Things you like and hate in Horror Games.

[Alex Ros]

I agree totally.

Spoiler below!

I think one of the reasons why Groom is such a memorable character is that it's your, player, fault he became what he became. He cryed for help in the laboratory at the very beginning of the game. He cryed for help real badly. And when you do encounter him near the end of the story you're afraid of him. Surely. But at the same time you do sympathise him. You have a feeling of pity. He's not a blank monster. He's tortured to the point of becoming a monster.

Not to talk about the familiarity of his obsession. I suppose you've said everything that might be said about the familiarity of his obsession.

[Alardem]

I've been playing the Betrayer for some hours. And while playing I've been thinking about one parasitic thing in all (or most of) horror games. There's no transformation of usual into unusual. From the very beginning you're already brought into uncommon situation. You're entering an abandoned research base; waking up in a spooky castle; investigating empty streets of a foggy town; empty island; hospital; mansion... etc. Surely, while talking about nice games like Penumbra there's a horror build-up. Nevertheless I can't remember when as a player I was drawn into something common and usual and only at some point of the story development situation transformed into something frightening. I can't remember of such a transformation. Apocalypse is not only going to happen, it's already happened or happening.

Doom 3, in a manner similar to Half-Life, started off the first couple levels introducing you to the Mars Base prior to the demon invasion. While it was still a dark and unfriendly place, being able to interact with people and see things functioning 'normally' help make the base's subsequent desecration feel more convincing.

Also, the Silent Hill games toyed with different levels of 'reality', although none have ever actually shown you interacting directly with normal people as part of their goal of isolating the player. Silent Hill 4, for example, allowed you to watch your apartment neighbors go about their daily business and listen to the police report on the murders your character witnessed, even as you were helpless to contact them due to being locked in your room.

[RedKnight]

I agree totally.

Spoiler below!

I think one of the reasons why Groom is such a memorable character is that it's your, player, fault he became what he became. He cryed for help in the laboratory at the very beginning of the game. He cryed for help real badly. And when you do encounter him near the end of the story you're afraid of him. Surely. But at the same time you do sympathise him. You have a feeling of pity. He's not a blank monster. He's tortured to the point of becoming a monster.

Not to talk about the familiarity of his obsession. I suppose you've said everything that might be said about the familiarity of his obsession.

I feel really bad for the groom.


But the groom is a very gay homosexual <3

[AGP]

I agree totally.

Spoiler below!

I think one of the reasons why Groom is such a memorable character is that it's your, player, fault he became what he became. He cryed for help in the laboratory at the very beginning of the game. He cryed for help real badly. And when you do encounter him near the end of the story you're afraid of him. Surely. But at the same time you do sympathise him. You have a feeling of pity. He's not a blank monster. He's tortured to the point of becoming a monster.

Not to talk about the familiarity of his obsession. I suppose you've said everything that might be said about the familiarity of his obsession.

I feel really bad for the groom.


But the groom is a very gay homosexual <3

It's not that the Groom is gay, but that there are just no women at the facility, which to me an interesting little, subtle twist to the story. There were obviously women there at one point; there is a female ward you explore through after all. So where did they all go?

The Groom had to make do with what he could and in his mind he convinced himself the other men were women who just needed... "Reshaping".

[VaeVictis]

On the topic of fictional children (or characters) being killed:

I think it works when an actual emotional connection is made to the character through making it clear that the person is an individual. We should know about their personality. The writer should not assume that just because the character represents A Child that the player will care. That's my problem with Bioshock's rather empty exploitation of soulless children for ineffective "emotional" moments, and that's the issue with AMFP's use of kids too.

In that aspect, Amnesia 1 was alright with making us feel empathy for the victims of Daniel. Less so with linking that girl to Hazel - I wish Daniel's sister had a larger role than just loading screen text.

As for themes and AMFP: the main theme for that game was Industrialized Horror, and I personally thought it was a great dark take on the 'steampunk' motif. It was a lot more sterile and 'cold' than I'd imagined a pig-themed game to be, however.

Pretty much. Silent Hill is as guilty as any of this, too (as well as the hyper sexualization thing, too). Funny though, I never really noticed these things until someone pointed them out to me.
I understand that they wanted to pull emotion from the player, but you can only play that card so many times before people start to get wise and see it coming a mile away.

[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

[RedKnight]

I agree totally.

Spoiler below!

I think one of the reasons why Groom is such a memorable character is that it's your, player, fault he became what he became. He cryed for help in the laboratory at the very beginning of the game. He cryed for help real badly. And when you do encounter him near the end of the story you're afraid of him. Surely. But at the same time you do sympathise him. You have a feeling of pity. He's not a blank monster. He's tortured to the point of becoming a monster.

Not to talk about the familiarity of his obsession. I suppose you've said everything that might be said about the familiarity of his obsession.

I feel really bad for the groom.


But the groom is a very gay homosexual <3

It's not that the Groom is gay, but that there are just no women at the facility, which to me an interesting little, subtle twist to the story. There were obviously women there at one point; there is a female ward you explore through after all. So where did they all go?

The Groom had to make do with what he could and in his mind he convinced himself the other men were women who just needed... "Reshaping".

Well, in the past. Mount massive asylum ussed to have females. But i forgot why they just had males instead.

[Red]

I don't know what was wrong with Daylight.
Maybe it is because I expected too much from it.
Too many jumpscares, weak plot, cheap scares, too easy puzzles.
Only strong thing was UE4, and even that wasn't used in its full potential:
Blurry textured, lower poly textures etc. Lighting though was true eye candy.

[AGP]

I honestly haven't seen much of Daylight, though all the Let's Players I'm subscribed to seem to be playing it (and I've subbed to loads of LPers).

From what I saw, it looked okay, though extremely repetitive and I wasn't quite sure what the playable character's goals were.

The maze idea was very intriguing though.

[Alardem]

I agree totally.

Spoiler below!

I think one of the reasons why Groom is such a memorable character is that it's your, player, fault he became what he became. He cryed for help in the laboratory at the very beginning of the game. He cryed for help real badly. And when you do encounter him near the end of the story you're afraid of him. Surely. But at the same time you do sympathise him. You have a feeling of pity. He's not a blank monster. He's tortured to the point of becoming a monster.

Not to talk about the familiarity of his obsession. I suppose you've said everything that might be said about the familiarity of his obsession.

I feel really bad for the groom.


But the groom is a very gay homosexual <3

It's not that the Groom is gay, but that there are just no women at the facility, which to me an interesting little, subtle twist to the story. There were obviously women there at one point; there is a female ward you explore through after all. So where did they all go?

The Groom had to make do with what he could and in his mind he convinced himself the other men were women who just needed... "Reshaping".

Well, in the past. Mount massive asylum ussed to have females. But i forgot why they just had males instead.

It's because

Spoiler below!

the secret ghost-experiment was fixated on giving the female patients "terminal phantom pregnancies" i.e. killing women while impregnating them. The DLC seems to hint that the female patients were moved to a separate facility.

The Silent Hill series is old and boring, partly because its protagonists have almost consistently been young white men capable of beating monsters up. The one anomaly, Heather, comes from a game over 10 years old.

I'd love to see more horror games focused on the perspective of a child. The second season of the Walking Dead game is interesting for that reason, although it's much more of a drama than a pure horror title.