What do you think about Frictional Games' body of work?

What do you think about Frictional Games' body of work?

Scariest games.

Soma is genuinely great

not a fan of the rest of their work

Giving their IP to the Chinese Room is unforgivable. Frictional can go fuck themselves.

lol

Overall good but too similar.

I'm not entirely up to date on news. Did something happen or do you just dislike Machine for Pigs?

Want more of Penumbra really

I tried to forgive them but I never could. That game was just so shit. $30 for under 2 hours total.

They all of their pros and cons. Overture has some issues with deciding whether or not the player should be able to kill the enemies and repetitive environments. Blackplague has that fucking ghost voice actor that ruins any tension or immersion. Amnesia is probably the closest they've been to seeing their vision through. SOMA has a p neat sci fi story but isn't that scary and a lot of people find Simon annoying and probably think likable character = good character and vice versa

It cost less than $20, not 30

The scariest games ever made. They understand the elements that make a video game scary better than almost any other games. Amnesia was their masterpiece. These games don't get the respect they deserve around here because they've become closely associated with youtube cancer. Thing is, the reason it became fashionable to scream like a bitch is because they started with these games, and the fear was genuine. Look at Pewdiepie's original videos. He wasn't acting in those days.

It really illustrates the craft of Frictional's formula, that it totally falls apart when they give it to another developer who doesn't understand the intricacies of why it's so good.

the first Penumbra and the first Amnesia are really fucking great

I didn't like their sequels as much
also I havent played SOMA because I was spoiled everything and cant find the motivation now lel

I piss myself at the slightest whiff of horror so I can't play anything from them except SOMA which I could stomach to a degree. It was easily one of my favorite games last year.

Wish I wasn't such a pussy desu

You say that as if their intent was to make "The Dark Descent 2", which it obviously wasn't. If you assess the game on its own merits instead of what you wanted it to be, it's actually not bad. It's better than everything else Chinese Room has made, at least.

I can see why you'd be mad if you bought it day one for full price without reading a single preview, but then that's kind of your fault.

only played amnesia. it was real fucking scary I must say, more so than SH2. Unfortunately the gameplay was not very compelling so I grew tired of it after 3-4 hours

>
>The scariest games ever made. They understand the elements that make a video game scary better than almost any other games.

Their games are fucking walking simulators

Soma was cool but a let down in terms of replayability and super linear.

They need to make a game that has some sort of mode like snapmap where it randomly creates an area and gives you some objectives.

If FGs games are walking simulators then that word has lost all meaning.

They're more like first person puzzle adventure/stealth games.

Amnesia was good, only one I played though.

I can't really get scared by any form of fictional media (inb4 someone memes me), but I think SOMA had the bleakest atmosphere and some of the most oppressive moments. Surprised it's the one you are least scared of.

Overture>Dark Descent>Soma>Black Plague>>>>>>>literally shit>requiem>>>>>>machine for pigs

>Surprised it's the one you are least scared of.

Well I haven't played the other ones but from what I heard they are a lot more prone of randomly spawning monsters to surprise you and shit. SOMA had a succession of dedicated story, puzzle and monster sections the former two giving me a much lesser sense of danger and the latter announcing any monster presence before it could surprise me. It also helped that the game had a calmer, mostly blue color palette and that I had a female sidekick talking to me from time to time.

Not the same user but I'd say it's like Silent Hill giving you that sense of dread. I wasn't really scared playing that but I found SOMA was the same. The themes they worked with were unsettling, but not much was happening in-game to actually scare.

I really loved Penumbra 1 and 2, and Amnesia.

Fuck Requiem.

Haven't played MfP or SOMA.

SOMA would have been better if it had more Caroline in it.

Requim wasn't that bad.

Only played amnesia.

Was too scared to play it alone, so I would invite some friends over we'd turn out the lights and sit around taking turns to play through room by room... spooky/comfy as fuck

>Their games are fucking walking simulators

I see you haven't played them.

I loved Amnesia: TDD but my favorite game is SOMA.

I have a fear/interest of the ocean and the entire "What exactly makes us human?" concept was thought provoking.

Great atmosphere and Simons VA was God-tier.

I liked Soma's plot a lot. Really made me think a bit. What does it mean to be human? etc

SOMA took the frictional games formula and got rid of the monster closet bullshit just to spite youtube gamers like pewdiepie.

If anything it's FG's best game yet for pretty much that sole reason.

>If anything it's FG's best game yet for pretty much that sole reason.

For arguments sake though it also makes it the most walking-simulator of their games.

I agree it's their best though solely on visuals and writing alone.

>and Simons VA was God-tier.

They're not us! THEY'RE NOT US

Requiem was fucking awful.

>No horror
>Adds absolutely nothing to the story.
>A bunch of random, surreal setpieces.
>Retarded puzzles like "throw explosive ketchup bottle at chain to break it" instead of the more practical puzzles we saw in the other games

This. The whole premises of Penumbra deserves to be revisited. But really I think the ending is way too good to ruin.

The ending of Black Plague was what got me interested in philosophy, no shit.

Penumbra was fucking great, Amnesia was ok but was the first game they took a lot of shit that was cool out.

Just downhill from there.

except a machine for pigs all of them were great. sadly let's players killed them

these chairs are actually really great

they are ok in terms of comfort but make every room they stand in like a children's room

>ok in terms of comfort
denial

But I wont disagree about the childrens looks
there are some that have a black/grey color scheme and wont stand out as much especially the King series

AMfP wasn't made by them

Penumbra Overture was ok
Penumbra Black Plague was fantastic
Penumbra Requiem is a fucking joke game
Amnesia was fantastic and I adored it
Haven't played a machine for pigs
Haven't played SOMA

If you're going to play SOMA, do find a mod that disables enemy AI. Seriously, the forced enemy encounters were fucking atrocious.

Confirmed for not owning one.

They're great when they're new but they age like milk thanks to shitty material and approximative build.

Amnesia with no music or monster sounds would legitimately be the most terrifying game in existance.

which one do you own then?

I still own one because it's still not completely dead and I'm not in the mood to look for a good replacement.

Oh piss off

Requiem was shit because FG were basically forced by their publisher to make it even after they felt Black Plague ended the Penumbra story, then the publisher ran away with the money. After that they went permanently indie. And that almost made them bankrupt but the very first Humble Bundle, which had Penumbra Overture, just barely saved them.

quite spoopy

loved SOMA, it wasn't scary but it was quite something anyway

SOMA was fun for the story. One of the few horror games that I brute forced my eay through jumpscares and shitty monsters for the plot.

Ending was a little off about the coin flip stuff.

SOMA is really depressing and has great atmosphere that really sells how fucked the world is in game, but it's more of a constant low level dread than the occasional oh shit moments that Amnesia had. SOMA makes you scared in an abstract way, Amnesia makes you scared because you don't want your dude to die and have to do shit over again.

Id go so far as to say that including the monster at all was a mistake in SOMA, at least in the way they are used. I think they really ruin the game world when you have to worry about the robots coming to kill you instead of admiring the desolation and thinking about how hopeless your situation is. The only monsters that I think worked in SOMA was the one that puts you in the WAU cacoon thing in Theta(?) and Ross because he's not really a threat but he's still spooky.

Only 1 or 2 enemies aren't blind

I don't think it's off about the coin flip, more like Simon is too dumb to understand the "they just copy your brain" thing and Catherine not bothering to ever correct him. There's no coin flip, and no mjnd transfer, just a digital copy of whatever brain gets scanned. Catherine even tries to explain it to him at the end when he's freaking about it but she has a computer aneurism and breaks. Yeah the Simon mind save state gets continues to exist but to the individual Simon instances that doesnt matter.

the formula is getting really old, unforunately

theres only so many times I can play "scary, story driven exploration game with puzzles and no combat"
and as of SOMA, it seems like thats the only thing they know how to do

Only the walking turds are blind

Theyre still annoying. Theyre not hard to deal with but the stop you from freely exploring the cool underwater base. The one at omicron even prevents you from being able to read some of the stuff on the computers without having to stop to evade him and then go back. At least for me they were more of a nuisance than a threat. I just wanted them to fuck off so I could go back to exploring sealab and talking to my robot waifu.

You can lock him in

He can open doors though

If we are talking about "dude you r a robot" that is very obvious and gets revealed like an hour in, that is hardly a spoiler. If other things got spoiled I pity you, the game is pretty good.

Haven't played Soma yet but the Penumbra games were fun and Amnesia was great.

Penumbra is spooky until it gets to the retarded alien shit
Amnesia is 2spooky
SOMA isn't very spooky but it's interesting as fuck and has easily the best story and atmosphere out of them.

I never knew that.

Another good reason to hate Requiem.

While it wasn't aus scary aus Amnesia, the pacing felt much better imo and when you encountered a Monster it was genuinly terrifying.

autocorrect is a bitch isn't it?

Soma their best work by a fucking mile

Honestly never saw anything special about their games, until Soma they had very bad writing and pointless easy puzzles, monsters never did anything for me as their random spawn nature just dosnt work to create a feeling of tangible believable world

Penumbra had pretty great writing.

Security office computer lets you LOCK doors