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Comments
The thing about rules with zombies is that they're supposed to be set-dressing rather than the actual scares. They're more akin to the haunted mansion you meet the ghost in rather than the ghost itself. In most zombie scenarios the monster turns out to be all too human... or Albert Wesker.
I'm never going to argue zombies aren't over-exposed but I still see value in them as a vessel for horror.
Okay, simply put y'all are just going to HAVE TO accept that Night of The Living Dead is one of the greatest movies ever made.
And yet part of what makes that movie great is that the "zombies" are neither explained nor given clear rules of conduct. They simply are.
Rules are still stated. Desire for human flesh, slow-moving, afraid of fire, shot through the head kills them...
Sometimes though, I think the rule of the monster being fast, strong and hard to kill is enough of a means one can fall victim too. Something bizarre and fantastical like that can be cool, but real primal terror is just from something strong, faster and possibly smarter than you trying to hurt you.
Also, I'd like to point out that very few zombie fiction actually gives an origin story. The only successful ones I can think of are the overrated 28 Days Later and Re-Animator which is more a mad scientist movie than a zombie movie. In almost every zombie film, even the funny ones they simply are too.
Most zombie fiction origins boil down to A) Secret Military Experiment Gone Wrong or
Virus.
Oh right, I think the Red Dead Redemption DLC had an American Indian curse or something. There's also White Zombie but that doesn't qualify as a traditional zombie movie.
28 was a decent example of the principle that zombies are mostly just a background.
ParaNorman had a pretty unique take on the whole Zombie concept. It's that the Zombies are forced to walk the earth every year due to a witch's curse, and they still have intelligence, but are incapable of communicating to all except the main character, so they're confusedly shambling around trying to tell him the truth.
That's less to do with rules and more to do with traits, though. Disadvantages in speed, strength and intelligence are what protagonists of all narrative genres deal with, anyway.
Yeah, if a game being difficult made it scary, God Hand would be a masterpiece beyond Hitchcock.
I think difficulty can actually enhance the horror aspect.
Resident Evil in any difficulty that isn't professional is just hilarious run and gun adventures in Spain. But when you're playing pro and every single encounter is much more dangerous, then...yeah.
Not to say that difficulty works on it's own or anything, though. Definetly agreed with that.
Pro mode on RE4 prettymuch changes the game. Ganados off in the distance won't dawdle around if you're not close to them---they will RUSH you.
Also in Left 4 Dead 2 hordes change from a nuisance to a fast-moving hard-hitting wave of rotting flesh on higher difficulties. To say nothing of the Special infected...
Also, playing classic DooM with -fastmonsters on changes everything.
^^I suppose, but for contrast look at the original RE games or any given Silent Hill game. They're not particularly challenging because dying too much results in breaking the tension and getting frustrated.
Granted it can be taken too far like in Fatal Frame...
I think that's part of my issue with the gameplay side of Silent Hill, actually. Like, when I'm navigating the areas after a while, it feels just like tedium rather than actual tension.
One the biggest challenges when it comes to horror games is always this, I think. If the player succeeds too easily, then there's no tension, but if they die, then that tension is often replaced by frustration because the game has broken its spell.
Amnesia got around this pretty well by having little true death; if you were "killed", you actually ended up regaining consciousness in a different part of the castle. This provides a setback in terms of completing your objectives, but it doesn't break the narrative experience of gameplay. The same concept is in play in Reccetear, albeit moe capitalism rather than horror.
I think Demon's/Dark Souls has so far had the most effective combination of general atmospheric anxiety, gameplay and failure punishment. The premise of the games dictates that you're already undead, so death isn't really the end. That said, dying drains your resources and sets you back in distance from your objective, necessitating a problem-solving approach rather than a seeing-what-sticks approach. Those games are really effective at conveying the essential feeling of horror in a fantasy medieval setting, even if they don't have all the common trappings of horror films or other horror games.
Yeah, but I think keeping up a consistent tone and atmosphere is more important.
After playing F.E.A.R., I think I know enough to comment on it in relation to horror in general:
F.E.A.R. is not a survival horror game, but a plain horror game, as TotalBiscuit puts it, and I have to agree with that. You're not surviving against any horrific things, you're unraveling a rotten mystery while horrific things are foisted upon you. You go into the game with a simple mission: find Fettel and kill him. As you get deeper, though, you essentially uncover these dark secrets. Granted, some people may call it that because your main enemies are the Replicas-cloned supersoldiers with a decent grasp of tactics who seem human and, yet, not human at the same time. Not to mention other ATC-devised nasties: heavier Replicas who have these non-human-sounding vocalizations, invisible Replicas, man-sized robots, and floating drones.
The scares are essentially based around visions of things. Being in the hospital/facility, being in the dark void with the flames, seeing Jankowski and Fettel, and of course, seeing Alma walking about. It's a very tense game all around, and I think that's what makes the whole thing work.
Also, Bioshock, which does it pretty badly, methinks. (Not to say you aren't right, just that it can misfire)
...?
It didn't do that.
Sometimes it does. There are different deaths depending on how you die- occasionally, when you're killed by The Gatherers, you'll end up in a different room or hallway from before.
Oh, okay. They've never actually killed me.
BioShock's issue was that those respawns were a known factor. Not all deaths in Amnesia take you somewhere else, and when they do, you can have considerable trouble getting back to where you were. So you never elect a respawn point or anything.
Ultimately I think this is the bottom line for horror.
Pretty much every respawn in Amnesia links back to the way you died. It gets pretty predictable.
I never completed Amnesia, but nor did I really die much. But I remember that when I did get that respawn thing, it was pretty confusing and scary, which was pretty cool in and of itself.
Well, I think that may be a personal thing, as many people started finding it predictable after a while.
Then again, many of those people also held crates up to their heads and found that the monsters couldn't see them, so...
how do you die in Amnesia. ._.
granted it's been awhile since I played it last.
by getting killed by a monster
yeah but like
i dunno. I don't think I ever even came close to dying when I played Amnesia, but it's been a really long time so maybe I just don't remember that part.
Also I can't take the monsters seriously after the one mod that had them raving.
Water. Which is why I'll never ever actually beat that game.