Round Table: Halloween Special
By DeltaGamer Staff | October 31, 2011 | Editorials | No comments | Share
The fine folks here at DeltaGamer have been counting down the days until Halloween with our Week o’ Scares, and to top it off, we’ve gathered the troops for a Halloween round table discussion. Aside from those Elf Bowling games that get released every Christmas, Halloween is really the only holiday that’s associated with a specific type of game, and horror games are as popular now as they’ve ever been, thanks to games like Dead Space and Amnesia, but we’ve spent the week scaring ourselves silly with some classics too. We’ve decided to assemble like a group therapy session to discuss the state of horror games in general, and what it is about scary games that terrify us, but have us coming back for more.
Dustin: So, let’s go around the virtual room and list our favorite scary games. Also, are you guys fans of the horror genre in general?
Kyle: Though I’m not huge on the horror genre, I do have a few favorites. As I wrote on Monday, The Lurking Horror is an excellent text adventure that really develops a thick sense of atmosphere. As far as more modern fare, the original F.E.A.R. got my adolescent brain pretty creeped out at the time. I’ve found scary movies to be increasingly tame as I get older, but some of the classics can still get me pretty jumpy.
Catriona: I am a complete scaredy cat (pun intended), so while I don’t enjoy being terrified beyond all reason, I like the thrill of it all once in a while. A game which I drew a lot of fear, and somehow inspiration from, was Thief: Deadly Shadows, mainly because of the section where you are expected to investigate and steal from an old, abandoned orphanage which doubled as an insane asylum. The Cradle, as it was named, was a complete shock to behold, and left a lasting impression on me as one of the most skillfully crafted horror segments in an (what was for me) already rather scary game.
The Cradle...
Kyle: Ah, you’ve just reminded me I never finished the first Thief because those accursed spiders freaked me right out. I slammed Alt + F4 when those buggers came out, uninstalled, and never went back.
Harry: I’ve never really considered myself a fan of horror games. When I look for a game to get I’m not quizzing about how scary it is or how freaky the atmosphere’s going to be. I bought F.E.A.R. not really knowing much about it other than a little girl in red made appearances and that it would feature an awesome combat system allowing you to karate kick enemies in slow-mo, all while holding a gun. During the first level, however, everything became clear. This was a pretty damn scary game. I ended up finishing the game years after buying it, because I simply couldn’t handle it. Every time the HUD would begin to glitch up and I heard that high pitched sound I would freak out and normally save and then close the game. F.E.A.R. seemed to almost be a punishment because I was genuinely enjoying the combat but dreading the scary moments.
Miodrag: I’m a fan of the horror genre in many mediums. I actually have a small collection of trash horror movies and enjoy watching them. When it comes to games, I think the genre is perfect for an interactive medium, because the more you invest yourself, the easier it is to feel terror. My personal favorite horror game is Silent Hill 2, but the actual horror there is of a completely different nature and the point is more to create a macabre atmosphere rather than scare the crap out of you.
Dustin: My enjoyment of the horror genre is on a bit of a sliding scale. I’ve always been a fan of horror movies, and I would say I have a pretty high tolerance for scares and gore when it comes to watching a film. On the other end, those haunted house things they have at amusement parks scare the hell out of me. I remember as a kid being taken into one of those things, and when someone would pop out from around a corner wielding a chainsaw or whatever it was, whoever I was with would stand behind me, laughing, and slowly push me towards whatever it was. My enjoyment of horror games lies somewhere in between. I love the atmosphere of scary games, and when the game has a good story like Silent Hill 2, even better, but I get a similar feeling to being forced through a haunted house when I’m playing a lot of these games. Dead Space is a perfect example, and even when I know something is about to jump out at me, the fact that I have to walk into a room to initiate the necromorph bursting out of the vent usually cripples me emotionally.
Dustin: When we think of the all-time greatest horror games, it’s a pretty diverse list, with equally diverse types of scares. Is there any one thing that makes the perfect scary game?
Kyle: Playing through The Lurking Horror again for my writeup, I realized something: graphics and sound are secondary when trying to create a creepy mood for a horror game. They are effective tools, yes, but the key to successfully scaring the player is in weaving an unnerving, genuinely scary tale before any visuals or effects have been added at all. If you can’t creep me out with a description of the scene on paper, it’s not going to creep me out just because you add a bunch of bloom lighting and a violin score. Really, it goes back to Lovecraft: a fear of the unknown is stronger than a fear of any big, sharp-toothed monster.
Miodrag: I’m not sure if you need a genuinely scary tale to achieve the desired effects for a horror game. I think the actual atmosphere is much more important. I’m quite far into Amnesia, and while I did catch a good deal of the story, I am more unnerved at what I’ll see in the next room. The fact that I know where the monster’s origins lie doesn’t make me any less or more scared.
I agree that the overarching storyline as a whole doesn’t have to be some horror masterpiece, but each individual scene and situation that’s intended to scare should unnerve the player.Kyle
Kyle: I agree that the overarching storyline as a whole doesn’t have to be some horror masterpiece, but each individual scene and situation that’s intended to scare should unnerve the player. In other words, a monster jumping out of a closet? Don’t care. Some unknown creepy crawly thing hiding in the shadows, making little noise? NOPE NOPE NOPE. It’s not knowing the “origins” of the monster so much as that dread of staring at that closed door, wondering what lies beyond.
Catriona: I think that having a really good story helps to push things into an admirable kind of horror, which is not just based upon jumpy things and special effects. However, it does not only take a story to make something scary. For example, zombies are something which people find quite scary (though I hope this is not largely due to the theories of how the zombie apocalypse will occur) but often the story for zombie based horror is repetitive, but this doesn’t make people any less afraid of zombie games!
Miodrag: As far as the “perfect” horror game goes, I think you can’t invest in any one thing. For example, I didn’t find Dead Space 2 scary beyond the first hour because I was used to every room having a set of vents and most likely a horde of monsters. On the other hand, when playing Amnesia, there were times when I expected to be defiled by a monster as soon as I finished the last part of a puzzle, but it didn’t always happen. I think you need to put just as much breather periods as scary moments, as well as relying on “surprise scares” as much as subtle “well-refined” ones. It’s a very delicate balance, which when you don’t achieve, you’ll get the problem F.E.A.R. had, which was that the game felt at times like it forgot it was a horror game, so it rushed to scare you just so you’re reminded.
Kyle: Yeah, dynamics are very important, whether in games or movies or music. Going full-bore scares through an entire game fatigues the player, and ends up having the opposite of the intended effect.
Harry: Some would immediately say that anything that jumps at you would be great, but that’s not the case with me. You need to build it up before you attempt to scare a player. I thought that F.E.A.R. did this perfectly by having a build up right the beginning of the game where it would start off with a few tiles falling off the walls, followed by a slamming door, then a dead body and finally a bloodied Paxton Fettel coming out of nowhere and smacking your head with a hammer.
Miodrag: That’s the start of the game, though. My main problem was far later in. There were some extremely unnerving moments, like the infamous ladder one which scared the bejeezus out of me, but in general, I felt that it kept forgetting it was supposed to be scary, rather than pacing it properly. I completely forgot at moments that I was playing a horror game or that there was some unseen force I needed to be wary of.
Harry: I agree that the ladder part was indeed bloody scary, I believe I had goosebumps on the back of my neck from that part. What you need to remember is that F.E.A.R. is an FPS, with scary elements put in because of what the F.E.A.R. team are fighting. F.E.A.R. was never meant to compete against, say, Resident Evil or Silent Hill but rather other PC shooters. I’ve watched the “Making of” DVD that came with the game and from the looks of it Monolith really were focusing on the scary parts; I don’t believe they ever forgot about it.
Miodrag: Yea, I watched the DVD as well. I wasn’t doubting their intentions, only saying how the end-result felt on my end.
Kyle: I’d also like to offer that monster design is extremely important. Fluid skeletal animation, lots of claws and tentacles, and grotesque features go a long way, especially when the beasts are intent on eating you or clawing out your eyes. But demons with rocket launchers attached? Not so scary.
Monster design is probably the most subjective part of any horror game, though. I mean, after browsing the Internet with broadband the past 8 years, do you really think I’m scared of tentacles?Miodrag
Miodrag: Monster design is probably the most subjective part of any horror game, though. I mean, after browsing the Internet with broadband the past 8 years, do you really think I’m scared of tentacles? But I’d be more scared by a well done non-action zombie game, for example. Again, other people would be scared of spider monsters, but I wouldn’t.
Kyle: Yes, there’s some subjectivity, as is the case of course with all aspects of the horror genre. Speaking out of my own experience with games though, monsters that animate fluidly and in the realm of plausibility are far creepier than wooden foes with big guns. Honestly, enemies with projectiles rarely scare me at all; it’s the hungry ones you have to watch out for.
Dustin: It seems like over the past few years, franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill have shifted away from their survival horror roots, focusing more on just making another shooter or action game. For me, part of what makes a game scary is knowing that if something pops around the next corner, you’re powerless to stop it from killing you, something that a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent did incredibly well. Why do you think bigger franchises have gotten away from that style of horror?
Kyle: Well, it would be a big financial risk. I think, whether it’s true or not, that a lot of developers and publishers have the perception that empowering the gamer with big weapons and destructive abilities is what we all want. But then Valve comes along with a game like Portal, which on its surface controls like an FPS, but takes away combat and you’re left with your brains and the environment. And it worked brilliantly. If a big developer were to take a chance in the horror genre with that kind of approach, I think it could be huge.
Miodrag doesn't like this guy. Neither does she...
Miodrag: I like that you mentioned both Resident Evil and Silent Hill, because it does make sense for the former and not for the latter. Resident Evil originally had those godawful tank controls and the gameplay was pretty limited by technology back then. If you look at Resident Evil 1 and 4, it seems like a dramatic shift, but really, it was obvious with Resident Evil 3 that it was slowly going into a more action-oriented direction, which makes sense because you are, with the exception of Claire, playing as characters who have quite a lot of combat experience because that’s what their job entails. On the other hand, Silent Hill’s combat should have stayed awkward in my opinion, because you play as a writer, store clerk, teenager and… um, whatever the guy from The Room was? I never liked him. I’m gonna go into slight spoiler territory regarding Homecoming. At first I was worried that the main character was an ex-war veteran, but it made sense to improve combat in that case. Then the twist happens to be that half the backstory was a lie and he was your run of the mill average Joe, so I was left wondering how he knew how to handle all those damn weapons properly.
Kyle: Counter-example: Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist and he could kill you in his sleep.
Dustin: I’m alright with the idea of Joe Everyman taking on an army of soldiers, but I would fully expect Gordon Freeman to last five seconds in Silent Hill before crawling into the fetal position and weeping like a baby.
Miodrag: Is debating Gordon Freeman fair game? Do we consider Half-Life horror? I think the “character” of Freeman got pulled off much better, because… Well, because it felt like his learning to handle all those weapons and alien firearms was part of the story. I don’t know how relevant it is whether James Sunderland can handle an assault rifle, because that’s not the point of the game or the story. (Of course, there are all sorts of theories as to why everyone in Silent Hill finds the “perfect” weapon for themselves, but that’d be a roundtable of its own. And there’s a Wiki for that anyway.)
Dustin: My issue isn’t so much that the people in Silent Hill have access to weapons, but they’ve just designed the newer games in a way where you never feel like you’re in any danger. Compare, if you will, seeing Pyramid Head for the first time in Silent Hill 2 with the first boss in Silent Hill: Homecoming, which basically has you strafing around a giant plant man, shooting at explosive bulbs. You wouldn’t even know the two games are related, and that has nothing to do with the types of weapons you find scattered on the ground.
I do see Kyle’s point that developers want to try to tap into whatever is popular at the time, but surely they’re aware of the legions of fans who are begging for Silent Hill to return to its roots. Not every game needs to be an Uncharted clone, because if people want to play a third person shooter with lots of neat guns, that’s exactly which game they’re going to go play, instead of a Silent Hill game.
Miodrag: It’s a bit awkard to compare Silent Hill 2 boss battles and Silent Hill: Homecoming ones, because Silent Hill 2 was, well, not so strong in that regard. The first battle with Pyramid Head felt like you were just cowering and hoping he goes along his merry way. You weren’t really in a fight.
Dustin: The boss battles in Silent Hill 2 may have been lacking from a gameplay sense, but looking at Pyramid Head, isn’t cowering in a corner exactly what you would expect to do, rather than cartwheeling around a room taking pot shots at his giant helmet?
miodrag: Well, I did fight a gigantic worm in a mall with a hunting rifle in the original Silent Hill. Felt a lot like I was cartwheeling around the room. I think it’s more a thing of Pyramid Head not being a boss like, say, Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 was. He’s more like a plot device. He never even falls over. He just… leaves. You can’t hope to stop him. But games like Silent Hill 1 and 3 did have proper battles, so I wouldn’t fault Homecoming in regards to that. I would fault it for a ton of other things, like me generally finding it to have copied Silent Hill 2’s twist, but I might save that for a “History of” article.
It’s difficult to recreate something like that in a series like Silent Hill without it feeling like a rehashing of Pyramid Head, but maybe that feeling of being pursued by something so horrible and unstoppable is what’s missing.Dustin
Dustin: I think you touched on something there that’s been sorely missing in horror games. You’re absolutely right that Pyramid Head was more of a plot device than a boss, as was Nemesis, same goes for that creepy guy with the scissors in Clock Tower, and in movies, that’s exactly what makes people like Michael Myers so effective. It’s difficult to recreate something like that in a series like Silent Hill without it feeling like a rehashing of Pyramid Head, but maybe that feeling of being pursued by something so horrible and unstoppable is what’s missing.
Catriona: All I’ll add to this, is that it seems to me as though it’s relatively straight-forward to make a new game a true horror in regards to both frights and a compelling story, but as demand grows for more of that series it is understandable that some games appear to have gotten lost in a different genre altogether. Once there are about 7 games in a series, not including games which were from that series but not numbered just to make people think there weren’t as many, it would be quite difficult to recapture the great essence of the first few games without being ‘samey’, and trying to change the whole feel of the game is very risky. So perhaps developers are opting out of complete failure by bashing out another shooter/action game, purely as they think it to be the safest option?
Dustin: As everyone is probably aware, Rise of Nightmares was recently released for the Xbox 360, which uses the Kinect software to create a first-person survival horror game where you’re physically fighting off waves of monsters using your own movements. The game definitely had its problems, but is motion control possibly the future for horror games, because of how it immerses you in the experience?
Kyle: I think the jury’s still out on this one. It’s really all in how it’s implemented. I played a bit of Cursed Mountain on the Wii, a horror game that integrates some motion control elements, and it honestly did nothing for me, whether due to poor execution or poor conception I can’t say. The game itself was decent enough for the scares, but in the end, motion control is just a tool, and there are far more important design elements than the interface. When we get virtual reality, then we can talk.
Manhunt. Scary or simply gruesome?
Catriona: Oh my goodness, Kyle. You just reminded me about the badness of horrors on the Wii. I played Manhunt 2 on the Wii (for a short time, just because I got so freaked out). The way in which the controllers were used was horrible, I felt a man’s pulse slow as I strangled him. That was too realistic for me. I can, however, play arcade games where you use a fake sword to slice through monsters, because swords are fun!
Kyle:You did what? You sick, sick woman!
Catriona: The game made me! This is probably a whole other kettle of fish though, debate-wise. We don’t want to bring up that whole Manhunt fiasco from the press many moons ago, do we?
Miodrag: Wait, Manhunt was supposed to be scary? I though it was only supposed to be… err… gory? Well, I could say the same for a bunch of other games as well, but still. As far as motion controls go, it makes sense that you would want to increase immersion in a horror game, and in theory, motion controls should help you with that, but we’d need motion controls to work properly in the first place. I think a first-person view does a much better job than motion controls in that regard.
Catriona: I am quite wary of the ‘new technology’, so I like to wait a little while before indulging in it myself. I would consider a fast-paced game, as horrors usually are, to be something which would have a significant risk of losing out in their main goal of truly scaring people because of issues such as, for the Kinect, standing out of range, or any kind of laggy movements.
Harry: I don’t think so. I believe that Rise of Nightmares was merely an experiment to see how a game like that would feel as opposed to telling the world “you need to make horror games on Kinect.”
Kyle: Looking at reviews, seems as if “Deca Sports Freedom” is already somewhat of a horror game on the Kinect…
Dustin: Zing!
Harry: Oh Kyle…
Dustin: I think horror games on the Kinect or with the Playstation Move have potential, but as with anything related to motion controls, that potential hasn’t been reached yet. It seems like the safest route to go when using motion controls is just to create an on-rails shooter, which really doesn’t immerse you in the game any more than a standard controller shooter, and that’s something that motion controls are always going to have to deal with. When Rise of Nightmares tried to create an entire body horror game, they couldn’t replicate the feeling of actually walking through the corridors of a haunted house, and their solution was one of the most broken aspects of the game. I think it’ll be a long time, maybe when we start dealing with virtual reality helmets or something, before we see a true successor to games using a controller, horror games or otherwise.
