Playing The Ship again makes me realize I am a great big scaredy-cat when it comes to certain types of gameplay and I wonder if I am alone.
Give me a gun and a hallway of aliens, zombies or dragons and I am just fine, but The Ship makes me terrified of going into cruise liner bathrooms least someone beat me to death with a pot or umbrella. I am not actually sure I can enjoy the game fully as I spend a lot of time finding high powered weaponry and then nervously blowing away anyone who gets in my personal space (which in The Ship is anywhere closer than 10m). I realized the other night that my favourite way to play is to sit in an armchair next to a security guard as this is not stressful. Walking around? Madness! A fur coat wearing, pool cue wielding maniac could be around any corner!
Don’t even get me started on games like Penumbra. I made it up to a wild dog and promptly never played again. Or how about Aliens vs Predator? I distinctly remember early in the Human campaign crawling trough some tunnel when a pipe drops that is shaped like a Alien’s head. I think I wet myself a little.
Sadly, I do love a good scary film or story. I guess there’s something about games with high personal threat and a low-power protagonist that just hits all the fight/flight centers in my brain.
Am I alone in this? Does anyone out there love game horror?
Silent Hills 2 & 3 & Undying gave me moments where I’m internally pleading with the game/designer “please don’t make me go down there.” and of course, in order to progress, you have to muster up and go there and get through it to the next “safe” location. The constant intense dread and release cycle actually gets physically draining…like playing a competetive rts match at times (different emotions involved, of course)…that I have to take a break and unwind.
Silent Hills 2 & 3 & Undying gave me moments where I’m internally pleading with the game/designer “please don’t make me go down there.” and of course, in order to progress, you have to muster up and go there and get through it to the next “safe” location. The constant intense dread and release cycle actually gets physically draining…like playing a competetive rts match at times (different emotions involved, of course)…that I have to take a break and unwind. I haven’t even touched Amnesia yet…kind of hesitant…
The only time I was ‘scared’ (as in, anxious of fright for my avatar’s prospect of dying) was in System Shock 1, where very good enemy spawn placement made enemies literally jump you from behind, ambush you around the corner and every slight electronic quirk sfx could throw you leaping off your chair in high tense.
The only other occurrence was in Star Wars: Republic Commando in the mission to investigate a republic stardestroyer that went MIA and there’s a bit of time where you ‘crawl’ through some of its interior in nigh zero visibility darkness and this goddamn mechanical droid that can nearly instakill jump you, literally out of no where and without any advance warning, followed by a couple more of its buddies, made me fritz the fuck out.
Otherwise…nope.
I do believe there’s been a thread discussing similar issue before.
I absolutely love horror games, movies and books within a particular group of themes. I find it very hard to watch more realistic and disturbing movies like Irreversible and Eden Lake. No horror game has bothered me anywhere near that much; maybe no game producer has yet approached those kinds of themes or at least handled them with the same level of gravitas - but I’m totally open to suggestions if anyone else knows any.
I played through System Shock 2 in 20 minute stretches, taking a break as the tension headaches became too much. Undying was too much for me and I stopped playing. I don’t bother buying “true” horror titles any more, though I enjoy some horror themes like FO:NV.
Oddly, I love horror movies and nothing is too much, no matter how violent or dark.
Movies don’t bother me but scary games freak me right the fuck out. FEAR, System Shock, Bioshock (but not its sequel oddly) are all games I can only take in small doses. I already know I wouldn’t like Dead Space.
Yeah, Doom 3 and System Shock had my heart litterally pounding in my chest after playing an hour, and I had to rest then… I also found myself leaning to the side to look around corners.
Alien vs. Predator 1 did this to me, in the Marines section. Despite being a guy running around with high-powered weaponry, they managed to capture the “what was that” feeling of the Aliens movies pretty well.
In full PK muds, all the time! Sometimes I’ll ignore PK because I’m too goddamn stressed out from the last time, possibly the only game type where this happens.
Remember, death loses you XP, gear, possibly QP, lots of other stuff. You can’t see hidden instagibbing stabbers in your room, let alone what’s in the adjacent rooms. You can’t even see what enemies are in the zone!
It’s very stressful, and very different from graphical PVP where you can, you know, generally see things.
I had one great experience where I chased an enemy south west from a friendly town with a couple of allies of my clan – not in the same gang, spread out all over – only to find that the enemy had an ambush planned. And I ran smack into four warriors as a fragile channeler. I fled and got out eventually, but for a solid twenty minutes I was chased all over several zones without any support really nearby, and in total fear for my gear.
You know how sometimes when you’re asleep and dreaming, if there’s a noise or something, it becomes a part of the dream? Like, for example, somebody knocks on your door, and your dream turns into a nightmare that a giant is chasing you around going TROMP TROMP TROMP, until you wake up and realize it’s just the door.
I keep 2 cats. When they’re hungry in the morning, they get upset and dash around on top of my bed trying to wake me up.
One time I played Dead Space late at night. You have no idea how TERRIFYING it is struggle awake in the morning from a nightmare that is heavily influenced by 1) Dead Space and 2) the sensation of small mammals savaging your lower body with claws. I had to stop playing Dead Space.
I loved Stalker right up til some escort mission where some doctor NPC needed to go from point A to point B, I had no choice in the matter, and he was running into gunfire like a retard.
Hate hate hate hate hated that mission. I didn’t mind shooting my way out of a military base with nothing more than a pistol, but something about escorting NPCs hits my rage button hard.
