Seriously, not having a PS2 meant that I missed out on all the Sirens and Clock Towers and Fatal Frames. The only horror games I kept up with are the Resident Evil series which has always been very hammy.
This gen I think the only horror game I have is Condemned, which I enjoyed, it needed something to bump up the experience. I'm thinking of hobo picking up the sequel but I hear in horror terms its flatter than the first.
Next week I will be getting Silent Hill SM.
SteelAttack said:They can be vintage games such as the early Clock Tower games, or the gruesome PC title Phantasmagoria (rated AO, btw).
Vintage? Really?
i remember playing the gabriel knight games with a friend who had a PC back then. I loved them so much. I was so young back then and i used to listen to metal so anything to do with the occult and voodoo was of great interest. There is a chance I will be in New Orleans this summer and next to traditional jazz and jambalaya, gabriel knight games is what i think about.
haven't played many horror games though. i have the silent hills (first 4) but i haven't played them. Same with Condemned (1 and 2). Bought Call of Cthulu for the PC but i didn't play it either and ended up forgetting about it.
I loved Eternal Darkness so much that I played through it against all three of the deities. Which reminds me i should perhaps play Cursed Mountain which is here behind me still shrink-wrapped.
Bioshock is a game i found very unsettling even though it is not often thought of as a horror game. Demon souls can also be a scary mind-fuck at times, especially the prison dungeons of latria and they plague and pest ridden valley of defilement.
ps raven those are awesome finds!
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Nice feedback, guys, especially Ham Ham, who again schools everyone in the ways of pre-8 bit games.
Oh and I just remembered, I actually played Friday 13th! That's a NES title, awesome in the way Jason would jump at you from unsuspecting corners, and a 1st person view inside lake cabins.
SteelAttack said:
Nice feedback, guys, especially Ham Ham, who again schools everyone in the ways of pre-8 bit games.
Actually, those are 8-bit games. The Atari 2600 was powered by an 8-bit 6507 microprocessor.
Shoot, the Intellivision used a 16-bit microprocessor in 1979!
Besides Haunted House for the Atari 2600 I think the first horror game I ever played was Gabrielle Knight, Sins of the Father and the only reason I even picked that up was because it was a Sierra Online game (my favorite PC game developer back in the day), and Gabrielle was voiced by Timothy Curry which seemed kind of cool. The game however was really hard if I recall and I never got very far in it.
Likewise I played the Phantasmagoria 1 & 2 because they were Sierra games. The first one was pretty good, but the second was pure crap. The were very weird games, but the first one had a plot you could follow. The sequel just poured on the weird just for the sake of being wierd I think.
My interest in the genre was never that high though. Parasite Eve was the only horror game I played on the Playstation, and last gen I think it was limited to Eternal Darkness and RE4 (if that series even counts anymore).
Ravenprose said:SteelAttack said:
Nice feedback, guys, especially Ham Ham, who again schools everyone in the ways of pre-8 bit games.Actually, those are 8-bit games. The Atari 2600 was powered by an 8-bit 6507 microprocessor.
Shoot, the Intellivision used a 16-bit microprocessor in 1979!
Shit, nice call. When are you and Leo going to do a vintage games podcast? Fuck, I could play host if you're up for it. 
And while these two were more mystery games than horror games I wanted to throw a little recognition their way. They were two of my favorite PC games of all times, and got extremely intense at times as in both games you are cut off from the outside world while on a Louisiana plantation and in a New York museum. There are some very horrific deaths (particularly in Amon Ra where one woman is killed and then covered with plaster to be made up to look like a statue), and at times you're in some heated chases to avoid the killer.
robio said:There are some very horrific deaths (particularly in Amon Ra where one woman is killed and then covered with plaster to be made up to look like a statue).
Fuuuuuuu...
robio said:Likewise I played the Phantasmagoria 1 & 2 because they were Sierra games. The first one was pretty good, but the second was pure crap.
I bet roberta williams didn't have anything to do with the second.
Now if you are looking for most scary then I say that title goes to Silent Hill. This series is a mind fuck, it terrified me when I was young, the last one I played was SH4 and it scared me cause it sucked... well ok it had a few good ideas. The Wii one should be ok but I doubt it is anywhere as scary as the first three were. SH1 I would say is the masterpiece of the series, lots of people love SH2 and it is a very scary game but rather boring, SH3 is more action but an excellent game. The good thing about this series is that it is always scary as hell and it's the next best thing to RE, they are actually great games.
You mentioned Clock Tower, interesting concept and game but kind of crappy. Never played the sequels but I assume they got better. Siren on the PS3 is AWESOME, its a sort of remake of the PS2 version which I never played. All I know is that it is freaky and plays great. Never played a Fatal Frame game but i hear nothing but endless praise for them, very scary stuff so try it out. Eternal Darkness is a fantastic game, I don't find it scary but I guess it fits in this category, it is just a great game.
As for older stuff, the NES games like Friday the 13th sucked. It did scare me as a kid though when Jason would pop out of a corner. Nightmare on Elm Street was a side scroller and a decent one like that, so just like the movies, Freddy is better than Jason. NES horror games and every thing before (like Atari) probably all suck, you can't do much horror when your game looks like that.
I don't know anything about the PC horror scene. I know games like Doom were scary as hell to me back in the day. I played the original Alone in the Dark, interesting in a museum piece sort of way, not in a its a good game kind of way. All FMV games SUCK, don't bother. There was a Myst like horror game called D, probably heard of it, cool game, never played the sequel. Games like Alien Trilogy used to freak me out back in the day.
Parasite Eve is an interesting game yes it's horror technically cause it has RE like monsters and crap but it plays like an action RPG, there is no fear there. Speaking of FEAR, it sucks, but I am in the minority so whatever. If you like games where you walk down the same boring locations fighting the same 3 enemies and being telegraphed when scary shit will happen then by all means play FEAR. Ever hear of Nightmare Creatures, it was an action game with monsters, not that good but not that bad either.
DC had some interesting ones but as usual the majority sucked. The best one by a MILE is Resident Evil Code Veronica. Then you got stuff like Illbleed which was this horror theme park game, very different and cool. There was that new Alone in the Dark which is nothing but a RE clone and not a good one. Blue Stinger is a game I will always remember cause it was one of the first DC games, technically a bad game but so memorable and cheesy that its kind of good. There was an Evil Dead game for DC, omg it was awful.
And of course now we have a few new ones, Dead Space being the best of the new. I only played Condemned 2 and liked it as a different kind of FPS, not so much cause it was scary or anything. The Wii has a bunch but I have played none. I hear the Fatal Frame game is great, SH is good, Cursed Mountain looks good.
I actually played Nightmare Creatures! But yeah, the only scary thing about the game was its title.
SteelAttack said:
I actually played Nightmare Creatures! But yeah, the only scary thing about the game was its title.
It had some CG cutscenes I believe that were really cheesy awesome. And it was really bloody. It was like England in the 1800's or something, interesting setting. But I remember that you can only see like 2 feet in front of you, everything else was blacked out by "the darkness".
Found pic, see:
OMG time has not been kind with Nightmare Creatures. I don't recall it looking so assy.