How do we fix horror games?

How do we fix horror games?

>inb4 combat

reminder that horror games with guns stop being scary the second you get a shotgun or equivalent which is 2-3 levels in and that's mostly because no one bothers with making combat challenging and devs always give too much ammo not to mention enemies are usually the same shit in different uniforms you never for example have a monster that will never attack you when you're armed but will still stalk you throughout the map waiting for your HP to get low or run out of ammo or a guy who behaves like Librarian from Metro. Spice their fucking behaviour up a little bit.

Horror is a single player genre i.e. worthless.

First person only.

>inb4 silent hill and resident evil kids

Your games are not scary, just admit it already.

>implying Silent Hill stopped being scary no matter what you had
>""levels"" in horror games

That statement is both subjectively and objectively false, so fuck your shit.

I bet you mindlessly think jump scares are bad without actually understanding their purpose.

A game with movement like Mirror's Edge or something along those lines. Where you can do pretty much anything you would expect a real human to do.

A game where you can use pretty much everything ever as a weapon, like you really could. But the catch is that none of them do anything.
You have every weapon, even guns, but none of them harm the monster(s) You just have to run.

Nope. Even Silent Hill had jumpscares, but they were used in moderation, and not spammed all the time because the game would have lacked atmosphere and good visuals to shake the player.

SH2 certainly was easy as fuck and thus not scary.

Not him but this is false, there is nothing wrong with a good jump scare, they just need to be used in moderation and have proper build up.

So not like in average AAA horror game where pretty much every encounter starts with a jump scare

>use a gun once
>oh weapons wont work i'll have to run
>ignore every weapon afterwards

Wow so let's just make a walking simulator with some useless items you can carry great idea.

i want a horror game with realistic guns. accurately hitting things should be difficult, and guns should be deafeningly loud. it would make them more of a last resort or panic button than your primary means of combat.

You know how sometime you can human face in certain patterns or objects? Instead of shoving everything into the player, developers should take a more subtle approach with horror elements and let the mind fill in the blank.
>walking through a hallway
>see a face staring in a corner
>come closer and realize it's just a weird placement of leafs on a plant
Also it's not really scary when the game is so fucking dark you can't see shit and don't even know what just jump scares you.

Make ammo scarce and valuable, try to trigger paranoia and despair rather than fear, Make the levels and monsters trigger human primal fears.

Make the story get very satanic or otherwise very taboo and fucked up.

>Use a bunch of stupid shit on it
>Obviously does nothing
>"Maybe if I use something sharp?"
>That doesn't work
>Move to a gun that only has ~1 mag the whole game
>Save it for a desperate time
>use it, fails, panicked as fuck, end up escaping with your pants shat
>"Guess I need more bullets"
Do you also assume all weapons in an RPG do the same damage as the first, user?

Do you actually play video games bro? I don't think you've ever played a game in your life.

Rat tower in Witcher 3 had a hanging coat that looked like a person at first glance.

I can't be the only one who saw that.

Like in STALKER?

>play on easy
>WAAAAAAAAAAH THIS GAME IS TOO EASY

You'll ignore everything, try once with the new stronger weapons ypu find then run again. Fuck, the mechanics are so repetitive I'm already bored.

how about segments that come late in the game where you lose access to your weapons? Fatal Frame II did something like this and it heightened the anxiety because you were so used to being able to fight off everything up to that point.

Then you want a military simulator not a horror game.

Just copy the original Silent Hill.

make them turn based

Which raises the question - can a horror game that takes place during day be scary?

Not being able to fight is one thing but I think it's better not wanting to fight just in case you might need the ammo later.

Resource management can be pretty spoopy.

>>Use a bunch of stupid shit on it
>using stupid shit
>>Save it for a desperate time
>desperated when you didn't even need weapons
>>use it, fails, panicked as fuck, end up escaping with your pants shat
not really, since you experiecenced that before
>>"Guess I need more bullets"
if the game didn't gave you enough bullets, everybody with a brain will assume that more wont change anything

Well, there's segment of Eternal Darkness set in the day, not that I found that game to be particularly scary.

how so? i think realistic gunplay is a good solution to the problem a lot of horror games run into when including weapons, and i really dislike the trend of dropping combat completely.

i mean, even the developers realized that..

just mod Dying Light to nerf all the weapons

I've always enjoyed games where the horror factor seems unintentional, yet it's very effective. I believe that's why games like STALKER can cause jump scares as a side effect to everything going on. One horror concept I think we should have more of are manhunts. There's something tense about trying to outrun and outsmart something that's clearly better than you in every way possible and aware of your general whereabouts.

I like games that mess with the files directly, like imscared and Irisu Syndrome. Making a horror game that's designed to specifically unnerve the player by tampering with the game itself is good.

Just a few things that are a must in almost every horror game

>ambient and drone music composed using items in the location you're in, i.e. you're in an abandoned apartment complex, the drums in the music is beating on a wardrobe/door
>instruments being added as you advance the level, possible room for a musical "jumpscare" though certain areas are without music or with a different noises
>tank controls - or a variant of that
>scarce ammo
>enemies can always catch up if you're running away from them for too long
>melee weapons break
>under certain circumstances enemies may respawn, you need to spend resource for them to die completely - room for a new enemy type that seems to be killed by it just to reappear later for example

It's more about a proper use of light and dark
>need to get something from a computer
>computer is in a well lit room
>the hallway outside however is completely dark
>when you use the computer you face the hallway
>camera isn't locked to the screen so you can look around
>halfway through the scene something outside the room puts its face onto the glass and look right at the player

Like Undertale!

Horror games can have combat, and can even have "empowering" weapons like a Shotgun. Combat just needs to be jerky, awkward, and hard to pull off at the best of times, and ammo for weapons which reduce your fear needs to be rare enough that you subconsciously treat it like the 37 Elixers in a FF game you save until the last boss just in case.

A neat concept if not abused would be a "snatcher" enemy, which would make the use of empowering weapons even more effective. Imagine walking through some dark corridors, confident that you're safe because you've got your shotgun, when suddenly a dark, impish figure ambushes you, snatches your shotgun away, and then fucks off with it? Now you're left with just a piddly little pistol and the other monsters start to close in.

Or make an area where you're blinded, but based on maps, hearing, and touch (i.e. touching a wall), a picture of the environment is created for you. You never see enemies or the environment, just your character's interpretation of it. (Obviously with the intent that some doors/areas on the map you had would not match up with the actual area)

Literal faggot is what you are.
Are horror movies not scary unless they are Blare Witch clones?

Yeah let's make controls fucked up on purpose because that's exactly what people loved in survival horror games back in SH and RE times it's not like people were complaining about tank controls and now suddenly nostalgiafags think it was done on purpose and people loved it or anything.

In before, during and after retarded memers going
>"le jump scares are bad xD"

They are

>it's a "tank controls are bad!" post

I always find spooky games lose all scaryness as soon as you realise it's better to just run the fuck past everything.
This is the case for all resident evils/silent hills

Nah, Stealth is still the way to go, but leave combat in. Weapons are scarce. You can use them to make one part easier but never run into another weapon for some time. Like some kind of in-game skip function except if you miss you're fucking dead.

That's actually pretty good. The snatcher, I mean.

Also, horror games need more open areas.
Sure, they want to invoke a claustrophobic feel, but large open areas really do it for me.
Especially when you're grounded and enemies have more vertical mobility than you do. Horror games always give you a lot of hidey-holes to crawl under.

I've played a few co-op survival horror games. They're pretty fun, but not scary enough. What they should do is separate the players, but still allow them to interact and help each other. And how about not letting them communicate with each other without some kind of expendable item?

Monsters are not scary, the horror should be grounded in reality with a bit of mistery.
i.e. evil cults, possession, serial killers, asylum patients.

>STALKER
>Unintentional horror

lol no

>how about not letting them communicate with each other without some kind of expendable item?

A lot of games actually do this but its pointless as everybody is in some sorts of voip program (mumble/ts)

Play game

>Come and post here
>Anyone else having trouble defeating enemy's?
>Yeah none of the weapons do anything
>Oh. lucky I can still steam refund.

It's not really pointless, it is really up to the people playing to limit themselves, if they want to ruin it for themselves, let them do it.

If they were good reviewers back then wouldn't point them out as a flaw and the devs wouldn't ditch them dumb faggot.

I really like how multiplayer worked in Journey. The closest thing I've seen this been done in something remotely close to horror is Dark Souls.

>evil cults

how to spot underage

You have an arsenal of powerful, hi-tech weaponry at your disposal.

The monsters are invincible and the guns only slow them down at best.

Alien Isolation

So the fuck are the guns for in the first place? Might as well slow them down like you do in Amnesia and just throw a rock at them.

Because the best guns buy you more time to escape.

Also this

No guns. Baseball bats, knives, maybe at some point you go through a weaboos house with anime posters all over the place and find a katana.

Monsters act like normal animals. They will attack you, but aren't suicidal. If you hit them hard enough, get a stab in with a knife, they will back off and be more cautious. Trying to snap out you just out of reach of your weapons, like a coyote harassing you, or wolves taking down a bison. Ambushes. Virtually no visual or hearing cues that they are nearby, they are good at sneaking up on you.

I like the idea except for no guns part because it makes no fucking sense unless the game takes place in Europe and even then cops are still armed.

Intelligent enemies, I want to feel I'm being hunted.

I guess because shooting a gigantic alien laser machine gun is more fun than throwing a rock you boring piece of shit. But really this is horror games we're talking about and there's nothing that can make those stupid walking door opening broken lock doesn't open from this side hallway simulators interesting.

If it's in the middle of the foggy woods and every time your turn the camera you see shadow apparitions that seems to get closer and closer only to lead to the player walking off the trail out of fear, and slowly but noticeably start to see things more frequently until the player starts to go mad, while the music begins to build up and then you hear a clear whisper, moan or anything from behind that causes you to jump and turn your camera around so fast.

The woods are terrifying, you just need to know how to use thick brush, even in the daytime woods are freaky as shit.

I kinda get where you are coming from, but I just think guns are so overdone at this point, and if you are going for any sense of realism, they trivialise things.

Yes a gigantic alien laser machine gun that does no damage sounds fun as fuck.

>le Slender xD

I wouldn't say am necessarily say woods are scary in daytime to walk in.

But living near one and looking into it's border at night, nah fuck that, close my blinds.

Is it strange I find the OP pic comfy rather than spooky?

Action horror games are the best. I don't like being scared but i like to feel tension.
dead space/systemshock2/etc

Are you implying fireaxes and knives are not a thing in horror games?

I know right? They are epic! My favourite action horror game is Call of Duty.

Blaire Witch sucks ass, I don't get it why people are sucking its dick constantly.

what's your problem downie

What is yours?

The woods at night are somewhat like the sea, you never know where you're heading, and you never know what's infront of you.

You are not the only one.

Why not a shotgun? I imagine a game like F.E.A.R., minus the super human main character. Shit goes south and for a while, you're able to blast anything that comes your way. But after a while, things aren't dying like they should. And your dwindling supply of ammo is getting less and less effective. Having your character become more vulnerable over time could have some interesting horror aspects.

Well more fun than throwing a fucking rock that does the exact same thing. I can throw rocks at freaks in real life.

Make a game like supernatural where only certain mystic items can kill enemies, there are demons, ghosts, other spirits, angels, bigfoot etc. Add horrific cutscenes that add depth to the mission. To be honest "The Evil Within" was the best horror game I've played in a long time. Also more ghosts less zombies, nothing creepier than something being there one second and then not being there, or some shadow in the corner of a room dissapearing when you're not looking. Also in general ghosts can't be killed so it makes for a better survival experience to run away and temporarily repel them with salt or iron. Then you have to find their specific bones and burn them.

Reviewers today are worse than ever and you know that.

A good game of any genre is all down to gameplay mechanics. In a horror game gameplay trumps jump scares, atmosphere and sound. Though all of them are good the game is shit without good gameplay. This is the reason why most horror games are bad because they get the bare minimum amount of gameplay in so they can focus on making cheap jump scares. Alien: Isolation was the last horror game id consider good.

Define ''aren't dying like they should'' you mean enemies start to regenerate or multiply like that one tall Dead Space monster?

Make them more SH-esque like The Evil Within did.
Make ammo rare as fuck so that you actually need to run past at least half of enemies and when you find 3-4 pistol bullets or 1-2 shotgun shells you jizz your pants.

i like the idea of a monster that persistently hunts you and is unkillable or very difficult to kill. what i'd like to see is a game where the recurring monster retains any damage inflicted on it. so for example if you fuck up its leg at one point, it will be walking around with a limp the next time it shows up.

>reviewers back then

reading comprehension you ameritard newfag

people fucking hated tank controls and set camera angles back then that's exactly why RE4 went to pure TPP camera and smoothed out a little bit

These are good. Another good one is forced backtracking with something unexpected on the way back.

Bring back Team Silent.

It's never happening. And that's what scares me the most.

How about a game with something like a moon phase system in SMT?
Normally enemies act predictable, like animals: baring teeth before attacking, growling in your presence, trying to make themselves look bigger when you pose a threat, etc. To keep the player on the edge full moons make the enemies behave strangely and erratically: increased aggression and recklessness, using player weapons, crawling on walls and ceilings, acting like other enemies and so on.

Pull shit similar to what happens in grave encounters, where the layout keeps changing, dead ends were stairs would be, an exit door suddenly having another hallway behind it.

I think you misunderstood my post. No one said that Resident Evil and Silent hill games had terrible controls. The new generation don't have the patience to handle the controls after over exposure to high octane fps games.

I think games need more guys like Pyramidhead or Nemesis aka that one indestructible fucker who is different to the rest of cannon fodder I always found it more menacing to have my trusted gun do jack shit all of sudden than to not have weapons to begin with.

Also make that guy smart, make him use the same weapons player can, destroy the supplies, stalk him like a vulture (it would work well in a semi open world), boost the enemies, make him a cunt you really don't wanna meet.

this

You can't define what makes a great horror game any more than you can define what makes a great strategy game or action game, which is why these threads always just turn into "no jumpscares, no wait SOME jumpscares, but, uh, not too many"

Just think of a situation that terrifies people to think of and create a game that develops that idea.

>A game where you are a deep sea diver exploring the Mariana Trench when your safety cable snaps
>A game where a highly developed AI serial killer is tracking you through an open world and you have to escape him.

There have been some games that touched on good mechanics but didn't really go all the way in developing them, like Alien: Isolations tracking/chase mechanic, that one SCP game with the blinking mechanic,

Its a shame there are a ton of AAA horror game developers who do very little to innovate.

I think a good horror game have to balance out the horror elements with moments of relief or safe zones. Constant sense of horror can easily tire one out and can quickly become repetetive and stale.

Yes they did, you're just too young to remember.

SH2 had an option to remove tank controls specifically because a lot of people complained about them when SH1 was released.

This. Team silent knew how to create a perfect atmosphere. They are truly
The masters of horror when it comes to games. The only games that have made me feel nervous or hesitant is Silent Hill 1-3 and Siren. Fatal frame was pretty eerie too.

So alien isolation?

You get a revolver with only 6 bullets in it
Monsters WILL attack you can you can use the gun anytime you want, to kill those things, to help stop the final monster, or to end yourself

I found SH2 more playable in tank mode. It gets confusing everytime when the camera changed position.

Coming from someone who gets easily scared and rarely plays horror games for that reason, I think some sure ways to make a game scarier are:

>no soundtrack at all
Not even the background dark ambient. It's all you and the environment noises.

>stop jumpscares
If you're gonna scare the player, make sure he sees the enemy coming. Make the player think fast, invoke a fight or flight reaction in him.

>no safe places
To me, that's the most important. Making the player feel like he's bound to be attacked at any moment, even in a place where he's supposed to be safe like a save spot is something I think every good horror game should strive to acheive.

He means no crosshairs that allow you to pull off perfect shots. If you want to fire a gun then you need to stand still and line up the sights which can take a few seconds and leave your VERY vulnerable. If you want to blind fire from any distance other than point blank range you have like a 40 percent chance of hitting your target, even less if you're running. At least this is how I would do it.