stewmull

How far will you go for a scary game?

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I am a horrible scaredy cat, I think the scaryest movie I have seen is paranormal activity and the same goes for games. Stalker is probably the scaryest game i can 'play', but even then i just stick to shooting men rather than monsters. I even got scared in some of oblivions dungeons. I was wondering how much other people can tolerate?

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Very little! I don't even want to think about horror films like Paranormal Activity, though I have a weird tolerance for other things such as science fiction horror. Alien, Prometheus, Sunshine, Solaris, that's all good. Just don't give me any weird stuff on earth, apparently.

As for games, I hate it when things jump at me and are jarring and shocking. Again, it's all over the place. Silent Hill is no problem, Amnesia and Slender Man probably would be.

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Actualy thinking about it i have seen Prometheus and Sunshine and didnt mind them. Weird.

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I've never played a game that scared me too much to play it, but if it's too disturbing I might quit, the only game I felt was too disturbing was the original Postal game. Does that count?

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I felt that the orginal portal was a bit sinister, the rooms that you find with writing on the wall. I really didnt like that haha

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I don't play or watch scary anything. I get nothing out of it, and I don't enjoy all the lights going off and then something blowing out the speakers screaming at me.

Stuff like that makes me completely backflip out of my chair, and then be really annoyed that playing this game means I have to deal with that every so often. Dead Rising 2 has one of those at the end of the last cutscene, and Alan Wake has one every hour or so.

I LIKE a dark spooky, twisted aesthetic, like Bioshock or something, but I've got no compulsion to be scared by things. Especially if it's gonna come at the expense of all the characters being super dumb, or really corny monster designs, or like "Here's a dude with spikes sticking out of his eyeballs for NO REASON!"

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I think I don't like the idea of being scared, which is why I avoid horror stuff in general. The times that I actually have watched it, I didn't mind and one might even say I enjoyed it. It's weird like that.

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I find my tolerance for being scared is a lot lower for games than with movies, probably because of the interactive requirements of playing a game. I tried playing through Dead Space recently, and I couldn't make it past the intro monster. Sit me in front of a Paranormal Activity though, and I'm more likely to laugh than cringe. Fear is a strange thing.

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I really, really want to play scary games, but I'm terribly, terribly easily scared; a horrible, horrible combination. For example, I really want to play Amnesia, but when I play Amnesia and run around for a while and turn around and see the silhouette of a man, I ... I do things. Embarrassing, debilitating fear is my motion sickness.

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I hadn't played any scary games for years prior to trying Dead Space, and within an hour there was so much shit spewing out of my ass that I put it down and never played it again. Up to a certain point I enjoy it, for example the Half-Life games are pretty much a master class in terms of how to build a game that can scare you without it completely dominating the experience.

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Amnesia is still sitting in my unplayed folder. I got to the part where an invisible man chases you around and the only way you can tell his location is by splashy footsteps in water... ugh it frightened me so bad. I think it's just a matter of degrees for me. I echo a lot of sentiments stated previously: I can deal with sci fi horror easier than earthly horror, and video games are worse than movies because you can't turn away; YOU have to walk into that dark room and face the nightmare. Also I really do appreciate spooky, tense aesthetics: I loved Stalker, Dead Space, Metro 2033, Half-Life, and Bioshock. It's just when it becomes entirely about the horror of it that I get put off. I couldn't finish any of the Silent Hills for example.

So to sum: I do find the horror genre enjoyable and love the tenseness that a good horror-themed game cultivates. I do have a limit that can be overrun though so there are a few games that I just can't deal with. Like Amnesia and Silent Hill.

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I've been watching horror movies since I was a child, so I'm not easily scared. I'm also not jumpy, although I have been startled a couple of times. As for scary games, I haven't played any that I would really qualify as scary (haven't played Amnesia yet). But there have been games that startled me a couple of times, they are usually FPS games where I sneak around and suddenly get surprised by an enemy or trap that I really didn't expect. This happened to me a couple of times in Skyrim. But also non-scary games like Rainbow Six managed to do that a couple of times.

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I don't usually get scared by games, only tense in the way that I'm in a really hard section where if I die I have to replay a bunch of shit. Fear sets in there.

The last time I remember getting somewhat scared was the first Uncharted when you go to that underground area with all of the mutated guys. Dark areas where nasty things fly out at you when you turn the corner doesn't set well with me, so I found myself being really careful. It didn't help that they jump on you sometimes if you aren't fast enough,

Normally though I just do jump scares that fade quickly, but I don't know if that constitutes a scary game. I often tend to jump in my seat while playing Metal Gear Solid games when I hear the siren noise when someone spots you. But for that to work, I have to be in a very tight spot in the game, quietly moving slowly and having high concentration on my actions. It's always good for a laugh with my girlfriend even though I feel dumb.

Also this shit scared me so much as a child:

lasthalf_011.png

lasthalf_012.png

What a piece of garbage that game was.

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I absolutely love scary games, but i find most don't really have the intended effect for me. I'm one of those people who grew up with horror movies and has grown inured to their intended effects.

I mean, but i love hunting for that scare, for that game that can legitimately get under my skin. I've found it generally has much more to do with a game's underlying mechanics than anything else.

Dead Space has been mentioned a few times, so Dead Space. Where Dead Space fails is in how it's very easy to suss out the rules of when you're safe and when you're in danger, and how it's easy to discern where enemies will come from and what patterns they operate on. (They do that thing where If you get far enough away, they'll hop into the nearest vent and then re-emerge at the vent closest to you.) The game narratively insists that you're ill-equipped, just a lowly engineer, but the practical effect of the tools you're given is that you're extremely empowered. You actually have quite a lot of health and many powerful abilities.

I mean, so if the atmosphere doesn't affect you, that game doesn't have anything going on mechanically to reinforce that you should be scared.

My recollection of System Shock 2 is of a game that worked on both sides of the coin, having an phenomenally creepy scenario with game mechanics that reinforced you feeling frail and never safe. (Notably, with the scenario being somewhat conscious of how weak the player is made to feel, and it actually becoming a running thematic point in the game.)

I think games like Dark Souls and Stalker are other great examples of games that employ mechanics that can facilitate intense, scary, and unpredictable situations.

Though that's just talking about what are primarily action games, there's still the looming spector of all those survival stealth games that have become much more popular in recent years.

I really need to play Amnesia, though i'm concerned it'd end up just being a frustrating, linear puzzle. (Concerns i have from it sounding, at least in part, very similar to CoC:DCotE. An extremely clever game that had moments of being fabulously intense, but would wear thin when you were replaying a heavily-scripted chase sequence multiple times, trying to hit marks in an incredibly narrow procedure. Also, all the clumsy FPS nonsense that it should not have had, but Amnesia doesn't seem to go down that road.)

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I love Amnesia but am too much of a scaredy-cat to play it, so I watch others. At first it was just shammack, but now I'll just watch reaction videos and LPs. In fact, I just got done watching "cry"'s 34-part playthrough of Amnesia on YouTube about 15 minutes before making this post.

(Also that one part in Bioshock with the mannequins? I was sat on the sofa beside shammack as he played and when that happened I screamed, jumped up, and ran out of the room. I are girl.)

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(Also that one part in Bioshock with the mannequins? I was sat on the sofa beside shammack as he played and when that happened I screamed, jumped up, and ran out of the room. I are girl.)

You should probably not played Condemned.

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You should probably not played Condemned.

No kidding. In fact in general, people with issues with scary games should not play Condemned. That is one of the few games that has frayed my nerves completely while playing. Though I'm sure with it being a few years down the line now, the visuals will seem degraded enough to dilute the effect somewhat.

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There have not been a lot of games that really got under my skin, but Condemned was definitely one of the few. The unreliable flashlight, weapon degredation and strict carry limits, the way enemy AI would actually try to sneak up on you, their indistinct and ragey obscenities, the filthy and dark environments, the ambiguity about whether or not you're hallucinating or witnessing real events.

You know, and to tie this back around to why i brought it up, the abandoned mall with the mannequin people was terrifying.

The sequel got too wrapped up in explaining its mythology, when one of the main reasons the first game was so scary is because you really didn't have any idea what was going on. I mean, there were clues everywhere, a logic behind the scenes that you were not privy to, it was a mystery. The sequel just kind of lays it all out and ends up looking really goofy in the process. (That among other failings, i could go on about why i think Condemned 2 is a tragically flawed sequel. Even so, i would say it's still a worthwhile playthrough.)

Ambiguity is a powerful tool for horror! The gaps your mind fills in are always scarier than anything an author can imagine, people are naturally afraid of what they don't understand.

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Day 9 played Slender on his stream this past Wednesday and I really enjoyed watching it, but normally I hate scary games. Well I don't hate them per se, I just don't ever play them because I don't enjoy scary things. I don't watch scary movies either,well I don't watch "horror" movies, I'll watch psychological thrillers. I have Amnesia from the Potato Sack, but I've never played it. The only scary game I've played was the one time I did boot up Amnesia to play the Justine DLC to get the achievement for the Portal 2 event. That was too much for me so I played it windowed with the sound muted. Haven't touched it since.

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"Jump" scares are super effective on me, and I've grown to actually hate them. In nearly all cases, they're just lazy ways to produce tension, but they work so well! I never finished Dead Space, but that's the most recent game that comes to mind that I really wanted to enjoy but couldn't get past all the jump scaring.

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"Jump" scares are super effective on me, and I've grown to actually hate them. In nearly all cases, they're just lazy ways to produce tension, but they work so well! I never finished Dead Space, but that's the most recent game that comes to mind that I really wanted to enjoy but couldn't get past all the jump scaring.

Yeah, they work on me and I hate them. It just feels way too cheap and dumb.

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Yeah, they work on me and I hate them. It just feels way too cheap and dumb.

I hate those kinds of scares too, but I can think of one particular case that I actually enjoyed it. It's from a specific mission in Freespace 2, which is probably why I remember it so well since it's a space combat sim and the LAST place I expected to have the crap scared out of me. The mission involves you and your wing going on a reconnaissance mission deep into enemy territory in captured enemy fighters with no support. The moment the mission starts, you're greeted with "DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT!" and the sight of a huge capital ship just meters in front of you. After nearly falling out of my chair, I fumbled for the keyboard and managed to fly directly into the ship and was promptly obliterated.

I know it's not quite the same as a scary monster jumping out at you from the shadows, but it had the same effect on me at the time and in retrospect is one of my favorite video game moments ever.

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I love horror, but I find it more and more difficult to find horror movies that are actually good. Well, ones that I like at least. Most of them I find boring. I watch the first ten or twenty minutes and see the same boring stuff and I switch off.

I have more success with horror games, most probably because of the intrinsic level of personal involvement that games have over films. There is a trend for big franchises to drift from horror into action, which is well noted, but games like Amnesia and Limbo show that indie and smaller developers are actually bringing new life (it's aliiiiive!) to the genre. I'm really keen to play Deadlight, which seems to be inspired by Limbo.

Jump scares occasionally work on me but even when they do I don't always find them that interesting (the ones in Bioshock I liked, but mostly for amusement value). My favourite stuff is psychological horror and cosmic horror. A good cosmic horror I find... well, actually horrifying, not just terrifying or frightful - but at the exact same time it evokes curiosity and awe and a kind of creative satisfaction in me.

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Could you give some examples in cinema or gaming of good cosmic horror? That sounds intruiging. I assume it has Lovecraftian overtones, rather than a butchering monster doing the rounds. This might be one of the types of horror I am strangely comfortable with.

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I love horror, but I find it more and more difficult to find horror movies that are actually good. Well, ones that I like at least. Most of them I find boring. I watch the first ten or twenty minutes and see the same boring stuff and I switch off.

Same here. I rarely watch horror movies because they're usually the same boring shit. The TV series "Masters of Horror" was great though, sadly it's no longer running.

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