Dead Space Wants To Scare You 195
Kotaku recently ran a story questioning whether the survival-horror genre still exists, and how Dead Space may or may not fit into it. With reviews for the game starting to come in, Ars Technica reports that the game is, indeed, both scary and good. Gamespy wrote up a Dead Space survival guide, and Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with the game's senior producer. In the production of the game, the developers studied things like car wrecks and war scenes to increase the level of realism. They also want the game's sounds to terrify players, including appropriately timed silence. The launch trailer is also available, though it does contain spoilers.
DRM Space scares me more.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dead Space I can handle.
GrpA
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a horror connoisseur, but the scariest game I've played thus far is the Afraid of Monsters mod for Half Life. I gave up on the game before I even fought a single monster. Why? Because as soon as the 2nd level loaded I felt incredibly unsafe. There were tons of doors around me, in front of me, and behind me. Any one of them could spew out a bunch of monsters. But none did, yet. The worst part was the ambient sound that kept me completely uneasy. It wasn't obvious stuff like monsters or whatever, it was just a carefully crafted sound that made me uncomfortable the entire time I played. To compound the issue, I wasn't a superpowerful space marine. In the game I was an unarmed drug addict who was hallucinating. Even in broad daylight, with other people in the house, I just couldn't bring myself to play it. I tried several 2 minute plays before I gave up. It was too scary for me. I never saw a single monster. That is good horror.
System Shock... (Score:1, Interesting)
While I admit I never finished the first one, System Shock 2 grabbed by the throat and never let go. How can you match playing a whole game working for an insane computer who wants nothing more than to rip you apart and remake you "in her own glorious image."
And don't try to sell me that BioShock nonsense, that game was easier than WiiSports and about as "scary."
I hope to play this game soon (Score:1, Interesting)
But I hope that when I do the game isn't Resident Evil. Tactical shooting and whatever... Nifty but not that well done in RE. Not to mention the "horror" you face in RE wasn't really horror, it was stress. The stress of conserving ammo and hoping your luck is good enough that if you run out that last head you blew off isn't going to turn into a giant biological scythe whip. If that scenario scares you, you're a lightweight. If it pisses you off and frustrates you, join the club.
Nobody in their right mind should like a "scary" game where the idea of scary is having to load your last save.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:3, Interesting)
With these newer games that are horror survival, there's usually a secondary character watching over you, so there is that chance they might save you even though they probably wont it gives you a different mindset.
Re:Gore doesn't scare me but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Problems.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. What made "F.E.A.R." great at this wasn't the "startle" moments, or the gore, but scenes that created an air of foreboding. For instance, you walk down a dark hallway and see a vague shape jump around the corner. Go around the corner, and there's nothing there. *That* is what creates the feeling of impending doom, not the fifteenth iteration of "turn lights off, open up closet behind player containing monsters".
I stopped playing Doom 3 when I realized that I had developed an instinctual tick of turning around and firing every time the lights went out.
I never played F.E.A.R, but I got this same feeling playing Quake 4. There was still some of the Doom3-like 'stuff coming up behind me' moments, but there were a few parts of Q4 that just scared the crap out of me.
Like the one level where you're crawling around in some sub-level [not quite a sewer and not quite a dungeon]. It's mostly dark, with some light shining in from the grates above you. As you're walking along trying to find your way out, you hear something skittering about going down different hallways, sometimes seeing a shadow flick by. That scared the crap out of me, never knowing what it was, where it was, or what it was going to do. What made it all worth it, was that it never attacked me as I expected.
There was also the cutscene where your character gets uh, 'converted' or whatever it was called. You've got a 1st person view of your body strapped down in some sort of cart, and you can see the people ahead of you strapped into carts, going along an assembly line of sorts. I was playing this late at night with a good sound system, in the dark.
Man when it got to the part where you watched a 3-foot pipe being repeatedly stabbed into the chest of the guy ahead of you, I damn near ran for the door, and when it happened to my character, I swear I felt something enter my chest.
If a game is going to try to scare me, that's the kind of environmental/emotional attachment it has to have for me. Otherwise it's just startling me or throwing out more blood and gore, which just bores me [no pun intended]...
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Interesting)
Right on. System Shock 2 is in my top 5 games of all time.
Sorry to hijack your point, but I picked up Dead Space yesterday mainly due to the decent reviews it was getting and the fact that it shared a lot with SS2 (RPG elements, sci-fi setting, horror) and about 3-4 hours in I'm sorely disappointed. I replayed SS2 a few months ago, and was absolutely engrossed over the few days it took me to finish it. The screeches of those fucking monkeys still creep me out. Dead Space just kind of feels lacking.
I want to be scared by Dead Space, but so far I've only gotten startled once by a loud noise while turning a corner. Keep in mind, I've been playing in a dark room with the sound turned up and the difficulty on hard. People claiming it's the scariest game of all time clearly haven't played SS2, Call of Cthulu, Silent Hill 2, etc. It feels a lot like Doom 3 in 3rd person and awkward controls, while I was expecting a cross between SS2 and RE4. That said, I'm enjoying it quite a bit even if it is a bit disappointing.
There are definitely some cool things about the game - the fact that there's no HUD (your health is displayed as a meter on your back) definitely helps immersion, but Call of Cthulu pulled it off better (and is FAR scarier than Dead Space). The Zero G bits have potential, but I've only been in one so I haven't had a chance to see what they do with it. The stasis effects are nifty too. I like the gore, even though it can get a bit silly sometimes. I've yet to see anything as visceral as getting decapitated by one of the chainsaw sisters in RE4 - though a few death animations come close.
SO yeah, to sum it up DS is pretty fun, not scary (so far), but probably not a must buy at this point. GOTY contender it is not in my eyes.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:1, Interesting)
Your logic is...confusing to me. I can't begin to understand it, but I can tell you that your not necessarily supposed to be afraid to die. What makes these games scary is darkness, and things jumping out of nowhere. That's not "scary" per say, it's more of a "jumpy" feeling...which I can't stand. I played doom3 with god mode and other cheats but I still couldn't finish it. I just can't stand crap jumping out at me. It's why I dont' like horror movies either. But a lot of people eat that up, and so that's what they're aiming for.
As for you wanting to be tense and afraid to loose something you worked for, all I can say is this; A lot of people are like that, but it makes absolutely no since what-so-ever. Life is stressful, life is tense, life is challenging, so why in the hell would I want to "Play" a game that has those same factors? It just makes no since. Obviously games shouldn't be too easy, but they shouldn't be so hard that you actually will have something to get upset over if you die. But if these were the good ole days (the days of gamesharks and codebreakers) they could do whatever they want to the game, make it hard, easy, whatever, and then the player could do the fine tuning via memory hijacking...sigh...I miss them so much, and now that I know they're gone, I'm probably not even going to bother with the next Playstation, xbox, or Nintendo console :\
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:2, Interesting)