Horror video games was the topic of our last podcast. I had finished Dead Space 2 and still amazed by it. It was no BIoshock, but it was effin cool. There were some amazing moments and some beautiful settings, like 9/10’s of the game was fantastic. I don’t want to give anything away, so I can’t say too much, but the enemy AI was interesting and varied and there were some creatures that made swear internally and grip my controller more tightly whenever they appeared.
My problem was the end where they just covered you in enemies with (what seemed to me) to be random spawn points, why not a door, vent, something, and give us an “opening the vent” sound. Cheap and wasteful. I could have done without the last couple of levels.
Which leads into its other problem; it’s a shooter. I know that the genres are cross pollinating, rpg/ shooter, shooter/ horror, sports/rpg, etc. This is great if you are pulling the best from each and if they serve each other, but I am really tired adding multi-player to every game (don’t ever want to play it), or making everything a first person shooter. I’ve got a penis. It is quite serviceable. I do not need phallicism and projectiles in every effin game.
WHAT I THINK HORROR GAMES NEED in no particular order
ATMOSPHERE: horror is sensation, it is mood, it is surprise, it’s heightened senses, so give us sound or silence, give us a place that seems real. Alan Wake did this well, and Bioshock was amazing, the place told a story; it was a character.
INIMICAL ENEMIES: Give us something frightening, not gorey, maybe not even physically monstrous. Rule of Rose, Alan Wake, both Bioshocks gave us enemies that maintained some sense of humanity and tragedy, they were not just grotesques. Even in Dead Space you had the Unitoligists, humans dedicated to a religion. The necromorphs maintained some of their humanity too. I think part of the scare is “That could be me” or “I can see who that used to be.” Maybe we can’t fight them. The supernatural is just that- beyond natural, outside of our rules, shotguns shouldn’t work or holy water.
TACTICAL AI: Dead Space 2 did a great job of creating enemies who had differen strategies that seemed to fit with who they were. Bioshock had Splicers who reacted to you and did just run at you. They had a plan and this made them all the more threatening. If we are mobbed we should have to run. It is hardly scary if I am able to take out 40 of them at a time.
STORY and CONNECTION: Give us a protagonist and characters we can care about, not just because they are our girlfriend (stupid girlfriend!) or kid. Give us something to lose that we don’t want to, like in Heavy Rain, multiple protagonists who could fail or even die and the story would continue.
AN END: Poor Issac, if there wasn’t something blocking the tracks, there was a switchbox that needed fixing. I got really tired of constantly succeeding and having it work, but not work. How about it leading to trouble. How about multiple plots? Maybe we follow a serial killer as the through-point, and we play as his potential victims, each different. It would be cool if we weren’t jumping back and forth between them, but instead saving or slaying them. In Dead Space 2 it would have been nice for there to someone else who was trying to survive outside of Issac. In the first Dead Space everyone we meet killed them self or died in 5 seconds of meeting them.
I don’t know how to label these ideas, so I’m just going to keep going. It also doesn’t have to be constantly frenetic. Let there be lulls. Let us soak in the atmosphere and anticipate the scare. Mess with the controls, maybe have us get weaker as the game continues instead of stronger. Our protagonists has been through a lot and injured often; she shouldn’t still be a killing machine. In addition, this will help players learn game mechanics in a safer environment when they have all their powers and make us be more skillful, crafty and scared at the end when we can’t use them anymore.
I would argue all good games connect to us through character, story, atmosphere, so that we play the game for the game not for a score or achievement. Let horror games be horrible not just shocking and loud.
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