Splatterhouse in Australia?

[warrenEBB]

I think what's interesting about gore gaming is - the concept of sadism.

If video games are this magical invention that frees you to "do anything you can think of," then why are you perpetrating all this gore?
Make the game focus on this. If you ignore this aspect of the experience (by making the game about a stylish world travelling treasure hunter, for example) then you're robbing the gore of it's punch. You're making a different genre of game that happens to have some gore in it. which strikes me as lame/irresponsible.

It often seems gore in most games is hidden behind a shiny veneer of heroism and world saving. so you don't feel bad about it.
but this's the key to how any goregame leaves you feeling about gameplay when you finally put the controller down.
I think context must be established, so it will trickle down to affecting how you feel about each attack you perpetrate against each enemy.

1) Have the enemies (victims?) notice all the violence you're perpetrating against them: and react somehow.

running away in fear. crying over wounds. or going nuts themselves and also killing off enemies. It weirds me out that in all these recent games where you enter an area and have to kill off x number of baddies - the baddies never seem afraid. or even remotely aware of what they're getting into. it's like bad guys shooting guns at Superman. don't they fucking know they have no chance? what the hell?
anywho.
even in Splatterhouse2010, this bothered me. You're basically killing wild animals that do nothing but froth and wait in turn for their chance to slowly attack you. If one of them didn't fight, and just crawled into a corner and started crying - I would have thought more about the violence.

2) Have things you aren't supposed to hurt.
Innocent bystanders you're not supposed to touch, mixed in with the baddies (as in every light gun game ever?).
Or maybe offer rewards for not breaking all the furniture.
You could still destroy these things, but if it's clear you aren't supposed, it'll feel more like a dramatic moment when you just lost it and killed everything.

3) Replace dry wooden crates with something fleshy.
In the ultimate gore game, you'd probably want animals (rats?) corpses, or innocent bystanders to stand in for crates. ie. those things that draw you to explore a room and briefly attack them for small powerups.
I think there's nothing satisfying about breaking some barrels/crates/vases in games anymore. borrrrring. Maybe the repetition is addictive? I don't know why

4) Might be interesting to play with your "control of the character".
ie, after you kill the 11th baddie in a row, maybe your character is no longer interested in doing what you tell him. He vomits, or screams, or cries.
Or turns to face you, and personally chews your ass about what you're doing.
I thought this relationship between you and the character was the most interesting thing about the Manhunt games - you're character is walking this weird line between being forced to do things he wouldn't normally - and trying to break free of control.

I just think there's something to this idea of control that is a worthy spin on the usual video game "power fantasy" cliche.

5) call it "The Borrer". heh. ok, no. ... Call it : "Bored With Horror"

 

[warrenEBB]

If you want to make a horror game, with grappling hooks, i'd recommend going to Hellraiser town.

Also, I think it'd be ideal to make a game where you are controlling a "remote robot probe". like the little robot they send through the portal in Stargate. Or one of the deep sea robots they use to explore rooms of the sunken Titanic ship. Because this would play up issue of control.

You as a player are sort of sending part of yourself into this game, to see what happens. So make a game about sending a robot probe into hell. or something.

It has to protect it's cable (or else, the signal is lost, and you'd need to send a new probe).
falling down pits wouldn't be such a big deal (as it was with the instant death in Splatterhouse2010), because you could just retract the cable.

I've never seen a game like that.

 

[Kyoh]

How about an organic gun that launches parasites on to enemies, who fall to the ground clawing, and screaming, at the critter as it burrows through whatever limb it struck.

Launching several of the paarasites onto one enemy should be entertaining to watch as he thrashes wildly as he is slowly devoured.

And there should be an upgrade for an explosive version. Not only does the critter tear into your skin, it also explodes shortly there after.

Sounds like good times to me.

 

[NeoShinGundam]

Hey, at least you don't live in Iran. Their rating system goes all the way to age 25!

 

[magicpokey]

I'm too lazy to read the whole comments thread, so this may have been mentioned... but didn't he just thought-design a good version of madworld without the artsy bullshit-o-vision?

 

[proghead]

How about an organic gun that launches parasites on to enemies, who fall to the ground clawing, and screaming, at the critter as it burrows through whatever limb it struck.

Launching several of the paarasites onto one enemy should be entertaining to watch as he thrashes wildly as he is slowly devoured.

And there should be an upgrade for an explosive version. Not only does the critter tear into your skin, it also explodes shortly there after.

"Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath [http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox/oddworld-strangers-wrath]" had living ammo. It worked differently though.

 

[PopcornAvenger]

You can kick enemies in the genitals and when you do they start screaming "Augh, my genitals!".

That's a very good point. Enemies should be *reactive*, and the sound and animations should vary (or, yes, randomly not be applied at all).

If I set someone on fire, damne it, they should be screaming bloody murder. Bioshock did that pretty well (the bees were a nice touch, too)

I was also reminded of the V.A.T.S system employed in Fallout 3 & NV. Sure, it makes the game too easy at times, but, yow, I was sold on the game when the first time I saw a skull fly apart in slomo

 

[essidus]

Two words: Cerebral Bore

 

[nohorsetown]

Don't try to physically model and account for every permutation of a sword slash through someone's guts (and how those guts flop around and permanently stain other complex 3D models) - just do the game in 2D instead. Or 2D with multiple planes like Little Big Planet (should be some interaction between planes, tho). Voila, you save tons of space and processing power, and you can fill the game up with a bajillion lush, gory animations, all interacting with and domino-ing off each other. Problem is you couldn't get your face all up in someone's guts, first-person-style, so I guess you wouldn't "feel" like a murderer as much. Meh, that'd be fine with me. I appreciate some good gore, but I don't need to feel particularly immersed in it.

 

[Dog Wednesday]

Go to a Melbourne inner city nightclub and look a few strangers in the eye. I guarantee someone will lose a few pints of blood. When the Mana Bar opens here next year, you should use this to your advantage. "Hey look everyone! Gamers enjoying their harmless hobby and drinking responsibly! This Mana Bar must surely be the cleanest, safest and most fun drinking venue in Victoria! How bad can violence in video games truly be if this is how the average gamer behaves in a licensed venue?" Hell if all goes well, The Herald-Sun may even publish a positive article (maybe)

 

[rda_Highlander]

...And therefore I declare Painkiller and Postal 2 two of the most satisfactory gore-y games ever. True by the way. Talking about Serios Sam is just cheating.

 

[Akalistos]

offers some suggestions on how to maximize blood and gore.

Use the same system that you use on monster on the Players. When a monster hit the players, make sure that the character does a convincing pain animation and gush out blood until he heal himself. It's not much but you can make the monster a more reliable threat, the player an even bigger badass and almost double the amount of blood. Tho it only work when you don't use the fake looking damage decal and put it on the character's skin like X-Men Origin - Wolverine. That's just lazy.

 

[beefpelican]

- All gore physics should have exaggerated sound effects

Definitely read that as "Al Gore Physics."

Someone needs to make this game. It would change the world.

OT:You would need to be fast, and able to hit more than one thing at a time. I always get annoyed with characters whose attacks take forever, especially if they can be interrupted by little swarmy creatures. I want to charge forward and kill some things, dang it! Not wait for my sword to finish glowing!

 

[beefpelican]

I think what's interesting about gore gaming is - the concept of sadism.

If video games are this magical invention that frees you to "do anything you can think of," then why are you perpetrating all this gore?
Make the game focus on this. If you ignore this aspect of the experience (by making the game about a stylish world travelling treasure hunter, for example) then you're robbing the gore of it's punch. You're making a different genre of game that happens to have some gore in it. which strikes me as lame/irresponsible.

It often seems gore in most games is hidden behind a shiny veneer of heroism and world saving. so you don't feel bad about it.
but this's the key to how any goregame leaves you feeling about gameplay when you finally put the controller down.
I think context must be established, so it will trickle down to affecting how you feel about each attack you perpetrate against each enemy.

1) Have the enemies (victims?) notice all the violence you're perpetrating against them: and react somehow.

running away in fear. crying over wounds. or going nuts themselves and also killing off enemies. It weirds me out that in all these recent games where you enter an area and have to kill off x number of baddies - the baddies never seem afraid. or even remotely aware of what they're getting into. it's like bad guys shooting guns at Superman. don't they fucking know they have no chance? what the hell?
anywho.
even in Splatterhouse2010, this bothered me. You're basically killing wild animals that do nothing but froth and wait in turn for their chance to slowly attack you. If one of them didn't fight, and just crawled into a corner and started crying - I would have thought more about the violence.

...

4) Might be interesting to play with your "control of the character".
ie, after you kill the 11th baddie in a row, maybe your character is no longer interested in doing what you tell him. He vomits, or screams, or cries.
Or turns to face you, and personally chews your ass about what you're doing.
I thought this relationship between you and the character was the most interesting thing about the Manhunt games - you're character is walking this weird line between being forced to do things he wouldn't normally - and trying to break free of control.

I just think there's something to this idea of control that is a worthy spin on the usual video game "power fantasy" cliche.

These two are the most interesting I think. I know that the first one has been done to a certain extent. Assassin's creed guards, for instance, will run away if you kill a bunch of them in an impressive manner. On the other hand, they also all act like douche bags, so the player (and here I mean me) feels absolutely no remorse if they decide to chase them down and back stab them. For the idea to truly be effective, the player would need at least a little empathy for the enemies, which is something gore intensive games avoid for obvious reasons.

Idea four is also unusual (at least as far as I know) because everything about it deliberately breaks immersion, unless the game developer somehow managed to make the player feel equally sickened by the violence. Unfortunately, the type of player who purchases a violent video game is unlikely to feel as sickened by violence as the developer would like, so the game would run the risk of just seeming preachy, or punishing the player for enjoying it. The only example of something like this that I can think of is in the original Deus Ex. If you killed anyone during a mission, including enemies, the morally upright characters would lecture you on finding another way. One, the guncage manager, rewards you with assault rifle ammo for not using deadly weapons. I saw what they were trying to do, but it kind of fell flat.

Overall, cool ideas. Have you seen them actually used in anything you've played? Did it work well?

 

[ZetzDarke]

Why not rip a guys head off and throw it at another enemy. Also the character should retain blood splatter too, if only to make mandatory conversations with npc's more comical.

 

[[.redacted]]

I have to say, part of the fun from games like these comes from the ability to design your own violence, and by that I mean the ability to build your weaponry and/or method of distributing slaughter.

As such, I would recommend a system by which the player can stick pieces of spike/stick/stuff together to form their own weapon of body-mass destruction.

Naturally, community is another thing that powers all games, and so should not be overlooked.

In this case, I would recommend the ability to share your weapons, and/or share short video clips of them in action.

Perhaps a trophy-stand-esque selection of your choicest murder moments might be in order.

That's all I can say in the short time I can be bothered to devote to this, and I'm not a fan of this genre, so what do I know? But still, hope some of this is at least worth a cursory glance.

[sub]As a side note, do these posts actually get read? If they do it might be worth making time for this each week.[/sub]

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Dwarf Fortress keeps track of anatomy. When your military dwarf lops off a goblin hand you see the part fly off an leave a trail of blood. The goblin tries to fight with one hand but usually passes out from the pain and then you cleave his skull.

Your dwarf's boots keep track of every enemy's blood they tromped through unless you wash them off.

The pieces are stored in a abattoir stockpile decomposing from full piece to rotten to skeletal, but they never go away.

Course Dwarf Fortress is a 10 year old game with ascii graphics and has a learning curve that defines "hardcore".

 

[C117]

Well, if you want a violent game, you should try Shank for Xbox 360 and PC. Bloody, violent and satisfying as all hell.

 

[COLIN BOWELL]

I see that the ability to use/continue to dismember corpses has already been mentioned.

Let me also add that explosions need to launch the bad guys (and their constituent limbs) flying like gravity' just been disabled. It's always satisfying to see grunt bits get tossed 30 feet into the air by a grenade.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

hmm, good article, and if we take violence to its max, people won't have much to complain about, and violence in games will be more for primal enjoyment instead of a feature. Sick and twisted, yet surprisingly sounding like a lot of fun!

Don't forget having the enemies make loud blood lust roaring noises to add to the excitement, or possibly if its first-person, have the blood effects also effect the player?