davidn: (prince)
[personal profile] davidn
I keep on saying (now and then) that despite the impression that I may have given over the last few years, I'm not really a fan of horror games. Starting when I got my hands on Silent Hill some time around 1999, it's just been the case that I somehow get roped into playing them as people keep on giving me them to try. It must be said that I have a respect for things that scare me cleverly, though, and they have a great viral appeal in that you can pass them around either to spread the pain or just to see if people are as traumatized as you were.

I had told people... quite a lot that I definitely wasn't going to play Amnesia, then [livejournal.com profile] quadralien went and got it for my birthday, so I felt I should at least give it a try. And I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to share my reactions with the world - though it must be said that the game has started slowly compared to my expectations, with only a couple of involuntary noises from me. In fact, I think the party that ended up most distressed from the experience was the plant ten minutes in.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTsvrbo0tJw


I did about twenty minutes of it, then decided it would be better to upload it in multiple parts instead of one megavideo and edited what I had. Thanks to a Christmas present from Whitney's parents, I've now moved on from iMovie (which, to be fair to it, is pretty decent for a free program and can out-video Windows Movie Maker in virtually every respect) and am using PowerDirector, so having eliminated the need to work on two computers at the same time I can put these things together a lot more quickly.

Date: 2012-01-08 03:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ravenworks.livejournal.com
Okay, it is pretty clever the way they let people invent their own fear without having to do anything more than spawning cupboards by putting in the capacity for performing an action hesitantly.

(I'd have been tempted to go back and try that big door again after you learned how to open the cupboards, though! Although it probably would have just been "it's locked" or something..)

"There's some sort of ghostly emission here.." I was going to ask, actually, whether you could see the intermittent spattered trail of blood you'd been following the entire way... it was light enough that I figured it would stand out in grayscale, but eight minutes in was the first time you commented on it..

Watching you put that plant on the table, suddenly I want to watch people re-enacting famous scenes from film history as clumsy in-game avatars or something. I can't even imagine how unplayable these are going to seem once some more natural form of interacting with these environments is invented...

Have you noticed that the leftmost column of pixels of your video feed seems to be wrapped around from the right side?

Did you ever figure out if tilting to one side was a bug, or if the character was meant to have a limp? (It seemed to go away in subsequent areas, or did I just stop noticing it?)

Date: 2012-01-08 10:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lupineangel.livejournal.com
I watched the video, but something seemed to be missing from it for it to count as a true horror game... it was a dark castle environment, yes, but there didn't seem to be a great deal of atmosphere. I can understand how the random sound effects (footsteps, gusts of wind blowing open doors, earthquake rumblings while you're trying to look at your inventory and so on) would be scary, but other than that, a lot of the 'fear' effects just seemed... well, more annoying than mood-building. Cameras doing that weird brief fish-eye lens blip thing, an inability to stand upright (although the lean-round-corners mechanic is an interesting idea)... I'd find those frustrating, and perhaps disorienting, but not really frightening. The lights suddenly going out while you were looking at the paintings was a sudden shock, but then nothing happened - nothing attacked you in the dark, like, say, the part in BioShock where you get the shotgun for the first time; it was just 'oh, the lights went out. I can just walk out into the next room and things are better again'. (Come to think of it, the candles don't go out when you light them; why could Daniel not pick one of them up? I'm guessing because, if your experiences with the pot-plant were anything to go by, he'd solve the whole "evil shadow chasing you" thing by accidentally setting the tapestries on fire and burning the mysterious castle to the ground. :P) Does it get scarier later on? Is it more engaging to play than to watch? It just feels kind of... clichéd and clumsily executed, at least, at first glance.

I suppose it doesn't help that I'm watching this on a laptop, and the LCD screen shows the 'blood trail' you were following in bright pink; it looks like someone walked through the castle spilling Pepto-Bismol all over the place, which does make it kind of hard to immerse yourself in the spooky Gothic mood. :P

Also, I had a flashback to Planescape: Torment when Daniel picked up the letter and his previous self told him that he'd chosen to forget whatever it was that you're presumably meant to spend the rest of the game finding out. I don't know if you've ever played it - it's almost worth viewing as a kind of interactive novel rather than as a game, but it's very well-written - but there's a story someone tells in it:

"An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn't certain of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: 'Now your *third* wish. What will it be?'"
"'Third wish?' The man was baffled. 'How can it be a third wish if I haven't had a first and second wish?'"
"'You've had two wishes already,' the hag said, 'but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That's why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.' She cackled at the poor berk. 'So it is that you have one wish left.'"
"'All right,' said the man, "I don't believe this, but there's no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.'"
"'Funny,' said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. 'That was your first wish.'"

The point being, why not just trust that forgetting was a good thing? Ignorance is bliss. Just leave the castle, go home, and put your feet up. Maybe rescue the pot-plant on the way out. :P Besides, your previous self seems like he's a murderous douche anyway; no reason you should be his puppet.

...I don't think I've got the point of this game, have I? :P

D.F.

Date: 2012-01-27 10:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tamakun.livejournal.com
"Aaah! A Shirt!"

I keep refreshing this page sadly, and keep eliminating what I was meaning to say - I'm starting to understand how people can get motion sickness while watching others play games. Since I'm not in control of the motions, seeing people move about in a way unlike my own makes me feel disoriented.

Anyhow, I wanted to recommend the NES game "Monster Party" because of its strangeness. It was an old favorite of mine (aside from Rad Gravity, and you've seen that one, at least the title screen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2S2_kLodIc)), and I'm curious to what you'd think of that.

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

May 2020

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
1011121314 15 16
171819 20 212223
24252627 28 2930
31      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Page generated Jul. 14th, 2025 07:22 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios