I really don't like horror games anymore

Hi everybody!  
 

Hi everybody!  
 

Did you try Silent Hill 2? Still some of the best atmosphere I've ever experienced, even with outdated graphics. It's got a very slow pace, though.

All hyperbolic thread titles SUCK! 
 
Seriously, if you want people to read your thread, don't be so childish in your subject line.

" Did you try Silent Hill 2? Still some of the best atmosphere I've ever experienced, even with outdated graphics. It's got a very slow pace, though. "

I, for one, welcome our new Frictional overlords.
 
Also, the only thing scary about fixed camera angles is the fact that anyone could possibly believe it's a good idea.
 
@mylifeforAiur:

" @thomasriis1987: You should definitely keep an eye out for Asylum. "

I always thought Silent Hill 3 was scarier than Silent Hill 2.  I may be alone in that opinion.  Still, if you want horror games, and you aren't afraid to go to older ones, pick up the fatal frame series.  Playing through the first one gave me the same feeling I hadn't had since the first Resident Evil- wishing that instead of continuing the story I could just turn and run the hell out of the mansion.

The most scared I've been in a game in a long time was Demon's Souls. Even the smallest enemies can easily kill you if you're not careful, and the consequences from death can be extremely high. The only way to approach a new area is to inch your way forward, shield held in front of you. Almost all of the levels were dark and oppressive. There is one enemy that is a huge ball of corpses that shoots lasers at you. When I came around the corner and saw that thing writhing in the room it scared the shit out of me. Also, I hate those fucking squid head wizard guys with the bells and the magic. What the fuck?

Let me use this opportunity to mention Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth again. It only gets weird near the end of the game where you get like a lightning gun or some shit.
 
Oh, and have you ever checked out Alone In The Dark? It's got plenty of running from monsters... and awkward camera angles to boot.
 
@BeachThunder said:

" Also, the only thing scary about fixed camera angles is the fact that anyone could possibly believe it's a good idea. "

" The most scared I've been in a game in a long time was Demon's Souls."

" Horror games started to suck once RE4 came out, which was a horrible game. "

" @samusaran253 said:

" Horror games started to suck once RE4 came out, which was a horrible game. "

Resident Evil 4 was amazing, it's just that anything that's tried to mimic anything about it has been awful. "

Are Resident Evil games less scarey or did you just get older? I was scared of the original RE on PSX but the REmake on GC didn't scare me all that much. Of course, I enjoyed REmake thoroughly regardless, but I was much older at the time and not as easily scared.
 
Edit: One other thing I'll throw out there is that RE needs new characters and a new story. It is hard to be scared when playing as Chris or Leon because those motherfuckers have already seen a ton of shit and you feel super empowered at that point. So in order to make it more scarey they need to put you in the shoes of someone who doesn't look like he has hit 70 home-runs for the San Francisco Giants.

Revelations looks like it's a return to form.

Games that are designed to become unwinnable don't interest me anymore.  If you need to resort to broken mechanics to push your thematic elements, you need to try again.
 
And making the player character weak is actually the worst thing you can do.  The more often I see the game over screen, the more often I'm redoing checkpoints and seeing the same dog jump through the same window, the less scared I am.  The ideal is to keep the player character alive but low on options, not dead or incapable of completing the game.
 

" Also, the only thing scary about fixed camera angles is the fact that anyone could possibly believe it's a good idea. "

" @BeachThunder said:

" Also, the only thing scary about fixed camera angles is the fact that anyone could possibly believe it's a good idea. "

They're great when used properly. Problem is, they practically never are. The only horror games I've played that have used them well are the Project Zero games. Silent Hill, Resident Evil and all the others would be better off with player-controlled camera angles. "

This thread topic seems pretty misguided and one-dimensional, but here's my .02. The better horror games were the ones that had their own identity and didn't borrow from what we've already played through. Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, and yes, Dead Space distinguished themselves in this regard. They didn't try to be Resident Evil, they weren't necessarily original, and some of them even had spots of slightly busted gameplay, but those other series just brought something different into the horror game genre and carved out their own respective places.

Am I the only one that wants a zombie game that isn't batshit insane like Dead Rising and is like the old RE games, but without a fixed camera, maybe FPS, that is actually scary? Zombies may be getting old at this point. But I still really want a Zombie game that is scary, and is not just ridiculous like Dead Rising, or fast paced action like Left 4 Dead.

I can't help but shake my head at almost every post in this thread. Survival Horror is dying.

It is easy to dislike horror games now, but I've began accounting it to the same reason I dislike professional wrestling; I grew up. When I was a kid, Silent Hill and Resident Evil were the kings of this genre, in my heart anyway. Silent Hill was at that time, the most terrifying game I had ever played and even today, I still get the creeps playing it, but I no longer lose sleep over it. Resident Evil though, is to this day my favorite game and while it never held any horror for me, it nailed the survival aspect. If you went through wasting everything in your path, you weren't making it to the guardhouse, so you had to think of ways to dodge zombies, or toss a GameShark in first. Now, if we skip forward to present times, there are a lot of games that can be classified under the horror genre, but very few to none of them would be scary.  Resident Evil as a franchise has broken my heart, Silent Hill is more or less dead to me. I'm not sure what happened, but horror is the saddest genre to look back at. What it was and what it has come to be, it seems like a somewhat logical progression, but a few things got skewed.

Try some Fatal Frame II or III. Till this day they are the only games to have made me scream at something DURING THE DAY. It wasn't even an in game scene or anything. I just happened to be looking through my camera lens and a random ghost type I had never seen before spawned right in front of the lens.
 
The Silent Hill series is also good. I played SH3, SH4, and SH: Shattered Memories and can vouch for the three, but SH4 was the weakest.

i agree, horror games aren't scary anymore. resident evil 4 tried to be scary but i didn't feel scared, i just felt pressured. there were times where i ran out of ammo so i panicked and felt pressured of what to do. there were also times where they made it easy to kill a boss. the two el egonte's were easy to kill. all you had to do was run shoot one run shoot, and then there was a zip line. shoot zip line shoot zip line.

" i agree, horror games aren't scary anymore. resident evil 4 tried to be scary but i didn't feel scared, i just felt pressured. there were times where i ran out of ammo so i panicked and felt pressured of what to do. there were also times where they made it easy to kill a boss. the two el egonte's were easy to kill. all you had to do was run shoot one run shoot, and then there was a zip line. shoot zip line shoot zip line. "

" @iam3green said:

" i agree, horror games aren't scary anymore. resident evil 4 tried to be scary but i didn't feel scared, i just felt pressured. there were times where i ran out of ammo so i panicked and felt pressured of what to do. there were also times where they made it easy to kill a boss. the two el egonte's were easy to kill. all you had to do was run shoot one run shoot, and then there was a zip line. shoot zip line shoot zip line. "

I'm sorry, not to to nitpick, but you spelling El Gigante like that makes me envision two giant Egons from Ghostbusters tearing shit up. "

Resident Evil and Dead Space are not Survival Horror games. Maybe people see them that way, and maybe to someone playing one of these for the first time with a low tolerance for gore and scares may think so, but the older of us here (i'd wager) would not see them this way.
 
For me at least RE and Dead Space are solid action games (well dead space is, i haven't played resident evil since Resident Evil 2- which was scary at the time but i hear and have seen in videos the franchise seems more action oriented now). Dead space has some horrifying ideas and a creepy atmosphere but nothing about the game is particularly scary. As a action game in space, though, it's pretty solid.
 
I think games like Amnesia, Penumbra, Silent Hill 2, the original F.E.A.R, Call of Cthulhu, the original Bio Shock, System Shock, Sanitarium (a highly under rated adventure game masterpiece), S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadow of chernobyl, Phantasmagoria, 7th Guest, and in a lot of ways the original Myst are good examples of scary games. In my opinion most of them hold up still (except maybe the FMV ones and some other older ones I didn't mention).
 
Frictional made this comment about how it seems to be more difficult to get people to buy scary games. I think this has a lot to do with why the mainstream scary games aren't all that scary. On top of that it probably helps to sell you're game if it's empowering, and most horror does not adapt well to that at all (as the best horror is helpless and alone as proven by Frictional). I do believe you can use empowerment and still tell a freaky story (F.E.A.R. being the highly debated one). I guess it's all in how the story is told, and the tone is set; although when it comes to empowerment the longer you are left to confront your fear the less likely you are to be afraid anymore.