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.
Maybe it's me (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't gotten the chills from a game since Doom2. Thinking back, I wonder if now I would get the same feeling. I guess part of it's realism, but as/more important is the immersion. I've not been able to turn up the volume, shit the door and leave the real world in a while.
Another important thing in scaring someone is that there has to be some negative outcome that they are genuinely concerned about. A game can look as creepy as Hell, and the sound can be spot on. But, if I am not afraid to die, to lose something I've worked for, I'll just think it's cool.
Give me that tension. Make losing my character be a significant loss. Then, those dark rooms, eerie creeks and nervous silences just might make a bit uncomfortable.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. "Shit the door". Well, I stand by that. It sure has been a while.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Funny)
Glad you caught that first. I personally only shit bricks, and that's already painful enough. That door must be brutal, what with the slivers and all.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Funny)
That door must be brutal, what with the slivers and all.
Especially if it comes out sideways. Ouch!
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Maybe it's me (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:4, Informative)
Want to be really scared? Try this: (Score:2)
Bash-powered Russian Roulette: /* || echo "You live"
# [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf
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Here's the portable version:
n=`expr $RANDOM '%' 6`; [ $n == 0 ] && rm -rf ~/* || echo "You live"
Re:Want to be really scared? Try this: (Score:5, Funny)
Nice. One improvement if the original isn't hardcore scary enough:
This way, you get to sit there in suspense for a while as your hard drive goes berserk, hoping desperately that it comes back with "You live". (Replace /dev/md0 with your root.)
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It's only a rental if you buy it for the PC platform, the PS3 and XBox 360 versions are DRM clean.
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How's that, then? A casual pirate who, what, burns off a copy on CD for his mates? What do you think this is, 1999? A casual pirate downloads a cracked copy from TPB, mounts the image in Daemon Tools or similar, and plays it that way. He never even encounters the DRM.
Unreal.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember fighting those green spider things in the dark by throwing flares around and lighting up little areas?
Let's not confuse that with "suddenly make a loud noise in a quiet bit".
Re:Unreal.... (Score:5, Funny)
Remember fighting those green spider things in the dark by throwing flares around and lighting up little areas?
yah. i do it once a year. it's called "house cleaning".
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:4, Funny)
A game can look as creepy as Hell, and the sound can be spot on. But, if I am not afraid to die, to lose something I've worked for, I'll just think it's cool.
Ya, whenever my router's internet light goes out while playing a game, all I can do is hide beneath the sheets and pray to God it's not the end of the world.
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Ya, whenever my router's internet light goes out while playing a game, all I can do is hide beneath the sheets and pray to God it's not the end of the world.
You pray to Al Gore?
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The spiders did it for me... chittering, fast as all fsck, and hard to kill... at least a shotgun shot or a few bullets made a monkey go bye bye.
SS2 was and is Awesome, for getting scared by a video game.
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I wanted to play through that again to get over the vague sense of disappointment after I finished Bioshock. Unfortunately it looks like arse on a 1440x900 monitor. Fortunately, a couple of weeks ago someone published a widescreen patch [ttlg.com]. I'm busy at the moment fighting off the king of France's expeditionary force which is about six times the size of my rebel army, but once I've finished building my free state on top of a mountain of skulls
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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 th
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The thing about Doom is we felt alone. There were no computers to read dialog, no diary's, no nothing. It was you, a weapon, and a shit load of monsters. The feeling of being a world by yourself gives you a sense of helplessness, even though you knew you could beat blast the monsters away, if you got caught with no ammo, no one was there to save you.
I agree with the second part, but disagree with the first part. Some games get scarier when you know more about the story.
Watch this little game [youtube.com]. Project Firestart is over 20 years old and it still scares the crap out of me.
And what to say about the Silent Hill games? Having to kill your best buddy to survive, the possibility of you actually being insane, etc. How about this: You're trapped trying to get a door open, and there's a key on the other side. You crawl to try to get it, and guess what? A spoiled
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Doom 2 [and 1] wasn't designed with 'scary' as a primary goal. Keep in mind this was during the mid 90s, before Resident Evil made survival horror popular, and apparently invented the term "survival horror".
And yes I'm aware of Alone in the Dark and some other predating it.
Re:Maybe it's me (Score:4, Insightful)
That was the one thing I didn't like about Bioshock. There wasn't any penalty for getting your character killed. Otherwise it was a very creepy/scary game. That removed a lot of the potential tension.
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Back in the day...
Whenever I GM'd, it was all about survival, in fact it wasn't a successful game unless someone died.
I was not exactly sadistic, but there were logical and very simple ways of avoiding death. It just so happened that everyone was a complete moron.
Once, I even let them build a fortress (with traps), free of charge. Sure enough, someone fell into the pit of spikes.
Good times!
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But, if I am not afraid to die, to lose something I've worked for, I'll just think it's cool.
Give me that tension. Make losing my character be a significant loss. Then, those dark rooms, eerie creeks and nervous silences just might make a bit uncomfortable.
If I stretch that a bit, you're basically stating that horror movies or literature cannot exist. It does, so I claim you're wrong.
Losing playtime is about the hardcore / casual divide. You are correct that it can add a bit of extra tension to the game, but for many people (me included) it is just mindbogglingly annoying and ruins a game more than anything else.
You mention immersion, and you're right. And for me, worrying about save spots, backtracking safe areas to save, and reloading for the nth time break
Have you been playing the right games? (Score:2)
If you want scary games, here's a few (not entirely today, but relatively recent) titles.
And no, I'm not meaning the "shit will jump out of windows" stuff.
Grab your Gamecube or Wii and play "Eternal Darkness." With the lights off. And let your sanity meter get a little low, just to have some more fun.
Go into Thief 3 and play the "Cradle" stage. THAT was fucking scary. Not only that, it did it with ATMOSPHERE and not just "OMG ammo starvation and stuff jumping through windows."
If you want to make a horror ga
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My biggest problem is that many developers mistake fear with being startled. The game engines often "cheat" (especially the Doom series), spawning enemies, etc. It's easy to go too far -- witness Doom3. Ironically, F.E.A.R. did this
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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?
Because in real life, if the axe murderer in the corner jumps out of the shadows and takes a swipe at you, no amount of health packets is gonna save you.
Incidentally, the whole "why would you want to do this escapist activity when it also exists in some fashion in real life" is a very played out argument that completely misses the point of escapism and why people enjoy it. Just thought you'd like to know.
Problems.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem in making a good survival horror game is that people just aren't scared anymore. We are used to movies with blood everywhere and body parts flying in every direction. Mix that in with the current technology of load times and lag and a survival horror game just isn't going to work. Granted, you can make a fairly good and creepy game, but the tactics that worked in the past aren't going to work today.
But that isn't scary, just nasty... Some of the scariest movies of my life had little or no gore. Now that have traded dread for surprise and shock. I wild love to have some good old fashioned Dread back. This might be it. I just hope the DRM is not the scary part of the game!
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I have to say that the Silent Hill games are WONDERFUL for this. Look at the first game (i believe, *may* be 2). As you're entering town, you see just a streak of blood on the road. That's *it*. I remember seeing that, thinking "shit."
Silent Hill games are, honestly, some of the best in the genre. Also, Fatal Frame games are good. Freaky as fuck.
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I agree. SS2 was pretty scary. If you want creepy, trawl the web for Zork: Nemesis.
One of, if not the, scariest movie for me was The Shining (the earlier one, with Jack Nicholson). There's very little gore (altho, ok, a fair amount of blood at one point), and fewer than 5 people die. But it's really suspenseful, and scary.
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem in making a good survival horror game is that people just aren't scared anymore.
The problem is that we're tired of producers confusing "scaring" us with "startling" us. How many times did something jump out of the dark at you in Doom 3? Don't you remember playing 95% of the game switching between your gun and your flashlight and constantly entering rooms backwards because you knew the monster was going to come out of a hidden door behind you? That's not scary, it's just annoying as hell.
You look at recent horror films like The Ring (setting aside that it wasn't a very good movie). That movie was scary as crap, and the director did it by actually scaring you.
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
All the time, or only in Doom? Remind me not to follow you at night...
Re:Problems.... (Score:5, Funny)
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After a year or two of WoW certain noises make me jump up and do a 180, if they sound enough like a rogue coming out of stealth.
Problems....solutions. (Score:2)
Good thing you didn't see the sequels. Creepy to a certain degree but repetitive too. Also no one's mentioned "condemned" which ran on the same engine as F.E.A.R..
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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 hallw
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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.
this could become a bit unsettling in intimate situations. i hope that your girlfriend loves you anyway.
Lovecraft (Score:4, Insightful)
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
You are spot on. Horror is foreboding, knowing that something bad is going to happen, just not knowing exactly how or when.
I'll make a reference to H.P.Lovecraft. Arguably the most famous horror author, and basically all his stories starts with telling you how awful everything went in the end. Then he starts describing exactly how it happened and why it couldn't be avoided.
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F.E.A.R.'s music also helped out a lot with that regard as well. To be honest, that game had my senses all a tingle to the point I could only play it for 30 minutes at a time at most.
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.
H.P. Lovecraft at his best could chill you to the bone with nothing more explicit than an overwhelming sense of age and power:
That the closer you came to the heart of things, the more likely you were to go utterly and irretrievably mad.
Hitchcock, working in another genre, always knew that the fuse hits the audience harder than the bang - which, in th
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That's not scary, it's just annoying as hell.
I beg to differ. Doom 3 scared the shit out of me. I could only play it for 15 minutes at a time, tops (I never did finish it because of that). I remember my roommate earning my eternal wrath by startling me while I was playing Doom 3. Far from being "not scary" and "annoying as hell", Doom 3 was an intensely scary game.
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You look at recent horror films like The Ring (setting aside that it wasn't a very good movie). That movie was scary as crap
Why does everybody keep saying this?!
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The first hour or two of Doom 3 were genuinely creepy. There was this sense of foreboding That made me reluctant to keep playing. It was an interesting sensation, stopping in some part of the complex, knowing that it was relatively safe and feeling some level of relief, but imagining what the hell might be going on elsewhere. The voices early on were extremely unsettling. Curiosity, however kept me going because I thought that all those elements were hinting at the coming story. Unfortunately, that never ca
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I think that's what horror games should also aim for: The slow buildup of tension, and not Doom 3 like "enter room, kill baddies, leave room" kind of repetition.
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.
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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.
Ah, "horror game". So that's what the kids are calling it nowadays...
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Yes, as far as I remember, this is the first "Delta Labs" level. I do think there was another scary and eery sequence in Doom 3,
Oh, it's an FPS (Score:2)
Some idiot called this a "space shooter". If this is a space shooter then so was Doom 2.
Freelancer [microsoft.com] is a space shooter.
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Way to totally miss the point. A "space shooter" is not an FPS set in space. It's a game where you fly around and shoot things in space.
Gore doesn't scare me but... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Neither really scares me, though things jumping and strobing may have a momentary effect.
No, I've found that the only types of things that scare me are things that could be real, and in a realistic way, or at least close to it. That's why I still consider Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers one of the scariest games ever, and One Hour Photo is one of the scarriest movies I've ever seen, even though nothing actually happens in it.
Re:Gore doesn't scare me but... (Score:5, Funny)
Man-Bear-Pig is as scary as it gets!
Re:Gore doesn't scare me but... (Score:4, Funny)
loud noises and mixed with strobe lights can get me every time.
Hmm, you should probably stay away from nightclubs then. :)
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You're right in not being scared by Gore. If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have your loverly interwebz on which to post this.
-dZ.
DRM Space scares me more.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dead Space I can handle.
GrpA
fff (Score:5, Insightful)
Silent Hill 2 ... its weakness was that it sprawled thematically, leaving many loose ends, unanswered questions, unclear conclusions and unrelated elements.
That was not a weakness, it was one of its main strengths! The ambiguity of the story makes the viewer think and wonder about just what was it that was seen. And it does so in a masterful way, provoking interesting thoughts and interpretations on the part of the viewer. Not to mention that uncertainty is a key element of suspense and fear.
On a side note, this kind of attitude of wanting everything spoon-fed and explained is very lazy and too typical of people who just want to sit in front of a box to be entertained for a set amount of time. That's entirely different to wanting a piece of art that lingers in the mind long after experienced.
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Ambiguity and loose ends are for romance novels, not horror/sci-fi stories.
this kind of attitude of wanting everything spoon-fed and explained is very lazy and too typical of people who just want to sit in front of a box to be entertained for a set amount of time.
Before you get all high and mighty, we're still talking about Silent Hill - the movie, right?
Call of Cthulhu (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a nice 10 minute video that gives you the general feeling of the whole game. (minus the 320x240 resolution and lossy quality of course). If you get bored skip to the middle.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vs-7_JlzJg [youtube.com]
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That game would be scarier if you could figure out what to do easier. Even still, the running from the hotel room and the ship level were pretty damn awesome.
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I forgot to mention, the shoggoth was pretty boss as well.
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Scary is Vampire Bloodlines, the perfect mix of brutal violence, creepy lighting, and, lots and lots of tense moments. Too bad most of the scary stuff was scripted so it became less so on the third and fourth play throughs (still that Hotel gives me the creeps)
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CoC started out amazing. But then it turned into just another FPS.
More of the game should have been about sneaking around and running for your life when things go bad. You don't kill your enemies in CoC - they kill you!
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You don't kill your enemies in CoC - they kill you!
So it's kind of like a Russian FPS then ?
Meh. (Score:2, Insightful)
I liked this game better when it was called Doom 3.
At least then the graphics were cutting edge, instead of 3-4 years out of date.
Not that graphics are the end all, be all of a game. But this game has the same plot as every doom (and doom clone) ever made.
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WAIT, Doom had a plot? Doom CLONES had PLOTS?? What was it, "shoot monsters, go to hell, shoot more monsters?"
I don't think you're really being fair. This is sort of like saying all vampire movies have the same plot. "Vampires terrorize general area, go to vampires' domain, kill the vampires." It's true!
This game has a little more depth than that. There are some nice animated comic strips for free on the PSN if you're interested. I don't recall any zombies or going to hell being involved...
Not enjoying the desensitivity... (Score:2)
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I've been thinking, are we really desensitized, or have games been getting a lot tamer since Doom and Quake's time? :\
Personally, I'd rather see some cheap pixilated gore than a whole limp body slung 50 freaking yards by a rocket. It just doesn't look right
I don't understand it.. it's perfectly fine in the movies, but it's wrong in video games?
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I was playing Gothic 3 for a while last weekend and felt a bit of re-sensitization going on. I was playing as a rebel, but all the towns at the beginning are controlled by orcs and their human mercenaries. You go into the towns, meet the people (they don't know you're a rebel), do quests for them, etc. Then you kill them all and liberate the town. It actually made me feel like a real bastard.
It is pitch black... (Score:2)
You can tell it's EA... (Score:2)
...because they're interviewing "producers", not "game designers." Yeah, I've been there before. 'nuff said.
Still, looks like a good game. I'll never buy it on the PC, of course. I'll have to think hard about whether I want to support them by purchasing the Xbox game.
AVP (Score:2)
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The Game That Terrified Me (Score:3, Funny)
DRM (Score:2)
Hey, face? You know what? Fuck you, I'm going to cut my nose off, how you like THEM apples?!?!
The tags about DRM, defective by design, don't buy it... It's an important issue that needs to be adressed, but for the love of God, this is not the way to do it. If you're going to boycott, then boycott, don't just go online and rant about how people shouldn't buy it. Get organized. As such, you're at best going to annoy a PR grunt, not get one of the decisionmakers at the top of EA to quit using DRM. If you
System Shock is still king (Score:2)
If you see someone talking about SS2, well that is just because they are to young to know better.
The trick for me to make a scary game is NOT darkness or making the player helpless but rather to give him just enough power to be cautious. Give me a grenade that I can use to clear a room, killing everything in sight, but I got ONE grenade, and there are 5 rooms. When do I use it. Now, in the first room or save it for monsters yet to come. Are there monsters beyond this room. Do I use the health potion now o
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System Shock had a better plot, I think, but it wasn't as scary.
The trick for me to make a scary game is NOT darkness or making the player helpless but rather to give him just enough power to be cautious. Give me a grenade that I can use to clear a room, killing everything in sight, but I got ONE grenade, and there are 5 rooms. When do I use it. Now, in the first room or save it for monsters yet to come. A
Left 4 Dead (Score:2)
DRM? (Score:2)
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That's part of the horror.
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Bioshock had its startling moments, but didn't have the pervasive sense of paranoia that SS2 did. Nor has any game since then, IMO. A true classic. Think I'ma dig it out and play through it again...