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Is The Suffering any good, Stoatie? I was thinking about giving it a whirl recently, but remember it getting mediocre reviews.
Rothkoid> Project Zero/Fatal Frame was a game that I thought was really effective in getting the feeling of fear across. Where the Resi series has always been more of a splatterfest, relying on jump scares and gore for the 'horror', PZ is highly effective at creating an atmosphere of sheer terror. Partly it's the way that you're naked against the ghosts that attack you, with only a camera for protection and the best way of getting rid of them being to wait until the very last second before they grab you.
Mainly it's the direction - the camera angles are all well chosen (something which a lot of survival horror titles seems to have forgotten is that static cmera angles weren't just originally used because of technical limitations, but also because they could heighten the atmosphere), audio - bar the voice acting, which is as bad as in every other title in the genre - has you on edge constantly and the few jump scares, when they come, are timed to perfection. The design of the ghosts is imspired - the kimono woman, with her snapped neck and head hanging limply bacwards, is particularly memorable, running towards you all back-to-front.
It's just a shame that it's got some major faults as a game. At one point, an essential puzzle item is hidden from the player's view by the choice of camera angle, meaning that a trip to GameFAQs is required to discover what you're missing. There's also a huge increase in difficulty at one section, which is where most people seem to give up. In fact, I don't know a single person who's bothered finishing it.
Alone in the Dark always had that horrible cold-sweat feeling running through it. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the visuals aren't advanced enough to put the information across, you always knew that the wallpaper in the mansion was covered in a layer of greasy nastiness, that there was a hint of rotten flesh in the air. Angular zombies in plush purple smoking jackets are just wrong. One bit, in particular, has always stuck in my mind as truly unnerving - finally managing to fire up the gramophone and entering the ballroom to discover the gowns and tuxedos waltzing around on their own. No attempt to every give a full explanation as to why that was happening - there are a lot of things in that game which current survival horror titles would do well to go back and learn from.
There is one game which takes AitD's Lovecraft feel and brings it to the current gen - Eternal Darkness. The mansion in that feels very similar to AitD's, it has the same theme of edler gods and a cavernous, deserted world of alien spires and cathedrals buried underneath our own. Unfortunately, it never manages to properly unsettle the player, although it does have a couple of nasty jump scares and the fun insanity system - your sanity slowly and constantly depletes, and can only be topped up by disposing of zombies and whatnot with a finishing move. As it drips away, the lines between the player and the game become blurred. Most of the insanity effects are little more than cool gimmicks - a fly will crawl across the screen, or the screen will try and fool you into thinking that you've sat on the remote and turned the sound down. Some are just downright stupid - a statue turning its head to follow you around. A few, though, are inspired.
It's also a game with a very strong narrative, that manages to suck the player right into its world. Told through flashbacks to the mansion's past, with the player taking on the roles of the main characters mentioned in the journal documenting the building's history and playing out events which have already happened. It's just a pity that there's nothing all that horrific about it. |
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