by Roody_Yogurt » Fri Oct 26, 2012 2:11 pm
If Jonsey hadn't mentioned it already, I would have said Clock Tower, also. For me, there was a fantastic time spent dying repeatedly in the game (with only some success escaping by my own evasive maneuverings). Then I actually looked at the manual and saw that there was a button on the controller for escape moves, which made me die much less and, therefore, made the game much less scary.
I think scariness is somewhat related to a game's ability to disturb. In that category, I think the crappy 90s FMV game Harvester is a contender. The game's central conceit is that you are mysteriously in this ultra-creepy town, and it does much to push your ok-this-is-f'd-up buttons. In the end, it becomes one of those pieces where you don't know if the minds behind it are brilliantly self-aware or if it's just lowest-common-denominator shock value. Given the town's firehouse where the bigger shocker is that the firemen are all flamingly gay, it's almost definitely the second thing, but there's still enough genuine-wtf stuff in there that part of me wants to think it's the first thing.
I don't think of the entirety of Half-Life as horrific, but I think everybody remembers that early scene with the headcrabbed-guy sitting on the chair in the strobe-lighted room. Along those lines, Ravenhurst in part 2 was greatly scary the first time through. Plus, um, the underground sections of Episode I. The scariness is kind of a one-time thing, though.
I agree, in a way, that this Slender game is about as good as it gets. Even Amnesia: the Dark Descent, which day[9] keeps comparing Slender to, is very boring. Maybe I just haven't gotten far enough into it yet, but the candle management is killing me.
The IF game Babel is probablly the closest thing we have to a good videogame recreation of The Thing (which is sad because of the existance of The Thing videogame), but a good horror story like that doesn't really make you fear for your own safety.
If Jonsey hadn't mentioned it already, I would have said Clock Tower, also. For me, there was a fantastic time spent dying repeatedly in the game (with only some success escaping by my own evasive maneuverings). Then I actually looked at the manual and saw that there was a button on the controller for escape moves, which made me die much less and, therefore, made the game much less scary.
I think scariness is somewhat related to a game's ability to disturb. In that category, I think the crappy 90s FMV game Harvester is a contender. The game's central conceit is that you are mysteriously in this ultra-creepy town, and it does much to push your ok-this-is-f'd-up buttons. In the end, it becomes one of those pieces where you don't know if the minds behind it are brilliantly self-aware or if it's just lowest-common-denominator shock value. Given the town's firehouse where the bigger shocker is that the firemen are all flamingly gay, it's almost definitely the second thing, but there's still enough genuine-wtf stuff in there that part of me wants to think it's the first thing.
I don't think of the entirety of Half-Life as horrific, but I think everybody remembers that early scene with the headcrabbed-guy sitting on the chair in the strobe-lighted room. Along those lines, Ravenhurst in part 2 was greatly scary the first time through. Plus, um, the underground sections of Episode I. The scariness is kind of a one-time thing, though.
I agree, in a way, that this Slender game is about as good as it gets. Even Amnesia: the Dark Descent, which day[9] keeps comparing Slender to, is very boring. Maybe I just haven't gotten far enough into it yet, but the candle management is killing me.
The IF game Babel is probablly the closest thing we have to a good videogame recreation of The Thing (which is sad because of the existance of The Thing videogame), but a good horror story like that doesn't really make you fear for your own safety.