toblix

Routine

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Oh no, Routine appears to be another sweet game that'll be too scary for me to play it. It's a non-combat space completely non-linear survival horror with permadeath. Sounds like part of the game is that you'll never be able to fully explore the spaceship (or whatever) in one go, and every player will discover weird and unique clues to the riddle of why everyone is frozen in mid-massacre. Also, there appears to be slender robots chasing you.

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Aaaargh, that is something I want to play, but never will because I'm a big baby.

I hope Jake will play it though, and then be sent to Golden Gate park after dark on an errand.

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Looks pretty neat! I'm a huge wimp but I might be able to steel myself for terror if it's what I have to do to enjoy a game with a neat retro aesthetic ON THE MOON IN SPACE.

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That looks neat. I'm not a big of perma death because I don't enjoy replying the game thing, so ...

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Holy Crap. I have no idea what this is, but god damn space.

Also, their little company bumper is pretty awesome too; so weird too, because I was just watching a lot of old 70s corporate videos and imagined a game company using that style for it's bumper.

Kind of gives me the same vibe Fade to Black did back in the day, only more space less scifi.

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That looks amazing. Nothing better than horror games set in space! I love how Amnesia popularized this whole genre of games where you cannot fight but still die while not being a sierra adventure. Which is probably not a good name for a genre.

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That looks amazing. Nothing better than horror games set in space! I love how Amnesia popularized this whole genre of games where you cannot fight but still die while not being a sierra adventure. Which is probably not a good name for a genre.

"Run & Hide" Horror?

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"Sierra Horror", that has a nice ring to it.

Or, in Idle Thumbs fashion, "Stalkers Management".

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Still sounds like survival horror, but without guns. More or less like the original Alone in the Dark.

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AitD did have weapons, but you didn't have to use them to win the game. Raynal's idea was to create a game where fighting wasn't needed. That's why he hated AitD2 and later where fighting was made a more important factor.

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For me, there's an entirely different feeling if the game has weapons, even if I can beat it without them. If the game has weapons, your mindset is always "if I needed to, I could try to fight." It's always at least an option. With something like Amnesia or Routine, you couldn't fight even if you wanted to, and I think that changes things fundamentally in a way that it wouldn't change just because a game could be completed without weapons.

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Sounds like your mindset has already been polluted by the 13 in a dozen shooters. This reminds me of an other discussion I read somewhere, probably here, just because you can kill doesn't mean you have to.

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Permadeath? I don't care how amazing this game is, permadeath is on the top of my list of reasons to not buy a game... I'd rather play a game that's ten times more scary of difficult that a permadeath game.

It almost feels like a cheat, of course this game is going to be more scary and tense if you only have one chance to survive.

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Sounds like your mindset has already been polluted by the 13 in a dozen shooters. This reminds me of an other discussion I read somewhere, probably here, just because you can kill doesn't mean you have to.

I don't mean that I feel like I have to kill ever monster, I mean that whenever I play a game, I'm presented with challenges, and I always have a little mental list of ways to respond to the challenge. In Fallout, for instance, "talk with people" is on the list, which means I approach situations differently knowing that there's often a way for me to resolve the situation with words. In Dark Forces 2, "lightsaber" is on the list, which means at any point I can decide to stop shooting lasers at people and turn the game into a melee combat game. In a game that gives you weapons of any kind, "fight" is on the list, because you can fight. A game where "fight" is not on the list has a different feel than a game with "fight" on the list, just like Fallout feels different when "talk with people" is on the list even if I just shoot everyone to finish each quest. In Fallout there's the sense that the violence was my choice, not something forced on me by the game.

In a game where "fight" is on the list, I feel like each monster I encounter is scary, but ultimately something I can defeat. The developers gave me a gun, and if I so choose, I can shoot this monster. In a game like Amnesia or Routine, "fight" is not even on the list. There is never an enemy encounter that I could conceivably beat by killing it, and this is important not because I've been trained by 13 in a dozen FPS games to by hyperviolent and thus murder everything, but because having the option to kill a monster means knowing that the developers expect me to be able to deal with it like that. The threat is something I can remove. It's omnipresent and something that necessarily evokes a flight response or a hide response or anything other than fighting back.

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Have you even played Alone in the Dark? Sure, "fight" might be an option a couple of times, but next to the fight option there are other options which are often way more effective. The fight option is even very limited due to the very low amount of ammo.

I haven't played Amnesia yet, but the way you describe it, it sound like your options are limited?

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I used to be (and perhaps still am) very bad with horror games: I made it to the first enemy in Doom 3, shot him before he turned into a zombie, and quit. So my experience with Alone in the Dark is limited to watching someone play and briefly struggling with the controls myself before deciding I wasn't having fun. I know the fight option isn't the most effective and it's very limited by ammo: I'm just saying that "packing heat" and knowing that I can turn a particular encounter into a combat one means that I play the game with a certain attitude that I wouldn't have if I had literally no option of fighting.

Amnesia gives you zero combat abilities. You cannot harm the monster. You have to hide or run.

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Silent Hill has weapons, but using them is a nightmare in itself. Also, you need them for the bosses. The weapons do nothing to make this game any less about running the hell away from monsters. (Apart from the rather weak SH5.)

Tanu, I think you're misunderstanding the role permadeath plays here. In Routine, the idea is that you can't do everything in one go, you HAVE to replay it to 'see everything'. Think of it more like a roguelike where dying is part of the deal and creates its own unique dynamic in a randomized world. I don't know how randomized Routine will be, but the point stands.

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I feel like there's basically two approaches to horror in games. There's the games that try to intimidate you with noises and images and a narrative, but play essentially like any other game would. Then there are games that that try to engineer gameplay that is itself conducive to fright.

In my experience, the latter is the only kind of game that gets me on edge, and i feel like most survival horror games tend to fall into the former. (Particularly in the case of modern survival horror. I think RE4 is one of the best games i've ever played, but what it started kind of destroyed the genre.)

I like horror games, i play a lot of horror games, and yet somehow Dark Souls was the only game i've played in recent years that had me genuinely feeling really very tense. Not a "horror" game, but a game that has you constantly on edge with a lot at stake, surrounded by threats that are actually threatening. Scarier than Dead Space, that's for sure.

Also, i should definitely play Amnesia. Judging from what i've heard about it, i suspect it has some things in common with Call of Cthlulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. (Which is a pretty damn great game that kind of falls apart towards its conclusion.)

Finally, just as a random aside, i think System Shock 2 is probably the one game that got more under my skin than any other.

I've played through it so many times that i can't really look on it as being a scary experience anymore, there's too much familiarity, but calling on vague memories of my first couple playthroughs, i remember being just terrified by the sense of complete fraility forced on the player. (And the game just narratively reinforcing it, showing awareness of how it was making you feel.) You were remarkably weak and frail, your supplies were extremely limited and your gear was barely holding together, and the enemies were constantly respawning and always roaming.

I've also always been pretty fond of how Doom 3 handles its admittedly totally arbitrary flashlight mechanic, forcing the player into situations where they are made to feel uncomfortable. I've always seemed to be on the losing side of that argument, though.

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I've also always been pretty fond of how Doom 3 handles its admittedly totally arbitrary flashlight mechanic, forcing the player into situations where they are made to feel uncomfortable. I've always seemed to be on the losing side of that argument, though.

You and I both, sir.

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Finally, just as a random aside, i think System Shock 2 is probably the one game that got more under my skin than any other.

I've played through it so many times that i can't really look on it as being a scary experience anymore, there's too much familiarity, but calling on vague memories of my first couple playthroughs, i remember being just terrified by the sense of complete fraility forced on the player. (And the game just narratively reinforcing it, showing awareness of how it was making you feel.) You were remarkably weak and frail, your supplies were extremely limited and your gear was barely holding together, and the enemies were constantly respawning and always roaming.

Agreed, this is the only 'survival horror' (if it can be called that) game I have ever enjoyed.

Routine looks awesome, the 80's scifi trappings, exploration-centric gameplay. Just seems really cool.

Also the permadeath thing can be good if its merged to gameplay well. Imagine Super Mario without permadeath, or any of those old gameboy/arcade games or any shmup. Challenge and permadeath in those games were pluses: the levels were tightly focused and well made, you could see your skill building with repeated play andthat skill building became the fun of the game.

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I once made a valiant effort to get throught System Shock 2 and really liked it, but then the respawning enemies became too much for me to handle and I didn't push through. Pity, because it's a truly memorable game.

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You can mod them out!

God, i hate that, i hate that being how so many people experience that game, i think it is just colossally missing the point.

System Shock 2 is scary because you cannot make an area safe, you can have your back turned while you're hacking a door lock, and there are always enemies roaming around in that space behind you.

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