• Horror Games - what makes one a good one?
    10 replies, posted
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWD2Z_HMVFM[/media] i ended up referring back to silent hill and dead space a lot only because i grew up with those games and not so much a lot of older ones, like clock tower.
Ok I know that this is totally nitpicking but everyone's been doing this for some reason since Red Letter Media did it: Stop making out with the mic when you introduce shit. Why are you taking away your popfilter and licking your mic while talking!? Stop! I know you understand sound design from the rest of the video, why are you intentionally making your video worse? It was novel the first 3 times I saw it, not after 27th time! Other than that I liked the video, good points and very comprehensive without dragging out too long.
here's a good video also talking about horror games [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxDROzvn5aw[/media]
Jump scares and loud sounds don't just make a horror game. Its all about suspense. The suspense is what amplifies horror. If there was just random jump scares now and again with no suspense at all, after the first initial scare, it would get boring and repetitive.
[QUOTE=TheJoey;50297347][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWD2Z_HMVFM[/media] i ended up referring back to silent hill and dead space a lot only because i grew up with those games and not so much a lot of older ones, like clock tower.[/QUOTE] I'm sorry, I can't watch your video because I'm DEAD sure the P.T oogley boogley is in it and I want to sleep tonight :cry: [editline]11th May 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=greeley;50298519]Jump scares and loud sounds don't just make a horror game. Its all about suspense. The suspense is what amplifies horror. If there was just random jump scares now and again with no suspense at all, after the first initial scare, it would get boring and repetitive.[/QUOTE] FEAR 2 did both things kind of right imo. The school halls and the boiler(?) room parts were rather unsettling both for atmosphere and for jump scares. You had everything being haunted to fuck, moving around on its own, in an almost pitch dark school hall or a dark boiler room set out like a maze, lit just enough so that you'd see and get spooked, mainly by your flashlight that kept flickering. You could see the still squirming bodies of Armacham soldiers around while the spectres of their souls attacked you, and Alma just casually showed up every now and then in front of you, displaying her horrible japanese horror movie style appearance. That one game lacked quantity of terrorizing parts, but it made up for it in quality, with the few parts it had, imo.
I wonder if he's talking about that one thread I made some days ago on an imageboard at 0:21 That was a cool thread. Vid's pretty spot on, to be honest.
are you going to make any more videos discussing stuff like this? i really enjoyed it [img]https://facepunch.com/fp/ratings/heart.png[/img]
As much as people regard P.T. being scary because of it's jump scares, personally I think what makes it a great game is how it drops you in, no hub, no indication of what to do, no sign of any potential real threat, but what's there in front of you just seems off. It's tension and the story that you piece together makes it the perfect horror game, the likes of which I'm happy to see replicated by games like Allison Road and all the other clones it's spawned. Whereas games like Outlast fail for me is that it feels cinematic, it all feels very theatrical and it draws you away from it, it relies on the same kind of horror most modern horror cinema flicks do like "what's that?!?!" kind of shocks. Whereas P.T kind of did this, but everything was coated in this really twisted and morbid obscurity. It's actually insane that a 40 minute teaser for a game that will never exist could be considered a landmark in horror games.
Videos really spot on, especially shit on letting the player take a break. My biggest gripe from Alien Isolation which is arguably the best horror from AAA in YEARS, is that it gets to a point where you have almost 0 downtime and really hurts the game. But god Silent Hills fucking sound design is just so good. They really did use a shitload of everyday sounds everyone should be familiar with. Most of the monster sounds are actually edited animal noises, so they always have a hint of being familiar but skewed and scary.
dANM you got me at the end
i feel like this video is very vague and misunderstanding most of the psychology behind horror, more of a 'my general unresearched feelings', like you hit the right points but can't explain the real reason they work or just use straight up bad examples of them. you got the silent hill sound design right but didn't at all accurately explain why it is that works and instead say stuff like 'its scary because theyre real life sounds! out of place! whoa!' it really doesnt to any of the horror design justice
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