's all for fun.

Although now I've written that, it makes me wonder why I'd ever watch a movie/play a game which leaves me awake at night.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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Meh.

The stuff about Dead Space was bull.

You know what isn't scary? Vent #37 bursting open with a necromorph. Or Suspiciously Intact Corpse #11 lying on the corridor ahead of you.

And even if it was scary, any sense of threat is undermined by the fact you're carrying a arsenal of guns in your pocket. When a monster jumps out at me in a DS game, I don't think, "Oh crap, I'm under attack!" Rather, I think, "Fuck yeah, time to try out by new upgraded kinietic blaster!"

Also, there was nothing slow or tense about the intro to either game. DS1 had necros popping up with, what? Five minutes? Ten? DS2 had one screaming in your face before you'd even got control of your character.
 

ZexionSephiroth

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Apr 7, 2011
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There are many kinds of fear...

Fear of Danger...
Fear of the Unknown...

...And...

...The most Crushing of all categorized fears...

...The fear of one's own self.

For our greatest fears are tied to what we might do, and we feel we have the capability to do deep down, and we oppose doing more than anything else.

...But there is one further fear...

...Our True fear.

It is the one unique fear that you hold above all others.

It is tied intrinsically with two other unique values you hold above all others of their kind...
...What you value as most important, above anything else.
...What you Wish for; more than anything.

These are not easy things to figure out. And sometimes, it might be better you didn't know.

Its a shame... that I figured out... what my true fear was...And I figured out just how pathetic I am...

In any case, feeling the effects these things have on you isn't hard. It just requires you to ask the question of what it is until something in your heart clicks, and you can't imagine that specific question digging deeper.

"What are you really so afraid of?"
 

Milanezi

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Mar 2, 2009
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Zhukov said:
Meh.

The stuff about Dead Space was bull.

You know what isn't scary? Vent #37 bursting open with a necromorph. Or Suspiciously Intact Corpse #11 lying on the corridor ahead of you.

And even if it was scary, any sense of threat is undermined by the fact you're carrying a arsenal of guns in your pocket. When a monster jumps out at me in a DS game, I don't think, "Oh crap, I'm under attack!" Rather, I think, "Fuck yeah, time to try out by new upgraded kinietic blaster!"

Also, there was nothing slow or tense about the intro to either game. DS1 had necros popping up with, what? Five minutes? Ten? DS2 had one screaming in your face before you'd even got control of your character.
I believe Dead Space one was pretty scary at moments, however, as you said it, Dead Space 2 was not. In Dead Space 2 I wouldn't feel desperate but more "frustrated" because there were so many necromorphs attacking, simply put, many passages in Call of Duty would make just as tense, because just the same, it would throw a shitload of enemies on top of me. Dead Space 2 was a total letdown for me, I felt like going through the descending quality of Resident Evil all the same.
 

Some_weirdGuy

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I think many people fail to notice the transition Doom 3 undergoes as it plays out, where although they use the same mechanic (in this instance, the imps leap attack), it's not trying to achieve the same effect as it was earlier.

Early game, it's a jump scare, purposely made to be that and placed during areas of tension build-up as an unexpected shock, later in the game however, when you have many powerful weapons at your disposal, they use it as a way of letting the imp get in a shot at you since he's not likely to even get close otherwise.

After the 4th or 5th time they've specifically trained you to predict it coming up, that's why the focused shifted away from being placed in tension building/scary lead-ups to instead 'regular' areas that already just had a bunch of enemies, instead using it to chip away at unwary players health(or other times as a sort of 'booby trap' for players who try running away from existing enemies by sprinting up ahead), providing a sense of gratification and game mastery as you 'outsmart' the demon and avoid it's leap attack, a form of positive player feedback which is actually incredibly common in (good)game design.

As I said though, people don't seem to notice this and just go 'urrg, Doom 3, stupid jumpscares got so predictable'. They think they're actually the clever ones who just figured out the 'totally dumb' system that the 'silly' designers keep trying to pull over and over, and don't realise the doom 3 designers were leading them by the nose the whole time and building them up specifically *to* know better.