Sanity Meters

[Covarr]

I don't even know why people liked Eternal Darkness. It had bad combat, bad controls, bad cameras, and a boring story.

The game that pulls off sanity the best, in my opinion, does it by incorporating it into the story rather than a game-long meter. This game is Batman: Arkham Asylum. What makes it work is, the Scarecrow sequences serve to enhance and add to the game, rather than trying to be the central focus. It gives a good break from the style of gameplay the game's already established, and it doesn't last so long that you get sick of it. Additionally, it doesn't resort to anything obvious or meta.

DO NOT CONTINUE READING THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT MILD SPOILERS FOR BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM.

For example, in Eternal Darkness, you start seeing volume controls, which would be fine and dandy if you're too stupid to realize "That's not what my volume looks like", Batman avoids this by all being game specific. It's also less immediately obvious, when you turn around and go through a door you just went in, and realize it didn't take you back to the previous room. At first you think you just got turned around, and it takes a couple of passes to realize you're not going anywhere and something is completely wrong.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Nolanp01]

I enjoyed Alice even though it was a healthbar. Demented LSD story x2 ftw.

 

[Johnlives]

The Fahrenheit meter was a bit broken by the fact that after all the dreadful things that happen, you can have Lucas end it all by trying to use a broken vending machine.

 

[Callate]

I kind've like sanity meters. It's more interesting to have to worry about the character's actual morale rather than just taking a bullet to the head. True, such a meter should never be used in the place of actual scares, but it also isn't entirely inappropriate that the in-game person whose actual flesh and bone is on the line feels something entirely different from the person behind the controller who's greatest risk is the possibility of having to hit the "quick load" button.

I do think they should try to do more interesting things with such meters, as in Eternal Darkness- there's room for a lot more than just blurry effects and wonky controls in the face of diminishing sanity. Auditory and visual hallucinations can make for interesting effects; perhaps even having the player go through an entirely different version of the level they're in if they're losing their marbles, or face the possibility (hinted of in games like Silent Hill) that the things they're seeing as "monsters" may not really be what they appear at all.

In some ways I think Indigo Prophecy/Farenheit just about did it right- the character's morale was an ongoing concern, but not generally something the player had to spend every spare moment thinking about. I rather prefer that to the morality system in Mass Effect 2, where the Paragon/Renegade choices increasingly become another "stat" one has to monitor in order to have the best options available, rather than a boon to role-playing the character as one envisions him or her.

 

[Traigus]

For decent Lovecraftian reading in the modern era, I recommend "The Laundry" series by Charles Stross. Though they are also pretty funny as well.

Basically it is about how the UK cicil service (and to some extent the CIA etc.) would handle Lovecraftian horrors... by counting paper clips and worrying about if getting your brain sucked out would violate OSHA standards.

(clipped from the Stross Wiki page)

The "Bob Howard ? Laundry" series

* The Atrocity Archives (2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8; also contains the extra story The Concrete Jungle)
* The Jennifer Morgue (2006, ISBN 1-930846-44-4; also contains the extra story Pimpf)
* Down on the Farm (2008) available online
* Overtime (2009) available online
* The Fuller Memorandum (2010, ISBN 1-84149-770-3)

Down on the Farm and Overtime are short stories (initially available through other means) you can get for free on the Amazon Kindle store or from the publisher's website if I rememebr right. (There is a free Kindle reader for PC and Mac). Others are available in a variety of formats including Kindle.

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I have to say I enjoyed most of the games when they came out (some of them are a bit dated now) I'm not so sure if it is the Lovecraft itself, or just the games that came from that mindset. At the times I played them the mechanics didn't bother me so much, especially Eternal Darkness... where i admit to trying to be crazy and not crazy to see how the rooms progressively changed.

I've never been a giant fan of Lovecraft as a writer. He took up a lot of words trying to describe how indescribably awful things were.

I have to say the Lovecraftian movies are usually way worse than the games... way way worse

 

[About To Crash]

I think a good point to take from this is how the effects of a depleted sanity meter show themselves. For instance, the blurry screen/heavy panting is not nearly so effective as the effects that cross through the game world and really screw with what we think is going on, like in Eternal Darkness, or Arkham Asylum (the Batman one). It's like dream sequences in games that try to convince you they aren't dream sequences, and fail miserably, if only because the sky now has eyes. Trying to fuck with a player's head in-game is less effective, in my experience, than letting that fucking cross over into the world where the player believes they are safe and alone.

 

[Ryokai]

Wait a minute--Most of us have accepted that we're accidents in a godless existance? Doesn't the majority of the world believe in one religion or another?

Yahtzee, I love ya, man, but come on. Not all of us believe like you do, and guess what? THAT'S OKAY. We're all entitled to our opinions, and my reason and logic leads me to a different place then yours does, and that's fine

Not that I don't appreciate the atheist jokes--"The most famous fictional character since Jesus" Hehe.

 

[Desworks]

I like the Eternal Darkness approach the most of the bunch but I think sanity meters should be invisible. Don't tell us how sane we are, that way when crazy shit happens I'll be like "Holy shit what the fuck" rather than "oh my sanity is low".

I agree with the meters needing to be invisible. In fact, if you really wanted to pull off a sanity meter, not ever mentioning that you've implemented one at all would be nice. If the effect of going insane was subtle enough (think glimpses of monsters at the edge of vision, causing you to expect attacks when there's nothing there rather than the current trend of playing a prank of sorts on the player), and nobody realized there was a sanity meter, you could probably glean something interesting out of it. At the very least, you'd make sure that peoples playthroughs were somewhat customized to their playstyle due to the effects being influenced by it. As it is these days, the sanity meter tends to just be another health bar for us to keep an eye on.

 

[jamescorck]

Yeah, the Eternal Darkness sanity metter does that. I tend to do it myself, but some characters have so little sanity sometimes is really difficult to control it, despite the magic spells and the enchanted crosses.

 

[RJ Dalton]

While I agree with the thought that the sanity meter doesn't work to well in games, I think you really missed the point of some of Lovecraft's works. Particularly, Shadow out of Time, which has always been one of my favorites (second only to Colour out of Space). You weren't supposed to be horrified by the Great Race, just unsettled. The unsettling factor to them is that they are a highly advanced race, but are totally alien. Even today, there are very few people who get what Lovecraft was playing at with his alien races; we tend to think that any advanced civilization will share our moral standing, or we attach our notions of good and evil to them. The fact that the Great Race is so far ahead of us technologically, yet appear to have no qualms with completely disrupting - and destroying - the lives of individuals simply for the pursuit of knowledge is a break from that notion. The fact that they were so courteous makes it truly unsettling; it's not that they're evil, they're just incredibly alien.
Now, the polypous creatures that hunted the Great Race and eventually drove them to flee their host species, they were meant to be scary. And they were, particularly in the chase scene at the very end.

 

[JPH330]

Yahtzee took a shot at "Alice"... Oh good lord, is nothing sacred to this guy?

[small](Short answer: No...)[/small]

Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

 

[Vinticore]

I have been thinking about maybe reading through some lovecraft someday, is the any book in perticular which would be the best to start with, or?

 

[jabrwock]

It was like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books where it proudly claims "21 DIFFERENT ENDINGS!" but 20 of them are just you getting killed three entries in.

Or worse, one of those ones that had you start with a certain number of "sanity" points, and certain actions made you lose them. So 2 ****ing pages from the end you were stuck in an "unwinnable" state. At least with CYOA books you could just say "**** it" and turn the page anyway...

The health bar in Alice was a sanity meter? Okaaaaaay. I must have glossed over that.

Brrrrrr, I was just replaying Max Payne, and no need for a sanity meter. The drug-nightmare sequences gave me the willies.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I have a love hate relationship with the sanity "meter". The thing I liked the most about Amnesia including one is that the protagonist was there. It wasn't like gordon freeman where it was just a camera floating around, "Daniel" was actually there in the game world, he reacted to everything that happened.

Though in Amnesia I only went "insane" once, usually when I got to the bottom my sanity got restored pretty quickly, but when I did go insane all sorts of strange things happened. First the room got distorted, then bugs started crawling on my face, then the paintings started changing, and finally I walked towards a door and as I was about to open it, it slammed open and I turned around and sprinted off and found the safest most well lit area and just hid, until daniel had a seizure or something and then realized that it was a hallucination. I went back to that same door and it was closed when I checked, so it does seem like the game fucks with you when you go insane, you just have to be in that state long enough I suppose.

 

[Nieroshai]

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth were both good games, and they're the most Lovecraftian out there. I also find the Silent Hill series very Lovecraftian in a way, because they tweak with the player's sanity and ancient elder gods using humans as playthings and driving them mad. Also the theme that Silent Hill reflects the inner demons of the witness, something I'm sure Lovecraft either has used or would have wanted to use.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

I didn't know about Eternal Darkness. That's a pretty neat idea, if only as cheesy as Mr."YOU SEEM TO LIKE MARIO SUNSHINE" in Metal Gear over there

Oi, it's called, "Metal Gear Solid." And that was a stroke of genius mind you!

Oi, it's called "Metal Gear Solid Snake." And that was a stroke of MADNESS mind you!

No, there has never been a canon MG game with," Snake in the title," apart from Snake Eater, (MGS3), and MG:2. Unless you're referring to the remake for the Gamecube, entitled, "The Twin Snakes."
And how was it not brilliant? A fourth wall breaking reference that is actually relevant to you. Not to mention the vibration feature of the controller. (And the later addition in MGS3, that if you waited long enough between a save, you could kill a boos that was old.) The MG series has always been very interesting to me, as it utilises very unique gameplay mechanics.