mothman prophecys bored the living crap out of me i really liked the silent hill series.. the fog just added to the effect... but silent hill 1- those little kids in the school! OMG! heh. anyway- i agree, the resident evil series werent very scary. Clive barkers undying was really cool. having to walk through all of those hallways with the curtains being blown into your path so you couldnt see.. plus the flashing back and forth between ''visions'' was weird. plus, i dont know if anybody else noticed, but in one of the main rooms of the game, if you switched to your ''vision'' mode and looked at a huge painting on the wall it changed into this evil gory picture.. heh it was weird. anyway thats my rant and im sticking to it.
hmm. well, the whole "evil monsters and madmen" shtick/cliche/montage/whatever has been beaten to death, resurrected, and molested by a drunken priest.
I think the atrocities of human nature is much, much MUCH more horrifying than any of those slasher horror things.
like for instance the Columbine shootings and that recent one in Germany... holy sh*t.
and the holocaust, with those deathcamps... that''s... that''s... that''s really f*cked up. i mean imagine the suffering those people went through... the starving to death, the lies about getting de-loused/showered then getting gassed...
i heard stories about how in those gas chambers the people would climb up the wall to try to breathe through the vent. that, my friend, is horror. frantic, hopeless, cruel, malicious, evil horror.
i don''t want to toot my own horn or suck my own c*ck, but i think i managed to bring a little fear and horror back into gaming with my newest project, World War III: Hell on Earth.
I addressed several fears, ranging from the dread fear reaction to the escape/flight reactio, etc.
one especially creepy part of the game is a scripted sequence where your character is a janitor/maintainance guy on a mars base, and it starts off with you pushing a tray of refreshments into a little cafeteria thing which overlooks the children''s play area where several parents are talking together, discussing the recent nuclear explosions/tragedies on earth, tsk tsk''s and what a shame''s and all. there''s a bunch of little kids running around on the playground equipment, swings, etc. then, a pulse wave (alien radar/sonar wave) hits the base and disables a lot of the electronics in the base, including life support (02,pressure regulation, and temperature). sparks erupt from light fixtures, muffled screams come from all directions, and the parents scream in horror as the little children slump over dead or flop around on their backs, coughing and holding their throats. you can''t hear them, but you can see the expression in their movement (congrats on the f*ckin brilliant animations, Terry). then, your boss'' voice crackles over the intercom, ordering you to go fix the redundant circuit breakers and to grab a mask (oxygen). he gives directions to the maintainance room and instructions on how to fix it, but the parents are screaming "save my baby!" "do something!" etc, so you can''t hear what your boss is saying. anyways, the red emergency lights are on, a lot of the doors are stuck/broken (instead of a tutorial level, i made it so little messages are displayed at key parts of the level. like how to duck/crawl under stuck doors, how to use things liek maps and masks, a brief weapons overview for shooting out the glass of a pressurised room, jumping over objects like dead bodies, etc.) as the player walks through the halls (this is the apartments/living quarters area of the base) they can hear people banging on the doors and screaming for help, and in one area smoke is pouring out from under a slight opening about an inch high in a door, and a man''s fingers are reaching out from underneath. when the player tried to use the panel to open the door, the panel displays the FIRE HAZARD- CANNOT OVERRIDE message. the man isnt even screaming, more like hacking and moaning (a crack voice acting job by moi... whiskey and cigs do come in handy... heh). then when the player gets near the maintainance area, they pass a woman sitting under the emergency o2 mask panel holding a baby, crying. the mask is all ofgged up, but the situation is clear- the baby died, and the mother is holding it in her arms. probably blames herself for the babies death. this goes on until you get to the maintainance area and the level is complete.
the next one starts out as the player playing a female nurse, in a big transportation/luxury ship''s medical bay. they''re told to got get some clean sheets and stuff from the laundry area, which is where players learn the inventory system (quantity of things like how many towle and how many pillowcases, as opposed to how many clips of ammo and how many starter tabs for belt fed ammo, blah blah) well on their way out to the laundry room they pass a big window looking out into space where they see a smaller vessel dock in the loading area of the larger ship. looks like a routine supply load. after the player gets the stuff and is on their way back to the sick bay, a whole bunch of burn victims and radiation sickness-ridden patients are rushed in on stretchers and gourneys. these are the "survivors" from earth. one man is brought in covered in a sheet, which is fresh. the blood seeps through (no, not an animated texture, just clever use of the model. the bloodsoaked version of the sheet is modeled under the clean version and it simply rises up to simulate the effect.) after all this commmotion the floor is ridden with blood smeared footprints, wheel tracks and urine puddles. the texture changes while the player is inside the sick bay dropping off the supplies, and the floor afterwards is visible through a scripted cutscene.
ok, i really feel like an egotistical maniac right now, but i feel i have every right to. i''m just so confident that this project will blow everyone away... probably too confident but hey what the hell...
Hmm... If you have a PS2 try renting SilentHill 2. It''s probably the best horror game out there. Granted, it could use some changes here and there, but I think they did an excellent job. Give it a shot, it might help with some ideas.
The third person camera forces you to turn around to see what''s coming. And the excellent camera work and the accompanying sound gives it a movie-like feel.
Always remember the radio noise... always...
People are not inherently evil, but all of them are guillty of something...
Turned off all light in the room so the only light source was the monitor. With the sound hooked up to my stereo the setting was perfect!
Then I entered a marine mission... that motion tracker sure is intense, you run around expecting an alien around every corner but mostly they was not there - but when they actually was there I would shoot after them at random trying to hit it if is was attacking.... That is the most scary gameing experince I''ve ever had.
But unfortunatly I had to stop playing because it was too scary! (or me being to wimpy).
Methods would different for different games, but lets use an FPS for an example. Sudden noises in attacks work well. Don't have music at all, just maybe a quiet sound of footsteps, and maybe an echo to make you wonder whose steps those are. Breathing, heart beats, and other personal sounds work well. In contrast to these relatively quiet sounds, have the battle scenes be enormously loud. Gun shots could echo almost endlessly, and you don't hear your enemy until they're right on top of you. Have feints, but not too frequent, just enough to keep you on the edge. Have enemies move blurringly fast, and movement outside of battle being slower. This way time will seem to speed up in battle scenes.
Use lots of shadows, mirrors, and other optical illusions and tricks to deceive the player. You could even make multiple images of the same enemy, so you have to guess as to which one to attack. (This would be used when you're wounded - you have blurred double vision). Occassionaly add in a few suspicious sounds resembling that made of the enemies. Have uneven and unbalanced attack scenes. There could be a complete five minutes of frequent fighting, and long waits searching for the opponent. Have multiple open floors and hidden passages, so an opponent can jump you at any time. Have frequent holes in the floor, roof, and wall where an opponent could be waiting. You could give opponents special abilities, such as flying or the ability to walk through some walls. Have intricate scenery, such as paintings in a castle, and monster-filled vats in laboratories. Make your opponents be able to hide in both of these. Have random events such as lightning, and creaks in the floor. Maybe have a sudden chunk come out of the roof sounding like a gunshot to startle you.
Those are just some of the things you could do for a single type of game. Keyword: suspense.
quote:Original post by crouilla I think these are so scary because you don''t realize how close you are to death until you see something later. Oddly enough, I don''t think this has been used much in games (at all, that I can think of), and if done correctly could make things interesting.
--WARNING: The following is a spoiler for Deus Ex. Skip it if you want.
They tried that once in Deus Ex. Just at the end of the Paris level, Gunther Hermann (a partner who turns against you in the later phases of the game) runs up under the helicopter and shouts at you as the ''copter lifts off and flies away. You then encounter and ultimately kill him in the next level.
What made this effective: *Gunther has a deep-rooted disgust of you because you failed to save his tail one time when he was held hostage (I''m not sure how it turns out if you actually save him from the terrorists) *Once you discover that UNATCO is in fact a subagency of an international entity of conspiracy and desert them, Gunther remains loyal. You then have to kill Anna Navarre, another fellow agent, who apparently Gunther has some sort of attraction to, and this causes him to swear to hunt you down.
What made it ineffective: *You aren''t all that well associated with Gunther *You know that in order to complete the game, you''ll eventually have to face Gunther and destroy him. *You have no real fear of death because new life is as far away as the ''Load Game'' button.
So, while this added to the plot, it wasn''t terribly effective in creating fear. A lot of manipulating people is controlling what they know and when they know it. As it has been said several times, lack of information causes us to vividly fill in the missing details better than any game designer can.
Interesting what people find scary. I played a lot of those horror games, Aliens V. Predator, Silent Hill and, still, nothing scared me as much as Undying. I like the feeling of dread throughout the whole game. You never get a break from running for your life. Undying is a unique (and totally underrated!) game. The zombie/skeletons and howlers are a good example of what''s scary about that game. They look creepy, move in a terrifying way and make a horrifying shriek. You can hear the howlers coming and you know you''re in for it. It works best if you have surround sound on your computer and keep the room dark. Sound is the most important factor, doors squeaking, beasties growling as they''re coming towards you, the loud thump as you''re getting bludgeoned. It''s great!
