Things you like and hate in Horror Games.

[Froge]

SH1 was more effective than AAMFP in making us care about the child, though only marginally. Big difference was the subtlety. The ghost-like voices and appearances of Mandus' children in AAMFP made it very, very obvious that they were dead, and that knowledge also makes us care less about Mandus himself because we already knew that his whole journey to go find them would end in failure so I was like "this guy is hopeless".

On the other hand, we saw a good 30 seconds of Cheryl in SH1, and her appearances were always vague and obscure, but Harry Mason was damn likeable. Unlike AAMFP, where we see just glimpses of terrors, Harry straight up walks into schools with undead babies* and curb stomps them all so that he can save his child. While we don't care much for Cheryl, the emotional connection I made with Harry automatically transferred his goals to me as well so I was really rooting for him throughout the entire game.

*this also made SH less subtle in terms of horror