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Role Playing (Games)

Who's Afraid of Shinra Tower? 90

Posted by Zonk from the sephiroth! dept.
Amid a lot of talk about how games can affect us emotionally, Lara Crigger at Gamers With Jobs reminds us how a simple trail of blood can affect us if it's couched in the right surroundings. From the article: "Hojo's Lab shows signs of struggle. Shards of glass are everywhere, and lying a few feet from the dais is a mutilated guard. The door to the holding tank is gone, ripped aside and crushed like so much paper; in its place glows a strange Mako light that is simultaneously pink and green. But Jenova - Jenova has evaporated, disappeared but not without a trace: she has crawled out of the laboratory, onto the elevator, and up, and up, and up, leaving behind a wide and thick river of dried blood. I know I have to follow. I do not want to."
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Who's Afraid of Shinra Tower? More

Who's Afraid of Shinra Tower?

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  • Well, a good movie can do this, a game should do it as well. However I'd imagine all the sockermums (yes, I'm a stubbborn Brit) will be up in arms.

  • FFVII wasn't scary. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Meagermanx ( 768421 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @07:45PM (#13849631)
    You want to talk scary games? Play Thief: The Dark Project. That is the scariest game I have ever played, bar none.
    Go ahead. Start playing level two. You'll beg to stop playing, but won't be able to take your hand off the mouse.

    • Re:FFVII wasn't scary. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by oGMo ( 379 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:58PM (#13850019)
      Pfft, go turn off the lights and play Silent Hill (2 or 3) in the dark by yourself. Or Fatal Frame 1-2. People these days think stuff jumping out at you in the dark or sneaking up behind is "scary". That's not scary. Scary is when you don't want to continue the game because of what might be behind the next door. Scary is when you get up from playing and are afraid to open the door to your room, lest you find it a twisted hellworld version of what it should be.
      • True. Silent Hill on the Playstation has been the scaries thing I ever played. To this day, I still hate the fucking static on radios.
      • Back to Thief: Deadly Shadows.

        Mod this down if this gives away too much

        [spoiler]

        Scary is when you get to the level in the game you're usualy wisecracking, confident character gets a tinge of terror in his voice. It's also when you spend the entire first half of the level creeping around, scared out of your wits because you KNOW there's something there to get you.. so you hide in the shadows like the thief you are.. atmosphere so thick it's dripping down the walls. You finally figure out that there's n

        • Like you said, but needs to be stressed out more, what makes a game or a scene scary imho, is that you generally have self confidence and feel unbeatable, and then you get to something which seriously make you feel like you don't belong there and helpless.

          Why was Doom1/2 scary? You were genrally strong and went through well lit areas and then blam, a door opens and some unearthly monster comes out. Or when you go through an area which looks ok, open a door and see some hellish room.
          Doom3 was hardly scary be

        • Re:FFVII wasn't scary. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fbjon ( 692006 )
          And those inmates, with the spasmic movements, and the frickin' cages over their mouths! Aaargh!

          Truly an experience that rivals System Shock 2. I might just find some code to jump over that level next time I play Thief III.

    • No, play System Shock 2 and Aliens vs. Predator games in the dark. That's scary.

    • Re:FFVII wasn't scary. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Luigi30 ( 656867 )
      System Shock 2 was scary.

      Pick up a log on level 4, it says that whoever tries to reprogram a unit (your objective) will feel "soooo much sooooorrooooow...". You head down there, go down a ladder... a voice speaks to you, and you are promptly booby-trapped by worms, flies, and spiders from behind the wall.
    • I tried the single player demo, and it was the first game in a long time that got to me. The scare mechanism was a bit different from what TFA describes, however:
      In F.E.A.R., the enemies are not overly innovative, but you never know when you will run into the next batch of bad guys. Combined with a generally bleak and poorly lit environment, it creates the same kind of tension as Alien (the film).

      • Currently playing F.E.A.R. Most of the time it's a fairly normal shooter. The times it scares the crap out of you, and it does it well are when it takes you by surprise, the sudden appearance of an apparition at the top of a platform you glimpse for a few seconds or that suddenly appears and walks towards you. It takes some effort to avoid instinctively wasting ammo on them.

        I'm as far as just having run into the cloaking ninja dudes in the corporate tower (met the fat guy eating cheetos checkpoint).

        One thin

  • Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)

    by czarangelus ( 805501 ) <iapetus@g m a il.com> on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:05PM (#13849742)
    Slashdot is getting to be like Fark: there's always someone (usually multiple someones) around to crap on someone elses' parade for the sheer malicious joy of doing it. STFU. If you didn't think it was front page material, why did you bother to read the article in the first place? Why did you waste eighteen seconds of your life to tell everyone else how stupid it is? Why can't you just move on without making a snide comment? The same intellectual runoff in every thread is getting kind of dull.

    I think it's a great article. I had the exact same reaction the first time I played FFVII, and I think a lot of other people did too. It's also topical - FFVII might itself be old material, but the video game industry is cranking out one unsatisfying suvivial horror after another. So what if it's dated - FFVII did right what a hundred other games have done spectacularly wrong. I think that if a few creative minds in the industry were tipped off to this article, they might reconsider the plot devices used to scare gamers. FFVII was scarier in its places than any Resident Evil I've ever played.

    • Since when was FFVII scary? Awesome visuals ya...

      Well, I will admit, it has been a while since I was in the Diserted Shin-Ra building for the first time, and the memory might have died a little...

      Personally, I was scared when I first fought The End (MGS3). That fear was more psycological then visual. That's the kind of fear I like...

      • Re:Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pyrrhonist ( 701154 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @09:26PM (#13850139)
        Personally, I was scared when I first fought The End (MGS3).

        No kidding. It was creepy when you're trying to find him with your scope, and catch the glint off of his scope. It also freaked me out when I realized that the cut scene showing Snake through The End's scope wasn't a cut scene - you still had to control Snake! It wasn't too hard to actually kill the guy, but it was a very strange boss battle. Next time I'm going to snipe him on the dock so I don't have to go through that again, though. THE EYE! THE EYE!

        The Sorrow was probably supposed to be the scariest boss battle, but it ended up being the funniest.

        The other battle that creeped me out was the one with The Fury. Somehow a guy in a spacesuit with a flamethrower and a rocket pack in a narrow, dark hallway is bit unnerving, especially when you're trying to knock him out instead of kill him.

        I'm looking forward to the remix in MGS3:Subsistence (original MGS3 with first person + network play + the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 + a movie of the cut scenes).

        • It wasn't too hard to actually kill the guy, but it was a very strange boss battle.

          Does that mean he's not particularly tough in terms of actual health, or that the fight itself wasn't as challenging as one might have expected? If you enjoyed the fight, then I'm sure you'll love Sniper Elite [namco.com].

          The other battle that creeped me out was the one with The Fury. Somehow a guy in a spacesuit with a flamethrower and a rocket pack in a narrow, dark hallway is bit unnerving...

          Seconded. Aside from the spacesuit len

          • Does that mean he's not particularly tough in terms of actual health,

            He's not very tough physically. I dispatched him with a single shot to the back of the head with a pistol once I had located him and snuck up behind him.

            He is also geriatric. You can literally wait for him to die of old age (just save and turn the PS2 off for a week).

            or that the fight itself wasn't as challenging as one might have expected?

            The fight is easily the most challenging in the game, or at least I thought so.

            If you enjo

    • Slashdot isn't about reading and appreciating the article, it's about 1 in 10 times reading the article but discussing it anyway - so if you think people should shut up if they didn't like it, you've missed the point. Also, the world doesn't revolve around you, so if someone does something you disagree with, don't be so indignant.

      I think this should have been only in the games section.

    • It's also topical - FFVII might itself be old material,

      Not really - todays machines are finally fast enough to play FFVII smoothly with software rendering, which means its actually playable; the accelerated version crashes too often to be considered such.

      but the video game industry is cranking out one unsatisfying suvivial horror after another

      Speaking of survival horrors, one is over others: Nethack. In no other game will realizing that the letter h is purple and not green cause such amounts of sh

    • personally, i recall that scene from ffvii. perhaps i wasnt /scared/ per se, but i remember that i was understandably nervous and on edge. here i am, low on health and items, following the trail of blood left by something, probably a boss that i was not prepared to fight. im walking through the building and its aftermath and its easily slaughtered tons of guys that i spent the last halfhour struggling to get past.

      what amazed me about the game is that it was that it was relatively upbeat until that point ove
  • The long fight to find Captain Keys (again and again), following with tracking him down one more time and fighting off the fairly tough Covenant to come to a place where the Covenant were getting their collective asses kicked, and then a "sped-up view of the death of the guys before you" movie before a horde of squid-popcorns came out was scarey. Then, a mad dash to get the hell out before some leap-frogging monster whacked the hell out of me. That was a scary game.

    The interactive story of a well written
  • I remember playing that part of the game quite clearly, and to this day I can't help but giggle. The reason for this is the soundtrack; throughout the scene, the game maintains that dark and creepy atmosphere described in the article. The setting is empty and lifeless, leaving only blood on the walls and and an impression of violence. It's fairly silent, but music is there. It keeps the tone quiet and dark, and it plods along for quite a few minutes, keeping the tone until suddenly, after a final moveme

  • Don't worry. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HunterZ ( 20035 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:34PM (#13849907) Journal
    If it's any consolation, it was posted in the Games category where the /. gods have decided that 95% of stories are not worthy of beeing seen -- except by the dozen or so of us who bothered to look at what categories were available and checked the Games box. We should totally start a "/. Games category readers' club" or something.

    Anyways, back on topic: I don't think that writer has played enough video games. My roommate has a morbid fascination with scary games and she could probably list off several that are way scarier than FF7 -- a game that I've tried seriously to play at least three or four times over the years but keep putting down because of all the silliness that kills the dark mood (mini-game carnivals, beach resorts, whorehouse humor, etc.).

    On the topic of Japanese RPGs: It'd be great if some western-world company were to do remakes of JRPGs in a way that appeals better to non-asians. This is how we got Robotech; I guess it's also how we got Lunar, which I still didn't care much for (mostly because the plot was still too cliche). The development of Japanese RPGs was derailed at some point, and now they've all got the same recycled plots but with some new battle system gimmick. The sad part is that gamers eat it up and talk about how great each new JRPG is instead of calling the game companies out on the carpet for it. Chrono Trigger came frustratingly close to being a good game, but they screwed it up by not tying up loose ends in the plot (like what the hell is Lavos other than some spikey thing that wants to eat the world?). Final Fantsy 7 was close, but had too much cheesiness and more mini-games than regular combat encounters (it's almost like the designers had ADD and couldn't stand the idea of a consistently dark, deep plot).
    • Have you ever played Chrono Trigger? The "loose end" that you mention is tied up quite nicely in one of the dialogs. Lavos is just one of its race, a race that keeps humans (and the inhabitants of other planets) like humans keep cattle, only we're intelligent and cows just taste good.
      • Yes, I beat Chrono Trigger actually. I guess I must have missed that one dialogue amongst all the prehistoric dancing and whatnot...

        I heard they also explain it more in Chrono Cross, but that nobody liked it due to the fact that it was more of a spinoff than a sequel. I might check it out someday though (if I ever get desperate enough to try a JRPG that apparently even the fanbois don't remember fondly).
        • Wait? No one liked [gamerankings.com] Chrono Cross? I very vividly remember that game, and how much I enjoyed it. The story was interesting, the graphics were amazing for the PSX, and it had just enough references to Chrono Trigger to make those who played the first game feel at home. I can't recall anyone who played Chrono Cross who didn't find it to be an excellent game. Hell, I bought a Playstation to play the game, and I didn't feel disappointed.

          It's got to be priced damn near dirt by now, but it's worth picking up at an

          • I apologize if I misrepresented the overall fan reaction to Chrono Chross - I'm just going off of my memory, which is probably highly unreliable. On the other hand, I'm suspicious of Gamerankings' PSX list since it doesn't mention Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which was so good that it has influenced almost all subsequent Castlevania titles.

          • Re:Don't worry. (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Grym ( 725290 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @09:34AM (#13852259)

            Wait? No one liked Chrono Cross? I very vividly remember that game, and how much I enjoyed it. The story was interesting, the graphics were amazing for the PSX, and it had just enough references to Chrono Trigger to make those who played the first game feel at home. I can't recall anyone who played Chrono Cross who didn't find it to be an excellent game. Hell, I bought a Playstation to play the game, and I didn't feel disappointed.

            I hate Chrono Cross.

            Being a good RPG gamer, I decided against using any sort of guide the first way through. About a third of the way into the game I got stuck on an almost impossible boss battle (I've been told it's the hardest encounter in the game.) I tried everything I could in my gamer experience to win this battle. NOTHING worked. No amount of item-spamming cheese or character combination could work. I probably spent about 6 hours of actual playtime trying to win just this one fight.

            Fair enough... I'll just level my characters up and come back stronger for the fight, right? WRONG! Chrono Cross has an extremly STUPID leveling system in which the power of your character is limited by the progression of the game's storyline (ie. Boss fights).

            Normally even this wouldn't upset me. Maybe there's something I'm doing wrong in the fight. Maybe I just suck, right? Thinking this was the case, I hopped online at the time to get some help. Well, as it turns out. I wasn't alone. This problem happened to a number of customers... The reason? All of us had picked a JOKE CHARACTER THAT EXCLUDES ONE FROM PICKING THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE GAME. And it's not like this was hard to do. It was possible by following the normal progression of the story. All I can say is: ASDFJAEORDSAOFJASKLDFNKLJASHNDLKFJASDLKFJASDFLKJAS DFJ:KLASDJFLI:QJWSDVKLN!

            Needless to say, I've never touched that damn game since finding that out. What kind of QA process lets a dead-end like that slip into production? Each of the moronic elements that culimnates into this giant clusterfuck-of-a-timesink is damn near heresy in traditional RPG game design. Bah...

            -Grym

    • We should totally start a "/. Games category readers' club" or something.

      Count me in.
    • Final Fantsy 7 was close, but had too much cheesiness and more mini-games than regular combat encounters (it's almost like the designers had ADD and couldn't stand the idea of a consistently dark, deep plot).

      With the exception of the Chocobo Race in the Gold Saucer (which was part of the plot), all of the other minigames were optional. You didn't have to run around breeding chocobos and whatnot, the first time I finished the game I went straight through without exploring.
      • The problem is that I'm an explorer. I have to turn over every rock and complete every subquest that I find. Even if I hate them, I can't skip mini-games without feeling like I'm missing out on some useful item or experience.

        To me "going straight through without exploring" is a boring waste of time. It's also the reason I don't finish many games despite spending more time playing them than many who do finish those games.
  • I think that a computer game that could be just as, uh, involving as a sad film... uh, you know... so sad that it can actually... *sniff* make you, uh physically cry ... *sob* I'd like to see that! That would be fantastic. *uncontrolled sobbing*

  • Simple?! (Score:3)

    by Geckoman ( 44653 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @10:17PM (#13850378)
    simple trail of blood
    I don't know about the world the rest of you Slashdotters live in, but around my neighborhood there wouldn't be much considered simple about any trail of blood, much less a long, wide, dried one.
  • This guy should play F.E.A.R. She may be a total ripoff of the Ring but that little girl scares the shit out of me. I get creeped out every time I turn a corner or look through a window because Im afraid she will be there.

    One of the best scares I ever got from a game was the F.E.A.R. demo. I was walking down the catwalk admiring the graphics. I turned around to climb down the ladder and BOOM that creepy little girl is standing right behind me (with a jump in the music). I must have jumped 3 feet out of my c
    • You should try the Fatal Frame/Project Zero games for some good horror as well. It has that ring-girl as well but the scare comes mostly from the enemies which are invisible most of the time and you only hear them coming. Sure, they become visible before they hit you but to kill them you need to aim at them for quite some time and preferrably hit them just a moment before they hit you. There's a difference between "cut scene" scares that just happen but don't hurt you and actual enemies that are hard to tra
      • F.E.A.R. has those as well, in the form of cloaking ninjas who only become visible when you hit them or they strike at you.
  • I don't know about you guys, but games do a better job scaring me than movies. It's probaly the fact that in a movie all the stuff is hapening to the people in the movie, but in a game it feels like it happens to you. Also one of the scariest moments to me was in Undying when the ghost jumps out in front of you the first time. Something about trying to shoot it and your bullets going right though him.
  • You want to get really scared , try playing Alien vs Predator. Note: play it as a marine. When the blips start, the terror begins...

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