Amnesia killed the horror genre

[Hunter of Shadows]

That's because, imho, most of the market thinks horror = blood and sudden spooks. And not psychologically created tension and immersion. No one but Amnesia's team seems to have "gotten" that it's entirely about the 2nd. Amnesia makes you afraid when absolutely nothing is around threatening you... constantly.

Well yes, but I find it's less of that, and that the developers have a less refined understanding of what horror really is, and end up bypassing fear and terror completely, Dead Space for example, is definitely and utterly horrifying, but it has no 'fear factor' at all. I have never had any horror game evoke the flight or fight response.

Amnesia hasn't killed the horror genre, it has moved beyond it, it has taken horror genre, being a relatively new kid on the block so to speak, with horror games and shown us what true horror really is.

Other horror games are what I'd equate to children's toys, not that they're toys you'd ever give to actual children god forbid, but in the sense that they give us a feel of what horror is, but not the full scope of what horror is.

Amnesia gives us a much better feel of what real horror is, it doesn't just horrify and repulse, it terrifies, that is as Stephen King describe, to be the finest of all the emotions when it comes to the horror genre, other horror games only demonstrate how to horrify and repulse(and sometimes they don't even accomplish that).

Amnesia shows us that something we know isn't real, and is just a game, can terrify you. Except for some boring people I know who apparently aren't scared by ANYTHING, though personally I feel this is more due to a little bit of insanity then anything else...

I'm probably sounding extremely condescending and patronizing, and with a helping of arrogance as well, while being dead wrong, but a lot of what you're seeing here is part of what I've done a lot of thinking into. I started playing Amnesia, when I heard that it was the scariest thing ever made, because I've been playing and reading horror trying to understand what part of our psyche enjoys it so much, and to understand the fear response a little bit better.

And until I encountered Amnesia, I had frequently been disappointed, horror games managed to startle me yes, and they are actually often TERRIFYING...if you imagine yourself in that person's shoes, and that can take a bit of effort, not so with Amnesia. Amnesia manages to immerse yourself into Daniel's shoes quite well, and often you sit there and go "Fuck Daniel's sanity, what about MINE!?"

You can relate to him, he's an ordinary guy, who's managed to get involved with some unpleasant stuff, if you think about it, what's so horrifying for me with Daniel's story, is that it's possible to relate it to real life stuff, where someone could feel pressured to do things that are ethically questionable, if not downright ethically wrong.

Yet despite the utter failure of developers in most other games to create a 'true' horror experience, Frictional has come through, in a shining(or not so shining example depending on your preference) example of what true horror is.

Bravo Frictional, bravo.

[evertuy]

Anyone feel the creepiness and somewhat scary parts in Stalker SOC or COP? The atmosphere, I think, was better in Amnesia because of the setting and how it actually happened.

I might be totally off here, but I got the same vibe from half life 2 as I did from the stalker games and amnesia. Perhaps one of the key things in maintaining atmosphere is deliberately-made environments? As much as many of us liked Dead Space, a bug chunk of it was copy/pasteable ship interiors, while I remember a valve interview from years ago saying that they went out of their way to keep each piece of the environment unique and memorable. Amnesia does this too, I think, since I can recall most of the ingame map from memory (70%+) without having played the game in weeks.

Half-Life in general had me immersed ever since that memorable tram ride up until White Forest, I was shocked when Alyx was stabbed, and relieved when the Vort helped her. I have never been so interested and afraid of a video game character than the G-Man. His angry side shows when the Vorts stop him from you.

[SkeleDragon]

Amnesia definitely is terrifying I couldn't even complete the demo....
anyways The Suffering was creepy as well and dealt with psycho horror as well but wasn't as good but I do believe it had a better story than amnesia and even though it's technically an action-survival-horror-shooter game the atmosphere gave me the same vibe as amnesia the tension and feeling somethings going to happen though Amnesia did it better and so did Penumbra which I'm currently playing but I bet if I were to go back and play/watch things that used to scare me post-Penumbra/Amnesia I probably would be like "I can't believe I found this scary"

[xtron]

wtf?. I'm now more scared for everything than I were before I plaied Amnesia. The dogs in Penumbra Overture is scarier than ever O_O

[LucaP1000]

Hunter of Shadows, about the thing you said about those "fearless" people, don't listen to them. They're just a bunch of stupid little kids that think people will believe their bullsh**s.

[Hunter of Shadows]

Incidentally I read through the rest of this thread, and I think the bitch fight between Mexxi, kallip and the one other guy who kept saying dead space was the scariest thing ever killed a few of my brain cells

[Tanshaydar]

Incidentally I read through the rest of this thread, and I think the bitch fight between Mexxi, kallip and the one other guy who kept saying dead space was the scariest thing ever killed a few of my brain cells

You would lose half of your brain when you hear people saying "Left 4 Dead is some scary sh*t"

[Hunter of Shadows]

Incidentally I read through the rest of this thread, and I think the bitch fight between Mexxi, kallip and the one other guy who kept saying dead space was the scariest thing ever killed a few of my brain cells

You would lose half of your brain when you hear people saying "Left 4 Dead is some scary sh*t"

Sounds about right, but I wouldn't debate the point or freak out about it

[hollowleviathan]

I begrudgingly accept the responsibility to freak out about it should the need arise.

[smapho123]

BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC:

I'm playing Penumbra right now, but aside from that I haven't really played/read/watched anything scary after playing Amnesia. But I still get scared by really retarded things in Penumbra, so I'm probably still going to get scared by other things. Amnesia hasn't ruined the horror genre for me personally, but it might have for others. Just like some games are scary for some people while other people find those games laughable.