What do you Find More Threatening/Scary?

[VoidWanderer]

Imagine being in The Walking Dead 'verse. That is survival.

Horror is taking away the ranged weapons.

 

[suitepee7]

Not being able to defend yourself at all or having some slight methods that might be effective but the occasional part where you can't defend yourself.

An easier way to look at it might be, You can't defend yourself at all or You can fight but you have a slim chance to win.

and once more i get to reference one of my all time favourite games, resident evil 4. in particular, the regenerators. admittedly you can fight them a bit later on, or with really OP guns you can take them down early, but generally before you can kill them you need the scope to see their parasites. even then, they have really long reach, and trying to slow them down is a pain in the ass because they jump at you. then factor in the fact that you only have 1 type of ammo to take care of them, and one type of gun (a sniper in a close quarters battle,) made them pretty damn intense.

long story short, this shit was incredible. without a doubt one of the creepiest scenes in that game, and brought on by building you up, making you more durable, fight more enemies, then suddenly reset you to the wimpering hit and run tactics you had to use right at the start of the game. you could beat them or run away though, which was the survival part.

for me, games like amnesia just don't appeal. don't get me wrong, i really enjoyed what i played of it, but without ANY means to properly defend myself, i just didn't enjoy it. survival horror gives you an option, run away and hide, or try to deal with the problem, then usually run away and hide anyway. the key is in balancing the weapon power against the enemy numbers or strength. so say you can't kill something, well at least you can shoot its leg off so its easier to run away and hide, and then you can follow a trail of blood so you don't run into it again. pure horror game just aren't for me, but survival horror is one of my favourite genres. i'm pretty excited for this game

 

[Yopaz]

Not being able to defend yourself at all or having some slight methods that might be effective but the occasional part where you can't defend yourself.

An easier way to look at it might be, You can't defend yourself at all or You can fight but you have a slim chance to win.

and once more i get to reference one of my all time favourite games, resident evil 4. in particular, the regenerators. admittedly you can fight them a bit later on, or with really OP guns you can take them down early, but generally before you can kill them you need the scope to see their parasites. even then, they have really long reach, and trying to slow them down is a pain in the ass because they jump at you. then factor in the fact that you only have 1 type of ammo to take care of them, and one type of gun (a sniper in a close quarters battle,) made them pretty damn intense.

long story short, this shit was incredible. without a doubt one of the creepiest scenes in that game, and brought on by building you up, making you more durable, fight more enemies, then suddenly reset you to the wimpering hit and run tactics you had to use right at the start of the game. you could beat them or run away though, which was the survival part.

for me, games like amnesia just don't appeal. don't get me wrong, i really enjoyed what i played of it, but without ANY means to properly defend myself, i just didn't enjoy it. survival horror gives you an option, run away and hide, or try to deal with the problem, then usually run away and hide anyway. the key is in balancing the weapon power against the enemy numbers or strength. so say you can't kill something, well at least you can shoot its leg off so its easier to run away and hide, and then you can follow a trail of blood so you don't run into it again. pure horror game just aren't for me, but survival horror is one of my favourite genres. i'm pretty excited for this game

Uhm, I'm not sure if we've played the same game, I killed regenerators with my knife most of the time and didn't find out about the scope until I was on my second playthrough. They weren't really that hard to beat, but the first encounter was a little creepy.

 

[suitepee7]

-snip-

the only way i've seen somebody do that is by glitching them so they can't get up and slashing them over and over, a ridiculous number of times. i'm not sure why you'd try though, without already knowing the glitch exists as it takes 30 odd slashes to kill one of the parasites. but like i said, they can be taken down normally anyway, just requires OP guns or a glitch where they can't move. my point still stands for the majority though, i've never even heard of them being killed that way before

 

[hazabaza1]

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Resident evil 4 is survival horror

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Spoiler

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Oh god you're funny.

OT: I dunno, as soon as I get a weapon of any sort in horror games I kind of start just getting really silly and bored because it seems like the threat is gone.

 

[Yopaz]

-snip-

the only way i've seen somebody do that is by glitching them so they can't get up and slashing them over and over, a ridiculous number of times. i'm not sure why you'd try though, without already knowing the glitch exists as it takes 30 odd slashes to kill one of the parasites. but like i said, they can be taken down normally anyway, just requires OP guns or a glitch where they can't move. my point still stands for the majority though, i've never even heard of them being killed that way before

I can also take them down using the normal hand gun, they have never offered me any difficulties. As soon as you get them down on the ground tou can easily kill them using knife since they are stunned for long enough to keep slashing without taking damage. The reason I used knife is that I kill most enemies with knife in that game to conserve ammo. it takes time to kill them with knife, but it's still really easy. Everyone I know has fought them off like that before they got to the point where they got the scope.

 

[suitepee7]

-snip-

the only way i've seen somebody do that is by glitching them so they can't get up and slashing them over and over, a ridiculous number of times. i'm not sure why you'd try though, without already knowing the glitch exists as it takes 30 odd slashes to kill one of the parasites. but like i said, they can be taken down normally anyway, just requires OP guns or a glitch where they can't move. my point still stands for the majority though, i've never even heard of them being killed that way before

I can also take them down using the normal hand gun, they have never offered me any difficulties. As soon as you get them down on the ground tou can easily kill them using knife since they are stunned for long enough to keep slashing without taking damage. The reason I used knife is that I kill most enemies with knife in that game to conserve ammo. it takes time to kill them with knife, but it's still really easy. Everyone I know has fought them off like that before they got to the point where they got the scope.

well i'll be. didn't even know it was possible xD i use the knife as much as possible anyway (again, ammo conserving), but i didn't realise the regenerators get stunned on the floor, so never tried killing them before i got the scope, just ran away from them. there's only 1 or 2 you face anyway before you pick it up, so it's not a huge issue. nevertheless, the more you know

 

[bug_of_war]

I prefer having a weapon with barely any use for it. It's like a false shield, and when you have occasion to use it you are suddenly left vunerable. If you have no weapon you know that in any encounter you won't be armed, so you're prepared for it.

Pretty much this^

It's scary in Amnesia because you don't have a weapon and know for a fact that you will get fucked up if the monsters get you. But it's terrifying when you have a weapon that you need to use sparingly. You fear running out of ammo, you fear not being able to find it, and when the enemy takes more than one bullet to kill, you fear their durability. A false shield always fills me with more fear than knowing I'm helpless from the get go. Just my opinion though...

 

[YunakoTheWitch]

I never found amnesia to be scary and Live streamed it :/ I mostly threw chairs and stuff at the shadow and didn't really enjoy the horror at all, it was mostly just seeing how long I could live while I trolled the shadow.
It would be nice though if the game has an atmosphere like silent hill 2. Imagine silent hill 2 with no weapons and the whole siren thing that just struck randomly, you could hide and stuff, that'd be great. Lets hope this new one aims to scare the hell out of you with atmosphere and psychological stuff rather then those lame pop up "Scares".. thats not horror.

so what I find most threatening is Atmosphere and psychological stuff. Thats the good horror if you ask me
Remember the first time you enter the apartment in Silent Hill 2 and you hear the breathing in that hall way? I was playing in pitch black at the time and it creeped me out.

 

[itsthesheppy]

It's not hard to make things scary, because we're generally all scared by the same things.

1. We're scared of being alone. Isolate the player far away from any vestiges of protection or support. Strand them by themselves in a dangerous environment where no place is safe.

2. We're scared of the dark. Our senses of hearing and smell are vastly weaker than sight. We're visually driven animals. Make things dark or difficult to see, and our imaginations fill those empty places with horrors.

3. We're scared of people. Animals and monsters are scary, but other humans are terrifying. We know that a bear will just maul you and eat you, but a deranged human will do much, much worse.

4. We're scared of unfamiliar places that are similar to what we know, but different. Stranding us in a place that should be familiar and safe but is somehow off and dangerous is a very scary thing. This is part of what makes Silent Hill scary; when the town reverts to a rusty industrial-looking facsimile of the familiar.

5. We're scared of disease, decay, and corpses. Things that are crawling with maggots, riddled with insect holes, standing, tepid water, and being forced to interact with dead bodies are all deeply affecting things. The valley of the uncanny is a very real phenomenon and games tend to feature it accidentally; more games should strive to enhance it as much as possible.

6. We're scared of being helpless. Being unable to fight back, especially when backed into a corner, is very harrowing. It's made especially worse when tools to defend ourselves are available, and yet insufficient. Recall for example the scene in I Am Legend where Will Smith is in the building with the zombie guys. He has an assault rifle, but he knows it'd be no good. The fact that he has a weapon and yet is impotent is a very upsetting and scary prospect.

I'm not sure why some games struggle with these concepts.

 

[Antishadow68]

I fear the unknown- like things popping out of walls and coming up behind me. Witch is why I hate draudgers in skyrim. Scared the living shit out of me first time I went to get the dragon stone.

I'd say this mainly because sometimes it doesn't really matter what kind of character you are. The first Fear game was pretty scary and nerve racking. What was your character? A super soldier. What was the main scary thing? A little girl. The threat doesn't need to be super realistic to scare you. That's the main point. Walking through a forest in the dark is scary. Having a gun won't change that if you don't even know what you're afraid of

Good point.

 

[Antishadow68]

The thing I fear most in video games is being chased by something. That really gives me the creeps, I HATED Nemesis in RE3 and Pyramide Head in Silent Hill 2. Sometimes I just couldn't take it and even had to switch off the console...

Lol ik the feeling

 

[veloper]

But games that takes your weapons away are just forecasting that everything will be balanced for not having guns for a while. Things must feel natural and real. Less scripted sequences and more actual game.

This is a crucial point.

I think we can all agree that simply gunning down ugly baddies isn't scary, but the opposite doesn't scare either because you'll know that your limited options of running and/or hiding will work.

Gruesome failure should be a very likely possibility, before a game can really become scary. So I'm thinking, roguelikes don't allow reloads and many involve hard choices (mostly resource management, but it doesn't have to be only that). No saves may be a bit too harsh, but something like that is what the horror genre needs.

 

[Lilani]

Now, what I was thinking is, what if there was a horror game where you could fight off some of the ermines but there would be those which are un-killable or they become just enraged when you attack them, thus rendering your normal skills useless. That could be seen as scary, right? So here's my question, what would be more scary / threatening to you? Not being able to defend yourself at all or having some slight methods that might be effective but the occasional part where you can't defend yourself.

An easier way to look at it might be, You can't defend yourself at all or You can fight but you have a slim chance to win.

Extra Credits [http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-beast-macabre] does a great job explaining that horror isn't about empowerment, it's about disempowerment. Your idea definitely addresses that, but you'd have to think creatively about how to put that into the game. If you cannot kill the enemies and attacking them only makes your life worse, then what would be the point in engaging them in the first place? You wouldn't be fighting them off so much as defending yourself. I'm tempted to say that because you're strong enough to hold them off at least for a while then that takes away that feeling of disempowerment that's important to experiencing fear.

But, for some reason I find myself thinking about a scene from the film Coraline. I'm thinking of the moment when Coraline is escaping the Other Mother for the last time, when her hand comes off. If you've never seen it, what happens is this little girl is running away from a horrific witch who is desperate to catch her and essentially eat her soul. In order to escape, Coraline needs to crawl through a small door in the wall, go down a narrow passage, and make it about to the other side where she can shut a door the witch can't break. In the moment, the witch is screaming at her and Coraline dives into the door. She tries to pull it shut, but the witch is pulling it open from her side and jamming her hand through the gap to try and grab Coraline. When Coraline manages to pull the door shut, the witch's hand gets cut off and there's a moment of silence.

The silence end when the witch screams and begins pounding on the door, and Coraline runs down the small passage. Every time she hits the door, the passage shrinks a bit, which means the door is literally chasing Coraline down the passage, threatening to crush her. Coraline reaches the door on the other side, and just before the first door catches up she slams that one and locks it. There is a huge crash from the other side and the wall bulges as the force of the impact knocks Coraline back, but the door holds.

The movie itself isn't exactly a "horror" movie, but that scene just scares me shitless every time. The witch's screams are agonizing and hard to listen to, and the beating on the door just gets faster and faster and you don't feel like Coraline is going to make it.

However, she wasn't totally helpless. She didn't just run and hide, she kicked the witch in the face to get her away from the door, she pulled the door shut, and that action injured the witch. She didn't set out to cut off the witch's hand, it just sort of happened. I think if you could design the game with mechanics like that, it might just work. Whenever she does engage with the witch it isn't to kill her, she can't really do that. She's just trying to get out of there. The only real damage she ever does to the witch is cutting off her hand in the door, and in an earlier scene she threw an angry cat at the witch to distract her, and the cat ended up pulling out the witch's eyes making her blind.

It sort of feels like enemies come in about two flavors in games--enemies you kill, and enemies you can never touch or get anywhere near. I think there's a middle ground to be struck, if it's done right. You couldn't really design a combat system around this sort of thing, it'd have to be pretty linear and scripted. But still, if you can pace it right, the payoffs can be very satisfying. It's not so much about designing enemies that can't be killed, but rather about making it so that killing the enemy might technically be possible, but making killing them either unfeasible or not the imperative. Coraline probably could have killed the witch if she set her mind to it, but running away from her and trapping her in her world was the more feasible option.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I hate running away from enemies. Scratch that, I hate being FORCED to run away from enemies, but I like to CHOOSE to run away and save my ammo/health while I scramble for an escape route or hideout. In my experience, making "running away" the core mechanic is incredibly boring and frustrating. Which is why I got bored very easily with Haunting Ground and the Clocktower games. I think things get a little more interesting when you have a measly and pathetic yet valid means of defense - a wooden plank with nails on it, a steel fan, a camera, whatever.

 

[Freddy]

I hate running away from enemies. Scratch that, I hate being FORCED to run away from enemies, but I like to CHOOSE to run away and save my ammo/health while I scramble for an escape route or hideout.

I feel the exact same way as I mentioned before.

Generally, guys, this is one of the best discussions I have ever read about games! So many good and valid points there which are worth considering, just fantastic! I reckon it is because we are making attempts at analyzing the human psyche and transfering all that to the world of gaming