Jimquisition: The Ugly Secret of Horror Games

[Nurb]

Silent Hill 2 is still the king, but the first Alone in the Dark ranks right up there if anyone remembers playing it at the time... great feeling of fear and hard as shit even if the graphics are 1st gen 3D, but it is one of the grandaddies of modern survival horror. Very "Lovecraftian"

 

[AJax_21]

A game doesn't necessarily have to look like shit for it to be scary. There are little things called pacing and atmosphere. The problem with modern horror games is that they are so fixated on showing you the horrifying monstrosities in their full HD, glossy glory. Case in point, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Dead Space series...etc. It's just frustrating to see modern games entirely miss the point of horror. It's much more terrifying to see the shadow of the monster than the monster himself, less is always more.

Also with modern technology, developers can pull off wonders with effective use of lightning, shadows and effects. I would love to play Amnesia, It's been a long time since I've scratched my itch for proper horror games.

 

[ZiggyE]

Yume Nikki is an example of a good modern horror game.

 

[ultimasupersaiyan]

There is a modern pretty horror game that can be mentioned... EyePet! That thing creeps me out!

 

[StrixMaxima]

Horror is displacement of the common, not eye candy. Today's horror games are bad because of how games are marketed nowadays, and what is to be expected of a title.

So, while I disagree that 'ugly = horror', I do agree that the real nice horror game experiences will stem from the indie scene. But that's something very easy to imply, you don't need to be a genius to get to this conclusion.

What I want in my games is a new aesthetic experience, a solid storyline and resistance to the urge of putting trophies and other immersion-breaking elements sewn within the game. I want it gritty, unfriendly and uncomfortable, but not too over the top, comical or scatological.

 

[personion]

You said that uglyness adds to horror, and you said that was because we couldn't identify with it... but wouldn't that make it less scary? If we can't imagine ourselves in that situation due to the fact that the graphics are extremely unrealistic, then how're we supposed to have a personal fear for our lives?

 

[Virmire]

Rehashing my bitterness towards my laptops inability to play Amnesia...

I agree. I've only gotten into horror recently, hell I've only played Parasite Eve all the way through. But I see his point. Dead Space, which I am currently playing by chance, has cheap scares, things jumping out of closets. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, has some truely terrifying moments. The characters phsycotic rantings when afraid, his combative ineptitude, the fucking, FUCKING shoggoth bit. THAT is scary. You know you can die from a simple slip up, while in Dead space, shoot a leg, then an arm and your done.

Man, I really need to start Silent Hill. Picked it up, but haven't sat down to try it yet.

 

[Smokescreen]

I'm in with the people who say design trumps all. What this episode seems to forget is that at the time, RE2, Silent Hill 2 etc, had great graphics. However, because the graphical content had limits, atmosphere and design were able to shoulder a great deal of the weight-which they ought to do anyway. (Which is sorta said but because it isn't explicit, there's a sense of 'when I was a kid things were terrifying, not like now you fancy bastards!')

Dead Space 2 seemed to recall this when they had the player going back onto the Ishumura (spelling!) to do something. Hardly anything jumped out at me but-and this is especially because I'd played DS1-the whole thing was creepy as hell, because of the atmosphere of the place and how starkly different it was from the rest of the game.

You just can't make an entire game from that material, and charge $60 for it.

I blame RE4 for this, just a little. Don't get me wrong, I love Resident Evil 4; it's an amazing game that breathed new life into the series. But action-horror is very different than horror. If the player always has more than enough resources to deal with the situation at hand, the scare value drops considerably. Again, Dead Space seems to remember some of this but still wants to rely on swarming effects, so for playability's sake, proper amounts of ammo have to be provided. And since RE4 was so successful and rightly so, the people wanting to follow in those footsteps have been legion.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I largely have to disagree with the premis. REMake had a high graphical polish and was scarier in a lot of areas. A lot of it is , yea, the addition of more Gotcha moments with the crimson heads and the bonb zomibe, but also the added tension of creatures that could hide in the shadows easier or bleand into the background. Then there's Eternal Darkness, which, aside from some fantastic jump moments (the body in the tub, the more clever sanity effects), had the added suspense of most of the characters meeting a bad fate making most levels feel lost even if you "won".

Of this generation, Bioshock has a great creepy atmosphere, and audio tapes of Raputre citizens are brlliantly dark and draw you in. The ammo supply isn't quite as limited as RE, but the ferocity and number of enemies make up for it leving you just as desperate and isolated. Now if Big Daddies staklked you like the Nemesis it'd be perfect.

And sometimes the crap quality can hurt, as any devotee of MST3K can tell you. It's hard to be scared of a monster that can barely waddle a few inches per second. RE's beneath porn level acting brought us out of the scares, and even those Clash of the titans skeletons left me thinking "they're slow and clunky, run around them".

 

[TwistedEllipses]

I've got to disagree with the main argument that horror games need to be ugly. Nostalgia plays a big part with forming opinions of older games and frankly someone playing Friday 13th for the first time now, will not be frightened in the least. A lot of monsters rely on the 'uncanny valley' of incorporating human and inhuman aspects creating an unsettling whole, this can't be achieved if the game is a low-res mess.

He's closer when he cites gameplay choices: Fear, Dead Space and Resident Evil are primarily shooters, not simply horror games and having a massive gun over-rules a sense of helplessness. The sense of helplessness is key to creating the right atmosphere in Amnesia (along with lighting and ambient sounds, the rule of show don't tell, etc). I also agree that graphics shouldn't be the focus for developer and that photo-realism isn't always the best way to go...

 

[DeManix]

I firmly agree with Jim here, jumpy motions that are very non-human just scare the crap out of me. That's why I don't play Bethesda RPGs, because the stuff like Deathclaws just freak me out in the way their movements are really jittery and un-natural on top of the way they look and attack. I find it simple to kill humans in video games because I feel I can relate to the way they think and feel, but when the time comes to kill an animal or an alien, I run for the hills, because I can't relate at all, and most of the time their movements are jittery and unpredictable. I think Jim really hit the nail on the head here.

 

[Zoe Castillo]

I don?t think so .
deadspace2 isn?t scary because it?s more oriented towards action than horror. But to give you an example of a game I think can be absolutely terrifying while looking good ( or at least it looked good at the time) is S.TA.L.K.E.R shadow of Chernobyl. the game is ridiculously atmospheric and can be incredibly scary while having good graphics and tight controls .
As an example look at this
The fear you felt while playing those old games is more of a side effect of crap?y controls and shit?y sound than anything else (also nostalgia) . good looking games can be scary if done right it?s just that horror doesn?t sell so almost no one ever bothers to put in the time and do it well.

Even bioshock had it?s moment?s and I think that game looks good even by today?s standards

 

[Rack]

So if Amnesia was made 5 years before it wouldn't have been scary for a few years until graphical standards caught up?

Obviously this is complete nonsense, yes big-budget games aren't scary but he's mixed up correlation with causation. Horror games as opposed to "blowing the crap out of monsters" games aren't mainstream, if you aren't mainstream you don't get multi-billion dollar budgets. As a result all good horror games will be ugly, either by being made back when you could compete with a smaller budget or by being indie. The only possible help ugliness can be is that things are always scarier in the shadows and that's also the best way to cover up deficiencies in production. But a scary game will ultimately have to know this, it's almost impossible to just stumble on it blindly.

 

[keserak]

I usually agree with Jim -- even in the early episodes.

But he's completely wrong here.

· Plenty of ugly horror games are not scary. Plenty of us didn't find any Resident Evil game to be remotely scary, and tons of old-school horror games aren't scary.

· Dead Space is a piece of crap from a horror standpoint because it has a terrible plot, weak pacing, and horrible mechanics for a horror game (though standard fare for a shooter).

· Crap controls and bad graphics are hackery. They're the video game equivalent of making a character an orphan to both make a cheap play at sympathy and exclude any knotty family ties in the plot. They're what you do when you suck.

· Amnesia was a beautiful game. Seriously, the idea that bleeding edge graphics are always pretty and older-style graphics are always ugly is simply a lie. That equivalency was explicitly made in Jim's presentation.

· And remember his intro, uber-example, Friday the 13th? What was the scariest thing about that? When it broke out of its low-res graphics and presented the player with a high-res image.

Pacing, emotional connection, thematic mechanics, and compelling characters are the ingredients for an excellent horror game. Asthetics don't enter into it.

Seriously, I can't believe he called Amnesia ugly. WTF. You can go on YouTube and check it out -- some of those scenes are gorgeous.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Another thing that kills horror is when you are too well armed. For example, I was playing Dead Island and I had read that a zombie called The Butcher was scary and could kill you easily. When I finally met one after a cutscene it died in 2 seconds from my semi-auto rifle. I had plenty of ammo to spare and I had both a pistol and shotgun in reserve. The scary zombie game had gone from tense "I only have a stick and 5 are chasing me" to "Where can I find a horde to gun down for teh lulz?" The fun of zombie movies is that the survivors have dwindling resources, in Dead Island later in the game you have more bullets then the freakin army and can kill anything easily. There's even a section where you man a mounted machinegun with UNLIMITED AMMO. A better horror setup would've been a load of shell casings around the gun, maybe 30 bullets in the belt, and a corpse nearby to show that even an MG couldn't stop the undead.

As it stands when you give the player too much firepower all fear is gone.

 

[Jelly ^.^]

Just reminded me of the ACID BATH OUT OF NOWHERE.

 

[Aprilgold]

I agree with your point Jim, but um... don't think I didn't notice that you spent 7 minutes essentially repeating yourself over and over.
We expect better from you sir.

I don't because I enjoyed those 7 FUCKING minutes of completely repeating. Actually, I restarted the page because I thought the video was repeating itself, but otherwise, I enjoyed yet another reason why Horror games fall flat. *Sighs* Please don't go back to making bad videos again?

Admittedly, this doesn't necessarily have to apply to just horror. Proper art design for any game in any genre makes the game better regardless of shiny graphics. A lot of modern games, not just horror, fall flat because they focus on making it look good than making a proper game with good aesthetics.

OH HELL YES TO THIS!

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

This is an excellent point. Another way to scare,however, would be to put it where you least expect. For example, Half Life 2's Ravenholm, Max Payne's drug induced nightmare and Hitman Contracts slaughter house, I have also heard of things about Thief's Cradle level.
An example of a good horror game related to the Escapist would be Yatzee's Chazo Mythos(which I played before I knew about ZP or Yatzee), which uses bad graphics as well as completely unexpected scares.