Can't Scare Me No Mo': Is Older Better?

[Tipod]

While screwing around on Abandonia and looking through the old point-and-click horror game Last Half of Darkness, I noticed something: this game scares the hell out of me. Not like a little jump, but to the point where I force-quit DOSbox and put on something more lighthearted, like Total Annihilation or Europa. Silent Hill never scared me that much. Resident Evil never did either. But this old-ass game from like over a decade ago genuinely unnerves me. And it's not just that as well: two other games from around then/little past then, Personal Nightmare and Waxworks, also spook me like modern games can't. And why?

In Personal Nightmare, the whole idea is that you're a man who comes back to your hometown after getting a call from mom, and find out that the whole place is under the influence of Satan. Your father's acting nutty, a crazy little hellion boy burns his family to death, the local school teacher is literally a witch and sets you on fire if she catches you, all those good things. The game's on a timer ("The town bell rings. Another hour has passed"), there's practically no way to defend yourself, and you're bound to die in several horrible, up-close and personal ways, such as walking around past midnight without any garlic (example, and I was... surprised when it happened).
As for Waxworks... well, I'll let this handsome little deathreel speak for itself (obviously NSFW, especially the infested mine level).

Am I the only person who finds these old horror games more unsettling than new ones?

[Tapewolf]

I think there was less outcry.  I can think of a few "They don't make games that f---ed up anymore" examples, and they go back further.  This is more violence/gore than horror, but I think it highlights the lack of supervision and oversight games had back then.

The real poster-child, IMHO was Nemesis the Warlock (1987?), which I believe was taken from a rather violent comic book series.  It took about 15 years before games started to get that graphic again.  The version I had was for the ZX Spectrum so was monochrome(*), but there were versions for more colour-capable systems.

The most memorable part of this game was that when people died, there was a percentage chance that they would, after a while twitch for a bit before some kind of undead creature burst out from their corpses.  It really was quite gruesome.  I don't have any screenshots of it at the moment, though and it's a difficult game to find online.



The runner-up has to be Imogen on the BBC micro (1986).  While its cartoon graphics weren't quite as graphic as Nemesis, had a number of extremely questionable acts (as in "I have done... questionable things."), to whit, rampant animal cruelty and child-killings.  The player was able to switch form between a monkey, his base wizard form, and a cat.  The monkey could climb, the cat could jump far and the wizard could do things.

The most memorable level of this game was 'Hamster Jam', which involved this little sequence - images are clickable.


Fetch the tulip bulb


Squish the hamster, which turned into a little blob of gore that shot across the room



Plant the tulip bulb in the corpse


The other classic level was 'Balloonacy':


We need to get that baby's balloon, but he won't fork it over


So we kill the baby and steal it

...there were numerous other baby-slayings, dog-poisonings and so forth.  It is an interesting aside that the babies were turned into jelly-babies in the PC remake from a few years back.



Technical trivia about the systems:

(*)The Spectrum had 16 colours (8 with two brightness levels) but split the screen into a pixel layer and a colour layer.  The main display was 256x172, but the colour was divided into 8x8 blocks.  Some games did use colour, which resulted in slight visual glitches when two sprites of different colours collided, but later in the system's life, most games set everything to a single colour for simplicity.

The effect of colour-clash on the spectrum looked very much like what's happening at the top of the BBC Micro screenshots, though the cause is different.  The BBC had only 32k of memory, but supported about 8 video modes.  Some of these were monochrome, some were full-colour, but the full-colour ones took 2/3 of the entire memory!  What some games, like Imogen did, was to run in a monochrome mode to keep the memory, but fake having two colours by switching the screen colour halfway during the image retrace.  The emulator seems to be just a hair out of sync, hence it changed colour early.  Interestingly, the PC version of Lemmings did this trick as well to mix high-res and full colour modes (which the BBC game 'Elite' also did way back when).

[Janus Whitefurr]

The Chzo Mythos games. While technically not as old as some, their classic look and design harken back to such simpler days. Even if they're not quite as old as Tapewolf's references up there.

ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts

[TheDXM]

Another thing that can factor into is the general power or powerlessness a player can feel while doing these things I've found. In today's video games you have a lot more control over your environment, not just in the ways your character is able to move around quickly and responsively, but also in their ability to interact with their environment. You feel a lot safer in something like Halo, or Half-life where you can quickly alter a situation in your favor in some way that prevents you from being overwhelmed. This differs greatly from the old, clunky, and sometimes outright unresponsive controls of the past. On top of all that, add to the fact that most games now have some sort of separate resource for cheating or game info, thanks to the spread and power of the internet, and you really feel as if all the things you need to survive are right at your fingertips.

Another big factor to me is atmosphere. The last game I played that did this correctly was the Thief series. In all actuality, enemies in Thief were not very dangerous, even on high difficulty settings, but the game's ability to generate an atmosphere of loneliness, danger, and even sometimes disorientation was quite powerful. In this respect, games seem to have improved, with the innovation of 3D technology, better controls, and improved visual/audio and gameplay mechanisms but most developers don't take great advantage of this.

I really would like to see the horror genre revived a bit, and I think a good way to do that is to focus on atmosphere rather than just making things dangerous for the player in general. One idea I played with when I was entertaining thoughts of game design involved a sort 'ghost hunting' character who would enter creepy environments and try to uncover evidence about the game's core plot, possibly altering the game's story line in major ways if he or she failed to uncover enough evidence or the right evidence. But one thing I realized is that you never really had to put the player into extreme danger to get a rise out of them. You just had to creep them out some how and make them FEEL like they were in constant danger. Naturally, a few instances where the player could get injured or even die would reinforce that, but it's really a pretty small part of the equation.

[Tapewolf]

Another thing that can factor into is the general power or powerlessness a player can feel while doing these things I've found. In today's video games you have a lot more control over your environment

This is true.  Even in Doom I did my best to stack the odds, leading creatures into places where they got stuck or otherwise ambushing them.  That's something that's only become easier.

Another big factor to me is atmosphere. The last game I played that did this correctly was the Thief series. In all actuality, enemies in Thief were not very dangerous, even on high difficulty settings, but the game's ability to generate an atmosphere of loneliness, danger, and even sometimes disorientation was quite powerful. In this respect, games seem to have improved, with the innovation of 3D technology, better controls, and improved visual/audio and gameplay mechanisms but most developers don't take great advantage of this.

Yes, Thief has had more than a few disturbing moments.  Though it too is one where I usually find the layout to my advantage.  That and I have a distinct tendency to play on Easy and simply massacre everyone rather than stealthing it.  Just because I'm not supposed to.

Actually, System Shock - both 1 and 2 are good examples.  SS2 came off as more scary, but I think SS1 took the crown in terms of convincing me that the situation on the ship was critical.

[Turnsky]

onto more modern games, Dead Space sets the tone quite nicely, the somewhat darkened halls of the USG Ishimura, the somewhat disquieting echo of "twinkle twinkle little star" drifting through the crew lounge, the corpses you walked past as you entered an area are gone when you leave it..  and the humanlike chatter of a necromorph as it wanders aimlessly through airducts..

not to mention the Lurkers...

[Amber Williams]

Fish men!

FISH MEEEEEN!

[Mao]

As much as the settings in the old games and new games are scary, the real trick is the set up you put yourself in (well ok, for me at least).  Alone, in a house miles away from civilization after spending a day with no one to talk to while hyped up on caffeine playing games late night in the pitch dark with a snow storm howling outside, with an old grandfather clock ticking away in the background.  That setting, combined with the original silent hill and sheer circumstance (clock struck 12 just as the world changed into the nightmare realm and my radio went berserk) was enough to make me at 16 turn on all the lights, turn off the game, and stay awake huddled in the back corner of the room on the couch, wondering if I should call my gf to come over for a bit until I chill out.

Honestly I'm not sure the game would have mattered.  Old or new, it's the story and circumstances that will get you.  Sure the effects of the newer games help.. but it's not the only factor by far.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

The Chzo Mythos games. While technically not as old as some, their classic look and design harken back to such simpler days. Even if they're not quite as old as Tapewolf's references up there.

ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts

QFT, Trilby's notes especially was creepy to the max.

[Ryudo Lee]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the various audio logs that you find in System Shock 2.

"No don't do it, please!"
"Glory to the Many.  I am a voice in their choir."
*BLAM BLAM BLAM*
*Gurgling screams*
*BLAM*

[Tapewolf]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the various audio logs that you find in System Shock 2.

I found that gut-wrenching, but not scary per se.

[Dannysaysnoo]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the various audio logs that you find in System Shock 2.

All I found those to be was funny.

"I'm holding in my innards with my hands."
"Bwahaha!"

I've got a generally strong stomach for horror games, but for some reason, there was this bit in Chrono Trigger where I was kinda bricking it. That's about it.

[Tipod]

(Creepy monochrome games)

I notice there really is a sort of taboo now for games doing that. A newer example of "thank God they stopped" is Harvester, which combined infantcide, wanton murder, and any number of horrible, horrible things into one ugly package, with all the awkwardness of early/mid-nineties CGI.
Of course, I can't say I'm going to miss those kinds of games, "unique" as they may be.

Another thing that can factor into is the general power or powerlessness a player can feel while doing these things I've found. In today's video games you have a lot more control over your environment, not just in the ways your character is able to move around quickly and responsively, but also in their ability to interact with their environment.

That too. Going back to Waxworks and Personal Nightmare, the former let you beat up most anything that came your way with a plethora of improvised weapons, as well as providing you with a crystal ball to call on for help; PN, on the other hand, was just you against this really forboding evil and its minions, none of whom had any obvious weaknesses.

One idea I played with when I was entertaining thoughts of game design involved a sort 'ghost hunting' character who would enter creepy environments and try to uncover evidence about the game's core plot, possibly altering the game's story line in major ways if he or she failed to uncover enough evidence or the right evidence. But one thing I realized is that you never really had to put the player into extreme danger to get a rise out of them. You just had to creep them out some how and make them FEEL like they were in constant danger.

And that really is the creepiest thing in any game: knowing you're never safe. Not to the point where you can die anywhere, but in enough places to make the player know that the environment isn't just scripted, it really is deadly.
An awesome game, if anyone could do it, would be like an IT Came From the Desert meets The Thing dealie. Hell, put it in the future in some tundra environment/mining facility where the player knows contact with other people is minimal. You'd let some things in that pound on the door, and sometimes it'd be a hideous monster banging on the glass, or just a miner trying to shack up and survive.

[Amber Williams]

And I repeat... FISH MEEEN !!!

I have a bad tendency of choking up under pressure...and this particular game and this particular chapter was brutal because you dont get to sit and work things out. You gotta move. Move move mooooove!

[Tipod]

That part alone made me set it aside for a while. I love these kinds of games, I really do, but that was more frustrating than anything else.

[Tapewolf]

And I repeat... FISH MEEEN !!!

Let's see... you're playing a game based on 'Shadow over Innsmouth' by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, and you're complaining because it's creepy?  

Oh, oh, oh, that reminds me!  Alone in the Dark.  Sure, it's got flat polygon 3D with hand-rendered backdrops, but that game was scary.  Not quite enough ammo to take out all the zombies, some very weird traps and a Nasty Bath Monster.  I wish I could get it to work in DOSbox, but it was finicky enough on real hardware

I think the most genuinely frightening part was a ghost who just sat in a chair.  If you approached him, he'd get up.  Then the screen would start shaking, translucent circles would appear everywhere and shortly afterwards you'd die for no apparent reason and with no way to stop it.

[Gareeku]

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for the first time, and Silent Hill 2 for the first time. That is all.

[Tipod]

I think the most genuinely frightening part was a ghost who just sat in a chair.  If you approached him, he'd get up.  Then the screen would start shaking, translucent circles would appear everywhere and shortly afterwards you'd die for no apparent reason and with no way to stop it.

What's really frightening are the hideous graphics *ba-zing*
The ghost wasn't even the scariest thing, though. I thought the "trying to leave and getting eaten by the alien void" topped it, since... well, having your character be eternally digested by a Lovecraftian horror seems a tad more uncomfortable.

[Tapewolf]

The ghost wasn't even the scariest thing, though. I thought the "trying to leave and getting eaten by the alien void" topped it, since... well, having your character be eternally digested by a Lovecraftian horror seems a tad more uncomfortable.

I thought that was kind of cool.  Well, not the digested part, just the fact that the door led somewhere other than where it should.  Oh, and I forgot about the books.  They were awesome, except for the CD version which had crappy voice acting "Such a mune!"

I think my fondest memories were of hacking the savegame because it was too hard.

Most amusing moment:
Giving him 32767 health points and then making him drink a health potion.  Because it used a signed 16-bit int for the health, it overflowed and wrapped around to -32758 or so.  The net result was that he drank it, said "Ahhh..." then gave a piercing scream and keeled over.

Most snarky moment:
"He should have about 32000 bullets."
"Ah yes, 'loading' the gun, the way a dice is loaded."

Most horrifying moment:
Falling into the water and having all 32760 shotgun shells destroyed because they got wet.

[Tipod]

Most snarky moment:
"He should have about 32000 bullets."
"Ah yes, 'loading' the gun, the way a dice is loaded."

Most horrifying moment:
Falling into the water and having all 32760 shotgun shells destroyed because they got wet.

Isn't that enough bullets to kill every non-boss enemy like a hundred times over?
Man, now I'm remembering all the stupid hoops that AItD and other adventure games pulled back then. That was the real horror genre: constantly being screwed over for little things. Example, just from today's session of Last Half of Darkness 2.

Me: *navigates underground maze*
Killer dog: RAWRFGH RUFF
Me: *smacks with torch*
Killer dog: *flees*
Me: *now in complete darkness* ...aw, nuts.

[bill]

Everyone should probably play Bloodlines if only for the hotel level about two levels into the game. Getting killed by knives flying across the kitchen was kind of fun.

On second thought nobody should play Bloodlines because it is a horribly buggy mess of what should have been a great game

[Janus Whitefurr]

QFT, Trilby's notes especially was creepy to the max.

Each game had its own frightening spots, but TN really takes the cake considering what you have to type into the console to survive to the end of the game.

Everyone should probably play Bloodlines if only for the hotel level about two levels into the game. Getting killed by knives flying across the kitchen was kind of fun.

On second thought nobody should play Bloodlines because it is a horribly buggy mess of what should have been a great game

Ah, the Ocean View Hotel. I once died by not getting out of the way of the microwave that knocks the door down. As for bugs, that's what the various fan patches are for. They patch up the game to a much more servicable state - still buggy, but not unplayable. Plus, you should always try playing a Malkavian at least once.

And I repeat... FISH MEEEN !!!

I have a bad tendency of choking up under pressure...and this particular game and this particular chapter was brutal because you dont get to sit and work things out. You gotta move. Move move mooooove!

OUTSIDER! STOP!

[Rakala]

One of the scariest games for me was Immortal for the Sega Genesis, but now it is and has been for a long while Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

[Kasarn]

The White Chamber is the only one I've played. It's a rather short game, but it's also free.

[thegayhare]

And I repeat... FISH MEEEN !!!

I have a bad tendency of choking up under pressure...and this particular game and this particular chapter was brutal because you dont get to sit and work things out. You gotta move. Move move mooooove!

Oh I agree the fleeing from the fishmen part was realy hard. running from room to room, trying to bolt the doors fast enough.  hoping you don't miss judge your jumps.  It doesn't help when you take a sanity hit or vertigo hits you on a rooftop.  one of the more interesting things I found in that game was the health system.

[Jack McSlay]

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIAO5NUK5X0

[Tapewolf]

Man, now I'm remembering all the stupid hoops that AItD and other adventure games pulled back then. That was the real horror genre: constantly being screwed over for little things.

Yes.  That's definitely true.  In say, Deus Ex, it was difficult if not impossible to screw things up permanently.  Even getting other characters killed would generally result in the game drafting others in instead.

In Alone in the Dark, it was much easier to achieve.  Wasting bullets would put you in an awkward position - they had to be rationed very carefully, but it was the quest objects that were really issues.  For instance, I found a sabre and used it to fight a pirate ghost.  He broke the sabre because I was using a decorative one instead of a real one.
After I'd found a real sword and killed him, I then found that I had to put the sabre onto a wall somewhere to open a secret door.  One problem - it was now in two pieces.

There were a couple of other 'oh shit, that's what that was for...' moments, but that was the main one for me.  While there was a certain amount of frustration in that way of working, I think I prefer it to the likes of Oblivion where the game holds your hand constantly.

[Robbychu]

Reading all of this makes me feel like a pansy for thinking Eversion gets into your mind and leaves you paranoid about the music that plays in your head at night. But it tends to be the simpler things that get to me because I overthink things.

[Tipod]

There were a couple of other 'oh shit, that's what that was for...' moments, but that was the main one for me.  While there was a certain amount of frustration in that way of working, I think I prefer it to the likes of Oblivion where the game holds your hand constantly.

Arguably, those games had a sort of character by making it so screw-up-able, but the charm and challenge really wears off after the tenth or so time you find yourself backed into a corner thanks to the programmers feeling merciless. Could these things have ever flourished in today's market, even with better sound and graphics?

[Jack McSlay]

Man, now I'm remembering all the stupid hoops that AItD and other adventure games pulled back then. That was the real horror genre: constantly being screwed over for little things.

Yes.  That's definitely true.  In say, Deus Ex, it was difficult if not impossible to screw things up permanently.  Even getting other characters killed would generally result in the game drafting others in instead.

In Alone in the Dark, it was much easier to achieve.  Wasting bullets would put you in an awkward position - they had to be rationed very carefully, but it was the quest objects that were really issues.  For instance, I found a sabre and used it to fight a pirate ghost.  He broke the sabre because I was using a decorative one instead of a real one.
After I'd found a real sword and killed him, I then found that I had to put the sabre onto a wall somewhere to open a secret door.  One problem - it was now in two pieces.

There were a couple of other 'oh shit, that's what that was for...' moments, but that was the main one for me.  While there was a certain amount of frustration in that way of working, I think I prefer it to the likes of Oblivion where the game holds your hand constantly.

I personally think on games like AitD it is a good thing, makes the adventure more challenging, without the "oh, if I can do it, that means I won't have any problem", which tends to lead to the "try every item on every object" strategy.
besides, in this kind of game, if you already know what to do, you can recover after doing something stupid in a few hours.
Which is not the case in a lengthy game like Oblivion, obviously.

However, guess what... who did not get pissed on Doom games when you died at a late level but forgot to save at that level, causing you restart the level with only a pistol to fight a horde of angry demons?