/vr/ - Retro Games

Well, American made horro games havent ever been scary, so no shock there.

Project Zero and Forbidden Siren series are pretty fucking terrifying more than anything so I'm on the side of modern scares. Of old horror games, only Clock Tower ever really gave me chills.

What games are you thinking of?

It's because the lower-end technology gave the monsters a sort of "disgusting" feeling that made you sick to your stomach. It's one of the few situations where graphical flaws worked to the advantage of a game's ambiance.

I don't think horror is a genre that has suffered with time though. Dead Space is more of an action game, isn't it? Penumbra and especially Dark Corners of the Earth for example are very good.

Spot on, OP. Not only what >>638610 said, but the lower quality graphics also let your mind fill in the blanks, and the comparatively archaic camera angles and controls add some helplessness to the mix. I mean, the scenarios of SH Homecoming were quite well crafted, but you could dodge, run (and actually see here you were going) and do combos and shit, it's hard to be scared when you're really fucking proficient at combat. One other thing, first person/over the shoulder cameras don't really lend themselves to horror, in my opinion. The only exception being Siren Blood Curse, because the over-the-shoulder camera had a really terrible angle and you couldn't see shit coming like half the time.

>>638610
>Corners of the Earth
>Good

Dear god, no.

>>638660
It was great, right up to the point where you got the gun. Straight downhill slope right there.

>>638586

It's nothing to do with the graphics, it's because most of these games build atmosphere. Although I never found Parasite Eve scary.

I like it, but I laugh every time I see Eve's big huge clown hands.

>>638660

Agreed. Not sure why the game is so hyped. Must be the internet HP love affair. I'd go into it but >not /vr/

The abstractness of the design and presentation is what does it. See: Doom, doesn't seem scary now but the atmosphere can still really get under your skin, and that combined with the graphics being more abstract means you feel much more out of place, less comfortable with your surroundings, and thus more vulnerable.

Also, for horror in general, there's the weird phenomena of people finding underwater sections terrifying. Treasures of the Deep I'm looking at you, you goddamn paralysingly scary motherfucker.

>>638613

I think >>638610 pretty much explained it very well. It's not the creatures in games themselves that are scary, but it's because the flaws in movement and graphics in video games at the time gave it a much more inhuman look to them.

>>638586
No. Horror games never been scary ever. One of the worst thing they do that hurts is that they break immersion by making characters move like tanks or suck shit in general. It's hard to take a world seriously when you move like a gimp.
To really build terror you don't make the character fucking impossible to play well, you make it defeating when you can it play well.
If dead island didn't go the comedic grindhouse diablo route and instead concentrated on horror aspects, it could have potentially rode that line well enough to make a great horror game.

>>638751
>Horror games never been scary ever

>>638751
Tough guy detected

>>638751
>Horror games never been scary ever.
It always has to be that ONE fucking guy.

>>638792
Pussy guy detected

>>638924
Eh, I'd rather be a wuss if it means I can actually enjoy horror games.

>>638707

Right, but what games specifically

>>638952
I'd rather not be a wuss if it meant that every genre that ever existed was a horror game because I'm a gigantic fucking wuss.

>>638961
Parasite Eve, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Galerians, Clock Tower, and Alone in the Dark. You'll notice most of these are best known as PS1 titles, which was the best system for messy, freakish 3D.

>>639000
Dat straw man

I think controls had more to it then graphics leaving much to imagination. I always thought tank controls were a fair handicap. And the awkward camera angles, when not outright evil or broken, also added something.

>>639018
I know who makes a straw man out of someone being a tough guy.

>>638665
>>638683

I thought it was pretty good. A flawed game, but the ambition was there. If the game didn't have such a convoluted development cycle, it could've been golden.

the death sound makes me jump as much as the emergency alert system's tones do

>>639070
The opening sequence alone, including that chilling exchange with the fish-man that promptly gets shot through the window, is probably what cements the game as the best in the genre for me. Exploring a broken, battered-down house, then finding a pallid-looking man that gives you a spine-tingling welcome as if he were your long-lost kin... that was really how to set tone in a video game.

I can honestly say the only thing that scared the shit out of me as a kid was the nurses from the original Silent Hill. The newer nurses are hot though, I'd put the drill to them.

Not quite /vr/ but did anyone else think that Devil May Cry (1) was a genuinely creepy game?

I know tha tit was originally going to be Resident Evil 4, but the director Hideki Kamiya admitted to not liking horror games (he was also the director of RE2)

The way the enemies are introduced is very much like a horror game, and the underwater segments were creepy too. And that damn music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka7Giv8zV4A

>>638610
This effect is called the "uncanny valley", where something is close to looking human but not quite.

Playing the Mummy on the PS1 is still kinda unsettling.

The draw distance is short, and the zombies move in a jittery way

>>639156
Yeah, you're right

Compared to later games, DMC1 feels really unsettling to play.

I played it recently for the first time expecting something similar to 3 and 4, took me by surprise

>>638961

Well Silent Hill always creeped me out, as it should. The rather "thrown together" look of the mannequins and lying creatures in particular always jumped out at me quite often. The game The Suffering always had some eerie looking enemies as well, such as Slayers or the Suppressors. These probably aren't the BEST examples, but I always found their looks and weird traits to always freak me out a little bit.

>>639194
I couldn't get past the the fifth room, I threw the controller down and started crying. Horrific game.

>>639007
>Galerians
It was more shock value than actual horror

Well, though the low res makes everything creepier argument seems to be the one popular here I think it goes further than that.
Early survivor horror games were treading new grounds, which forced the developers into having to think hard how to get into the players head to efficiently scare him. Cinematic camera angles that the player couldn't change weren't just like that because of technical limitation, they were a strategic way of choosing what and what not to present to the player. An enemy you are aware of but can't see yet is much scarier than the one you can easily spot with the rotation of the analog stick. And speaking of enemies and fighting them, tank controls and wonky combat was also probably more a design choice than such due to limitations. In Silent Hill for instance, they really give you the sense that you're just playing as a regular Joe in an extraordinary situation. Also, having fighting be a chore helps the horror. You really don't want to fight most of the time because it's scary and annoying and you'd rather just run away. Making the killing of horrific creatures fun kills the horror element of it and makes the game into a power fantasy. For the player to be scared, you want him to feel vulnerable.

>>639330
Which makes the trend of "fixing" these things so annoying.
The Silent Hill series really don't need "better" combat and more control of the camera. Resident Evil wasn't really improved by replacing frail humans with action star like protagonists fighting Matrix rejects. It's hard to feel scared for Isaac Clarke in Dead Space because he looks more like a robot than a man fighting monsters that are the opposite of subtle with weapons that get the job done too well for it to be tense. And save at any time =/= horror.

>>638586
Atmosphere is one of the most important aspects of a game in general. Look at Diablo 1, lets admit it the gameplay can get pretty shitty at times when all you are doing is left clicking the whole time. However the atmosphere of that game almost makes you forget all that gameplay, that feeling as you journey through the closest thing to hell on earth. It is almost depressing really, but none the less we had our eyes on the screen and our hearts were thumping.
As for horror games specifically, horror in games come from the unknown. You don't know what the hell is there but you trode on anyways. You get paranoid and cautious as you keep looking over your shoulder to see if whatever the hell is chasing you is right behind you, but he isn't. You open doors praying that he won't be behind it. However games these days are not much about this anymore, we got this weird idea in our heads that horror games need scary monsters to be scary... However showing a monster so early, in hordes, and easy to kill has made them... less scary. The whole idea was fighting against an unknown and destructable enemy, but now horror games are coming closer to a new genre of action games... Sorry for the rambling

>>639390
*destuctable*
it is indestructible sorry, gotta fix it b4 the nazis come

>>638610
I don't really agree with this. In my eyes one of the reasons why modern horror games suck is lack of subtlety. Instead of building up tension they just decide to throw everything at you at once.

>>638586

I think one of the factors that go into this are tank controls. It feels like a nightmare when something just springs up, forcing you to retreat, but you can't due to wrestling with the controls in panic.

Same way you struggle trying to escape what's chasing you in a nightmare.

>>638751
I don't see why so many people moan and groan over the 'tank' controls, yes it takes a little while to get used to them but they aren't that bad. that said RE0 and REmake on the original Gamecube controller sucks because of the small d-pad, which is why I bought a Hori Classic controller.

>>638586
Yes.

Point in case - System Shock 2 enemies in the original >>scarier than>> System Shock 2 with HD graphics mod.

I dunno if I find them more horrifying, but I definitely find myself more anxious when playing them. One reason, is that years after beating RE/2/3 and Dino Crisis, I still have execution problems while playing them now. And while most people might complain that it's a shit control setup, to me, it really adds to the experience.

>>638751
Dark Corners of the Earth is scarier than Lovecraft's books themselves.

>>640767

This. I can't think of any game that ratchets up the dread quite like Dark Corners. It can make something as simple as a book falling over send your heart into your throat. That's skill.

How come jump-scares arne't scary? They are the sole underlying mechanic of scariness.

You can't scare a sane person with a video game. The only way is to hurt the character until the player starts expecting attacks at every corner. THEN you have tension.

People talk about how they don't value jumpscares in games and movies, but the whole tension thing in horror comes from being scared shitless by either gross or the unexpeted early on.

watching my dad play this as a kid was terrifying. Even to this day the game creeps me out

>>640771
What? You can have creepy atmosphere and tension without jump-scares.

>>640775
Let's see one example.

>>640771
>They are the sole underlying mechanic of scariness.
What gave you that idea? Going BOO! is startling, not scary. This also what differentiates a good jump scare from a bad one, I think. SUDDEN LOUD NOISE + something actually scary appearing on screen = scary / SUDDEN LOUD NOISE + "Oh look, it was just a cat!" = shit.

>>640771
Giving someone a fright is not scaring them.

>>640778
Waxworks.

>>640778
see
>>640774
no jump scares tho creepy as fuck atmosphere and tension

>>640771
>People talk about how they don't value jumpscares in games and movies, but the whole tension thing in horror comes from being scared shitless by either gross or the unexpeted early on.
The overwhelming majority of my favorite horror movies has little to no jump scares.

>>640771
I would say the lack of a jump-scare when you expect one is far far scarier than any jump-scare.

>>640786
Perhaps they aren't scary either.

>>640783
But it's Jumpscares: The Game.

The unexpected keeps killing you. Gross + sudden. Exactly as I described.

>>640789
>I would say the lack of a jump-scare when you expect one is far far scarier than any jump-scare.
It's all about the jumpscares, though.

>mortifying
They make you feel embarrassed?

>>640790
Either that, or your position doesn't reflect reality all that well. But decide for yourself. Here's a selection of my highest rated, not jump-scare-based horror movies from my IMDB profile:

The Exorcist
Poltergeist
Patrick
Two Evil Eyes
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
The Brood
Shelter
Triangle
Inside
Pontypool
BWP
The Fog
Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
The Others
It (the King adaptation)
It! (the sci fi classic)
Night of the Creeps
Dust Devil
The Curse of Frankenstein
Sauna
The Orphanage
The Fly
Eden Lake

>>640791
"Something unexpected appearing" is not the same as a jump scare. Otherwise literally any game with some sort of unexpected element or turn of events could be classified as jump scare horror. A jump scare is a scare that's supposed to knee-jerk a startling reaction out of the player/viewer, usually by having something suddenly appear on screen accompanied by a loud noise. The deaths in Waxworks could certainly be considered "sudden", but they're scary because of their gruesomeness and their torturous detail, not because they appeared quickly on screen.

>>640809
>The Exorcist
>not jump-scare-based
Uh, look.

Come the fuck on.

>>640835
Have you even seen the movie?

>>640835
There are a few jump scares in The Exorcist. Hell, it kind of invented them, but they weren't overused and it had a thick atmosphere built up from start to finish to compliment them.

Nothing wrong with jump scares if done right. They just have to be used sparingly to have any impact and constructed in a way that adds to the dread instead of just giving the audience/player release after a tense moment in order to be effective. Pic related, jump scares.

>>640835
It isn't. It has maybe three or four actual jumps, but the horror device that the movie *relies* on is the rather slow transformation of an innocent young girl into something grotesque and beyond normal comprehension. What's primarily scary is the situation of absolute helplessness that the mother and the daughter are in. The few shots of Regan projectile-vomiting unexpectedly (or whatever it is you're thinking of; I couldn't tell, because you didn't actually fucking explain yourself at all) are not what dominates the movie.

To be honest, though, if The Exorcist is your idea of a jump-scare-based movie, we may have such differing ideas of the concept to begin with that a discussion might very well be pointless.

>>640771
>http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/10/20/vlog-10-19-12-paranormal-activity-4-sinister/

Please watch the first one, because he explains what jumpscares are pretty good. Oh, and beware, there's a JS somewhere in the movie.

>>641010
The JS is in 1:15

>>641010
>Spoony
>Not the RLM episode on Parnormal Activity and Sinister
http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-sinister-and-paranormal-activity/

Polite sage because off topic as fuck.

>>641010
>Linking to a Spoony video for educational purposes
Thanks, but no.

Space ninja in Metal Gear Solid is wery scari

>>641024
It's sad that there are such misconceptions about the sage function that people have to specify that their usage of it is meant to be polite.

>>639789
That's very accurate, I think. I mean, the story, old-fashioned graphics all of this makes them scary too, but the controls emphasize the feel of hopelessness.

The scariest game that I ever played was none

>>638776
> Horror games
> Scary

Tell me one.

>>641159
>>639789

> People defending shit controls

No.

>>639125
agreed, Dark Corners of the Earth is one of the best horror games ever made

only MAJOR flaws are the gamebreaking bugs

>>638665
I strongly disagree with this popular opinion. Weapons were implemented very well. They were beliveable clunky and ammo was most of the time very limited. You were forced to utilize all weapons and ammo managment combined with great health system introduced heavy survival feel to the game.

I would however agree that game jumped the shark a bit with that lighting gun or whatever that thing was. It's still arguable though, because it fit to the theme/story of the game and it was only near the end.

Why is it that internet tough guys are attracted to these threads like moths to a light? It's hilarious. The funniest part is that they always repeat the same phrases like someone gives a shit.

>>641334
>RPGs
>Fun
hurr, ur all idots

>Fighting Games
>Realistic
u guise stupid

>Sonic
>Fast
He's just ah hedgecock

>>641514
If you said that fighting games are realistic and got laughed at, that was fully justified.

>>641519
I'm making fun of the survival horror tough guy syndrome. I don't honestly think these things.

>>641339
I'd never defend them, but I still agree with those two guys insofar as that those lousy controls really do contribute to the feeling of vulnerability that you don't have in a game with more polished controls.

I draw the line at Resident Evil, though. Anything *worse* than those controls (like the first Alone in the Dark, or Overblood, for example), and the feeling of vulnerability just changes into a feeling of irritation.

Wait, Parasite Eve is a horror game? It's not scary at all, I thought it was an RPG

>>641579
Horror is not a synonym of scary.

Also, if something belongs to the horror genre and it doesn't horrify you in any way, it doesn't make it less horror. The important part is that it has a main horror theme whether or not it works on you. Genre defining isn't about what you feel.

>>642020
So Resident Evil 6 is a horror game?

>>638586
Idk, condemned 2 is still my scariest play, so I'd have to disagree op

>>642020

What are the horror elements? Monsters? Burning bodies? Other games have that stuff too and they're not horror

>>642114
In the "other games" however, those things aren't really the focus or the main aesthetics that are meant to stand out.

>>640767
This.

I could never play past the second level.

It's all opinion; scariest game I've played is Doom 3. 2spooky4me.

>>639367
>Resident Evil wasn't really improved by replacing frail humans with action star like protagonists fighting Matrix rejects
But the thing is, most, if not all RE protagonists are all trained individual. Elite cops, secret service, a super spy, BSAA agents, all should be more capable than average civilians like Harry Mason. Still a frail human yes, but I feel the limiting aspect in old RE is kinda weird for those people. Even as rookie cop in RE2, Leon is surely trained in academy. Claire is civilian, but seems like he got some experience and fully prepared in RE2 and CV. It's not like Ashley and loli-Sherry are the main characters in all the game, y'know.

>>640786
>The overwhelming majority of my favorite horror movies has little to no jump scares.
When I was a kid I watched Friday the 13th for the lore and story. I found it intriguing, probably related to it more than felt frightened by it.

>>640767
>>640768
>>640768
Are you for real? That game is a mess. It doesn't know if it wants to be a stealth game or an FPS. And it fails at both. It's only mildly scary at the beginning, then it just turns into shit.

>>646559
>>646564
Hivemind

Are you guys being serious about Call of Cthulu? I'm sensing a lot of ironic hipster poser from these posts. It wasn't a scary game beyond the poorly implemented game mechanics and boring plot progression. I got more of a Shadow Over Innsmouth vibe from Resident Evil 4.

í̸͟'͏͘L͟L̷̢̡ ̴T̵ȩ̸A͟R̡ o̸U̸̢T ͡Y̡̕͞o̶͠u̷͏Ŕ͘ ͏̡s̕p͘͡i̷N̡ȩ̶͢

>>646581
Cant we all just get along?

>>646564
>I'm sensing a lot of ironic hipster poser from these posts.
AKA differing opinions.

>>638610
And how

>>638649
>the comparatively archaic camera angles and controls add some helplessness to the mix.

This is key.

>>646632
I still remember that scene so vividly. Back when RE was actually considered a 'horror' game.

>>646632

Scared the crap out of me when I was 9, I didn't even think games could be scary, I thought the ghosts houses in Super Mario World were the limit.

>>641431
I want to love Dark Corners of the Earth, I did finish it in about 2005. But every time I've tried to replay I get to the factory level and get bored.

Realm of the haunting is still a masterpiece.

>Dark Corners of the Earth
>retro

Fuck off with your boring game, this isn't the board for it.

>>643424
There's a fine line between being a trained individual and Arnie like commando superhero fighting anime villains.
That said, I love 4 and somewhat liked 5 in co-op. They just weren't Resident Evil, or rather the Capcom's Metroidvania's to Classicvanias in that they took it a bit too far from the original formula and started to focus on b-movie action instead of tension and horror.

>>646708
Not him and I agree with you that DCotE isn't something we should discuss here.
But it'd anything but boring, and has a really sad development history (needless to say, I'm never buying a Bethesda game because of it).

>>646704
It is indeed! It's also kind of a bit ahead of its time since it was being made at the same time as RE1

>>639156
You're right, feels much more creepier than the rest. And I'm not even talking about the later levels, when it gets darker. Those are nastier.
I played the shit out of dmc1. I usually do a yearly replay on summer.