Yeah @captainlove mentioned Faith earlier in this thread and since then I’ve had it on my radar. Seems like the unholy trinity is available in full on PS4 already, so I might just download and play it today (edit: no it’s not).
Finished Resident Evil a few weeks back btw. Initially I thought it was a masterpiece, but it becomes progressively less interesting (and less scary) from the tunnels onward. The second half of the game is still really good, but I don’t think it reaches the heights of the first half—just slowly exploring the mansion and feeling totally disempowered, disoriented, and on edge the whole time.
Think now’s the time to resurrect this thread Tis the season.
I have been playing Siren a lot lately. It is very good. A new Amnesia game comes out in just a couple of weeks, which has me very excited since I thought SOMA was great. And also I am waiting to receive my Retroid Pocket 2 to play through the Alone in the Dark games, the first four of them at least.
Been reading a book of essays on Horror games and greatly enjoying that alongside the stuff I’ve been playing.
I’m a big fan of Dead Space 1 and 2 and actually prefer 2. I haven’t played either in quite a while so it’d be fun to revisit them. I prefer 2’s variety and setpieces and actually think Isaac’s transition out of silent protagonist was fairly well handled. Weapon variety also improved dramatically and better secondary fires came in. Final boss of 2 is awful compared to 1 though.
I suggested to somebody that playing SMT1 with a CRT filter in black and white can give it a spooky feel. Plus, you have this spooky dream at the start, you’re sent this strange e-mail babbling about demons and computer programs, there are reports of people being eaten, rumors about an abandoned hospital where people are experimented on, a demon kills your mom and wears her flesh in order to lure you in so it can eat you, as well, you’re sent to a demon world, you encounter Lucifer, etc.
Revisiting this though to say this game did “Disempowered player” better than a lot of subsequent games like the Amnesia series because instead of having no fighting ability/weapons they are suddenly rendered completely useless in this level which is an unexpected fright. And the bits of kit you do have that can actually do something are in limited supply so there’s that tension mounting throughout the level as well
I am actually on the level “return to the cathedral” in Thief 1 which the cradle level was apparently inspired by. The game does a lot with sound design in general to create a creepy atmosphere, and since the optimal way to play is wearing headphones and straining to listen for footsteps, you’re always primed for audio jumpscares from, say, a zombie popping up out of a dark corner and groaning in your ear. The cathedral goes a step further with the hammer haunts, who have a genuinely unsettling sound palette; when patrolling they are a cacophony of eerie whispering, when they spot you it escalates into horrible distorted laughter. It’s very spooky
I want to say I used one of the shader presets from the Analog shader pack in RetroArch, but I don’t recall which – the black and white TV preset looks bit blurrier than what I was using, so I may have applied a black and white shader on top of another monitor or CRT shader in the Analog pack (definitely not a Zombie shader because I could never get those to work).
I think about that a lot with Crusader of Centy. A great game but at that price its prolly going on a shelf next to other things the owner doesnt actually care about.
I have heard some people say they don’t get into certain game series exactly because they can’t afford to buy copies of them on eBay, even when emulation is available to them. I sort of get that.
the sequels are both pretty mediocre and the reboot can go straight to hell, but I’ve had something of a soft spot for the original Splatterhouse ever since I stumbled across the old West Mansion fansite
I’m disappointed that there aren’t more Splatterlikes out there because I like the idea of Splatterhouse but none of them felt particularly great to play – very stiff, and the reboot seemed to be stupid, edgy nonsense.
Tis the season.
