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Fraidy Cat Gamer

Posted by Zonk on Thu Oct 19, 2006 02:53 PM
from the re-4-scared-the-bajeezus-out-of-me dept.
Entertainment Games
Allen Cook, over at Gamers With Jobs, talks about the problems of being a 'fraidy cat gamer'. Horror games are awesome, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to actually play through one if your fear takes hold of you. From the article: "I can watch most horror movies without any problem. The trick has nothing to do with my horror movie constitution but simply knowing the formula. At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead. Probably at the hands of some supernatural force, a mask-wearing psychopath or some otherworldly parasitic infestation. It's a given part of the formula that most of these characters will die. When it happens, I may be surprised by how they die, but it doesn't emotionally scar me. With horror games though, there's no switch I can pull to stop caring about my character. That's me in there in the inexplicably short mini skirt and tall boots, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Why the hell did I wear that anyway? Is that standard issue zombie hunting gear where I'm from? It doesn't matter, a zombie just tore a chunk out of my skull."
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  • Following one's own advice (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dachannien (617929) on Thursday October 19 2006, @02:58PM (#16506971)
    At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead.

    Simple solution:

    Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.

    • Simple solution:
      Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.

      Hilarious :)

      I have a friend who's affraid of spiders, he's good at that game, except where there's giant spiders, I used to do those levels for him.
      People with phobias are funny.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg (145172)
      Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.

      Ok, now that you've disposed of his real life problems, how about doing the same for his problems as a gamer?

      KFG

  • Dissassociation (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrSquishy (916581) on Thursday October 19 2006, @02:58PM (#16506981)
    I find that breaking the connection from Player to Character helps.
    If the character in the game is wearing a short skirt and tall boots, I wear a tutu and clown shoes.

    Also, the lines at the arcade seem to be quite short in this attire.
  • The fact you can load/reset/restart, and get a second ending or a win makes even horror games tame. Don't know which game he's refering too, but a lot of the horror games we have now are like that jerk who jumps out and shouts boo, they'll scare you only if you don't know what to expect.

    Personally I don't have many games that really terrify me, maybe I just am not playing the right games, but even back in the day, the resident evils just were annoyingly hard, not exactly "scary".

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy (595695)
      There's not so many games anymore that really draw you in like some of the old ones did. I remember playing Alone In The Dark, and getting really scared at some points. For a game to scare you, it has to really draw you in, so that it's the only thing you are focusing on. I find that I got scared a lot playing Metroid Prime. Not because it had a horror theme or anything, but because the atmosphere of the game really drew you in, and when some enemy jumps in front of you when you are already on edge, you

      • I'll second that. Metroid Prime and Super Metroid are some of the creepiest games ever made. Going deeper and deeper into the Phazon Mines, in which you start encountering giant glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, objects that you can only see in the X-Ray scope (which itself, was really creepy vision) and completely dark rooms just creeped me out. It didn't help that every so often, you were suddenly faced with a giant, mutant space pirate. And to top it off, at the end you face off with Omega Pirate, quite possib

        • Good call on the suspense of the Metroids. Prime had me soiling myself inside of the reasearch centers where the stealth pirates would drop from the ceilings. Using the heat-visor also was creepy if there wasn't any music because it had an unsettling tune of its own, as well as the XRay visor.

          My brother and I both shouted out loud when the SNES boss you mention showed up again, after being disturbed by its trying to swim in the magma.

          The Dark Aether messed with your mind at first, but since you were alway

          • The problem with Echoes was a goofy story (with goofy troop logs), and mediocre music. Metroid prime was very faithful to elements from super metroid, and thus as nostalgic as it gets, while at the same time being somewhat gritty. Echoes was a disappointment because of that - they innovated with the gameplay, but missed the point with the presentation. I blame Nintendo, according to the extras material in the game, they meticulously specified the contents of cutscenes, probably the story as well, but I f
        • I can agree that Silent Hill and Resident Evil are scary. I scream like a schoolgirl when those things come out of the car in Silent Hill 2 or when a zombie bites your leg in Resident Evil.

          I've played Resident Evil, Resident Evil 3, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2 Alone in the Dark, and Dino Crisis.
          What I don't get is what makes these games fun to play to people. I feel like I've tried the survival horror thing, but it's just not very fun.
          First of all, what's with the controls in these games? I'd much rather be
          • Played all the Res Evil games except 4 (on my to-do list) and of all of them do have issues with camera angle at some time. I am not sure of 4 since I think you can control the camera. It can be very annoying when the camera angle is wrong although in the majority of cases the fix is to stick in the middle (if you can) of the area you are exploring.

            I think that the idea of finding and using items even though they may seem silly is to distinguish the game from the first person shooter (FPS) and provide an si
          • I think you're just playing the wrong survival horror games, those are all good games but they all use the same formula. Its like only ever watching the Friday the 13th movies and claming that you know horror movies.

            Some more modern takes on the formula are Resident Evil 4 - no zombies, rebuilt control system from the ground up, it plays more like a 3rd person shooter (think Ghost Recon or Splinter Cell) then any of the old Resident Evil games. Condemned: Criminal Origins - IMO one of the best adventure

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Jaysyn (203771)
      I can't play System Shock 2 anymore. Eternal Darkness & Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth are both pretty damn creepy.

      Jaysyn
      • I was going to meantion System Shock 1, but that was more anticipated fear, than raw horror. But good games, I will say Eternal Darkness really took the "creepiness" to new levels.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Solra Bizna (716281)
      maybe I just am not playing the right games...

      If you can get past the graphics, Marathon:RED.

      Bort... bort... bort... bort... bort...

      -:sigma.SB

  • I've never been too terrified to play a game...Aliens vs. Predator 2 had some nice surprise moments that made me jump in my seat..but that's about it. Besides, any horror video game or movie can be ruined/de-scarified by simply turning the lights on and having some background noise, like a TV or screaming children neighbors, etc.
    • I'm responding more to the subject line than the content here, but "Made ya flinch!" sums up everything that's wrong with the horror genre in general, whether it's games, movies, whatever. It's easy easy easy to scare someone by having something jump out at them. How many movies have you seen where the music builds to a crescendo and then a freaking cat jumps down from a shelf in front of the protagonist and everyone in the audience screams? It takes no effort whatsoever. It's hack. It's not worth my t
      • The Japanese movies aren't scary, though. The first one is. If you haven't seen 'em, watch Ringu or Ju-On or their English translations and they'll be scary. But then you watch the next one, and the next one, and you realize the plots are all the same. It's like the '70s-'80s slasher craze all over again. How many strange cat-girls and distorted mouths and creepy televisions (or computer monitors) do you need to see before you realize it's the same thing, but a different basic plot? About 3.

        A good plot i
        • You say 'they all copy it', but that's not really true in Japan, except for sequels. It's true in the US, though, so much that they've made parodies (Scary Movie, etc) that the basic plot is a parody of almost every US Horror movie ever made. If you parodied The Ring, you wouldn't have even come close to parodying The Grudge, though... They're just too different.

          For those who are wondering, Ju-On is the Japanese name for The Curse, The Grudge, The Curse 2 and The Grudge 2, and I believe that is the corre

  • Take it in small doses! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cerberus7 (66071) on Thursday October 19 2006, @03:05PM (#16507103)
    I have the same problem, and my solution is to play frightening games in small doses. 10-15 minutes here and there, and eventually I make my way through it. It took me almost a week to get through Ravenholm the first time, just because I needed to take so many breaks and go play Civ.

    As an alternate solution, I will just blast through such a scene quickly, letting whatever baddies reveal their locations, then I go back to my save point and do it again with full knowledge of just what nastiness is going to jump out at me and when.

    I feel the same kind of intensity from other emotions in games, not only fear. It's just much easier to deal with the other emotions, as they don't come with a built-in fight-or-flight response the way anxiety and fear do.
  • The Marine campaign tended to be quite scary- especially if you played in the harder modes. Nothing like limited saving and inifinitly spawning enemies to heighten the suspense (and make your death much more painful). Eventually I had to give up and beat the Marine campaign in an easier mode- I just couldn't beat one level in hard difficulty, much less hardcore mode.
  • from the first time that you look in a mirror and see a zombie behind you, i knew doom 3 was a bad choice to play at night. I've got nothing better to do tonight, maybe I'll start Sweet Home.
  • I love the survival horror genre, as well as the horror themed action genre. Most of the games aren't really anything like what I would call scary though. The first two Resident Evils made me jump every so often- but they never really terrified me. Interestingly enough, I found Resident Evil 4 to be one of the most terrifying games, even though it was certainly more action focused - mostly because the enemies are smarter and vastly more numerous.
    I would say that really, although I love the horror games
      • I'm one of those people who only gets the jitters waiting for the shit to hit the fan

        That's a major element a good horror game (or movie) and I think most people, not just yourself, find it more scary than being startled. Ghosts and the like are often used because the limits on what they can do (or are about to do) is much wider. They're more unpredictable which increases the suspense and makes them scarier. Simply put, they're not scary just because they're 'ghosts'; they're scary because they're unpred
  • This brings back memories of my first night playing Doom at a friends house. I'd never played an id game before. The first time those demons/imps popped up I nearlly fell out of the chair. I think that my friends offered for me to play the most just to laugh at me that night. ;) After a few nights, you get used to it. Of course what really helped was just turning off the sound. That helped a lot for me.
    • Absolutely behind you, a hundred percent - I'll never forget the adrenalin shakes I had after playing the first level on Nightmare mode...

      Then my brother installed a patch that turned all the sounds into Monty Python sound-bites, so instead of background breathing and moaning, there would be occasional bouts of "Chicken... chicken!" and "I'll bite yer legs off!".

      Never was quite the same after that.

  • Seriously, think about it. When Resident Evil 1 for the PS1 came out, one of the biggest reasons why people found the game difficult/frustrating was the horrible controls.

    Fast forward to today and only recently are we seeing better controls for survival horror games. The camera no longer screws people over. You can actually SEE the monsters, not a unclear blob of brown and red pixels against a brown and red background. Level designs are no longer tight hallways that make it impossible to run past enemies i

  • Not the type of "fraidy cat gamer I was expecting. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LoudMusic (199347) on Thursday October 19 2006, @05:03PM (#16509101)
    I was expecting this to be more of an article about people who were afraid to play games the way they were intended. (intention in the eye of the beholder)

    I have several friends who play StarCraft completely defensively. On team games a couple of us will completely destroy the enemy while these RTS campers build base defenses the entire time. Highly frustrating.

    Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?

    I also play Travian, a stupid web based RTS, and people constantly bitch and moan about being attacked. Hello! It's a war game.

    As far as the subject, I don't really understand horror in any medium. But why seek out the best horror game and then try to find ways to get through it? You're just watering it down! Take it like a man, you pussies! (:

    • Re:Not the type of "fraidy cat gamer I was expecti (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SpacePunk (17960) on Thursday October 19 2006, @05:17PM (#16509277) Homepage
      "Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"

      That IS real combat. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, and you never, ever, give your opponent an even break. Unless you think of combat being the way the British fought the revolutionaries, or how the Civil war was fought where people just stand out in the open blatantly shooting each other.

      If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.
    • "Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"

      I used to hate players like that, but then I realised that is all they know how to do, so they are actually easier to beat than someone who is always changing their position, strategy, etc...

      So when i enter a room I throw a frag grenade under the stairs or a rocket that way (ala quake3) or throw a flash bang into the nest then spam as i come up the ramp (al
    • "Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?" Real combat is about maximizing enemy losses and minimizing personal risk. They're playing the game like Ghost Recon, not like Doom. Try leaning around the corner to see if they're waiting for you. Tossing a grenade. Not being able to play the game flexibly reveals your own weaknesses.
  • Playing this game, a simple search and rescue game, was the first game that scared the crap out of me. And this was on my Atari 800XL.

    Spoilers ROT13ed [rot13.com] below:

    Va gur tnzr, lbh ner gb ynaq lbhe fuvc ol gur qbjarq cvybgf. Bapr lbh unir ynaqrq, lbh'yy urne gur cvybgf jnyx hc gb lbhe fuvc. Lbh jrer gbyq gb jnvg hagvy gur cvybgf xabpx ba gur fvqr bs gur fuvc orsber lbh bcra gur qbbe naq yrg gurz va. Fb nsgre gur cvybgf jnyx hc, lbh ner yvfgravat vagragyl... Naq gura, CBJ! Na nyvra gung unq nyernq qvfcbfrq bs gu

    • Re:F.E.A.R. is a misnomer (Score:5, Funny)

      by F1_Fan (255672) on Thursday October 19 2006, @03:03PM (#16507071)
      Doom 3 stopped being scary as soon as I learned to walk into rooms backwards.
      • Agreed. The level design was ass.

        "Oh, a new room. Let's see--there's a pillar over there, so there's a zombie behind it. And some other kind of monster will undoubtably spawn or appear from a monster closet behind me when I enter the room."

        Splash damage shot next to the pillar... oh, what do you know, there was a zombie behind it! Step in slowly, look to my immediate left... look, a wall opening up to reveal a room that has no business being there, and another zombie! Wow, so surprised.

        The original doo

    • Wait... am I misreading you or do you think that Doom 3 was _less_ formulaic than F.E.A.R.?

      I had my problems with the latter, but I count it radically higher on the creepy-coolness scale, if lower on the imps-constantly-jumping-out-of-invisible-closets scale.

      Though both have anemic storylines, which I think we've all just come to accept from action games, and movies for that matter ("Must serve the evil god Momentum!" As Joss Whedon almost said).

      After all, Doom 3 was about a mute space marine who possesses
        • I spent my time in Doom 3 wishing there was more creepy.

          It was too close to the earlier Dooms, which were great in their time but no longer.

          Maybe I'm spoiled.

          (that was my 14, 20, 4 "extended mix" doom 3 haiku)

            • Not to mention I never once had an "Oh shit I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die" feeling from D3, while in almost every big monster infested room you got that feeling with the original dooms.

              The main reason you don't have that feeling anymore is because of the strafe command. If you played Doom as your first video game today (after having a friend give you a crash course in game configuration), the fear will be significantly cut down because you can sidestep fireball attacks with ease.

              In this kind


              • I hate to tell you this, but there was a strafe in DOOM and DOOM 2 - and I used it to "pwn" many a fellow player.

                And I myself generally don't play the same scene over and over and over again - I guess I have ADD or something - I tend to play it cautious and take more time getting through the game with minimal reloads.

                I hate doing the same thing over and over and over. Probably why I was never a good guitar player.
      • what's not scary is the monsters. It's the lighting and atmospherics. On a decent system with headphones, you can get very disoriented and twitchy.

        You hear clanking and you don't know if it was a wrench you accidentally knocked off a ledge, a door closing, or a Commando kneeling down to chaingun you from a catwalk above.

        And at first monster spawns were kinda scary, but once you got used to where you think they should be, it became routine. And I think that might have been intentional.

        You'll notice later on

    • SH2 was hardly a gore/scare fest. It had the best plot, and was probably the most consistently melancholy and creepy of the games. The third game used such vibrant colors that its primary impact was visceral: some of the violence and blood scenes, while not particularly "gory," were very memorable because of the way the environment looked. SH4 relied too much on the "boo" factor to match the previous games.

      Here's hoping SH5 is more like SH2.

    • Agreed - I played Silent Hill in the dark with a friend of mine from start to finish, and it was amazing.

      The movie was okay, but the games are so much better.
    • --
      Nintendo of Europe is a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
      Shouldn't that be the Wii now? I can see the head line already: "Wii has arrived, NoE against wall, lawyers expected to be next".
      • Then there's the System Shock universe, where scientists have got the whole "interstellar travel" thing tackled, but are still working on making handguns that can fire more than 20 shots before breaking...

        Yeah, I admit it, I used a cheat or mod or something (I don't remember, it's been too long) that vastly improved the longevity of weapons in SS2 when I played it. I also used the, "Space Marines should have 2 working hands" mod that let me hold both a flashlight and a handgun simultaneously in Doom III.
          • That game was great all around. Both it and FarCry (the other of the "Big 3" new-engine games that came out at around the same time) were much, much better games than Doom III. I maintain (and frequently post :) ) that D3's problem was that it tried to do several things simultaneously, and as a result sucked at all of them, while FC and HL2 did a lot of things (especially HL2) but did them individually, and it worked.

            Examples:

            The first part of FC was an exceptionally good standard shooter. The second was

    • Oh, I so smell fake. Like all those "haunting" shows where people jump at their cameraman knocking on a wall.

      And as far as envying, I would SO have two ex-friends and a legal case for kidnapping. I'm not 100% up on British law, but I imagine that they would be pretty leery of this kind of thing - say the boy has a heart attack, or even panic attacks, would he or his family sue? I would think so. Then again, I think it was a setup from the start, so...

      Besides, what kind of isolated gen-X-er doesn't know what

    • How can you be afraid of a moment in a videogame?

      By getting into the moment.

      Though simple, my first run through of Diablo was horrifying. I played at night, with no lights, and with the music and sound volumes fairly high. After a while, I was actually looking over my shoulder while playing the game. It was great but I almost didn't finish the game.

    • When you willingly put yourself into a game that would not normally scare you, your imagination can eventually take over and make the game a whole lot more enjoyable then it otherwise would have been. :)

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