A Diskussion about "regenerative health" in horror games.

[Damascus Rose]

What is with everybody having the need to select specific words out of their sentences to capitalize? If you want emphasis, just use italics, less annoying. Also most of the words emphasized need no emphasis.

Anyway, on topic:

A major problem in Amnesia also is that you doesn't need the Laudanum.
Because when you have regen health, it's totally worthless.
Nothing worse than to have no esteem to items.

I know, it's a problem to scatter around items in a world where you think "who the hell had left it here?".
So, such items should be really rare (~ 10 in the whole game) and only avaiable in places where it's logic to find them there.

I wouldn't say the regen health in Amnesia is annoying, but the feeling of horror and helpless would be improved when your health does not automatically refill.
Perhaps it would be a good choice when the effect would be slowed down, that it takes 5-10 minutes longer to be health.

It's absolutely wrong to compare Amnesia with COD mechanics, Amnesia is not a casual game, but it has some casual features it shouldn't have.
Nevertheless, Amnesia is one of the best games I ever played.
I prefer Penumbra a bit, because I played Penumbra first and maybe that's the reason because I look at every detail. Penumbra has by far more thoughtful and tricky involving puzzles than Amnesia and the horror in Black Plague is at least on the same level as Amnesia. Both games are holy pieces in my opinion and the developers should feel honored when people making thoughts to their games and tell how to improve some general things.

The big deal with having less health is the slower movement and red screen, and not always will you be in a situation where you can just sit wait and regenerate health. Also when you are being chased by a grunt and it hits you, you can use laudanum to get the health back to survive another hit, which you wouldn't be able to with regen (but then again it isn't exactly realistic to be chased by a monster then just stop the game, open inventory and heal hp back).

About Amnesia having these "casual features" as you call them that it shouldn't, that's very arguable. You are synthesizing the elements of amnesia into a comparison between casual and hardcore, when the entire premise of Amnesia is about the experience behind the game. It is not meant to be a challenge, it's not about winning, or losing. This has been said before, not having health regen would be a major annoyance and distraction from the game and the things the developers mean for you to see. Health also isn't a big deal in the game, considering the monsters kill you in few hits (as somebody has said before).

Also, I have no idea why you started talking about your opinion on Penumbra when it's completely unrelated to what you were trying to say :/

[spukrian]

A major problem in Amnesia also is that you doesn't need the Laudanum.
Because when you have regen health, it's totally worthless.

I prefer Penumbra a bit

Except for the fact that Penumbra has Health Regeneration as well, and painkillers in Penumbra are unneeded.

[Gunslingerjh]

Yep, health regeneration ruins it for me! I still remember the good old days in Resident Evil 2 where "First Aid Sprays" where so rare, you had to save them for bossfights etc. Nowadays they either let your health regenerate, or give you tons of healing items, which suks

[Ghieri]

Yep, health regeneration ruins it for me! I still remember the good old
days in Resident Evil 2 where "First Aid Sprays" where so rare, you had
to save them for bossfights etc. Nowadays they either let your health
regenerate, or give you tons of healing items, which suks

The thing is that Amnesia isn't a "gameplay" kind of game. They want you to play all the way through. It's like reading a book, except in game form. So they want it to be fairly easy to reach the end, even though you may shit yourself on the way. : P

[the dark side]

Sorry if this makes me sound Harsh or Nasty, but, if they wanted to focus on the Story, then, why didnt they just make a web comic or Interactive Graphic Novel?

A game without challenge, to me, personally, isn't really a game, its a tutorial, and boring. i'm not getting nasty with frictional, i can see why they wanted to focus on the Story, its a Duesie! great charachters, intelligent, superbly written, great dialoque and brown trousers time scary, but, if they are not going to have challenge, perhaps "gaming" isn't really the correct media platform.

No challenge, No Entertainment, No Entertainment, No game. its the same with call of duty or battlefeild, no challenge, just loads of massive setpeices that make it exiting as heck to watch, but brain numbingly boring to play. they would be absolutely brilliant as movies (Sean Connery (Price), Jason Statham (Gaz) and Micheal Fassbender (Soap) for COD movie?) but as games, ugggh, no no no!.

Everything has a place yes, but very Little has a place as a game now in my opinion, because its all designed to be as easy as possible so as to appeal to "new players", and that is boring, if you are not willing to have challenge, dont make a game, it is as simple as that, make a movie or a virtual novel.

if you have a great and involving storyline, then people will play it too its end no matter how hard the game is, look at the first 2 Max Payne titles, hard as nails, and people still played them because the storylines were epic, making a game easy when people will play it no matter how hard it is, because the story is awesome, is "dumbing down!" and that, to me, is a crime agaisnt gaming!

im with leon kennedy, too many medpacks is as bad as regenerating health, and regenerating health is a game ruiner (in all genres! it is not necessary, its dumbing down) as they remove the challenge, i'm sorry, but, if you dont want a challenge, then go watch a movie, i am sick and tired of having my hobby ruined for the sake of people who can't cope with a bit of difficulty so everything gets turned into call of duty in order to appease them because the industry hasnt got the guts to tell them were to get off because it has become so greedy it cannot see that this continual dumbing down so as to appeal to the widest possible audience has taken us back on the same "rushed out casual game for christmass" path that caused the great games crash of 1983, and will cause another crash!

as far as im concerned, a stand alone tutorial, a cut down "tourist" or "super easy mode" (that only offers half the game) and a quick controll reference sheet on the back of the manual were More than good enough to help the "new players" out before modern warfare got popular in 2006, so its still good enough now, everything else is "dumbing down", wich is the mark of greed!

if its not challenging, its not a game, and should have been made as a virtual novel or webcomic instead. okay, thats just my own personall opinion, and i expect 90% of people will disagree with it rather strongly, but, thats the way i am, a died in the wool old school hardcore gamer, and im beyond changing, so either gaming needs to change (wich it will in the next crash, as all the "mainstream" gamers will loose interest, just look at what happened in the last one) or i am going to need a new hobby, because gaming today, with its interest in new gamers, and its total lack of challenge, is Boring.

[Damascus Rose]

If that's how you feel about gaming, I have no idea why you would even play Amnesia, let alone complain about it so much because Amnesia was not and never will be meant to be a challenge. It tries to achieve something completely different than the kind of thing you want to see in a game and your ideas of challenging simply do not apply at all. The reason Amnesia is so unique is because it's like living a story, a Lovecraftian story and that experience simply doesn't come out of a book or another media.

[Obliviator27]

Sorry if this makes me sound Harsh or Nasty, but, if they wanted to focus on the Story, then, why didnt they just make a web comic or Interactive Graphic Novel?

A game without challenge, to me, personally, isn't really a game, its a tutorial, and boring. i'm not getting nasty with frictional, i can see why they wanted to focus on the Story, its a Duesie! great charachters, intelligent, superbly written, great dialoque and brown trousers time scary, but, if they are not going to have challenge, perhaps "gaming" isn't really the correct media platform.

No challenge, No Entertainment, No Entertainment, No game. its the same with call of duty or battlefeild, no challenge, just loads of massive setpeices that make it exiting as heck to watch, but brain numbingly boring to play. they would be absolutely brilliant as movies (Sean Connery (Price), Jason Statham (Gaz) and Micheal Fassbender (Soap) for COD movie?) but as games, ugggh, no no no!.

Everything has a place yes, but very Little has a place as a game now in my opinion, because its all designed to be as easy as possible so as to appeal to "new players", and that is boring, if you are not willing to have challenge, dont make a game, it is as simple as that, make a movie or a virtual novel.

if you have a great and involving storyline, then people will play it too its end no matter how hard the game is, look at the first 2 Max Payne titles, hard as nails, and people still played them because the storylines were epic, making a game easy when people will play it no matter how hard it is, because the story is awesome, is "dumbing down!" and that, to me, is a crime agaisnt gaming!

im with leon kennedy, too many medpacks is as bad as regenerating health, and regenerating health is a game ruiner (in all genres! it is not necessary, its dumbing down) as they remove the challenge, i'm sorry, but, if you dont want a challenge, then go watch a movie, i am sick and tired of having my hobby ruined for the sake of people who can't cope with a bit of difficulty so everything gets turned into call of duty in order to appease them because the industry hasnt got the guts to tell them were to get off because it has become so greedy it cannot see that this continual dumbing down so as to appeal to the widest possible audience has taken us back on the same "rushed out casual game for christmass" path that caused the great games crash of 1983, and will cause another crash!

as far as im concerned, a stand alone tutorial, a cut down "tourist" or "super easy mode" (that only offers half the game) and a quick controll reference sheet on the back of the manual were More than good enough to help the "new players" out before modern warfare got popular in 2006, so its still good enough now, everything else is "dumbing down", wich is the mark of greed!

if its not challenging, its not a game, and should have been made as a virtual novel or webcomic instead. okay, thats just my own personall opinion, and i expect 90% of people will disagree with it rather strongly, but, thats the way i am, a died in the wool old school hardcore gamer, and im beyond changing, so either gaming needs to change (wich it will in the next crash, as all the "mainstream" gamers will loose interest, just look at what happened in the last one) or i am going to need a new hobby, because gaming today, with its interest in new gamers, and its total lack of challenge, is Boring.

Interesting way to look at it.
Personally, I disagree with the idea of making Amnesia a webcomic or a graphic novel. The point of Amnesia is immersion, making you feel like you're the protagonist. I find I cannot get immersed in anything I'm not interacting directly with.
For example, movies. I don't find "horror" movies to be scary in the slightest. They mostly prey upon the general populace's disdain of gore, or at least the ones I have seen.

If I am to feel fear, I need to feel as though I'm a part of the environment, not just viewing it along a rail. So, in order for Frictional to give the player such an experience, they had to make it a game. Simple as that.

[the dark side]

that is very true, horror movies often are not scary, in fact some are so lame they can only really be laughed at, (ok, as laughable as it was, "the car" for instance is more than worth watching, because, my goodness it is one Heck of a cool car! awesome looks, evil hadlamps, and that NASCAR engine note wasnt a dub, ive seen the real car, there is a proper NASCAR engine under the hood)

Gore is just gore, tis' disgusting yes, but its not scary, Fear is Psychological, i think thats what makes penumbra and amnesia pretty darn scary, they focus on psychological shocks, true horror, although no game or film can compare to real life psychological horror, wich i am afraid i have experienced and have the mental scars to proove it.

you have a point obliviator, perhaps it did need to be a game, i quess, for me, i think psycholigical horror can work in any given medium.

it just didnt need to be a dumbed down game..
perhaps im letting my hatred of any and all cod elements boil over and cloud my judgement again...
well, ill say something nice though, at least it aint got controll hints!

@Damascus, i played them because i felt the storylines were interesting, wich is very rare now, iots mostly just all "Booooooom goes the dynamite, the russians all die and the Americans win", so a game with an actual storyline, no matter how it plays, is automatically going to interest me, because, it has a proper story, and so few games do now, they were actually scary in places, something horror games often are not these days, and they were unique and creative, something that is extremely rare now. i just think it should and could have been made harder by the Simple little Option to turn the regenerating health off, then it would have been properly scary and would have immersed me a little more, as soon as i saw the blood on screen and the regeneration, i immediatly thaught "call of duty", and that broke the immersion, meaning the games, although very good, were not masterpeices, and lost some of the "fear factor" because they became too easy for my tastes. "dumbed down", if you ask me, in my own personal opinion, making them harder would have made them more lovecraftian, not less, as they would have been more frightning and more immersive, for me personally anyway.

[Oscar House]

I suppose I feel sorry for you that you can only find enjoyment in games that are made to be challenging. Unfortunately for you, that's not the general consensus. Some want to experience a compelling storyline, others want to distance themselves from real life by shooting stuff moving on the monitor. Dying over and over until feeling like scraping your eyes out due to the game being so challenging doesn't attract a large audience.

The interactive medium would be pretty underdeveloped if all of us thought like you, if videogames were purely for challenge. They shouldn't be. Variety is what makes games appeal to a larger audience; some games are more challenging than others, and that's good. You say that regenerating health is a game ruiner. I say regenerating health is variety. Just because gaming is your hobby, doesn't mean it's not a hobby for millions of others. Catering to the minority is economically unviable.

I sincerely hope you broaden your field of view, because face it, gaming is a worldwide thing now. It's not going to regress to being "challenge for challenge's sake" anytime soon.

[darkely]

@Oscar House here is what I do not understand... why can't people enjoy a game that has something they don't like in it?!


Like I love to play Bulletstorm... it has some things I don't like (regenerative heath, and the game is some waht buggy) however I am not just going to just stop playing it over that...




^That was the first major boss in the game (a giant plant) and I can say with honesty fighting that bastard (on the hardest difficulty) was the most fun I've had in a long time :3 - so people who don't like regenerating health try to look past it... like I did and just try to have fun.