Splatterhouse in Australia?

[The Rogue Wolf]

As for the inclusion of gore, Left 4 dead 2 seems to have dropped out of peoples skulls (though for the Aussies its understandable, Poor bastards). The gore in the game is probably one of the more detailed I've seen. Limbs blow off at different points leaving bloody ragged stump. Chests can be blowned open, stomachs ripped out and leaving the zombies staggering with their intestines trailing. Heck even the head has deformable features. Shoot them in the face with a highish, but not to high, powered gun (like a weaker shotgun) and instead of blowing it off you leave a blood messy crater where their face used to be.
Makes pipe bombs fun *Beep Beep Beep BOOM* Body part rain!

I was wondering if anyone was going to mention L4D2. I mean, seriously, while the Special Infected are pretty impervious to visible damage, the Common Infected splatter pretty terrifically when hit by any reasonably powerful weapon (i.e. anything more powerful than the 9mm handguns or submachine guns). Hitting a climbing Infected in the back with a shotgun and being granted a close-up view of his shoulder blades, spine and rib cage sometimes disturbs even me- and I'm about as jaded as they come.

 

[Memor-X]

@octafish: nope, after the bad guy was dead i would pull out my shotgun and blow off all his parts one by one, if i was out of shells, i would pull out my knife and keep hacking at him, i was psychotic when i played SOF2, i did everything you could do to a dead body in a FPS in the game, cut, shoot, blow up, apart from tea bagging them

i wonder what would happen if a major game developer moved down here to Australia and created a game which crap loads of gore and there was no R rating, would the government try and stop it from being sold even though it was made on our soil?

i know one game that could cause quite a stir, the PSP game the kid was playing in the Movie "Inside Man", you know, the GTA-like one he's showing to the head robber where he starts off in a drive buy, gets out, shoots the guy dead, shoots him like 5 more times before sticking a grenade in his mouth and watching the dead body's head explode, but put it in full HD on a PS3 or X-Box 360, lets see the parents ***** about that!

 

[DonTsetsi]

I don't think that chopping off 2 limbs should kill the target. It would be better if it was done the Postal2 way- your enemy writhing in pain, crawling on the ground (and if he/she is cut through the waist some guts should be trailing behind him/her). Also, FIRE! Because fire makes everything better (again, Postal2).

 

[Therumancer]

The problem with the suggestions Yahtzee made to me is simply that all of those things he mentioned would require the game to track them. Having spurting wounds that leave permanant marks on surfaces, and tons of targetable locations that you can interact with all put stress on the hardware which has to track all those variables... that's a big part of why you don't see this kind of thing. It's easy to talk about all this stuff you want to see happening simultaneously, and with really impressive graphics, but even if it's possible doing it typically results in monstrosities like "Crysis" in the requirements department.

I'd expect Yahtzee as a freeware game developer himself would have some respect for this.

Other than that I admit to a dark little secret... I'm a bit of a sadist. Truthfully flying gibs and overdone blood splatters don't do it for me all that much. I'm one of those people who actually want to see more realistic violence, where say breaking an arm with a hammer might cause the bones to painfully shatter under the skin without any fancy bloody spurting. Bruising, welts, and surface damage can do a lot more to convey pain and a violent "this could happen" sense of reality than watching 40' of intestine go shooting out, or a severed limb spraying 10x as much blood as the human body should hold.

My taste in horror movies is also similar, grueling violence is simply much better than splatter for the sake of splatter.

Honestly when the amount of carnage is unrealistic and over the top, I think that should lower the rating. I think it's one of those cases where "less is more" and truthfully I think kids should be sheltered from realistic portrayals, far more than over the top slasher movie fare. As I've said in other posts, I actually have more problems with say kids watching "The Sopranos" due to the messages involved, and the way the limited amounts of violence are portrayed in a very 'this could happen' fashion, than say snuggling up under a blanket and watching "A Nightmare On Elm Street" movies with Robert Englund cheezing it up. The latter might scare someone (especially a kid), which is the point, but the former is far more likely to convince people that they could do things like this, or especially if young to get the wrong ideas by empathizing with bad guys (which is the entire point of crime dramas like The Sopranos). Kids can and do wind up looking towards gangsters and gang bangers as role models (which is part of the problem), where nobody winds up wanting to be like "Freddy Kruegar" who is a work of pure fantasy without even a core of realism.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

Slow motion?

The VATS system in Fallout 3 kinda made me sick of it, but if its used rarely enough, (once an hour?) for an especially spectacular moment it'd make a nice alternative to a replay.

 

[Valagetti]

HA, he caved. He spelled 'Iphone' with a capital 'I'!

 

[WhizEd]

Bloody Attorney Generals must get paid by the hour. That's why they're taking so long to "deliberate". Lazy buggers.

 

[RockyMotion]

The enemy models should have entrails which would spread all over the place randomly, into the floor, walls or other enemies in case of disembowelment. But not too exaggerated so we could keep track of the elements on screen. Being able to nail enemies to the walls and then finishing them off the way we wanted to would be nice. They'd still be able to damage you if you got too close for a long time though.

Instead of combos made out of random heavy/light attack combinations, the buttons should correspond to high/low slashes and puncture attacks so we could choose which area of their body we wanted to chop off, but I'm not sure about that one. There could also be a "charge" button the player could combine with any of the others to execute slower but deadly attacks, such as slicing the enemies in two halfs.

Being able just to have fun without having to worry about anything except health, like stamina bars, ammo, etc.

 

[KingofallCosmos]

There should be some of the ragged realism and clumsiness of movies from takashi or kitano. Most violence in videogames is over the top, but not particularly in a good way. When O daesu starts pounding those guys' feet in Old Boy with a hammer, or Kitano shooting his sister at the end of Violent Cop just because there was no one left to shoot.. those things are really disturbing.

 

[EvilYoshi]

I don't know about the gun bit Yahtzee, I'd like to be able to use a Gatling without going deaf. Sound effects should be appropriate to how the gun is used, not necessarily to how it may sound in real life.

One other suggested note: the environment should be interactive and effect how the game is played. You can chose to snipe enemies from vantage points and be able to involve the environment when fighting. Things like the flying leap in Assassin's Creed, or that tendency in games to leave exploding barrels. Maybe some more complex things like involving an environmental element in a grapple. It really adds a whole other dimension to the game: the more variety there is in the ruining of the shit, the better.

I say screw the gore and make another giant monster rampage knockoff. Or play prototype again. There are actually plenty of gratuitious violence games on the market, I don't see how Yahtzee's idea is any different from other fully realized games that boast much more than realistic dismemberment physics.

 

[ramboman88]

Too lazy to read the rest of the comments...

This reminds me of a cover of "Hi Fructose Magazine" in where there is a painting of a little girl in a cute dress with little cute animals (plus a barbie and an abe lincoln doll) having a tea party. Pay more than just fleeting attention to the painting and you'll notice that the table is actualy filled with meat... bucket loads of raw, meat. The tea is blood and I believe the girl is using a serrated blade on something...

In any case, very colorful.

Games like Red Faction Guerrilla have architectural gore.

I believe the best part of gore is the act of messing something up.

I remember "Rune" for the PS2 where you played a viking, it was the first time I ever played something where dismemberment was part of the gameplay. You could beat someone to death with someone elses arm... and I remember being attacked by a one armed one legged skelleton.

For me the appeal of gore is the same as the appeal for interactivity.

If the gore is directly linked to the physics engine, it would be awsome.

Imagine someone wearing a suit of armor. Imagine the armor being dynamically (realistically) worn out according to physics. Now imagine if the physics didn't stop at the armor.

I'd be happy enough with a hardcore BattleBots sim.

 

[Hyperactiveman]

Aside from Painkiller the only other games I can suggest that had satisfying enemies, decapitation, weaponry and the non-repetitive gameplay style that allows for creativity would be;

Killing Floor
- Enemies are few in amount of classes but meet your requirements of behavior
- Weapons kick ass, especially the AA12 shotty and the grenade launcher.
- Blood and gore is massively high and makes for good splattering into giblets.

The Darkness
- You could rip off heads, remove and eat hearts, impale -> lift -> throw.
- Also has awesome CHUNKY shotguns, dual smgs and pistol combinations.
- Enemies take the forms of gangsters or nazis... That's a winning mix for sure.

Gears of War
- Gun with Chainsaw... (duh), Torque Bow, Boomshot, flamethrower that doesn't suck.
- Boomers resemble what you would describe as a fat/greasy humanoid-like enemy.
- When enemies get killed with explosives the bodies explode and bits fly everywhere,

So if these games had a baby... called iunno... Gears of Dark Killing Floor War... I'd buy it!

 

[Rano]

I would say that Dead Rising 2, to some extent at least, satisfies the criteria with weapon choices and limb damage though is pretty weak in other categories. gore in video games can be excessive yet for some games (God Of War series for example)it is part of the reward that killing creatures using specific weapons or techniques gives more points. its as simple as the old combo system. so for this "perfect game" perhaps the old 'hit,hit,grapple' combo could be used with the grappling hook for hilarious effects. and one last suggestion: make the cable for the grappling hook some kind of high tensile piano wire, good fro slicing

 

[internetzealot1]

Dead enemy carcasses should still be able to bleed, be torn apart etc.

Enemies should emit some sort of sound when hit to convey that they are in pain.

 

[L4Y Duke]

Faulty memory, Yahtzee? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2176-Dead-Rising-2]

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Here's one that somebody may have used already!

For certain melee weapons (like glass) and certain ranged weapons (like the bow and arrow) make sure arrows or what have you stick into the flesh and stay there, possibly causing residual damage. Also, taking a note from your suggestion of enemies clutching an area which has received critical damage, how about having enemies reach for, pull out and, use as a weapon any glass, knives, shuriken or, what have you already embedded in their fleshy flab.

 

[duchaked]

my mind is still on the thought of going to the library to pick up some Tin Tin comics xD

 

[SkyC]

I personally think that smaller numbers of enemies who are more difficult to kill and require many damaging attacks would be more indulging of gore. When you mass enemies the gore becomes mindless and easy. But if there are one or two enemies at a time that you have to slowly and constantly bludgeon them to death--each event of gore festers in your mind between the next event of gore, and at the end of the murder all you can think of is the moments in between the strikes--fully realizing the gore as important.

 

[Optimystic]

He reviewed Halo Wars that one time.

Also Bryeutal Legend, that was an RTS too.

Most of Yahtzee's suggestions were spot on, though I think he should have said something about the 2D segments.

 

[RandV80]

A lot of these suggestions apply to off my favourite older but classic PC games, Carmageddon and Die By the Sword. Apart from the graphics limitation due to the graphics back in the day, but damn did they ever try. Between the two you got pretty much every point covered off.