It was okay

[Fitzcarraldo]

You contradict yourself in every paragraph. If it's all about business Amnesia wouldn't even have been made. The "majority" for this type of game is in fact "the very few." Vulnerability is not just about not having weapons, it's the (in)ability to limit harm, whether by failing to kill or by failing to hide. Honestly 100% ability to hide/cause the pathing to fail is the same as having a BFG. Elephant man will never stick its head in a room to look around, it just knocks down a door and waaaalks away.

I also never said make monsters "killable" with weapons and stuff. That's other people making it up based on what I actually said, which is that my instinct tells me I'd actually feel safer to take on the elephant man somehow with what's available, staying within the fiction. This is partly cus I'm a lot less scared than what is portrayed to be my behavior. A manbeast with 2 arms, 2 legs, and a head I can deal with, formless monsters like a pile of goo with eyes or a gigantic lump of tumors with eyes, fegitttaboutit. That was the point. I can't roleplay something I'm just not. I find Penumbra to be the better horror game - I can fight or I can hide, choice is mine.

And you lied about DCOTE not scaring you once, if you actually played the game that is. I can see you lied to make a point, lol but it is what it is, DCOTE is a lot more terrifying. At times I actually do feel similar to what is portrayed by the panic effects and the elevated heartbeat. Staring straight at something so hideous and inhuman, something that doesn't even have a definite shape, that's freaky.

Let me make myself more clear: for Frictional, who have a reputation and a solid fanbase, to act in a way that dismisses their reputation and solid fanbase, is not good business. They are not a major studio and as such can not hope to compete with a major studio at this point. Their niche is the only thing that gets their 5 man, no-budget crew recognition. Going against it sets them back to square one. That is a key fundament of niche marketing, and if you don't want to believe me on that, then take a course in specialized marketing, or in entertainment / arts marketing. When I speak of a majority, I mean amongst people who bought the game. That should have been obvious. I had no reason to be talking about people who haven't played the game, because those people obviously aren't going to be rendering a critique.

I'll admit to being mistaken on you saying the monsters should be killable. I misread. My fault.

I agree with you that the search activity for the monsters should be improved to make them a little more thorough in their hunt for you when they spawn in.

Now, as for DCotE - don't call me a liar. I did play the game, though when I first had to do the escape from the hotel, I got so annoyed by the lame trial and error component that I stopped playing for about two days before going back to finish it. Your assertion that I have to be lying if I'm not scared by what scares you is ludicrous. You don't know me, and you don't know what scares me.

I was scared by Amnesia, you weren't. Fine by me. You were scared by DCotE, I wasn't. Somehow, that's a problem for you. I don't know why that is. It's almost as if these things are subjective! Would it be fair for me to call you a liar for not being scared by Amnesia? Maybe I wasn't afraid of DCotE because I had read the stories the game was based on and sort of wasn't all that surprised by some of the enemies. I don't know. I liked the game overall, though it felt like a real grind sometimes. I liked the continuous forward progress of Amnesia more.

[ChrisSmith]

DCotE was amazing and did a fantastic job of creeping me out until... it gave me guns. Lots of guns. Eldritch horrors kind of stopped being scary when I could kill 2-3 Deep Ones in a single hail of bullets. The atmosphere was solid from start to finish, but the fear stopped about 1/3 into the game, which was a real shame.

[Finjy]

DCotE was amazing and did a fantastic job of creeping me out until... it gave me guns. Lots of guns. Eldritch horrors kind of stopped being scary when I could kill 2-3 Deep Ones in a single hail of bullets. The atmosphere was solid from start to finish, but the fear stopped about 1/3 into the game, which was a real shame.

I agree with this. I thought DCotE was excellent but in terms of scares (to me at least, since the whole 'opinions being subjective' thing is apparently hard enough to get that it's important to acknowledge) it doesn't hold a candle to Amnesia. In terms of humanoid monsters vs piles of tumor with eyes, I thought the shoggoth was more annoying than scary, except perhaps for the part I somewhat remember later where it was chasing you as you made your escape from the facility place...had it been less obviously scripted/predictable (if I walk up to this point, it will play an animation of swiping at me! etc), my reaction probably would have been more fearful.

In addition, the fishmen became literally comedic once you were able to fight back. I remember laughing with friends at how unutterably bad the AI was when it came to fighting them.

On the other hand, while the humanoid enemies from Amnesia were indeed easy to hide from, honestly I don't think it's fair to paint it as easy vs hard without considering other factors. For one, looking back I can see that I always had adequate forewarning to hide or react to the monsters in a way that kept me alive, and the fact that they so rarely actually saw and gave chase to me meant that I barely actually SAW them at all. Had they been harder to deal with to the point that I was dying constantly to them, the sense of mystery and terror they created to the end of the game would have been greatly diminished.

Otherwise in terms of the business model, if FG decides to incorporate combat into one of their games I think at this point we could trust them to incorporate it in such a way that the core experience was left intact; that's the important thing. FG gives us unique, quality games, and that's why I at least buy them. Keep that in mind!