BenJepheneT
Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
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- Jul 14, 2019
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In all honesty, horror always baffles me in how it works. Take a "horror game" like Resident Evil 5. Savage, virus-ridden villagers clamouring to stab you in the back may sound frightening in concept but once you play it it's really just a run-of-the-mill Japanese KUHRAYZEE action game with SOME horror elements to it. (Provided you're not playing co-op, then the whole game just becomes a lolcow)
But then you have games like Metro 2033, which genuinely scares me at times, with it's dark twisted tunnels and janky ass shooting mechanics. It's not even the monsters that scare me. That level where you have to inflitrate a militia to get to somewhere else scares me more than your normal indie SCREAMING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA game.
So to spare you my train of thought, here's my conclusion: first of all, disempowerment.
I'm not talking disempowerment as a core mechanic. Like pic related, disempowerment only gets you so far when done multiple times. I'm talking more about disempowerment as a core theme.
Say you're put in an home invasion. What's more scary? Arming yourself with blunt weaponry and hiding in the dark closet, clutching your hammer in fear, waiting for that right apt moment to smash and dash? Or being quadriplegic in a wheelchair with nowhere to go but to wait for someone to jump on you going ABOOGABOOLOO.
Point is, horror works best when you're severely overwhelmed but at the same time, you're given just the right tools and situational advantage to at least get yourself out of there.
Case in point, Alien: Isolation. Right from the get go you're in a ship with a map and a general sense of idea on where to hide or go. Late into the game you're given tools like a gun or a flamethrower to help you navigate through the ship to GTFO. Yet, you can't defeat the big scary alien with those weapons; you can merely wound it and skadoodle right after. That, is my definition of disempowerment: giving you the right tools not to defeat the threat but to evade it.
Same thing goes to that one level from Metro 2033. You can't defeat the giant turrets sitting on the side of the platform. You technically can, but unless you're an FPS god or a dedicated speedrunner, you're most likely left rushing into the dark down below the current platform with nothing but a few bullets and a dying flashlight. You can't beat em, but you're given tools to evade them.
The feeling of barely making it within a hair's thread. THAT'S what makes it scary.
But going from that term, that would mean FNAF is one of the best of the horror genre, right? You're given doors and a camera. You can't fight the furry fucks but you can "evade" them, right? So why does it get so boring after Night 3?
Here comes my next point: variety.
Having the same spook multiple times doesn't fuck with you. Amnesia: TDD was great on the first 3 hours. That is until the 30th slack jawed oogey-boogey comes for you again and you're forced to, once again, run around without a light. It's a great mechanic, along with the sanity meter, but it's just about the same with every encounter. See monster > put down light > hide until scary boo boo walks away >repeat.
Even pic related, which still holds the top spot in my horror list, falls short in this regard. At first, it was a breath of fresh air. You're given the option to run, hide, wait it out, or simply gun it into the dark, with or without the NV light. Options and routes to take. Then after that, simply finding a closet to hide becomes a fucking chore. It's just a change of scenery and people that fucks with you. It's nothing. The only thing that got me hooked since then is the story, which is highly debatable and very opinionated from my POV, but my point on its gameplay still stands.
Again, Alien: Isolation does this well. Even if you're constantly challenged by the Xenomorph in the same environment, you're given ever changing objectives and tools to help you navigate the ship. Back then you could only scoot into lockers, but now you can burst out the shotgun, get a lucky shot in and skadoodle to another direction. You're never in the advantage, but you're constantly switching positions in which you gain your salvation, making the gameplay engaging WHILST maintaining the scare.
Resident Evil 7 ALSO did this well. Your arsenal is constant up until the ballroom where you get your shotgun, but they spice it up with the monster variety. Every boss encounter is different (up until Lucas, which is starting to wear off), and the location, though still grounded within the house, relatively freshens up with every scenario.
And since I don't have a good segue into the third point, I'm just gonna wing it with Resident Evil 4 as my main topic: jank/clunky controls.
I'm not talking about BAD controls. If your horror games STILL aim like the og RE from the 1990s, it doesn't scare, it frustrates. I'm talking about heavy, hard controls like tank movement, or manual inventory management, or just heavy aiming in general.
Going out of left bound here, I'm gonna reference the new Modern Warfare here: the mission Hometown. You're basically playing as a young girl trying to escape a military invasion with your brother: you can't aim for shit and you can barely even reload. You move slow and trip all over the fucken place. In short, you're a trembling little pussy, and the game acknowledges it. It places its enemy sporadically, usually in duos or solo whenever you're given the chance to cap 'em. Unlike the usual soldiers, you die in a single hit, which makes every shot count. The sensation of having the inability to risk even ONE SHOT is terrifying, in of itself. Even cocking a new round in a revolver takes at least a second, and trying to land the second shot while your sight wiggles like Parkinson's is some of the most tension-ridden experiences I've seen in recent gaming.
Resident Evil 4 even manages to do this while being a somewhat action-romp. Hell, they even manage to do the holy trinity whilst having a usable RPG in their horror game. Enemies rarely go down in one hit, and any one hit kill game usually have sparse ammo (Broken Butterfly, for example). Every shot MUST count, or you're forced to hold spacebar to fight the fuckers. Enemies anyways switch up, when villagers get old, you get chanting cultists. When THEY get old, they throw you fucken BEES. And the tank control and slow reload is JUST right, along with the enemies, which rarely exceeds 15 at a time ('cept for that house with Luis, but that is a controlled environment) Even if they reach double digits, it's always in a huge arena with space to run and corner and gun.
My conclusion is that horror can work well, given that you have the ability to evade the monster in varying scenarios, barely wrangling the controls that just doesn't seem to want to cooperate.
Things like art direction and setting CAN make a difference, but given the example from Modern Warfare where horror can be achieved even in broad daylight among war-torn Iraq, it shows that mechanics and engagement truly is king.
So yeah, there goes my rambling of the week. I'm happy to invite the hundred replies that will surely prove me wrong with examples, since my gaming takes are prone to miss.