Fraidy Cat Gamer

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."

Following one's own advice

[Dachannien (617929)]

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.

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[Scrameustache (459504)]

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.

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[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

[MrSquishy (916581)]

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.

I don't know.

[kinglink (195330)]

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".

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[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

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[7Prime (871679)]

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

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[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

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[kinglink (195330)]

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.

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[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

Made ya flinch!

[Suzumushi (907838)]

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.

Take it in small doses!

[Cerberus7 (66071)]

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.

Aliens Vs. Predator II

[paladinwannabe2 (889776)]

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.

doom 3

[kevin.fowler (915964)]

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.

It's not the horror games that are scary

[miyako (632510)]

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

Not the type of "fraidy cat gamer I was expecting.

[LoudMusic (199347)]

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

[SpacePunk (17960)]

"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.

Re:F.E.A.R. is a misnomer

[F1_Fan (255672)]

Doom 3 stopped being scary as soon as I learned to walk into rooms backwards.

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[Fallingcow (213461)]

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

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[Merovign (557032)]

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

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[syrion (744778)]

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.

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[man_ls (248470)]

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.

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[Fallingcow (213461)]

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.

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[Merovign (557032)]

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

Willing suspension of disbelief

[Ahnteis (746045)]

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. :)