Its probably a good idea to keep the player barely surviving, like in Serious Sam. This game isn''t scary, but theres a lot of tension.
I played RE on my friend''s playstation once. I found it hard to be scared when the game loads off the CD every 3 seconds. Maybe the PC version is better.

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Original post by DanTheKat
Narcus: What about those freakin dogs jumping out of the windows in RE1? I think the true scary thing in RE is running out of ammo or have no room for an important item, heh.

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Not having room for an important item is mostly annoying. The dogs jumping through the windows is indeed terrifying, but sadly most of the game isn''t that scary.

"Joooiin us !"

- System Shock 2

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Original post by LockePick
The reason why most movies do such a horrible job of suspense and surprise is because they make the sounds lead straight to the event. Fast paced, tense music, then it all goes quiet and you know something will jump out.

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They want you know something is going to jump out. It plays to your sense of anticipation and sets your nerves on end.

It''s not the "knowing something will jump out" that is bad, it''s "knowing when". If you know (almost to the second) when something will jump out, the only effect it has is to make you jump by reflex. Surprises can actually scare people.

amish1234, you sir are igonrent beyond many that i have seen. with your low attention span (3 second load between rooms is not that bad nor detracts from the game by much at all). i think too many ppl tried playing re as an action game and missed the actual game. playing a game wrong will lead to less enjoyment (ie running through an rpg as fast as possible, or expecting a grand story from an action game like serious sam).

seeing that you played the game once further shows you can dislike something without giving things a chance. i hate to say it, but if your dont like the genre, you wont find the games that good at all. they require some intellegence due to puzzle solving and mystery solving. you are expected to follow the story and try and solve the mystery as you play. naturally looking at strategy guids, or having yoru friend tell you about the game (especially if the one time you played was in the middle of the game) ruins the expierence. kinda like knowing the end to a mystery. while it may be enjoyable to see how the story unfolds, you lose the surprise of plot twits. though some master story tellers can use the advantage of letting the viewer know the part of the end to further cloud the mystery. unfortunatly not many can pull this off well.

I think it''s all about the sound and unpredictabiliy.

Silent hill does this very well. Silent Hill II for the PS2, even better. The game makes use of the backwards capatability PS1 chip for the music while it brutally abuses the 3d Audio of the PS2 on my surround system. The surprise element is almost entirely eleminated by the radio item that makes a static sound when enimies are approching, but the game still never fails to creep me out with the little things like a childs laughter from behind me head or the squish squash of the main characters feet on a muddy surface.

Even though you know there is an baddy coming your way you have no clue what to do when you are in a tight hallway and hear the scrapping of a zombie but no radio static. Is the enimy immune to the radio detection? I don''t know... but whatever it is half way though the game when I was secure enuogh with the sounds to walk haphazardly when I didn''t hear static was when I nearly peed my pants because something jumped out at me.

Trick the player/viewer into a false sense of security and you have set yourself up to scare the crap out of him or her.

Now abuse your power... Change things up on the player. Again Silent Hill pulled this off by making doorways to alternate environments which would just confuse the player to almost point of fustration right before jumping out of their seat.

The surpise that is often ruined by subtle little hints is a tool that can be used to trick those used to the common movie techniques

-SniperBoB-

Follow the lead of that haunted house movie with Liam Neeson... about insomniacs. Its not the creatures that you have to worry about, but the house.

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Original post by deClavier
Its not the creatures that you have to worry about, but the house.

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Or how about Rose Red?

I've been thinking about it - the game "fatal frame" helped a lot - and it seems that there is a fundamental rule to creating panic: create that situation in which the distance between what the player knows about the world and their fate is shorter than the path by which the player is able to modify the world so as to avoid those fates deemed terminal. The more sudden the realization of that lack of distance is, the more horrifying (the more likely the player will over-react in the attempt to exaggerate/compensate for that lack of distance); this necessitates a movement between situations in which this rule is in force and situations in which the distance between what the player knows about the world and their fate is longer than the path by which the player is able to modify the world so as to circumnavigate those fates deemed terminal.

I said all that without using the word "surprise".



[edited by - deClavier on May 21, 2002 4:39:47 AM]