[QUOTE="Gray_Wolf-13"][QUOTE="JudgementEden"][QUOTE="Gray_Wolf-13"]

Like my topic states, I've been looking through some of my PS2 games and realized that despite better graphics and what not that the "next generation" systems offer they haven't produced a horror game that I can say is "scary" or even "creepy" :(

This argument is based on the fact that the best horror games that I've ever played all came from the PS2. Top of the list would be the Fatal Frame series, in particular Fatal Frame 2. Fatal Frame was great not only in the fact that things happened to make you scream:o but the atmosphere combined with bone chilling sounds made it so that you would look over your back at the slightest noise and would rarely leave your door open while you played at night :shock:

But now look at the PS3, which I have owned for a little over a year now. They have come out with a few horror games (such as Jericho and Condemned 2) and not one has been able to deliver the same feeling. :( At best, these games have made you say "eww" instead of making you yell out in shock or make you shake despite the fact that its 90 degrees outside. (I live in Vegas :P) They seem to be aiming for the gamble that if they have enough gore in a game that you'll be satisfied. :roll: Well I work as an EMT so blood, guts, and brain fragments don't scare me, especially since I've had the pleasure of seeing and even handling these substances. What happened to the good old days where blood was an accessory to the fright and not the primary mechanism? :?

I just hope that they can bring something out that is at least half of what Fatal Frame and many other PS2 and even Gamecube (Resident Evil 4 among many others) titles were. Some of the games that I'm looking at and praying for are Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill: Home Coming, but I'm not holding my breath. :|

Gray Wolf

GUNpoint_

That's because every developer that has made a "horror" game so far tried to make it in First Person. I hate that so much, and its not scary. They need to tone down these damn first person games.

I don't think that's true. FEAR has the potential of being an incredible horror game with just one problem, they are focused more on the FPS of the game and not the horror. To me, any game has the potential to be a horror game, but you need to be willing to try and even out the formula.

What I mean is that you can consider FEAR to be 1 part horror and 3 parts FPS. Well if they made the equation a little more even (perhaps put a few extra points in horror) FEAR could be a good title, which is why Project Origin is one of the games that I am waiting for. If they've learned anything they will had kept the hardcore shooting but added some more juice to the horror aspect.

While I'm willing to say that FEAR was indeed a good FPS horror title there were also some things that I wished they would have fixed.

Atmosphere, sounds, graphics, and chills were present in FEAR (most noticeably for the FEAR expansion Extraction Point) but one of the things that made the game not a "perfect winner" in my book was the fact that supplies were in no short supply. At the start of every mission, without fail, I would have all my medkits, full armor, and full ammo for at least two of my guns. In my book they should have made your ammo much more limited. This would have increased your uneasiness simply for the fact that you'd have to weigh if you could afford to fight the next battle in one way or another.

Another thing that disappointed me was that though Alma would appear in both forms (little girl in the red dress and her older teenage form) she could cause you no harm. She could appear behind you, next to you, on top of you, and anywhere but the knowledge that she couldn't cause me any damage (with the exception of the end of the first game) made it a lot easier to handle those sudden moments. In FF2 the boss, a ghost girl by the name of Sai, was the reason why so many ghosts were in the village. She too had a scary aspect and had a knack for appear suddenly in odd places, just like Alma. The DIFFERENCE is that Sai not only could harm you, she could kill you. This made the times when she would appear absolutely horrifying because each time you would be thinking "is she going to try and kill me or is she just trying to scare me?" And if you think this enough you soon begin to see her everywhere, behind every creak on the floor, inside every shadow, behind every door.

If I gave the impression that I hated FEAR then I must apologize. I, in fact thought FEAR to be entertaining and about a 6 out of 10 in the frightening aspect, but I also wanted to point out that there was room for improvement (anyone who's played Perseus Mandate will agree to that...) :?

[QUOTE="Gray_Wolf-13"]

Like my topic states, I've been looking through some of my PS2 games and realized that despite better graphics and what not that the "next generation" systems offer they haven't produced a horror game that I can say is "scary" or even "creepy" :(

This argument is based on the fact that the best horror games that I've ever played all came from the PS2. Top of the list would be the Fatal Frame series, in particular Fatal Frame 2. Fatal Frame was great not only in the fact that things happened to make you scream:o but the atmosphere combined with bone chilling sounds made it so that you would look over your back at the slightest noise and would rarely leave your door open while you played at night :shock:

But now look at the PS3, which I have owned for a little over a year now. They have come out with a few horror games (such as Jericho and Condemned 2) and not one has been able to deliver the same feeling. :( At best, these games have made you say "eww" instead of making you yell out in shock or make you shake despite the fact that its 90 degrees outside. (I live in Vegas :P) They seem to be aiming for the gamble that if they have enough gore in a game that you'll be satisfied. :roll: Well I work as an EMT so blood, guts, and brain fragments don't scare me, especially since I've had the pleasure of seeing and even handling these substances. What happened to the good old days where blood was an accessory to the fright and not the primary mechanism? :?

I just hope that they can bring something out that is at least half of what Fatal Frame and many other PS2 and even Gamecube (Resident Evil 4 among many others) titles were. Some of the games that I'm looking at and praying for are Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill: Home Coming, but I'm not holding my breath. :|

Gray Wolf

JudgementEden

That's because every developer that has made a "horror" game so far tried to make it in First Person. I hate that so much, and its not scary. They need to tone down these damn first person games.

I don't think that's true. FEAR has the potential of being an incredible horror game with just one problem, they are focused more on the FPS of the game and not the horror. To me, any game has the potential to be a horror game, but you need to be willing to try and even out the formula.

What I mean is that you can consider FEAR to be 1 part horror and 3 parts FPS. Well if they made the equation a little more even (perhaps put a few extra points in horror) FEAR could be a good title, which is why Project Origin is one of the games that I am waiting for. If they've learned anything they will had kept the hardcore shooting but added some more juice to the horror aspect.

I know what you mean. I remember I couldn't play fatal frame at night with the lights off. Nowadays these games are light in scares.DanteSuikoden

And its not so much that. I agree that having things in the game that make you gasp in fright is important but it also isn't needed. I remember that ghosts flying through walls was just one thing about Fatal Frame that would freak me out. If anything the thing that pushed Fatal Frame and the Silent Hill series is how the environment combined with eerie sounds made you THINK that something was going to happen but nothing did. This, however, usually freaked you out more because you started to doubt your own senses. Then if you played the game at night, the only time to play a horror game in my opinion ;), you'd start to see freaky things everywhere but whenever you would pluck up the courage to investigate closer you'd find that it was only a tree or a sign post. The good horror games targeted the mind and not the stomach like these cheesy gore fest games that have been given the horror slogan.

That's truely what I think horror games are missing. F.E.A.R has been a nice attempt at this but the problem is that F.E.A.R focuses too much on the FPS portion on the game and not enough on the horror aspect. If they took a little more time to balance the two out I think F.E.A.R could be an excellent horror title, but I guess we'll have to wait until Project Origin to see if they've learned anything...:roll:

[QUOTE="Ray_Out"]

The horror genre will pick up once Resident Evil 5 is released.

The game is truly next generation material.

WR_Platinum

No doubt RE5 is gonna be hot, but since its a lot like RE4, horror will be on the side while there will be more action.

My point exactly...:(

The horror genre will pick up once Resident Evil 5 is released.

The game is truly next generation material.

Ray_Out

We can hope but with the current trend they are on I'm trying to not get myself prepared for another disappointment. Condemned 2 was supposed to be the hype of scary but it didn't even faze me.

Though, Resident Evil has been a pretty reliable series (there's some mixed reviews on RE 4 but I thought the parts where there WERE things to get freaked out over were good, especially those white things on the island).

Though it saddens me greatly to hear that Fatal Frame 4 is wii exclusive. Nothing against wii fans, i personally think the wii is a good system, but I don't think Nintendo or its system will do it justice...:(

I like F.E.A.R.

It's a second game that made me scared at 2 AM in the morning with headphones on back in PC days.

IF F.E.A.R. does one thing right, that would be the phenomenal sounds that creep the heck out of you.

Sokol4ever

Not only that but F.E.A.R also had a way of positioning things so that you would walk straight into a freaky part while your adrenalin was still pumping from your most recent gun battle.

I never thought that a game could take a little girl and make her scary. Then take a naked teenage chick and make her make the little girl look like nothing.

[QUOTE="henry4th"][QUOTE="kenshinhimura16"]

Its not that they are going downhill, its just that we are older, much more used to the techniques. Try watching an old scary movie and you will notice how the genre hasnt changed at all when compared to a new one (except for the fact that for some weird reason now chicks are the lead characters).

We grew, we got used to the techniques, and as you grow, horror changes into suspense, and whats left is for them to impress us, thus goryness comes into play. Most of the people is not used to it, so it shocks them (yeah right) and in most cases it works, thus, games that arent scary at all, get the title badge anyway.

In my opinion, the only thing that we get scared in this games is about dying, which is turned into suspense, since we know a bugger is going to jump at us sooner or later, so we are already expecting it. In the past, with Resident Evil, we were just introduced to this genre, and to make it better it was 3D which made it more real life like.

So now, developers try to go for our other senses, they try to scare us with dead bodies, and deformed enemies. They try to keep us on the edge of the seat with suspicious noises and similar techniques. Most games fail to actually employ them well, resulting in fiascos as Cold Fear or Resident Evil 4, the later one turning itself into an action game instead of a survival game as the past versions.

In the past years, I´ve seen only a handfull of this kind of game. Doom 3 on one side handled the atmosphere of being on the edge of the chair most of the time, Condemned 2 has a great sense of spookyness when in the interior levels, Siren New Translation demo shows that the genre can still be done, and works out great with current gen graphics. The best way to make them more scary is to limit the freedom we have in terms of movements (I dont mean making the gameplay worser). If you check the Siren demo, you will notice how it uses the old Resident Evil mechanics, which, though archaic, work fantastic in this genre. Another thing that made Resident Evil games spooky, or lets say kept you on guard was the lack of ammo. If you can kill enemies and miraculously find ammo, then you loose the sense of survivalism, you just know that you can shoot someone and get back even more bullets. That makes you be less worry about how you rationate the bullets. Who doesnt remember counting every single bullet left in the magazine and being worried about what was going to come next?

kenshinhimura16

To be honest, in films, I've never seen any American movies that's truly horrifying. they are shocking with gore, but not horrifying.

Maybe it's because I'm an Asian, I find Japanese horror films are truly teriffying. They don't completely rely on blood and gore, they rely on sound, atmosphere, and character emotions.

In the same way, American (to a large extent, Western) horror games are just like American films, not really horrifying. I'm looking at Siren on PS3 right now, hopefully it will be like a true horrifying Japanese film where it makes you fearful for days if not weeks.

I compeltely agree with you. Asian horror movies are much better. they resort to atmosphere rather than goryness, and it makes them more scary. I remember seing the Eye for the first time a couple of years ago, or the originals of the Ring and the one with Buffy lol and their asian originals (they were from Japan right) were much more scary than their american counterparts, were they focused to much on the "creatures" to name them in a way, rather than the idea that made the originals great flicks. The same happens with most games. Most rely of a distant scream or gory things poping out rather than creating a tense atmosphere, were you dont want to actually move afraid of whats to come

I agree with you fully. American made games seem to be more focused on the action, creatures, and the blood that comes from both of the previous mentioned attributes. Meanwhile, if you look at games that have come from areas outside of the states (Japan being my fav.) they put their focus more on the atmosphere and the ability to make you feel dread with each step you take rather than make you some unbelievable superhero battling zombies that you'd laugh at instead of scream at. One of the comments earlier said that RE1 was good because the limited ammo made you extremely nervous and, thus, you would have to resort to traps and knife battle. In my book THAT'S what survival horror is all about. You need to have atmosphere but you also need things to be realistic. A game that comes to mind would be RE4. You would find additional ammo from the villagers. Why would VILLAGERS who had aliens implanted in their head and who were attacking you with pitchforks and other close range weapons be carrying around boxes of magnum ammo? Its just stupid!

Although, I have checked out Siren and, like many of my fellow horror fans, am eagerly awaiting it. With some luck, and a lot of faith, we might get a true survival horror game at long last.

Well you know, I guess it comes in spurts. Take example the first few generations of games (atari, NES, etc.), horror games couldn't really be made during this time due to the graphics capabilities making it basically impossible. Now I'm not saying that there weren't any horror games on the NES, but were they really horrific?

I thought the genre exploded during the PS1 era with Silent Hills and Resident Evils. I hope that the horror genre comes back up.

VVatson

But I fear another genre explosion will never come. I agree with you on the point that horror titles were hard back in the day because of the lack of graphics but now a days they can make a game so realistic that you start to actually believe that you're in the game with your character. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are, in no way, lacking in graphics and yet their survival horror games are abysmal and an insult to those of us who appreciate good survival horror. Isn't the whole point of a game that has a "horror" genre tag to scare the crap out of you while you play it and not make it so you want to eat raw steak the same night you beat the game?

Though I am with you in hoping that this is just a phase, I fear that it may be some time before they change their tactics from bloody murder to spine chilling survival, but maybe its just me...

Though I agree that as we grow older we begin to adapt to the usual horror aspect that doesn't mean that they should just give it up. I take Kempo lessons and once of my instructors is a horror nut like I am. Well he kinda had the same going as I am now, he had lost all faith in finding a decent scary game, so I recommended the Fatal Frame series and got it for him. (note that he is about ten years older than I am) The next time I talked to him, this was about two weeks later, he told me that Fatal Frame had, and I quote, "restored his hope in gamemaking". He told me that while playing the second Fatal Frame he could only go for about 30 minutes a night and then after he finished playing he had to watch an hour and a half of cartoons just to calm him down enough so he could go to bed.

I don't think that horror games are becoming worse because we are growing used to them. More so, I think horror games have stopped being scary because they've given up.

Like my topic states, I've been looking through some of my PS2 games and realized that despite better graphics and what not that the "next generation" systems offer they haven't produced a horror game that I can say is "scary" or even "creepy" :(

This argument is based on the fact that the best horror games that I've ever played all came from the PS2. Top of the list would be the Fatal Frame series, in particular Fatal Frame 2. Fatal Frame was great not only in the fact that things happened to make you scream:o but the atmosphere combined with bone chilling sounds made it so that you would look over your back at the slightest noise and would rarely leave your door open while you played at night :shock:

But now look at the PS3, which I have owned for a little over a year now. They have come out with a few horror games (such as Jericho and Condemned 2) and not one has been able to deliver the same feeling. :( At best, these games have made you say "eww" instead of making you yell out in shock or make you shake despite the fact that its 90 degrees outside. (I live in Vegas :P) They seem to be aiming for the gamble that if they have enough gore in a game that you'll be satisfied. :roll: Well I work as an EMT so blood, guts, and brain fragments don't scare me, especially since I've had the pleasure of seeing and even handling these substances. What happened to the good old days where blood was an accessory to the fright and not the primary mechanism? :?

I just hope that they can bring something out that is at least half of what Fatal Frame and many other PS2 and even Gamecube (Resident Evil 4 among many others) titles were. Some of the games that I'm looking at and praying for are Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill: Home Coming, but I'm not holding my breath. :|

Gray Wolf