Jimquisition: Scare Tactics

[wolfyrik]

Eternal Darkness is one of my all-time favourite games, and it used a jump-scare very sparingly (depending on your definition, there might have been just one), but to great effect; just as you're at ease, certain that there are no threats in the main mansion JUMPSCARE! that will put you back on your toes.

Eternal Darkness is genius, I wish the other games that cvlaimed to have insanity-meters did half as well as ED. It changed so much of the experience and was tremendously well done. Added to the overall suspense and anxiety of the game, while making replays more interesting.

@jim. Dood, Ghost Train. Ooohwaaaaaa! Loved that show. Jimquisition lately has turned into one part Critique, one part bizarre nostalgia trip. Enjoying it, greatly.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Stop praising Dead Space for being scary, because it isn't.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is scary, because it's not just one stupidly telegraphed jump scare after the other, it's actual atmosphere and LACK of jump scares (read: minimal reliance) that get you. Not always going "BOO!" but most often just "Boo." too. Then the occasional "BOO!" just as you think you're safe.

 

[duck-man]

I wasn't afraid... until Too Human II.

 

[Jobbie]

Resident Evil 2 / Police interrogation room + No Music. Licker jumps threw with a very loud crash. Worst jump scare ever.

 

[ms_sunlight]

The best haunted house in videogames is explicitly so; the haunted hotel level in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. You're sent to investigate an old hotel where the building crew doing rennovations is refusing to work because it's haunted. There is no pretence about what is to come. As soon as you get in the front door spooky things happen.

It's full of jump scares, poltergeist activity and half-seen phantoms. It tells a story. It's absolutely fantastic. Buy the damn game, it's on sale! http://store.steampowered.com/app/2600/

 

[GameChanger]

Hey hey Jimothy,

While I agree with you on the point that jump scares are not necessarily a bad thing, I do think that taking Dead Space as an example is not exactly a great choice. While the very first jump scare in Dead Space is really great and effective, the more you progress through the game, the less effective it becomes. Roughly halfway through the first one I could accurately predict when the designer thought to himself "I haven't put in a jump scare for two minutes now, need to fix that". Your point is that jump scares can be successful if they are executed skillfully, and I just don't think Dead Space does it very well. They just don't make me 'jump' as they were probably intended. It can only be scary if you don't exactly know WHEN something is going to jump out of the cupboard, and when you do know it starts feeling 'cheap'. Case and point.

I think Dead Space is an awesome game, but not for the reason that it is scary. I like the style and Lovecraftian themes in it way more than the fear-factor.

 

[KiloFox]

i'm not big on "Jump-scares" they don't ever actually SCARE me, rather, they just surprise me. i jump, but i don't feel scared, i don't dread the next one, and they just get boring after a while. now i'm sure they have the effects Jim mentioned in his EP on SOME people, just not me personally.

now i've never been a big horror fan, hell i was scared shitless when my older brother played Resident Evil Directors Cut on the PS1, but c'mon. i was like. 8.

last thing i saw that truly scared me, was the needle-pit scene in Saw (Saw 2 i think it was) that's really the only way to really scare me now. play to my phobias (Bees, wasps, hornets, and needles)

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Well Most of the time, I find myself agreeing with Jim here, but im not sure that's the case today. It seems he's kicking some hornet's nest without any reason (Although DAMN I laughed with Scare FOE).....

Evidently there is room for jump scares in horror, I dont think anyone can deny that, but I find it is a lot easier to pull off an effective jump scare. A simple Gif image can give you an effective jump scare:
(stare into this spot and you will see the point change color........ BLAM!).
Of course it requires work as well but it can be done very methodically through Action -> prolonged silence/pause -> Frantic action, and it works just fine.

I pesonally don't care much about the scare itself, but MUCH MORE about the long lasting unsettling feeling. And this is why, when playing Dead Space, the same jump scares that were effective initially, grew tiresome the further I got invested into Isaac's story. And this is also why a game like Doom 3 for me holds little interest (and i'm not being smug as to say, its artistically inferior or whatnot as Jim implies), I'm just noticing that it relies too much on that temporary high that repeats itself with slight variations, but it doesn't really get me invested or give me an insight on fear.

This in general, is why when I watch straight up horror movies, I don't particularly enjoy them, since they generally strive to you disturbing Imagery, but often dwell on very generic stylistic clichès and can rarely take that seriously. On the other hand, suspense thrillers (although genres often blend and blur) generally focus on giving you frightening IDEA, with or without the media shock, and directs our thought towards what scares us individually. The difference is that this profound fear requires to be constructed diligently, while a jump scare can be effectively created in a single scene.

So yeah, they are not the same, and in my opinion, one takes much more work to pull off psichologic long lasting fear efectively than a jump scare. And there is nothing wrong with that, noone is up in arms about it either...just different resources.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

I think one of the reasons jump scares don't work is once you reach a point where you expect them to happen, they kind of lose the fear factor and become just an annoyance. Fear tends to work best when you don't know what to expect...and it's that unknown factor that works best for horror and fear as it's your own imagination that creating the boogeyman. Jump scares just can't bring that because you know what to expect. Something is going to jump out of the closet going "Abloogy-Woogy-Boo", and it won't matter WHAT it is since you already know it's just going to give you a quick adrenaline rush...and that's it.

Personally, this is one of the reasons I hate haunted houses. After the first few jump scares I REAAAAAAAAAAALLY had to fight the urge to punch the next zombie in the face so I wouldn't get arrested. It just wasn't fun or even a good adrenaline rush...it was just a series of pointless annoyances like the current run of campaign ads. THAT IS NOT HORROR!

Don't get me wrong. If they can get the pacing right, I COULD see how good jump scares could work. But I have yet to see it because WAY too many people seem impatient to give the next adrenaline burst to their vicitms so they plie them on and so the tedium begins. What I prefer to see in games is true horror where you don't know what the danger is so at any time you could be doing something normal and then sudd

 

[lead sharp]

It's about bloody time some one spoke out for jump scares! I'm a horror fan and I've seen good and bad. The Asian Shutter has GREAT ones in it and then there's everything after the first Paranormal Activity which just re-treads old ground. But they all get lumped together.

Game wise one of the scariest moments actually happened recently during Dishonoured, just before I went into the sewers to get back to the Hound Pits I had to break down some boards to go through a corridor or two. I could hear the weapers but not see them, that was unnerving. Checking all the way I got to the room with the sewer hatch all was silent, I turn around and there were four or five weapers doing a conga straight up behind me, I actually screamed like a girl. That was an effective jump scare and it was all the result of a bit of smart AI just happened to do the right thing at the right time in a game that isn't really a horror game.

 

[csoloist]

Couldn't disagree more on Doom-3 and Dead Space.

Dead Space was *meh* because it telegraphed pretty much every single encounter in the entire game.

Doom 3 gets shat on because it's, y'know DOOM 3. Long overdue return of one of the most seminal franchises in videogame history. Trouble is it wasn't anywhere near as good as Doom, or even Doom 2.

 

[HalfTangible]

Does anybody know which Jimquisition begins with Jim listening to his own self-help tape? I'm trying to find that one =/

 

[Arnoxthe1]

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.

What I want it to do? I think you misunderstand me, old boy.

I'm talking about general genre and franchise expectations. Would you play Halo if 343 decided that jumping on colorful platforms to get gold coins was the way to go? Even if it was a good platformer?

This is exactly what happened to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Rare wanted to make something different and I respect that completely. However, instead of injecting their ideas into a new franchise, they decided to inject it into Banjo Kazooie. A game that was not about vehicles at all. So, when it finally came out, everyone was very turned off, expecting another romp through huge imaginative worlds but instead, they got a bunch of vehicle challenges in vaguely different looking mechanical worlds.

DISCLAIMER: I LOVED the vehicle building in BK:N&B. The core of the game was absolutely great. The rest of it, however, was lacking badly. And also, once again. Doom 3 wasn't a terrible game at all. Presentation of it all was great and the weapons were nice and beefy. Monsters were done well, etc. The constant annoying darkness and the horror though was what brought it down.

 

[Nazulu]

the dark and jump scares usually work on me. I never heard of any one calling it cheap though. Guess I can understand why, since after being jumped out so much in Doom 3, it just wasn't as effective later in the game.

The unknown scares me a lot more. Like the Blair Witch Project, it took me awhile to get over. So it's understandable why people prefer to inspire that which I also think is more creative.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Would you play Halo if 343 decided that jumping on colorful platforms to get gold coins was the way to go? Even if it was a good platformer?

Yes I would. I like platformers, and frankly, that'd appeal to me more than a Halo FPS, because the Halo series is something I've been unable to get into yet.

Hell, just look at Metroid Prime. A Metroid FPS? TRAVERSTY! Except it's beloved. It's all about the quality, at the end of the day. Not your expectations of static genres.

This is exactly what happened to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Rare wanted to make something different and I respect that completely. However, instead of injecting their ideas into a new franchise, they decided to inject it into Banjo Kazooie. A game that was not about vehicles at all. So, when it finally came out, everyone was very turned off, expecting another romp through huge imaginative worlds but instead, they got a bunch of vehicle challenges in vaguely different looking mechanical worlds.

But by all accounts, it was a good game. In fact ...

DISCLAIMER: I LOVED the vehicle building in BK:N&B. The core of the game was absolutely great. The rest of it, however, was lacking badly.

There we go. You LOVED the new changes, but the game failed you because you didn't enjoy the rest of it. But that was because you found it lacking, NOT because the changes ... which were the only bits you enjoyed.

And also, once again. Doom 3 wasn't a terrible game at all. Presentation of it all was great and the weapons were nice and beefy. Monsters were done well, etc. The constant annoying darkness and the horror though was what brought it down.

And again, you're pointing to matters of taste, not matters of the game failing on any technical level. The game did not fail because it was a horror game, it failed because you didn't appreciate its kind of horror and the dark palette. Meanwhile, I did, and feel it was a great success.

If you disliked Doom 3, that's perfectly fine, but you're applying a level of objective standards to it that it had no intention of applying to itself.

 

[Jamiethejedi]

"...he's scarier without the...WAAAAAAAAA"

lmfao

 

[Jamiethejedi]

"...he's scarier without the...WAAAAAAAAA"

lmfao

 

[Mikodite]

Definitely, Doom 3 is the only game that ever made me shit my pants. (For the record I was holding one in while I was playing Doom 3 but still)

I don't even think the Jump scares need that tense of a set up.

I still have fond repressed memories of Youtube or Newgrounds videos that say "Cool Optical Illusion" then 30 seconds in BAM! scary face... or alternately pancake face, which is equally as scary.

There's no build up, no tension and to me that makes it even scarier.

Thus why jumps scares are 'lazy.' Jim overestimates the amount of work required to pull off a proper jump scare. A jump scare is literally a monster jumping out of a closet screaming "Abloogie oogie whoo" and that is all it is, and they can do the job without any real buildup at all.

Something I want to add to this conversation is that most of us confuse 'being scared' with 'being startled.'

Being scared is walking down a dark alleyway knowing there is a strong change that you will be jumped on. Its being in a bad situation and not knowing if you will make it out in good standing - or even alive. Its having to make an important discussion that is make or break, knowing that a 'break' might not be something you can recover from.

Being startled is when your concentrating on doing homework in the school library when someone taps your shoulder. Or when a cat jumps off the road because a loud shiny demon roared by very fast.

The term 'jump-scare' or 'pop-up scare' are misleading as, even when done properly, they don't really scare you, they startle you. The difference in terminology is important.