What really kills a (horror) game for you, graphically?

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    • What really kills a (horror) game for you, graphically?

      I was thinking about that Pizza Delivery game which, while by no means a masterpiece, seemed to have more potential than it actually capitalized on ("I feel a strange presence behind me..." was actually a pretty cool moment). As such, my sense is that, while a scary game can be sustained by even incredibly terrible graphics, inconsistency in graphical quality is pretty fatal. That is, the game could have been frightening even though the pizza looked like this:

      But not after the Pizza already looked like this:

      (which despite only being a vaguely pizza-shaped, incorrectly shaded model with photograph of a pizza as its texture, looks a lot more like what it's supposed to be). In fact, this is so jarring and confusing that I can't help but wonder if it was intentional somehow.

      Do you agree? Are there other graphical problems that you think can completely ruin an otherwise-mostly-reasonable game?

    • RiskRim wrote:

      Oh comon, thats all the horror games all about, that you get scared by low grapic thing and you are like ahh damn im so stupid for getting scared from this :D

      Right, but I think the games that do this fairly effectively (I'm thinking of things like Slender: The Eight Pages and some of those Half-Life 1 based games) are at least consistently not-that-great, so seeing something that doesn't look very real doesn't completely break the immersion. Seeing something that''s noticeably worse than everything else always takes me out of the game's world, because it reminds me that someone made it.

    • Horror games are all about to make you freak out and shit your pants. I love half-life 1 horror mods like Cry of Fear / Afraid of Monsters / Mistake / Paranoia. The graphics is so shitty that I even get scared by just that. And its awkward in a scary way. :3

      Newer horror games like Dead Space doesn't even make me wet my pants since the scares are way to cheap...
      Silent Hill still does the job I guess...
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    • Beeckusu wrote:

      Personally for me horror games that have a non-scary threat really rustles my jimmies. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, SLENDERMAN.
      A lot of a horror game is also the sounds and music that goes with it too. If you've ever played Amnesia without sounds, you'll know what I'm talking about (even if the grunt makes me cry at night).


      Read the god damn OP before you post, PLEASE.

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    • Gonzo Mason wrote:

      Beeckusu wrote:

      Personally for me horror games that have a non-scary threat really rustles my jimmies. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, SLENDERMAN.
      A lot of a horror game is also the sounds and music that goes with it too. If you've ever played Amnesia without sounds, you'll know what I'm talking about (even if the grunt makes me cry at night).


      Read the god damn OP before you post, PLEASE.
      Well, it's not that far off from what I was looking for. Slender Man's lack of scariness is at least partially attributable to his lack of graphical fidelity, and audio, while obviously not graphical, is at least a technical aspect.

      I'm most immediately considering graphical features, but what I'm really not looking for is "bad story" or "unlikable characters."

    • Well they thought slender man had alot of potentiol, that why the made Slanderman The Arrival.
      Well now when i think about it, at the bottom line, there is nothing that kills horror games not the grapics, i will still be triping my balls if the one who made the game was expert at making the kind of horror games, just know when to and what to do, so when you get into the game, you are afrid to press the start botton
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    • RiskRim wrote:

      Well they thought slender man had alot of potentiol, that why the made Slanderman The Arrival.


      I'm not sure that counts as potential so much as proven brand recognition. I think Slender: The Eight Pages capitalized on the popularity of Slender Man at least as much as the actual quality of the game itself, and Slender: The Arrival in turn capitalized on the popularity of Slender: The Eight Pages.

    • Personally anything that gets TOO up into your face/camera. Because I can see all the pixels in the texture and it just doesn't scare me. I think it's better if the monster 2 feet away or something and swipes at you, or pops out of no where really fast. It just depends how fast the monster does this I guess.