Your Favourite Horror Games and Why

The original Clock Tower is also a complete chore to play unlike 80% of those other games

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Well, so, maybe, the best games would be those for which you could say: “instead of watching X, play Y” … Joking, but it could make some sense.

Rule of Rose is definitely a chore. And I think Haunting Ground, too, if I recall correctly.

Why is it called True story? Just because it’s the first game, or were you referring to something else?

yeah I haven’t played either of those so I left room for error lol but I think my point still stands

I think in America the box says “Based on a true story” if I remember. And I think that’s mostly not true, but was an effective way to market scary things.

Ah, I didn’t know this. Definitely makes it creepier

Even though these games are made to scare first and foremost, I get weird comfort from walking through areas like FF1’s outdoor shrines, FF2’s village, both Silent Hill 1 and 3’s endgame collapsing dreamworlds and SH3’s mall, probably partly out of nostalgia from playing these so much in the 2000s but also because the environments were beautiful, full of cool little details probably most people wouldn’t even see in a casual playthrough and packed with great music and sound design.




Forgot to mention that I meant to have the below clip start around 34:55 where this player looks out the grated “window” to see out into the orange void surrounding the hellscape. It’s like they wanted to suggest the otherworld’s expanding boundaries, or maybe that it could go on infinitely.
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i want to play more horror games cuz i think they’re cool, but cuz im a huge weenie i watch other people play them more than i play them myself. I think that speaks to how effective they can be almost by default. Just being put in the viewpoint of a horror story protagonist is inherently stressful.

I want to rep the Five Nights At Freddy’s games, i feel like they’re overlooked by sb despite being insanely popular (again, caveat that i have only watched them not played them) I think they are kind of rad! a unique example of low-budget horror applied to video games, that works because of the uncanniness of Mystlike pre-rendered CGI. Haunted animatronics is a perfect horror premise imo, both kind of cheesy and genuinely scary which is how i prefer my horror stories. Really dig that they are resource management games like a lot of horror games are, but entirely playing on your nervousness and paranoia. They’re games about making you jumpy where you lose if you get too jumpy. Jump scares are arguably the lowest form of horror, but these are well-pitched jump scares (if you haven’t watched any they’re great, the distorted screams the characters make do a lot to enhance the scariness), and i like that the ultimate point of the games is to totally avoid being scared. The series lore is also pretty neat and has spooky urban legend appeal. It’s cool to see a popular horror game series that can appeal to kids without feeling un-scary, and that doesn’t lean on “holy shit that guy got ripped apart by monsters and it was super gross waaaugh”

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I liked fatal frame 2 but I can’t imagine not playing it in first person mode on the xbox, constantly standing in the middle of the street and looking up at the sky

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I suffered through Rule of Rose and couldn’t finish any of the Clock Tower games but Haunting Ground is actually fun.

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Silently Hill

because a PS1 game is still scarier than most other games I’ve played

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Alone in the Dark 1 is legitimately still wonderful

Clock Tower SNES is the closest we ever got to a Giallo video game

I get bored easily by most horror games. Even Resident Evil is too drawn out and full of artifice for me.

Anyway, Paratopic sucks and Doc Buford’s an idiot

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woah!! I’m really curious why you think that.

I haven’t thought about why I hate Paratopic, I only played it once and thought it was a waste of my time, like any number of games made by vain narcissists convinced that their shit doesn’t stink.

But Burford’s idiocy is well established

The more verbs a game has, the more interesting it is, so to make a walking sim interesting, I reasoned, I’d have to make one with an awful lot of interesting verbs.

In film and television, there’s a lot more nuance; television critics are out there championing Westworld’s artful depiction of violence while too many game critics whine that games shouldn’t be violent at all.

He’s so convinced that he’s the world’s only genius and that’s all I felt while playing Paratopic “this is a game by someone who thinks he made a masterpiece but who’s idea of art doesn’t push past Westworld the TV show”

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In other words, I get the same vibe from Paratopic as I do David Cage games.

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Okay, I completely agree actually. I read a lot of what he posts on twitter, and does he post a lot. The most most most of it is polemic tirade, with a couple lucid points that are still just drenched in an absurd amount of arrogance. He gets a lot of attention so I always wonder if other people see his narcissism, or if they don’t and he’s just a great of example of fake it till you make it.

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Five Nights at Freddy’s perfected the jump scare. I think it’s smart enough to realize it’s not about startling people, but about making them anticipate the startling for as long as humanly possible. It also is so smart about what it’s doing. The fact that your main resource is your eyeballs and attention to detail means you’re leaning into the screen and looking for anything out of place.

But to do that, you have to (in-game) focus entirely on a screen that, when removed, can reveal a TERRIFYING ANIMATRONIC right in your face. Every action you take is balanced with the consequence of possibly getting scared shitless. It’s wonderful, it’s a genius game.

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I’m tempted to say Realms of the Haunting

But I haven’t played it since the 90s

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