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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Personally, I feel the aesthetics of DDLC count very little towards the impact of the game - they could be replaced by something less cliche and the game would remain the same. I wouldn't miss it if the game was less bishoujo.

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Mindblast
Jun 28, 2006

Moving at the speed of death.


1stGear posted:

You have to slog through a lot of deliberately generic, cliche, anime bullshit and the payoff is both easy to guess well beforehand and only arguably worth it. I guess it just wasn't for me, but I have really no idea why there are so many goons who think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Yeah 2 hour slogs to get to something good is a bit much. Especially if the payoff is uncertain.

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!

exquisite tea posted:

The games I've thought were ~actually scary~ are those that put you in a perpetual state of discomfort, where nothing feels safe, and almost feel exhausting to play.

It gets mentioned all the time but Silent Hill 4 is like that, where your "safe room" becomes gradually less safe as the game goes on unless you go out of your way to de-spookify it. Also the ghosts break the cardinal "rule" of survival horror games of that era by following you between areas. Fatal Frame does something similar, ghosts can actually haunt safe rooms and the likelihood goes up I think the more times you keep going back to the same safe room. Ghost appearances are random sometimes, there are specific rooms which will always potentially contain a returning ghost. And some of the ghosts can and will follow you from room to room, through doors or even walls. Fatal Frame is one of the few horror games I have yet to beat specifically because it stressed me out so much, Siren is another. Just making the player feel even a little bit helpless goes a long way, even if it's artificial.

Alien Isolation by comparison hasn't really scared me once. The biggest thing for me, and it's a personal one, is that I know what the xenomorph is and I've played enough to know how it works. I know that at times I can't see it patrolling around I'm safe as long as I don't sprint because sprinting will trigger it to drop down into Active Patrol Mode. In Active Patrol Mode I know that it rubber bands to my general location, so I have to keep moving and keep my eyes open for where it's coming from, and I know that it has the potential to leave me alone if it patrols for a random interval and doesn't see any sign of me. It's... unpredictably predictable, if that makes any sense. It's pure RNG, but you can easily see how it works and know when you're safe. And there's literally two states in the game, either you're being hunted and can die or you're not and you can't die.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Mindblast posted:

Yeah 2 hour slogs to get to something good is a bit much. Especially if the payoff is uncertain.

I agree - since I knew there was more to the game, I got impatient and wanted the real face to show up, and I felt like the game dragged before that point. A snappier, more efficient period of adjustment would have been better, but I don't know if that would compromise other parts of the game.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



1stGear posted:

You have to slog through a lot of deliberately generic, cliche, anime bullshit and the payoff is both easy to guess well beforehand and only arguably worth it. I guess it just wasn't for me, but I have really no idea why there are so many goons who think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I wrote a big thing about why I like it so much, if you'd like my perspective. Spoilers, of course, so don't read it unless you've finished it or have no intention to.

:ghost: SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension :ghost:

1. Stories Untold
2. Rusty Lake Hotel
3. Rusty Lake: Roots
4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board
5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition
6. Eleusis
7. Dead Effect
8. Dead Effect 2
9. State of Decay

10. Dead End Road



Vehicular horror has been a thing since... well, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow if you count horses. In games it tends to be the more actiony Zombie Driver variety, but Dead End Road strikes out to create an actual horrific driving experience. It does quite a job of it too, helped along by the tension and randomness of its roguelike elements. Only a few questionable design decisions might put you off, but this little gem does plenty more right than wrong.

A strange old woman in the woods offers you your heart's desire if you perform a simple little ritual, which of course summons a demon who wants to devour your soul. Despite the wish thing he's not the generous type, so you need to find the remaining tools for the ritual and return before he gets impatient and decides to snack on your spirit stuff. The spooky English countryside is vast, though, so you need to plan a trip through the miserable little towns and winding roads full of dodgy drivers and weeping corpses if you're going to finish your shopping and make it back with your soul intact.

The heart of Dead End Road is the driving, taking place in small stretches between towns. There are no forks or intersections to deal with, just a straight shot from one village to the next. However, as you're barreling down the darkened streets there are plenty of complications to deal with. Crashing into another car or a pole is an immediate game over, while running over boxes or trash cans or people does mounting damage to your poor land boat. Those are just the corporeal threats though, because the dark presence hungering for your soul will send all sorts of hallucinations to impede your journey. Illusions range from corpses in the street and severed heads hurtling from the dark, to visions of impaled bodies and fake system crashes.

Hallucinations do no damage to your car, but they stress you out and managing your stress, car condition, and fuel is the keystone challenge of the game. The longer you take to get from point A to B the more hallucinations you'll suffer, but the faster you go the more damage you're likely to incur. In towns you can buy items to heal stress, but you also need that money to buy fuel, items for the ritual, or upgrades to your car if you're flush with cash. You'll never be rich though, because opportunities to score additional funds outside your starting 100 pounds are few and far between. Giving hitchhikers a lift to the next town can get you a little, and gambling on scratch cards at the supermarket is an option, but neither is reliable and you need to prioritize getting the ritual items if you actually want to win. On top of all this, the features of each road and town are randomized every time you play so there are no ideal routes to learn.

Along with shady hitchhikers there are a few other features on the road you can easily miss. Gas stations sit along some routes (they're marked on your map) which provide free fuel if you can find them. There are also rest stops you can search for random results, both good and bad. However, these opportunities can be a challenge just to locate on account of how dark the game is. I understand the aesthetic reasons for the pervasive darkness and it does indeed make the game extremely oppressive and moody, but it also makes it a pain to see what's coming while you can still react to it, or just play the bloody thing in a well-lit room. The instant death from auto collisions is sure to be a big sticking point for newer players, in part because it's so hard to see it coming and also because the fake 2.5D driving engine makes it hard to maneuver nimbly around threats.

The low-res scanline presentation does a lot for the creepy vibes of Dead End Road, and the sound design does an amazing job of matching with distorted effects and rumbling tones. These retro elements do exacerbate the problems of visibility and control a bit because of how the game is designed as a moving diorama rather than an actual driving sim. However, these are surmountable issues for players hooked by the dark charms and mysteries offered here. If nothing else it's worth seeing how your wish plays out in the end, as you get to enter your own desire in text and it resurfaces in the conclusion (and some wishes get unique endings!). It's not the smoothest ride in the world, but Dead End Road proves to be an entertaining, spooky journey worth taking again and again.

sigher
Apr 22, 2008

My guiding Moonlight...



Dave Angel posted:

Xenomrph is best placed to answer in terms of the wider media, but quoting from the Aliens Wiki for the films:


Xenomrph posted:

As mentioned, the ones in Alien3 and Resurrection had digitigrade legs, while the ones in the AvP films did not.
The Alien costumes from the first AvP movie are actually repurposed and repainted 'Alien Resurrection' costumes and are identical from the knees up.

In the AvP games, they had human-style legs in AvP 99, but had digitigrade legs in the other AvP FPS games, as well as AvP Extinction.

Interesting, thanks guys.

woodenchicken posted:

Game definitely suffers from overblown praise by casuals; nothing could live up to that level of hype. That and the whole 'different strokes' thing. Personally, I thought it had some well-done parts at least. SOMA takes it in a much more interesting direction tho.

Amnesia is a good game, and there weren't many games like it out when dropped and at the time it was really god drat good. The problem is games since Amnesia have refined it's "hide and sneak" horror gameplay and are just so much better than it. I tried playing it again this past year and I just couldn't because it dragged on a bit too much in the beginning. I stopped before I even got to a monster encounter, it also didn't help that I knew there's nothing in the beginning parts of the game that can actually threaten you so that whole part is even more boring when you're just trying to figure out where to go and what to do.

Yardbomb
Jul 11, 2011

What's with the eh... bretonnian dance, sir?

Also worth a small mention is that Dead End Road is only a whopping $3 and that's the standard price, it's a really cool, novel game and short of being free it's hard to get a better deal if you're looking for a new and creative spooky game.

Xenomrph
Dec 9, 2005

AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill



Wasn't there that game in development where you're a hitchhiker who rides in a car with a creepy serial killer, and you have to juggle avoiding his creepy staring while riding in his car as long as possible?

Yardbomb
Jul 11, 2011

What's with the eh... bretonnian dance, sir?

Rides With Strangers.

At first it was looking like it just wasn't gonna happen, then the devs made another game called Welcome to the Game, wherein one bonus ending then outright confirms it's still on and is actually coming.

Parachute
May 18, 2003
i like that because in my head its just a really ultra short intense game like jfk reloaded, but not like it in any way.

in fact, are there any horror games like that? extremely short and intense with one singular objective and maybe cool physics stuff too, is what im getting at

Xenomrph
Dec 9, 2005

AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill



Slender?
Comedy answer: Don't poo poo Your Pants

God I remember JFK Reloaded. I wasted a ton of time in that game, just loving around.

DrSnakeLaser
Sep 6, 2011


Yardbomb posted:

Rides With Strangers.

At first it was looking like it just wasn't gonna happen, then the devs made another game called Welcome to the Game, wherein one bonus ending then outright confirms it's still on and is actually coming.

Maybe not for a while though, the dev released an update video saying the game was postponed for now due to financial issues.

Vakal
May 11, 2008

Xenomrph posted:

Wasn't there that game in development where you're a hitchhiker who rides in a car with a creepy serial killer, and you have to juggle avoiding his creepy staring while riding in his car as long as possible?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgmqtNOrKvA

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNeToSBKcSA

Blattdorf
Aug 10, 2012

"This will be the best for both of us, Bradley."
"Meow."

Dead End Road is pretty cool and maybe I should give it another go.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



:ghost: SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension :ghost:

1. Stories Untold
2. Rusty Lake Hotel
3. Rusty Lake: Roots
4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board
5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition
6. Eleusis
7. Dead Effect
8. Dead Effect 2
9. State of Decay
10. Dead End Road

11. Goetia



Horror adventures tend to have you investigating some horror like a ghost, not casting you as an investigating ghost. Goetia bucks that trend in a big way by giving you control of a plucky little ball of protoplasm in search of answers. They won’t come easily though, and in fact turning them up may be too great a challenge for many players. A lot of this is down to how the puzzles are designed, clever though they may be, making a pretty steep barrier to entry to an otherwise casual and creepy game. Still, the other elements work well enough to make this little ghost tale one worth seeing.

You’re dead, that much should be evident from the dreary grave you start in and the incorporeal form that follows your mouse cursor along. Your ethereal charge was a young girl before her demise, and your adventures together are mainly concerned with why she hasn’t passed on to the great beyond. Her family features heavily in this mystery, and as you explore their manor and its surroundings you begin to uncover a plot of diabolical portend. I won’t go into any more detail than that because some of the encounters are fine surprises, but there’s plenty of supernatural machinations to delve into here.

This setup is perfect for the point-and-click genre, since your ghostly friend always hovers around your mouse. You can move freely around the screen this way, unimpeded by walls or structures, and fly on to the next area simply by clicking on the edge of your view. The cursor also changes to indicate something interactable, and those points of interest can be inspected, used, or possessed as is appropriate. Those first two options should be self-explanatory but possession is the important one here, because it’s how you’re going to solve many of the puzzles in the game. As a ghost your little ladyfriend is limited in how she can affect the world, but possessing items allows her to fly around as that item and place or use it wherever it is needed.

You can only possess one item at a time, of course, and they stay where you leave them. This makes inventory management in the absence of an inventory a key aspect of the game, one that contributes largely to the steep difficulty. You might come across a wooden horse you can possess and have no idea what to do with it, and then find a note an hour later about a wooden horse and not remember where you left it. Most items are used in the immediate vicinity but not all of them, and the ones that need to be taken elsewhere can really throw you for a loop. Figuring out where items need to be used also figures heavily into what ending you get, making the best ending a steep challenge to reach.

That’s only half of the puzzles, mind you. The other half are more conventional code-cracking, lock-picking, button-pressing adventure game puzzles. There’s plenty of creativity and variety to find in them, everything from locating the correct key on a key board (a wall-mounted board of keys, not the thing on your computer) from reading notes to typing out an audio code in a text parser. You’re also going to contend with more esoteric puzzles like figuring out a sequence of gravestones from poetry or reaching a purely arbitrary weight on a scale, and it’s here that the precipitous difficulty rises up once more. I’m no point-and-click pro, I resort to walkthroughs on plenty of titles, but Goetia reached a point where I had absolutely no clue how to proceed, and even after consulting a walkthrough felt unprepared to follow through.

What’s crazy is that the puzzles aren’t bad, they’re really that hard. They’re not illogical like cat hair mustaches or brutal like throwing a shoe at a cat so you don’t die an hour later. Goetia’s puzzles are just extremely puzzling, fully expecting you to pore over every note and process every potential connection between clues. The solutions make sense when I look them up, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining how I would have sussed them out myself. To be fair the game really tries to help you along, with your ghost girlie often musing out clues when she find something important and your journal listing similar suggestions at each milestone. But you’re still going to have to be paying attention and thinking outside the box, because some of these puzzles punch right through the box into seemingly non-Euclidean space.

I’m not even sure the difficulty is a shame or not, because like I said it’s not at all unfair. It’s a very challenging game, and it fits with the excellent atmosphere of ancient secrets and ghostly intrigue. Waking up dead and alone decades after you lived would be a challenging situation for anyone, and answers would not come easily. They certainly don’t come easily here but they’re worth chasing down, presented in detailed, moody graphics with some delightfully reserved sound design. Goetia is a gem of an adventure game but it’s edges are sharp enough to cut, and you’ll need to be even sharper to even reach the end of it.

Bert of the Forest
Apr 27, 2013

Shucks folks, I'm speechless. Hawf Hawf Hawf!

A friend gifted this to me recently and it's honestly such a breath of fresh air from the usual horror muck on Steam. It's definitely REALLY simple, but has a pretty kick-rear end atmosphere. Though you are totally right that the car collisions will scare new people off because to this day I still am not sure what the best technique to avoid them is, given how little time you have to react. It's also a little odd to me that cars can come from any side of the road, which seems to imply you're driving the wrong way on a one-way road? Nonetheless, definitely a steal at 3 bucks.

Sakurazuka
Jan 24, 2004

NANI?

I'd had somehow convinced myself I had never gotten past the water monster in Amnesia but while playing it today proceeded to get stuck on the bit where you have to smash a window to go outside and when I looked up the solution released I got stuck in the exact same place last time I played it and had completely forgotten about it.

A. Beaverhausen
Nov 11, 2008

by R. Guyovich

Too Shy Guy posted:

:ghost: SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension :ghost:

1. Stories Untold
2. Rusty Lake Hotel
3. Rusty Lake: Roots
4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board
5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition
6. Eleusis
7. Dead Effect
8. Dead Effect 2
9. State of Decay
10. Dead End Road

11. Goetia



Horror adventures tend to have you investigating some horror like a ghost, not casting you as an investigating ghost. Goetia bucks that trend in a big way by giving you control of a plucky little ball of protoplasm in search of answers. They won’t come easily though, and in fact turning them up may be too great a challenge for many players. A lot of this is down to how the puzzles are designed, clever though they may be, making a pretty steep barrier to entry to an otherwise casual and creepy game. Still, the other elements work well enough to make this little ghost tale one worth seeing.

You’re dead, that much should be evident from the dreary grave you start in and the incorporeal form that follows your mouse cursor along. Your ethereal charge was a young girl before her demise, and your adventures together are mainly concerned with why she hasn’t passed on to the great beyond. Her family features heavily in this mystery, and as you explore their manor and its surroundings you begin to uncover a plot of diabolical portend. I won’t go into any more detail than that because some of the encounters are fine surprises, but there’s plenty of supernatural machinations to delve into here.

This setup is perfect for the point-and-click genre, since your ghostly friend always hovers around your mouse. You can move freely around the screen this way, unimpeded by walls or structures, and fly on to the next area simply by clicking on the edge of your view. The cursor also changes to indicate something interactable, and those points of interest can be inspected, used, or possessed as is appropriate. Those first two options should be self-explanatory but possession is the important one here, because it’s how you’re going to solve many of the puzzles in the game. As a ghost your little ladyfriend is limited in how she can affect the world, but possessing items allows her to fly around as that item and place or use it wherever it is needed.

You can only possess one item at a time, of course, and they stay where you leave them. This makes inventory management in the absence of an inventory a key aspect of the game, one that contributes largely to the steep difficulty. You might come across a wooden horse you can possess and have no idea what to do with it, and then find a note an hour later about a wooden horse and not remember where you left it. Most items are used in the immediate vicinity but not all of them, and the ones that need to be taken elsewhere can really throw you for a loop. Figuring out where items need to be used also figures heavily into what ending you get, making the best ending a steep challenge to reach.

That’s only half of the puzzles, mind you. The other half are more conventional code-cracking, lock-picking, button-pressing adventure game puzzles. There’s plenty of creativity and variety to find in them, everything from locating the correct key on a key board (a wall-mounted board of keys, not the thing on your computer) from reading notes to typing out an audio code in a text parser. You’re also going to contend with more esoteric puzzles like figuring out a sequence of gravestones from poetry or reaching a purely arbitrary weight on a scale, and it’s here that the precipitous difficulty rises up once more. I’m no point-and-click pro, I resort to walkthroughs on plenty of titles, but Goetia reached a point where I had absolutely no clue how to proceed, and even after consulting a walkthrough felt unprepared to follow through.

What’s crazy is that the puzzles aren’t bad, they’re really that hard. They’re not illogical like cat hair mustaches or brutal like throwing a shoe at a cat so you don’t die an hour later. Goetia’s puzzles are just extremely puzzling, fully expecting you to pore over every note and process every potential connection between clues. The solutions make sense when I look them up, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining how I would have sussed them out myself. To be fair the game really tries to help you along, with your ghost girlie often musing out clues when she find something important and your journal listing similar suggestions at each milestone. But you’re still going to have to be paying attention and thinking outside the box, because some of these puzzles punch right through the box into seemingly non-Euclidean space.

I’m not even sure the difficulty is a shame or not, because like I said it’s not at all unfair. It’s a very challenging game, and it fits with the excellent atmosphere of ancient secrets and ghostly intrigue. Waking up dead and alone decades after you lived would be a challenging situation for anyone, and answers would not come easily. They certainly don’t come easily here but they’re worth chasing down, presented in detailed, moody graphics with some delightfully reserved sound design. Goetia is a gem of an adventure game but it’s edges are sharp enough to cut, and you’ll need to be even sharper to even reach the end of it.

gently caress, sold.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



I've got one disappointing little indie joint to cover today, and then we can talk about F.E.A.R. alllllllllllllllllll weekend. :iia:

:ghost: SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension :ghost:

1. Stories Untold
2. Rusty Lake Hotel
3. Rusty Lake: Roots
4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board
5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition
6. Eleusis
7. Dead Effect
8. Dead Effect 2
9. State of Decay
10. Dead End Road
11. Goetia

12. EMPORIUM



I’ll be honest, I fell asleep the first time I played EMPORIUM. I also beat it that time, leaving me only fleeting memories of the beginning and ending. That makes a pretty good review in just two sentences, and if you want to punch out here I’ll continue being honest and say you’re not missing much. The core issues that put me under on this one have to do with the story, which is especially damning because story is all it has. Beyond the striking art style you’re getting an incomplete tale told in a way that does little to harness the power of its medium. Because of that I’m going to spoil parts of the game (mostly the structure) but if you’re still reading then I doubt that’ll bother you much.

You awaken face down on the bloodied pavement outside the titular EMPORIUM, with precious little to do besides enter and peruse the strange exhibits on display. An old man by a camper will prompt a response from you, and then from there you travel to a strange, broken place where he meets you again. You’ll climb a tower he inhabits, and then find yourself in front of the changed EMPORIUM once more. Through each of these cycles you’ll glean more and more of your connection to the old man, as well as to the dreamlike expanses you find yourself in.

Have you noticed the problem yet? I’ve just described the (literal) gameplay loop to you in less than a paragraph. Everything I mentioned there is everything you do in the game, just repeated upwards of half a dozen times. Repetition is a powerful tool in storytelling but it’s an utter drag on the proceedings here due to the lack of significant agency or revelation. Every time you loop you’ll see new things but you get just two choices per loop and their effects are unclear at first, and even once you understand them it’s still not to any appreciable effect. The game simply scoots you along to the next slice of contextless dialogue (unless you’re REALLY paying attention to the sets) to digest, as if expecting you to subsist on scraps of story indefinitely.

What narrative there is touches on subjects like lost youth and depression, and I’d be lying if I said the mentions of child abuse or entomophagy weren’t a little horrifying. The themes and atmosphere are definitely trying for a psychological horror vibe, apparent nowhere more clearly than the deep, booming soundtrack. It just doesn’t work because you have no real connection to your character. You piece together the links between him and the old man and listen to the horrors of their lives but in the 20 minutes you’re going to spend with them, you’re not going to form the bonds necessary to derive any sort of anxiety from their experiences. The emotional hook to the story isn’t there, perhaps since the game is so determined to be vague and mysterious instead of letting you get inside anyone’s head.

I won’t disparage the graphics, which were precisely what inspired me to give the game a go in the first place. The simple shapes and muted colors convey the right amount of melancholy, and some expert camera direction helps put it over the edge to something special. Again, it’s just in service of a narrative-driven game that never opens up the narrative to you. With your only control being movement, running, and checking things, there’s not nearly enough gameplay to prop up a vague story that requires analysis and commitment. To get the full story you’d need to play through the thing three times, which isn’t bad for a 20-minute game but multiplies that awful repetition threefold. I take great pleasure in championing indie and arthouse games but they need a basic level of quality and incentive, and while EMPORIUM might have the former it is sadly lacking in the latter.

Bogart
Apr 12, 2010

by VideoGames
Reminds me of Rituals. A nothing story, nothing gameplay, with only the graphics style to buoy it. And the control scheme, gently caress. VR "teleport controls" without being a VR game. You probably have Rituals from the Humble Bundle that supported the ACLU. It's no good.

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



Oh man, I had forgotten about that one! I watched my buddy Captain Swing stream that one in its entirety and yeah, it's an amazingly hollow experience.

A lot of designers out there just don't get how to tell a story, and err much too far on the side of subtlety and metaphor. It happens way too much in horror specifically, creators think they're crafting some grand and meaningful tale and don't want to give too much of it away, thinking the players will work to dig out the meaning themselves. But they almost always hide too much or make the symbols too esoteric, and partly because of that people don't bother to dig into whatever thing they've come up with. Sometimes mystery feels like a lost art, with too few able to create something with coherent leads to follow and satisfying revelations to reach.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
They gotta learn that if you want to be mysterious and esotoric what you really want is a double narrative. A simpler and more understandable one that sees them through the game and connects them to it deeply enough they WANT to puzzle out the "real story" from the hints and clues.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Having just finished Silent Hill 3 I've got the original trilogy down but I'm still confused over how these games work. General Silent Hill spoilers start here.

SH1 establishes a distinction between the real world and otherworld, that the nightmares of Alessa are causing the town to slip into the other dimension. SH2 establishes that everyone's vision of Silent Hill is unique to their own perception. So I guess I want to know how SH3 fits into it. It doesn't appear as if anyone is phased by Silent Hill other than the protagonists. They all feel something is off but even Vincent is surprised Heather sees the creatures as monsters. And given how weirdly violent Heather is I can't shake the feeling she's blasting away real people.

And I'm guessing that the otherworld shifting powers are focused on Alessa. No matter where she is she can twist her surroundings?

A. Beaverhausen
Nov 11, 2008

by R. Guyovich

al-azad posted:

Having just finished Silent Hill 3 I've got the original trilogy down but I'm still confused over how these games work. General Silent Hill spoilers start here.

SH1 establishes a distinction between the real world and otherworld, that the nightmares of Alessa are causing the town to slip into the other dimension. SH2 establishes that everyone's vision of Silent Hill is unique to their own perception. So I guess I want to know how SH3 fits into it. It doesn't appear as if anyone is phased by Silent Hill other than the protagonists. They all feel something is off but even Vincent is surprised Heather sees the creatures as monsters. And given how weirdly violent Heather is I can't shake the feeling she's blasting away real people.

And I'm guessing that the otherworld shifting powers are focused on Alessa. No matter where she is she can twist her surroundings?

To make a novel off of gamefaqs short, Silent Hill the area has had power since the Native Americans. The Cult and Alessa just draw this power out for their ends. All this and the town itself enjoys playing psychologist to randoms.

Also Vincent's little comment towards Heather has always been an interesting aside, but it could be a joke. Like many things in the Silent Hill series your interpretation is as good as mine.

E: I'm fact, you could have an argument whether the God(s) you kill throughout from the cult are even their God's, or what the town has warped to play to their expectations.

E2: Homecoming, while not a shining star does expound on the town itself having power, and spreading. poo poo SH4 has it too

A. Beaverhausen fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 12, 2017

1stGear
Jan 16, 2010

Here's to the new us.

Too Shy Guy posted:

Oh man, I had forgotten about that one! I watched my buddy Captain Swing stream that one in its entirety and yeah, it's an amazingly hollow experience.

A lot of designers out there just don't get how to tell a story, and err much too far on the side of subtlety and metaphor. It happens way too much in horror specifically, creators think they're crafting some grand and meaningful tale and don't want to give too much of it away, thinking the players will work to dig out the meaning themselves. But they almost always hide too much or make the symbols too esoteric, and partly because of that people don't bother to dig into whatever thing they've come up with. Sometimes mystery feels like a lost art, with too few able to create something with coherent leads to follow and satisfying revelations to reach.

A lot of people like me read the giant explanations of Silent Hill 2 symbolism on GameFAQs back in the day and thought it was the absolute tits.

Blockhouse
Sep 7, 2014

You Win!
Vincent's "They look like monsters to you? think was always a mind-fucky jokey as far as I was concerned. The dude's way too terrified of the cult's God actually being born to not be aware of the extradimensional monsters running around, especially since he's just as trapped in the fog world as Heather.

Diabetic
Sep 29, 2006

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world Diabeetus.

al-azad posted:

Having just finished Silent Hill 3 I've got the original trilogy down but I'm still confused over how these games work. General Silent Hill spoilers start here.

SH1 establishes a distinction between the real world and otherworld, that the nightmares of Alessa are causing the town to slip into the other dimension. SH2 establishes that everyone's vision of Silent Hill is unique to their own perception. So I guess I want to know how SH3 fits into it. It doesn't appear as if anyone is phased by Silent Hill other than the protagonists. They all feel something is off but even Vincent is surprised Heather sees the creatures as monsters. And given how weirdly violent Heather is I can't shake the feeling she's blasting away real people.

And I'm guessing that the otherworld shifting powers are focused on Alessa. No matter where she is she can twist her surroundings?

Heather is really killing just images shown to her by Silent Hill, unless it's the cultist enemies then yeah that's straight murder. The Cultists themselves see them more as heavenly beings or some variation thereof. Best way to sum it up is to use the line from Hellraiser by Pinhead: "Angels to some, demons to others."

catlord
Mar 22, 2009

What's on your mind, Axa?
Yeah, I assumed that the cult doesn't see the monsters like the protagonists do. Where we see rust and chain, they see gold and lace, and things like that.

Blockhouse
Sep 7, 2014

You Win!

catlord posted:

Yeah, I assumed that the cult doesn't see the monsters like the protagonists do. Where we see rust and chain, they see gold and lace, and things like that.

It's either that or, to continue the Hellraiser comparison, sirens and wire mesh and quivering flesh is actually what they want.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Blockhouse posted:

It's either that or, to continue the Hellraiser comparison, sirens and wire mesh and quivering flesh is actually what they want.

Yeah, that was how I always took it.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Oh and I keep forgetting that this quaint mountain town is a hotspot of drug trafficking. That was the first time I remember a drug plot in a video game which made it kind of more disturbing than the monsters and poo poo.

edit: I still can't shake how weirdly genre savvy and darkly humorous Heather is. Her internal monologue is dismissive and sarcastic while the "normal" ending she jokes with a guy whose been trapped with a broken leg just waiting for death. I justified it as her living this hell before and she's tired of this poo poo.

al-azad fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Oct 12, 2017

Diabetic
Sep 29, 2006

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world Diabeetus.
The main thing that makes me think the Cultists don't see the horrors is Laura from SH2. She literally sees nothing going on in the town except maybe fog because she's pure. Her only interaction with anyone is the dickhead Eddie and James and she rightly thinks they're both idiots.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hell, the drugs were even important to the plot. They were how they were coercing Lisa into taking care of Alessa, and they were how the cult was funding itself.

Blockhouse
Sep 7, 2014

You Win!

Night10194 posted:

Hell, the drugs were even important to the plot. They were how they were coercing Lisa into taking care of Alessa, and they were how the cult was funding itself.

And if you didn't finish the drug subplot you didn't get the good ending.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's also Kaufmann's whole connection to things. He's their drug guy. He's a cultist, sure, but he doesn't believe in poo poo and was just trying to get rich/powerful and is pissed as all hell that he's stuck in a snowy hellscape full of monsters.

Diabetic
Sep 29, 2006

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world Diabeetus.

Night10194 posted:

It's also Kaufmann's whole connection to things. He's their drug guy. He's a cultist, sure, but he doesn't believe in poo poo and was just trying to get rich/powerful and is pissed as all hell that he's stuck in a snowy hellscape full of monsters.

When I originally played it I didn't understand who the Hell the guy was but I missed the whole drug needed for the good ending. In fairness, I was nursing a horror boner for Lisa and thought Harry was an idiot for not going after that, but being a stupid kid, I also tried to learn how to play piano to get passed the piano puzzle in the school.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I just love how annoyed Kaufman is at all times. "NO-ONE FOOLS lovely DRUG DOCTOR, EVIL WIZARD!"

Blockhouse
Sep 7, 2014

You Win!
Kaufmann and Vincent were both in it for the money and the power but the second it looked like the God might actually become a thing they start trying to find a way to stop it.

The big difference being that Vincent is straight up manipulating Heather and Kaufmann just kind of does his own thing until he shows up to shoot Dahlia and throw Anti-God Juice on Alessa.

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Bogart
Apr 12, 2010

by VideoGames
Hey, here's a decent little throwback: it's called FAITH. Very much styled in MS-DOS, there's some good freaky design and the soundtrack, while appropriate for the genre and time it's supposed to be, really got under my skin. About an hour long. The Vinesauce guy streamed it and I think he's generally pretty palatable if you don't wanna play for yourself. They wrench a lotta dread out of the Microsoft Sam rear end voice.

and it's free. Just temper expectations appropriately (the endings are lame).

http://www.indiedb.com/games/faith1/downloads/faith-indie-db-edition-v111

Bogart fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Oct 13, 2017

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