Do you feel that horror games are too formulaic?

[unwittyoneliner]

Seeing the trailer for Outlast kind of disappointed me. It looked great visually, but the "scares" were too predictable for me. Plus, the character design of the creature was too generic for my liking. Seeing the trailer for Evil Within got me hyped up because of the unique and varied character design, but there was no gameplay footage, so I'm not going to get my hopes up too high for it. Amnesia seems to be the beacon of hope for the horror genre.

 

[Mudgee]

It's hard to create modern day horror that is still original and produces that 'scare' factor. They all generally follow a simple pattern

 

[brad]

Horror games really are hard to make well mostly the only game i found scary was Slender but only because of the music really it made the game eire cause not many people play like ps3 with headphones then it makes it less scary just going from sound.

 

[unwittyoneliner]

Horror games really are hard to make well mostly the only game i found scary was Slender but only because of the music really it made the game eire cause not many people play like ps3 with headphones then it makes it less scary just going from sound.

I agree that sound plays a significant factor in making a horror game more effective. That's not really something I had thought of, but most people who play on consoles don't use headphones. Most of the horror games I've played have been on PC, and while I was using headphones. This makes me interested in revisiting RE4, but on the PC this time.

 

[Soku47]

Hmm. Not really. There are still a few notebale horror/ survival games out there that the general gaming population dosen't really know about. A specific one, Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes to mind. That game is absolutely terrifying, because it leaves you practically defenseless, with your only choice being to hide from the game's monsters. This is way diffrent from today's mainstream games, who give you an arsenal of weapons and alot of genric ugly things to use them against.

 

[Jellyfish]

They are very similar but this doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's just like the sitcom that somehow repeats over and over but you watch it for the variation of the same elements.

 

[BlackSolaris]

Stop trying to make it an action game, stop putting stuff that screams at my face in a loud volume, don't make monsters too much like humans, but also don't make them too much like piles of goo, make something that gets into the uncanny valley. Make it so you don't have to fight the same thing twice and make it something that you would fear of facing because of death.

But the most important, setting. You don't want to use the same scare twice, and try to build everything and not just throw it at the player. Want a hint? Check out the mannequins scene from Condemned, you will never look at those dolls the same way again!

 

[pxyc]

I agree, a lot of horror games are just copying eachother to the point where they all seem the same. Every new release I see now is just a generic "spooky figures in the dark that jump out at you" it seems like. Maybe soon someone will make a great horror game. Maybe that's just me dreaming.

 

[corporatenoun]

I liked the way that Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem elicited fear from its players. There was a lot of outside-the-box thinking in that game, with the intent to really make you scared/insane. Beyond that though, it's hard to scare people with video games. Most of the tropes are played out. Amnesia does a good job with the lack of weapons that was previously mentioned, leaving you truly defenseless. Personally I find myself spooked whenever I turn around and find a creeper in Minecraft.

 

[Reptar_On_Ice]

Hmm. Not really. There are still a few notebale horror/ survival games out there that the general gaming population dosen't really know about. A specific one, Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes to mind. That game is absolutely terrifying, because it leaves you practically defenseless, with your only choice being to hide from the game's monsters. This is way diffrent from today's mainstream games, who give you an arsenal of weapons and alot of genric ugly things to use them against.

Except for the million other games where you're helpless and just have to hide.

Games can be creepy, sure, but as far as actual horror goes, very few games can pull it off. Amnesia was insanely predictable. Outlast was pretty predictable. Hell, even Slender is predictable. They all follow a really simple pattern and rely on the player to scare themselves, rather than the developers having to do it. Naturally, it doesn't work out, half the time.

 

[Scottf14]

I had better scares from the original Manhunt than I have had from most games that are actually survival horror games. I like it when the characters in those games have a sort of balance to them. They can be strong, fast, and have weapons. However, the monsters or hunters coming after the character needs to be able to do serious damage to the main character. You may be able to take on anything one-on-one, but if more than one or two of anything comes along you need to play it safe or expend precious ammunition or whatever you have. While Manhunt was not survival horror, and it was predictable despite its ever changing rogues gallery, it had a character who felt somewhat human at least. He could do extraordinary things one minute and be killed horribly the next. In most cases you had to be smart, clever, and murderous minded to survive.

Take that sort of concept and stick a player into a scenario with other-worldly creatures and you may be able to have something special.

 

[Esperahol]

I play horror, particularly survival horror, like it's my job so this topic is very interesting to me - that said things like Amnesia and Slender are worthless to me. They aren't scary, they are very predictable, and yet they are seen as the best of horror which saddens me. The thing is they are "popular" like Silent Hill and Resident Evil - if all you play are "popular" titles then of course you aren't going to be over-enthused with this field.

Siren is a horror game where some characters do get weapons, but generally all you have on your side is the ability to "see" where creatures are. It's an amazing game that is stupidly hard and I love it. Kuon is a game where you play as two different characters who sometimes run into each other over the course of a night, it has amazing usage of the rumble function in the controller and it's in some ways like an interactive horror film because of the great usages of camera angles and such. One scene that sticks with me is walking across the pavilion and as I'm stepping off it having a long hank of hair pull upward as pale white hands move away from the edge of the roof. Both of those games use what could be called zombies, but neither are boring.

Then again even popular games can be interesting, RE is action filled, but you can still be scared. Silent Hill has tried many different things across their games - having random events, letting you hide in the closet while watching Pyramid Head, Ghosts (walking or otherwise), the various "shifts" of the overworld, etc. Dead Space has lots of little psychological things - the way the lights are situated, the claustrophobic nature of many of the environments, the great usage of sound, random events based on triggers... and that's without the hallucinations, the broken people, and the generally more overt horror.

I know it seems like I wrote an essay, but my stance on this sort of thing has always been that within any small selection you're likely to become disaffected. If however you broaden your viewpoint you're more likely be better off.