Horror in Gaming - Try Not to Die (Pt 2)

The Horror Genre Article continues in the Virtua Month of Horror SPEEWWWKAAAAA!!! Now we're talking about the games that got it wrong and a deeper look at what makes and breaks the concept! Try to keep your brains! 

As amazing a concept as it can be, there can be plenty that can go wrong with Survival Horror at its very core. There are games that get their weapons and the feeling of shooting completely wrong. Sometimes, the targetting system can be awkward on purpose to enhance the scare effect of helplessness. Some games take this to mean they can make the targetting system as rubbish as possible and that will work. No, do not do that.

Where Alien Isolation got this concept to a near perfect, if somewhat languid experience, Agony took the concept of running and hiding and shat it right out. You need to be able to hide. Agony glitches so badly, hiding is utterly useless more often than not. When you are running and hiding from the farmer guy, Jack Baker in RE7, you feel the horror! If you have a knife against his shovel, you feel raw terror when you see him bust through a wall saying "There you are!" That sort of real feeling of helplessness is what you need and it goes so far when you can do nothing but run and hide. If you can't even run and hide, however, what can you do? Die! That's what! Then you'll probably turn off the game!

Running and hiding was a concept that put Five Nights at Freddy's on the map. While it dropped the ball on the concept of jump scares that aren't annoying as all hell, it still garnered a following from sheer gameplay and building challenge. That, plus the lore and the characters. 

There we come to a core that can also make or break a game. The story and the characters can bring your game from good to LEGENDARY and that is no exaggeration. FNAF has a great lore when it's not walking all over itself and forgetting whole chapters. Cut out your own square of Silent Hill's story, if you'd like, because it also gets choppy after the first few games, but what is there is very well crafted with subjects of psyche and the subconscious. 

Even if the story and the characters only work in one game, that can catapult that game into the stars. Doom had the most minimal story and character, but somehow brought Doomguy to the mainstream in a way that cements him there still today. Dead Space, the first and only the first game, has a pretty decent story to pull you along the haunted space corridors to fight space monsters with a space spinal suit. It and Half-life brought about an amazing use of the silent hero because he is you and you are looking for a way out and a way to survive. 

Then there are plenty of games that dropped the ball on Resident Evil. Yes, Resident Evil was a genre all its own, basically, because no one remembers Resident Evil Survivor everyone needed tank controls, slow moving enemies, scarce resources and stupid dialogue. They took all of these elements of the game and spilled them over the pavement. This, plus the fact that there were SO MANY of them! Just look at my Worst Games of the Sega Saturn 2 you will see plenty of them. Not all of them are the worst examples, but there are some very horrible ones (not in a good way). Then there's Countdown: Vampires, Deep Fear, and I could go on for days listing them. Trust me. There are a lot. 

There are so many concepts that go into Horror in gaming, as stated before. I've scratched the surface of games that do this well and not well, but these gameplay mechanics and visual style cannot be overstated. So, let's keep this going and keep these articles from being novels! Virtua SPEEEWWWWWMOOMOOMOO!!!!  

Horror in Gaming - Survive or SurDie! (Pt 1)

 Welcome, one and all, to the month of Virtua SPEEEWWWWKIEKINS!!! Get ready for the scary, the spooky and the monstrous games you know and love! Perhaps, you'll find some you want to try and we are here to endorse this notion! Let the Virtua Spooky Season begin!!!

Survival Horror, Zombie Shooters, and Horror in general can make for some of the greatest and the stupidest games ever made! Hyperbole abound! People will spend their paychecks when they see that you're killing zombies, vampires, werewolves, monsters and sludge creatures. It could be a cardboard monster on a stick. If it's well placed, jumps out when we don't expect it and keeps us on our toes, it can work for this genre. 

                                   

The fact that video games are an interactive medium makes it very, very unique, if you have not noticed. Doing anything more customizable requires schooling and skillcrafting. Video games require practice and that practice is quite often the most fun in one person's life. Teaching your brain to play the game and dealing with the horrors for the first time gives you the horror experience as if you are there and you are facing down Jason Vorhees yourself, then you can BE Jason Voorhees. 

Well that's great! All of the blood and the guts that we want and we can make that happen! Games such as Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, House of the Dead 1 & 2, The Dead Rising Series, CarnEvil and any number of other games have captured us with the concept of mowing down zombies in ridiculous numbers and working with friends and family to do so. These simple shoot'em ups and run and gun games were not "easy" to make, but they were not rocket science in terms of getting the formula. A good, chunky sound effect, a good recoil of your weapon, repercussion of the zombie's reaction and splatter of blood all accumulated into an experience that is real and fake enough to trick your brain into thinking you just blasted something full force with metal shreds. 

The same thing is true for melee weapons on zombies. Half-life captured this concept with the crowbar and Left 4 Dead did it very well with the axe. Then there are the chainsaws from Doom and Gears of War. You need the blood and you need the recoil from the hit. It needs to feel like I have hit someone really hard with the intent to kill. 

Fairly simple if you work at it. In no way is game development labeled as "easy". This is especially true for another very well known of the horror gaming genre, Survival Horror. After Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, this genre exploded with popularity and there is a very good reason for that. This is dynamic, this is also something that can be open to the most creativity and imagination as anyone can put into it. 

PT, Playable Teaser, AKA the failed Silent Hill game that never was, is a well known legend among gamers. Very few people have it on their Playstation 4 and it is well known as one of the greatest demos of all time. The gameplay, while slightly repetitive, draws you deeper into a world of darkness and dread that will keep you in the throes of horror with very little hope of climbing back out. This is mostly because the game was cancelled and this game art of a demo is nothing but a demo. There have been rumors that it will be unearthed some day, but those are just rumors until we see some digital gold and physical nirvana. 

Then came a glimmer of hope that was also quite thoroughly stamped out VERY soon after it was announced. Allison Road was going to pick up where PT left off and the gameplay it boasted was quite similar, along with its horror style and realistic graphics. The public took another hit, but after that, we grew accustomed to disappointment. 

The concept was finally picked up and brought to life by Capcom by none other than the Resident Evil Franchise. For the first time, the RE series got a mainstream first-person survival horror game in the form of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It had the ambience, it had the scares, the gameplay was fun and somewhat challenging and it took the concept to the level we were waiting for. Was everyone happy with it? Obviously not, but it was still a breath of fresh air after some very loud blasts of methane. Though, it doesn't technically take advantage of the zombie concept, it does what it does well with scares and excitement. It had a rather weak third act, but there was plenty of game to love and it brought both the survival and the horror to the table. 

The greatness of this concept is vast and dire, so let's go ahead and say we're going for a Part 2 coming next week for the Month of Virtua SPEEEEEEWWWW all over your dad's shoes!