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[tommib]

You people need to play Murder House.

 

[Arachnid]

1. Length. Too many horror games are 4-10 hours these days and I see too many gamers encourage that, calling it a "perfect length". It's not. I want more bang for my buck and I want to stay in that world as long as possible. Make your horror games 15 hours at the very least. Give me RE4 and Alien Isolation length horror games.

2. None of them are really all that scary. It seems most devs are afraid of going for max horror for fear of scaring off too much of the player base, so they tone it down (something said by the RE devs when going from 7 to 8, as if 7 was really all that scary either). Bring things back to Fatal Frame and Silent Hill level.

3. First person. Every single one is first person ever since PT started that lame craze. Tired of it.

4. Too many of them lean towards action horror instead of survival horror. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy action horror too. I just prefer survival, and it's a dying breed. The only amazing survival horror games I've played this gen are Alien Isolation and RE7/2 (though both of these are pushing it towards action horror).

5. Mostly pretty shit stories and lore. The only horror games that actually blew me away in terms of story this past gen were the Little Nightmares games and SOMA. They weren't afraid to go all in on horror too. The ending to the second little nightmares was up there as one of the most horrific endings I've seen in a game. Same with SOMA. I want more of this. No happy endings in my horror games, good twists, characters with depth and development.

 

[Frank Horrigan]

1. They're
2. 2
3. spooky
4. 4
5. me

 

[Signal Rockets]

I thought P.T. was overrated too. They didn't really show anything aforetypical of the series in that brief gameplay teaser. The game was never completed anyway, and some fans say Hideo Kojima's name like he matters more than Team Silent does. Yet he didn't even have anything to do with the previous entries.

In the same way Capcom fans rarely talk about Shinji Mikami's involvement any more, this gets annoying.

 

[TMLT]

Theres still some good horror games but theres so many generic walking simulators/haunted house simulators where you're pretty much on a guided tour while the game occasionally makes a door slam or a lightbulb explode or something. PT got away with it because it was relatively well executed, short, and it was an interesting marketing campaign that revealed itself to be connected to a beloved franchise.

I wouldnt put Outlast in the walking sim etc bracket even though theres no combat, because it has very clear tangible danger rather than amusement park haunted house scares. And in spite of the first person view and the PT influence of 7 Resi 7/8 dont belong in that bracket either.

 

[Haggard]

I´m old now. At some point no game/Movie can scare you anymore.

 

[ACESHIGH]

All third person horror games have an over the shoulder camera which its only purpose is favour shooting.
Lack of cinematic fixed multicam angles
Way too many cheap first person horror games
Lack of pre rendered backgrounds
Puzzles are either very little or way too criptic.
Lack of finesse. Cheap jumpscares galore instead of building proper atmosphere.
Mediocre soundtracks and sound effects. Sound is KEY in horror games.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

1. Everything is a walking simulator with no combat. I don’t need a rocket launcher or anything, but why does 99.9% of the horror games just copy Amnesia’s mechanics? Also, the first person perspective is WAY overdone in general.

2. Protagonists who aren’t afraid of the enemies, not surprised by them or too confident. I think it kind of ruins immersion in a way. If they don’t fear the monsters, why should the player fear them?

3. No music. Just silence throughout. I think music can add a lot to the immersion. Dreadout 2 for example has a very unique soundtrack and it adds to the tension and atmosphere imo.

4. Yes, most horror games are way too dark. Not saying they need to be set in broad daylight, but maxing out the brightness sometimes barely even help.

5. Lack of third person horror games. Goes back to number one I guess. I miss the games like Siren, Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, Rule of Rose, etc.

 

[The Book Reader]

I hate the lack of……

Interesting story
Third person view
Difficult or thoughtful puzzles
Storytelling/cinematics
Setting (interesting locations)

 

[MiguelItUp]

1. Too many "stealth" horror games with no attacking (I actually really enjoyed how Alien Isolation did it, but it also had attacking and ways to retaliate.)
2. Too many "jump scares", a lot of them lazily phoned in, etc.
3. Too many blatant rip offs of one another
4. Lack of unique or creativity stories that seem creepy
5. Great audio sfx, music, etc.

I've been playing Faith lately, and it does horror things better than a LOT of other games out there. Ones with much larger budgets too, that DON'T look like a Commodore/Atari game.

 

[MasterDerico]

1.

Lack of music.

How can you have a horror game with no sounds? I know some people may find it distracting, but at least make it optional in that case. Most of the music is low level anyway, but it really adds to the mood. The same with the camera viewpoints. But if you don't enjoy first person, how about third person? Make it where players have a choice.

Keeps everyone feeling happy. Right? Gets you more sales. Right?

When you play the RE2 remake, you can hear a pin drop. It's too quiet. I want to hear eerie piano music, or a string orchestra. Not just the sound of my character breathing heavily.

2.

Shopping systems.

You see, I hated that weird looking vendor in RE4 because the idea of older survival horror games from the golden age of the genre at least, was that you basically found things mainly by being all alone, while perhaps occasionally getting the odd bit of generous grenade launcher ammo, herbs, or something from a companion, who just so happens to be close at hand. Then you split up again for a while, going off to investigate something. As was the case with Barry Burton, when you randomly met up with him in the mansion.

This was only occasionally. But in later RE games, you had somebody helping you most of the time, such as Piers, Jake, or Sheva. Even what would often occur, is that NPC personnel like civilians or soldiers could aid you in battling enemies. It ruined the atmosphere.

The atmosphere was hereby retained by being by yourself, and you found all sorts of fascinating surprises along the way. It was a great feeling. Unlike nowadays, where you just shoot everything and loot wooden boxes, and Bob's your uncle. It's too effortless in that regard.

Starting with RE4, you can quickly buy tons of heavy artillery for a price. Grenades. Submachine guns. Even rocket launchers. It's nuts. Not to mention doing wrestling moves and being like Jackie Chan with high impact karate kicks, which was neat, but too silly looking.

You can then effortlessly kill everything in your path, making it not remotely creepy in the slightest. It's too action heavy, and while there's no denying it's a great feeling when you blast half a dozen cultists at once with an oil lamp hanging overhead, it deliberately betrayed the iconic tension of those prior games in many cases.

3.

Pyramid Head.

It seems the producers of Silent Hill just forgot the point of Pyramid Head to begin with, and just used him in the movies and had similar looking bosses appearing in other games, because he was considered to be the main scary villain, of sorts. But they failed to understand his genuine purpose was to punish James Sunderland, all because of how he treated his late wife, Mary. He ended up becoming a cheesy, popcorn bad guy. They just put him in the films to put asses in seats, I reckon.

4.

Characters getting redesigned, or too confident.

Using iconic characters keeps fans happy. I agree. But in horror games, it's way more appealing to control a mysterious newbie who is just a normal bloke looking for a loved one, or who is just wanting to get out of dodge, and also being a person who isn't a combat veteran armed to the teeth with weapons, so you can relate more to someone inexperienced with encountering monsters, ghosts, bioweapons, or whatever it is, because he is just like you in a sense.

Chris and Jill probably look like pensioners by now. But they've been making a career out of slaying creatures. They're familiar with it all.

The thing with RE games, is that Capcom uses the main heroes too often, and their experience just makes these games feel like a walk in the park. Leon Kennedy is in all of the animated movies too, serving as a glorified stuntman. They aren't scary. They are entertaining, however. And sure, that is okay.

Or if they want to use the original characters, look at how they looked like before throughout their prior adventures, so you don't ruin them when you hire the wrong looking actors to portray them using the RE Engine, for the current installments. After all, Chris in RE7 looks bloody terrible.

Of all the guys they could hire to portray Chris, they picked whoever that dude was. He looked like he had just graduated from a university out in Sacramento. Too young. Didn't suit the role at all.

5.

Let there be light.

OK. Why make everything so damn dark, that you can barely see a thing ahead of your flashlight? You had light and darkness in good measure in the old RE games, so you could see everything around you most of the time. Items would also sparkle for you sometimes. Other times, you had to search a bit longer. But that's where I'm coming back and saying the old RE games liked to surprise you with randomly placed goodies.

Now these games are blanketed in darkness half of the time, with minimal lighting, and quite possibly the worst zombies ever, where even a well placed headshot with auto aiming on is still ridiculously ineffective. WTF?

Also, don't keep adding in antagonists that don't feel characteristic of RE games, or repeating boss fights between separate scenarios. Because the last time I checked, RE wasn't about living puppets, robots, 9 feet high vampires, werewolves, and the Buster Bloodvessel, Bad Manners frontman, look alike.

God, it's not hard. Just stick to the basic formula of what made the RE franchise great to start off with. Viruses. Creepy environments. Zombies. Umbrella. But please don't use bizarre venues that look like they're from a 1930's era, Universal film set.

My God. It's way too zany.

Who punish James is Maria, not PH imo...
PH just want to show James the truth.

(I know we can discuss for hours, that's why SH2 subjective story is so brilliant)

-About the new horror games, lack of combat. Just walking simulators/hide&seek...

 

[BusierDonkey]

It's more an "every game" problem but characters that narrate their inner dialogue in horror games are shit city. Nothing ruins atmosphere like a line of crappy dialogue written by an amateur every fifteen seconds.

Resident Evil 2 Remake was an example of it being done right. Leon doesn't say a word most of the time because he's trying not to attract zombies, but every time a zombie jumps out of a closet or a locker, he yells out almost exactly the same thing I would.