Poll: what makes a horror game

[ottenni]

You can have all the scary noises you want, and you can be in the creepiest place on earth. But if your being chased by say, a carrot. It just wont work. The enemies HAVE to work. And the rest will follow. I mean the movie Black Sheep had sheep as the monsters, and they made New Zealand a bit scary, NEW ZEALAND for crying out loud.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Look at movies like Alien or the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They both have two things incommen; great editing and loose directing.

The same could be said about good horror games.

 

[Woem]

Combination of area, enemies and noises.

Just general atmosphere.

Good story, scary things jumping out at you, darkness.

Although if you can make someone shit their pants in a broad day-light setting, you've succeeded.

Definitely the atmosphere. You know, like in the original Alone In The Dark trilogy.

 

[ShotgunSmoke]

The feeling that you're completely alone.
Horror games with a sidekick just won't work, because you have somebody watching your back, you both talk and it ruins the horror effect.

Look at Resident Evil 5. The game could have been somewhat creepy, if you didn't have Sheva.

If you had a partner in Dead Space, the game wouldn't be scary at all. Same with F.E.A.R.

Look at the zombie parts in Half Life 2 ep 1. Alyx made you feel somewhat safe and you had the feeling that you have a friend, who you can trust and talk to. In HL2's Ravenholm, you had to rely only on yourself.

Being alone is the key to a successful horror game.

 

[Darenus]

the unknown. In my personalopinion the overal reason why horror games are succeeding is 'THE' combination... between a regular haunted house, a regular spook, a regular joe or joline for a hero and the regular type of combat.

It works when everything around you seemed normal up to a point but there is SOMETHING that you are not knowing but are aware of. If you find yourself in your regular grounds and still need to look around all the time because you get lost while watching your own back from all those whispers in your neck... it can work either as an action-packed gorefest like "The Suffering" if the horror elements are all constantly at their tops or it can work like the "Silent Hill" series, creeping steady, slow change of your natural envirorment and turning it all into your darkest fears or simply shatter your sense of reality completely in one strike all of the sudden like in "Eternal Darkness"...

Horror has many faces but as such it requires many many ingredients that all need to work together well.

The Suffering wouldn't have worked nearly as well if you were the Master Chief
Silent Hill wouldn't have made it if the characters weren't all being tormented by their past
and Eternal Darkness wouldn't have worked if the atmosphere or the characters wouldn't have just fit so strangely well together.

It's a puzzle and as such there aren't many good horror games and moviesout there because they keep focusing on 1-2 maybe 3 aspects and pull them off that massively well but slacked the entire rest or overload the game with endless clichees that we all already know off.

Horror is hard work to MAKE it work, but if you do it well and you keep the elements to work exactly to cause this ammount of despair, fear, will to give up but that one bit of chance alive that you can make it.... you got something you can work with.

That's it from the Rainbow spewing Happy-Bomb that I am:

Peace ou-*gets eaten*

 

[ACM_Shadow]

The use of immersion
if you can get someone so into the game by using atmosphere, then you can pretty much scare the ever living shit outta the player

this is what makes the horror game genre, SH with the radio freaked the shite out of me, the whole deadspace atmosphere and sounds (PS: drop kick babies when they want your brains ), and levels that don't seem linear.

Psycholical horror also makes any horror game, alone, dark, sound FX, hordes of mutants/spirits/undead coming for you just because you're breathing and you don't know if there is help out there.

 

[iJosh]

The use of creepy noises and screeches at perfect times creeps me out. Like in max payne on the ps1, when the baby was crying. That was creepy as hell.

 

[Tyrphanax]

The spooky bits.

 

[wonkey20]

I dunno but F.E.A.R 2 Does it pretty well. Along with Dead Space. They do lose their scaryness after awhile but damn those games scared me at first.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

The general atmosphere and feeling of vulnerability.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Yahtzee said it in his Silent Hill 2 retrospective; it's atmosphere. A horror game can usually only really scare you with what you CANNOT see. Take Doom 3 for example. When you find yourself face-to-hideous-face with some horrific hellspawn, things become very simple; kill the bastard before he kills you. It's what you've been doing all game, it's the reason you have a shotgun, a plasma rifle and a chainsaw. But when you're creeping through a pitch-black room, your flashlight sweeping through the darkness, with the possibility of an imp teleporting in behind you, or ticks and trites crawling out in swarms from a vent near you feet, or a zombie lurching out from between teo computer consoles- well, that's when you're absolutely on edge, so much that a simple environmental sound like a stack of boxes falling over can make you spin around fumbling desperately for the weapon switch button. People complained about not being able to use your flashlight and a weapon at the same time, but with duct tape Doom 3 wouldn't be even a quarter as scary as it was.

I heard an apocryphal story from a reviewer of Silent Hill 3. Apparently once they were advancing down a corridor when they suddenyl spun around to blaze away at a monster apparently sneaking up behind them. They'd fired off several shots before they realized they'd been shooting their own shadow. That's the kind of effect you want to get- not making players jump with 'zombie dog jumps through window' scares (although these work in moderation) and DEFINITELY not grossing them out with excessive gore, but just laying on the atmosphere so heavily that they're frightening THEMSELVES with their own imagination.

 

[Zand88]

What makes a horror game is gameplay that makes you feel uncomfortable. This cannot be stressed enough.

 

[Iron Mal]

I think the most important part of what makes a horror game scary is the atmosphere.

You look at some old games with terrible graphics and gameplay (with a confusing or non-existant story to boot) and they can still be masterpieces of horror just down to the fear inspiring atmosphere they can generate.

Look at Alien Trilogy (a personal favourite of mine), it was essentially a Doom clone in every way but it was unnerving and somewhat disturbing when you really got into it. Most of the levels were dark, claustrophobic, oppressive and dreary (and then let's not forget when the infected colonists turn up later in the game, embedded in the wall and calling out for a mercy killing until either you complied or the chestburster inside them came out), it also didn;t help that most enemies in the game could take you down from 100 health in less than 7 seconds (and took a long time to kill, the first adult alien you try to take down with a pistol gives you a clear lesson why you are screwed).

Now let's look at Resident Evil 5 (was still pretty fun to play but wasn't overly scary). Most of the levels were in daytime, outside with wide open areas, it began with a rather bleak setting but quickly became very sterile and cold and the enemies weren't too threatening (seeing as you could easily kill hordes of them at a time).

 

[fix-the-spade]

Ultimately it's the atmosphere as a whole.

If it's genuinely unsettling a game that isn't even a 'horror' game can become extremely nerve wracking (see Ravenholm).

But it takes a combination of level, sound and visual design as well as making the enemies a genuine threat and have the player feel constantly under attack (or the threat of attack) without actually having hordes of enemies running around.
The best examplpe is Alien Resurrection on PS1.

<spoiler=spoilered for text wall> You can enter a room and a sound will play, or you will have to press a specific button that screams 'arena fight trigger', then nothing will happen. You press the button, open the door or whatever and nothing happens at all, but you expected it to. The next time you could do something similar only to have face huggers drop from the ceiling before you do the triggering action. It's a genuine lack of predictability that really ratchets the tension.

It also scores big time with the motion tracker. It's the total opposite of games like Dead Space or Doom 3's cheap jumps. The damn thing will start chirping away, getting increasingly urgent as whatever's moving gets closer to you. But it never tells you what you're closing with, it could be another person, a piece of machinery or something much worse.

All you have to go by are the ever louder and faster bleeps (imagine re-enacting the Hive and control room scenes from Aliens repeatedly for 8 huors and you're about there, it's completely nerve shredding).

Once you actually face up to the aliens it's all over very quickly, if they make contact with you, you die, but with any luck your gun will have shredded them before that happens. Despite their weakness they create a massive threat by being so fast and damaging.

It's not so much the fights that makes the game scary, but the fact you can see them coming ubt can't avoid it.

 

[Jedamethis]

The Unknown. Knowing that there is a thing that will rip you limb from limb not far away, but not knowing where it is. Hearing sounds just behind you. Seeing the aftermath of the things presence. Smelling Knowing that if it gets you, you're fucked, as you have no weapon. Then seeing nothing of the thing anywhere, breathing a sigh of relief, and [HEADING=2]BAM![/HEADING]

You die.

 

[Julianking93]

Immersion, atmosphere, characters, disturbing images.

Or just Silent Hill 2

 

[rasmusernst]

The Unknown. Knowing that there is a thing that will rip you limb from limb not far away, but not knowing where it is. Hearing sounds just behind you. Seeing the aftermath of the things presence. Smelling Knowing that if it gets you, you're fucked, as you have no weapon. Then seeing nothing of the thing anywhere, breathing a sigh of relief, and [HEADING=2]BAM![/HEADING]

You die.

I agree.

A good horror story is hard to come by, no matter what medium you use. One problem is that what scares us is such a subjective thing.

But one element that is present in every good horror story I have ever read, watched or played is the unknown. In my opinion that is the single most important element in a horror story. The hero walks down a long, dark, narrow corridor in an abandoned house. You know that there probably isn't anything good down there. Still, you keep watching, reading or holding down the "walk" button. The mind starts playing tricks on you, your curiosity and fear battle for control, and you start imagining things that aren't there.

Then suddenly a large, bloated, rotting corpse lumbers into the corridor, gurgling and flailing its arms wildly in front of its face, as it advances towards you. Suddenly it's not that scary anymore. Now it's just a zombie that you can chainsaw or set fire to. All the "je ne sais quoi" of not knowing is gone.

 

[Shadowfaze]

If the story is freaky enough, it will probably scare you even if the enemies are very stupid looking.

 

[hcig]

wow, really guys? whats with everyone saying the enemies?

what about horror games with no enemies? only one enemy?

atmosphere (area and noises, on the poll)

and story,some people are even discounting the story, but without a decent story, a horror game is nothing more than a virtual haunted house, story gives you a reason to be there, a reason to keep going, and a reason to be scared of what lies ahead.

penumbra, even with enemies, you rarely get the chance to overpower them, and are forced to flee, in fear of their power, you also have a creepy story that evolves before you (not a single person wasnt worried about pushing that "ignite" button at the end of overture)
the sound is also different, because it doesnt try too hard to make things go bump, its generally quiet, which makes it really tense when you hear something out of the norm, penumbra could work just as well with no enemies, as the ones in overture are really nothing more than tools to force stealth

plus, the game atmosphere so well that when the lights turn ON, you get scared

 

[Et3rnalLegend64]

The noises or lack thereof, and the area. I want to say enemies too, but maybe even simple stuff can be scary in the right atmosphere. A game that always feels tense is better than the one that lets up just to have something jump at you.