Some horror games feel so much scarier when you are virtually defenseless, but some games can still feel scary even when you can really hold your own (like Condemned) - but even if the game is scary - because of the "natural progression of things" you usually end up kicking ass near the middle to the end and you've completely lost that feeling of atmosphere where you only had your fists and a pistol with shitty aim and two clips of ammo (Doom 3) so you use to be scared but now you are some kind of demi-god and now you don't need to watch your back...because your back is a weapon now.

How defenseless should we be? Is there a middle ground or is it going to have to be one side or the other to keep the atmosphere spooky (without making the game unfair)?

It's pretty hard for me to decide, sometimes I lean more towards the "condemned" level, and sometimes I lean more towards the "Silent Hill" and "Fatal Frame" (and I guess "Penumbra") level.

(If your option isn't in the poll then speak it out here.)

I like Dead Rising so I picked that although I don't generally like survival games (ah a ghost I should walk into a wall now ex. silent hill, resident evil) I mean if you can't move and fire yet you know how to use the gun thats sad.

I was a bit skeptical about putting "dead rising" in there, because that game is a pretty big hybrid of all of the above, and the whole "leveling up" giving you some of the most awesome combat abilities that were even sometimes better than weapons, and you are just some pansy reporter lol not the son of Rambo and Chuck Norris - so even in DR you can get that "Doom 3" feeling, especially since the game hardly took itself seriously so it was more of a "survival" instead of "survival horror" (that's not a bad thing of course, but it's misleading in the poll)

I just decided to put it in there because in general, most of the weapons in that game are great but without those "powerups" they hardly last even 5 minutes, and usually make people pretty conservative. Even the Soccer ball can be devastating.

EDIT: Oh yeah and I'm a tad biased against "Condemned 2" and "dead rising" weapon degeneration, I mean, why is a lead pipe just going to "explode" after a few uses?! It makes no sense to me.

To prove your point (Dead rising is fun but not survival horror) I used turret,machine guns, battle axes and the blade book and I was Jebus (which was why it was fun).

EDIT: Makes more sense then Silent Hills dialogue and controls.

I'm torn between Fear, Dead Rising, and Penumbra because all those games scared me (well, maybe not so much dead rising...). Fear scared me because it gave you the sense that you could kill anything that you were faced with, except the horrors which you were powerless against.

Dead Rising you were generally well armed but you were always given the feeling that whatever you were holding could break at any moment, same with System Shock 2 and Silent Hill: Origins to an extent.

and Penumbra(which I consider the scariest game series ever) gives the sense that any and all enemy encounters can (and sometimes will) result in your horrible, gruesome death.

Condemned sacred me not because weapons, but because you always had to get close to the enemies, the original RE didn't scare me at all, same with RE4, Silent Hill makes the most sense as a realistic system I think, but isn't truly scary, and fatal frame, again, was only scary because you had to get close to the enemies.

Condemned the guns sucked to I pretty much bare knuckle brawled with everyone. though the funniest thing was I broke I guys neck with a toilet seat and sat down on the toilet to me I really didn't understand why I was cracking up though.

To be honest I don't find any of those games scary simply because there games (I play with music and pause a lot to get food/go to bathroom kinda ruining it)

there should be a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. level of difficulty between RE4 and dead rising. Most enemies are not that hard to kill after getting NATO weapons and ammunition is semi-plentiful, but find a bloodsucker nest and you're screwed.

shatnershaman:
To be honest I don't find any of those games scary simply because there games (I play with music and pause a lot to get food/go to bathroom kinda ruining it)

Yeah but it's mainly the "atmosphere" I'm talking about here because a lot of these games don't actually scare the people playing them but I think Doom 3 is a good example because the first quarter of the game you don't have enemies popping up everywhere and you don't have chainsaws and rocket launchers to help you out either - so it feels more tense and eerie when you are playing, but then after that the feeling is completely gone. Games like Dead Rising and RE4 never actually aimed for "eerie" - mainly "trying to handle an impossible situation in a limited amount of time before being overwhelmed" - but even once you get "overpowered" that feeling of tension is gone. Dead Rising is excused of this of course because the whole point of that game is to kill as many zombies as possible wearing a lego helmet, so that you can get better at killing zombies,and near the beggining it feels more "tedious" than "intense". In RE4 half the fun was barricading yourself in a house and kicking down ladders, and shooting through a barricaded wooden door, etc. etc. but after a while it lost that as well since you weren't as defenseless as usual.

I'm trying to see if we can keep a "middle ground" with this topic, hence why I brought up so many game examples.

EDIT:

aussiesniper:
there should be a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. level of difficulty between RE4 and dead rising. Most enemies are not that hard to kill after getting NATO weapons and ammunition is semi-plentiful, but find a bloodsucker nest and you're screwed.

Ya know I was thinking about putting that in there but I wasn't sure if difficulty level had anything to do with it either. I guess S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is kind of a hybrid between a lot of the games on that list.

Also, I only have 8 options at my disposal :\

Double EDIT: Oh nevermind, looks like I have one more free spot for STALKER. Don't know why I forgot to include it.

ElArabDeMagnifico:

Yeah but it's mainly the "atmosphere" I'm talking about here because a lot of these games don't actually scare the people playing them but I think Doom 3 is a good example because the first quarter of the game you don't have enemies popping up everywhere and you don't have chainsaws and rocket launchers to help you out either - so it feels more tense and eerie when you are playing, but then after that the feeling is completely gone. Games like Dead Rising and RE4 never actually aimed for "eerie" - mainly "trying to handle an impossible situation in a limited amount of time before being overwhelmed" - but even once you get "overpowered" that feeling of tension is gone. Dead Rising is excused of this of course because the whole point of that game is to kill as many zombies as possible wearing a lego helmet, so that you can get better at killing zombies,and near the beggining it feels more "tedious" than "intense". In RE4 half the fun was barricading yourself in a house and kicking down ladders, and shooting through a barricaded wooden door, etc. etc. but after a while it lost that as well since you weren't as defenseless as usual.

Its like were opposite or something. I enjoy popping in a new "Horror"(or atmospheric game) game (like Fear Files was the last one) and then putting "Spongebob square pants" on just to fuck with it.

I'm not a "purist" or anything, I'll dick around even in a horror game especially after the first playthrough, but the first time I play it I don't want it to pull a "Condemned 2" (where it basically completely switches gears - up close brutal melee and rarely finding weapons, but then in the second half it turns into a run n' gun and I have DBZ powers...)

I'm not really sure where you are going with that last comment, I'll have Ghostbusters theme playing at the same time I'm playing F.E.A.R. while I'm dismembering clones with shotguns and scissorkicking those ambushing Ninja bastards, but right now I just don't want to get too off topic because I think I misunderstood you.

Oh yeah and aussiesniper I had no choice but to put STALKER choice at the end, it was the longest one and if I changed the other choices places it would fuck with results.

Little off topic (maybe) but my favourite survival game is actually a flash game called Last Stand its pretty fun and mixes the defenceless thing nice (slow reloads,limited barricade)

EDIT: My point sorta was (badly written I'm tired sorry) I can't take any game seriously.

shatnershaman:
Little off topic (maybe) but my favourite survival game is actually a flash game called Last Stand its pretty fun and mixes the defenceless thing nice (slow reloads,limited barricade)

EDIT: My point sorta was (badly written I'm tired sorry) I can't take any game seriously.

Oh man, love that game, haven't had a chance to play the sequel mainly because I forgot to, but that game is also interesting and now I wish I had 9 choices for the poll.

I guess it's mainly about "using the most of your resources" but after a while you can pretty much form an Army (but I thought that was awesome lol).

ElArabDeMagnifico:

Oh man, love that game, haven't had a chance to play the sequel mainly because I forgot to, but that game is also interesting and now I wish I had 9 choices for the poll.

I guess it's mainly about "using the most of your resources" but after a while you can pretty much form an Army (but I thought that was awesome lol).

Yay we agree on something. 2nd one though is not as good though. You look for your weapons and survivors in houses and supplies (taking hours) and leave when you have enough supplies (you have a 30 day limit). Problem is how easy or hard the game is on your luck and the locations of them are not random making a repeat super easy.

Dead rising.

Sorry, but if I'm trapped ANYWHERE with things that could kill me, I'm grabbing anything remotely hefty and caving someone's head in.

In resi (which I LOVE BTW), It always struck me as odd that Jill didn't try to burn any zombies with the candle's, or at least grab a chair from the dining hall and go all ECW on the motherfuckers

If you're taking on 4 or more 'monsters', you're dead. If you're up against 3, you're likely going to die, if its 2-on-you, then you've got about 50% chance of living and 1 on 1 favours you.

That's a straight fight, BTW. If they sneak up on you, then you should be pretty screwed no matter how many of them there are.

You should be completely defenceless I say. I like a scary game where weapons barely exist and you have to use your brain to kill enemies. I played a game where the background was the main weapon in the game which was awesome. I remember grabbing a man by the neck and having to bash his head against a spike to kill him...good times.

Well like I said to be completely defenceless is probably better. Yea it's much harder but a hard game is a good game.

It really depends on what effect you want to convey. If you want the game to be scary, the easiest way to do this is make the character feel helpless. You could do this by making battles very hard, and making it a better idea to avoid enemies than fight them (Silent Hill), or you could give the player big guns and rely on surprising and overpowering them (doom).

If the idea is to just be a survival game, I don't see anything wrong with having decent guns, as long as there is challenge to the game. However, if you're going for scary, give the guy a flashlight, a knife, and throw him into a house filled with zombies that kill him almost instantly.

i wouldnt be suprised if all these games scared me,i play stealth games and i'm scared,but i picked condemned(as it's one of the few survival horror games i've played.)

No BioShock? Weapons are few, ammo is much, and you can use your body as a weapon?

The First part of condemned 2 was good, you had to use the environment to stay alive, and guns were scarce.Weapon degregation is mostly a BAD idea though, unless you choose to use a weapon that could break easily, like a 2x4. Make the player get upclose and personal with the scary thing that is trying to kill them, I also think is is a better idea to use realistic villains, like serial killers and crazy hobos, I find serial killers to be much scarier than zombies, because zombies arent real. You can logically think your way out of being scared by the thought of zombies because you can tell yourself that zombies arent real, with serial killers the closest to that you can get is " I PROBABLY wont be killed by a maniac when I walk through this dark alley."

Dont throw in a superr power near the end, like the ability to scream so loud that your enimies heads explode, it supposed to be horror, not mortal combat. Make flashlights flicker at the right moments, with dramatic music and "rustling in the bushes", but dont use the surprise card too often or it will become expected, Like in the trailer for the "The Strangers" when there is one of the killers standing out in the open for a few seconds, when I saw that I was scared Sh**less, absolutely horrified, much more than if something had jumped out at me from a dark room, when that person was standing there, all I wanted in the world was for them to go away. Surprise is one thing, horror, true terror is something else completely.

TheIceface:
It really depends on what effect you want to convey. If you want the game to be scary, the easiest way to do this is make the character feel helpless. You could do this by making battles very hard, and making it a better idea to avoid enemies than fight them (Silent Hill), or you could give the player big guns and rely on surprising and overpowering them (doom).

I liked the way Doom3 did it best. Sure, you can just blast the living hell out of anything, and you've got the quicksave and quickload right there, but the game does such of good job making you paranoid about what's around the next corner.

I think Condemned defiantly had the best fighting system. It was fun. My next pick would've been RE:4 because I still play that game.

x434343:
No BioShock? Weapons are few, ammo is much, and you can use your body as a weapon?

No system shock would have been a better poll choice but that already fits with the whole "weapon degeneration and scarce supplies" kind of thing, but you still have biotic implants and such. Still, even on the toughest difficulties, after a few levels in Bioshock you have ****ing superpowers that can destroy everything in your path - and for some reason, you are the only one who has them in the entire city that also has access to those superpower vending machines...

Also I didn't think Bioshock was really a "Horror" game, it was a shooter at heart and it kept it that way but the "horror" parts were mainly just going for "disturbing" and not "spooky".

and BloodSquirrel that's a good point, I never realized how paranoid I really was in that game, I wasn't "scared" or "tense" but I was quicksaving a lot and I always thought "alright which weapon should I use before I turn this corner? Is it going to be an imp or those annoying spider things?"

Also flyingh1ppo I never thought of the "enemies" that way, now that I think about it, I'll take a mindless zombie over a serial killer in a real fight anyday. I'll admit though some enemies in Condemned 2 were ANNOYING, and they showed up in the very first level of the game and were constantly popping up from all directions. I'm talking about those stupid blob things that could die if you spit on them - when they are that easy to kill it turns from "scary" to "bloody annoying".

Penumbra style. And by that I mean that you should be in over your head. That goes for FEAR as well, sure, you can take out legions of troops, but then comes that time when all the weapons in the world isn't going to help you.

You need to feel powerless, just like you do in Penumbra. (Or for that matter thief when you're up against zombies.) Penumbra didn't do it perfectly though, because fear only works as long as you stay alive. After a while in Penumbra the odds were just stacked too much against you. There were too many of those darned dogs placed in the wrong places. I died a number of times and it just lost everything. I wasn't afraid anymore, it was just frustrating and annoying. It didn't feel like "oh, shit, I'm going to die" anymore, it felt like "what the devil were they thinking when they designed this place?". After that you just respawn ten times and try again, and suddenly you're not afraid anymore. You just don't care. You yawn and try again.

It's that balance that has to be struck. You should feel overpowered and like all the odds in the world are against you, but you shouldn't die, because that takes everything away (you should be VERY aware that you can die however).

I voted Silent Hill because I liked the feeling that your just an average person.

I think a survival horror game should make you feel helpless and reluctant to continue. You should feel like a normal guy trying to survive and using things around you to fight back. I didn't find Dead Rising scary though and once I got the mini chainsaws, I beat the game easily.

larispostae:
I think a survival horror game should make you feel helpless and reluctant to continue. You should feel like a normal guy trying to survive and using things around you to fight back. I didn't find Dead Rising scary though and once I got the mini chainsaws, I beat the game easily.

Exactly. This is what's important. Not how many guns you have. If you have weapons what matters is how effective they are, not how many times you can shoot with them. If you step around a corner with a uzi in hand, see something and spray with an entire mag not even slowing it down, you're going to be afraid (if it's done right, otherwise you'll complain about imbalance, granted, some people would do that right away, no matter how scary the situation). If you don't have any weapons and are followed around by a psycho with a knife and a tranquilizer dart you're also going to be afraid (again if it's done right).

I'm not a good horror game guy. The scarier it is the less fun I find it. (Covenant levels > Flood levels have to put halo in my post)

I reckon either lots of enemies, with limited ammo, or fewer enemies but you only have either melee weapons, extremely limited ammo, and at times you're totally defenceless and have to leg it to find weapons or ammo.

I think it's mostly the sound that makes me scared. I'd be scared if my grandma suddenly screamed like a banchee and came flying etherially at me.
Also that mouth stretching thing they do in 'The mummy' scares me every time.
Back on topic though: If you're just an average joe, or me, then I'd rather run than fight, and if it came to fighting I'd mostly use my legs for fear of touching them.

All a matter of opinion. Clock Tower was great. You had NO weapons and quite frankly, it didn't matter. Siren was well-balanced in weapon distribution. You don't want to have the same survival horror game over and over again. Weapons aren't a necessity.