That, too.
Also, Memory of Alessa along with the throat singing and Exorcist 2 music going on.
3 Likes
This thread has me remembering Andrew Plotkin’s review of Silent Hill 2, which is what originally convinced me to buy the game nearly 20 years ago, and rereading it tonight, I wish someone had communicated these two paragraphs to everyone who set out to make a Silent Hill sequel. I have added some bold text for emphasis.
Having been impressed by the worlds Plotkin himself has created on one or two occasions, I often wonder what the lineage of Silent Hill might look like, had those games hewn closer to the recipe he had imagined for them.
10 Likes
Apparently Silent Hill 2 is one of the last games if not the last game to sequence the music on the hardware in real time (at least if you play it on PS2). That makes for much smoother audio transitions between cutscenes and gameplay etc. I can’t pretend to know all the details, but it’s one of the many reasons the PS2 version is the ideal version to play. It blows my mind that we’re not listening to prerecorded tracks when we play the PS2 version!
3 Likes
which moment are you referring to? feel free to put it in spoilers or whatever, i just haven’t played it in a couple of years.
1 Like
Have to jump up and sit crouched on the table with your back facing the corner while listening for instructions because just waiting is too much
It will exit itself when you reach an ending. Start it up again to keep going. You’ll know when you’ve reached the final end.
3 Likes
7 Likes
oh god yeah
2 Likes
that circle room is so creepy! I don’t remember it, but wow I was worried the whole time watching that video and it’s just some circles lol
SH3 had some really really great subtly terrifying parts.
My favorite:
The cheesy horror house with the hanged people setpiece that got you all relaxed then led up to the somehow horrifying RED LIGHT PURSUING YOU DOWN A HALLWAY
2 Likes
i really love how it cold opens on a much later part of a game within a dream but without the means to progress and makes you wander around until you die and wake up for the game to really start, sh1 does something sort of similar but it’s much less disorienting.
2 Likes
Silent Hill 1-4 are pretty good y’all.
Silent Hill 1 is constant assaulting stress.
Silent Hill 2 is constant assaulting uneasiness.
Silent Hill 3 is a couple of things (fun seeing everyone shout it out.)
Silent Hill 4 is I gotta get out and then I gotta stay in.
Oh yeah! I played through Unreal PT and it is mostly accurate. They took out the starting room cockroaches and I think the ending but 98% of THE GAME is there to be enjoyed.
5 Likes
This thread inspired me to download and play Resident Evil Remaster! I played the first hour or so on my friend’s 'cube when I was younger, and the experience was traumatising enough to have burned itself into my memory, but beyond that, I don’t really have much knowledge of the game.
It’s so good, and so beautiful. It’s still really, really scary as well! I find it really funny that when the remastered version came out, reviewers complained that the inventory management and saving system were ‘dated’. I’m probably 20 years late to this conversation, but the inventory management and saving system seem utterly integral to the survival horror experience to me. I particularly like that the saving system forces you to play for long stretches of time—you can’t just play it for like five minutes or whatever—which means you really have no choice but to immerse yourself in the game’s environment.
I haven’t played RE2 or 3, but I’m almost tempted to say that everything from 4 onwards is a bit of a retreat from the radicality of that initial RE1 survival horror template, rather than an improvement or modernisation of the genre as such.
Anyway, I’m still right at the beginning of the game (got the armour key and slowly making my way through a bunch of previously locked doors, though I seem to be amassing a ton of items along the way), so I guess we’ll see if I still feel the same way about it as it wears on. I opted for the normal (hard?) mode, which I think was the right choice.
3 Likes
A few of my favorites:
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent - It seems that opinions of this game become less favorable as time goes on, but I still like it. More uncomfortable than scary, maybe?
- Bloodborne - You don’t play this to be frightened, but it’s undeniable that it does the horror theme well.
- Dead Space - The environments just feel dangerous, like in Half-Life 1 but with more of a horror slant.
- Eternal Darkness - Mostly playful (“Are you sure you want to delete all of your Saved Games?”) but also scary at times.
- Fatal Frame - Maybe I just played it at the right time, but the first Fatal Frame is my pick for the scariest game I’ve ever played. I never reached the end because I got stuck on a puzzle sequence.
- I Have No Mouth, and I must Scream - Maybe not so great as a game, but an interesting adaptation of one of my favorite stories. More bleak than scary.
- Inside - Creepy and stylish, and goes in a direction that I sure didn’t see coming.
- LSD: Dream Emulator - Unsettling in that you simply have no idea what to expect from these bizarre worlds. There are some overt moments of horror, too, such as when the woman in the nighttime scene loses her head.
- Monster Trivia - An atmospheric multiplayer Commodore 64 game show game in which a monster waits in a cell to eat the losers. (It’s by the same developer as the Forbidden Forest games, which are unsettling in their own way.)
- Silent Hill - All four of the numbered games, and also Origins and Shattered Memories, for reasons already stated in this thread and all over SB.
- SOMA - Cuba mentioned that this one isn’t scary and it’s not in the sense of traditional horror. But it excels at evoking existential dread.
5 Likes
I think one of my favorite new horror games is Faith.
It’s a pretty simple, retro-seeming adventure narrative game about a rogue priest attempting to save the soul of a couple possessed kids. It is disarmingly simple but full of effective visual, narrative and gameplay surprises that make for a really scary game! I really do think this is not a game to write off as one of those low-effort and derivative indie horror games it might kind of appear as, because this is definitely one of the most deliberate and stylish horror games I’ve played in years. Right now, there are two chapters available to play and the third is coming out in an all-in-one package soon on Steam. The trailer for Chapter 2 is great:
Edit: also, did anyone ever play the Chzo Mythos games that were developed by Yahtzee? I remember liking those.
4 Likes
i think i brought up faith as having some of the creepier moments in video games with the rotoscoped stuff. love the rotoscoped shit.
1 Like
Totally! It’s maybe my favorite part about them. I don’t know if rotoscoping was something old Apple games ever used, or if it’s unique to Faith, but it is so weird looking in general it really suits a scary game.
Yeah, Faith’s old tech gloss and distorted text-to-speech really lets you fill in the gaps. Some of the bosses can be a little tricky but the death animations make it worth it.
1 Like
MORTIS
1 Like
I̷̢͇͑͝͠ ̵̛̭̇̑̓H̷̭̰̒̇̾͝Ǎ̷͔̫͕̹͘V̴̢̜̽̾Ẽ̴̝͆͛̀͜ ̷̥̖̓͊͘͝T̸͔̖͆̎H̶͖̖̰̀Ė̸͓ ̶̝͘B̸̰̏O̴͓͆D̶͕̑̇̅̂ͅŸ̷̦͆ ̷̢̭͇̙̕O̶̬͚̘͛̄͜F̸̬̭͗̐̓̈́͜ ̸͇͕̙̏À̶̮̜̼̣́ ̶̨̎P̷̧̜̀̂Ĩ̴̡͈̽G̴̞̰̞͝
1 Like
Prince of Persia was a famous example of rotoscoping in an Apple game
4 Likes