Do you feel desensitized to scary games?
Not really a horror game, but anyone here play Clive Barker's Jericho?
I had nightmares about that game when i was young, but, surprisingly I could read Clive Barker's books back then and not have any sense of fear, but going back and reading them again in 10th grade disturbed the s*** out of me. That guy was a demented genius of an author.
Also, playing as a marine in AVP 2000 evoked a similar but much less severe feeling.
Xenomorphs. Enough said.
"Game over man, game over!"
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MissAlgernon
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I wouldn't even say that I'm desensitized, because fiction has ever managed to scare me, not even in the most realistic video games. Even as a toddler I could watch scary things on TV (even age-inappropriate things, yes my parents didn't care) and I never remember being scared or traumatized in any way, as long as it was fictional. I find monsters and horror entertaining, not scary. I find zombies super funny
God, I can't even watch that. Everything but the scenery looks... wrong. That would give a kid nightmares. What year is this game even from?!
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I'm not desensitised at all. I don't know what the attraction is to horror games, but I do play them occasionally. Generally it takes me a long time to finish a horror game because I can only play them in shorter bursts compared to other games. Amnesia: The Dark Descent for example took me several months, though I only ever tended to play for less than an hour at a time. I haven't finished Alien: Isolation yet and I've had that for at least the same amount of time.
I am desensitized to any visual but music can still be too much for me, I have problems playing Silent Hill with volume turned up in a dark room. Plus there is one area in Silent Hill 2 where you could hear whispers and mumbling in the hotel. That freaked me out good, the only game off the top of my head that I would call scary is silent hill and its not the violence that makes it so its the music.
Its depressing and dark, here is an example but the in game music is far worse
Dead Space, Doom and the like are not scary at all.
blueblood
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Though I guess that's why something like the Freddy's games caught my attention. No rocket launchers in that. You cant run, you cant move, you cant fight; Freddy and his pals are simply too strong and it's made very clear that they have power beyond just what the simple animatronic bots, unposessed, could do. Screw up, and you are dead in an instant. And for the most part, the series doesnt drop the immersion aspect. You dont lose control to watch some cutscene really. The later games have their "minigames", but... those ended up being very different from normal "cutscenes" and were freaky in their own unique way (and again, control was not taken from you). Tension in the games is also created by the fact that the jumpscares are not arbitrary; they *only* happen as punishment for when you screw up. That's a very rare concept and one I find quite interesting.
Good horror games, to me, tend to have those qualities. There's another one recently that I think is interesting, with the bizarre name of "Emily Wants to Play". In that one, yes, you can run away, but that's all you can do, yet even then, sometimes that either wont do it, or will very specifically get you killed. As in the Freddy's games the various dolls that roam the house simply cant be fought off; you either follow specific rules for each in order to get them to go away, or you die. One of them is kinda like the Weeping Angels from Dr. Who, attacking you stupidly fast if you're not looking at her, and only vanishing if you keep her in your view long enough. Another one needs to be run away from, going away only if you get a certain distance from where he first appeared. Yet another specifically kills you, unavoidably, if you're moving when he turns and looks at you. It gets creative in how the various things work, and the story behind everything is found without ever once leaving any of that behind or losing control.
Though my favorite is Spooky's House of Jump Scares (which is, oddly, very low on actual jump scares). I dont want to spoil that one much, but... suffice it to say it isnt quite what it first appears to be when you see it. Spooky herself is downright adorable, and the game seems cutesy at first, until, well... there were more than a few moments in that game where you sort of go "OMG WTF NOPE NOPE NOPE" typically while running in the other direction. The further into it you go, the darker and more messed up it gets. At the same time it parodies a variety of other games. And again, you cant fight the monsters when they appear (with one very notable exception). It's not an action game, it's a "get the hell out of there!" sort of game.
None of those use much in the way of blood or gore either. Usually blood/gore in a game says to me that the developer either ran out of ideas, or tried too hard to be "mature" just because that's the trend (sigh). A *really* good horror game to me doesnt NEED those things to provide it's effect.
But your more typical horror games? Yeah, definitely desensitized. They usually feel more like action/adventure games to me, albeit with alot of blood and enemies that are more messed up than usual. But they're also very same-y and tend to use the same exact ideas over, and over, and over, and over...
I LOVE those games like spooky's house of jump scares or bendy and the ink machine or FNAF or tattletail for lots of the reasons you listed. as much as people think they are childish scary games they do a good better job in my opinion because you don't need gore or M ratings for it to be a good scary.
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lostonearth35
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