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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2020 4:17:47 GMT -5
Since it’s Halloween this month, I thought I’d try something a bit different and try to come up with a joint list of our favourite horror or spooky games. To take part you can vote for your favourite games with each ranking scoring points as per the example below. Of course the position in the list will be determined by the number of points total each game reaches at the end of the thread. Please vote for a minimum of 5 games, with a maximum of 10. Please give some reasons for voting for at least your top 5 games (can be as little or much detail as you like). As for eligibility the games can be from the horror genre or just thematically more spooky such as Castlevania or Ghosts N Goblins. I’ll leave it up to your judgement. You should have played the game but don’t need to have completed it. Please see the results of the vote below:
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2020 4:18:30 GMT -5
I’ll get the ball rolling and put my votes in.
10 – Dead Space Extraction (0.5pts)
9 – Alan Wake (0.5pts)
8 – Zombies (Ate My Neighbours) (0.5pts)
7 – Sweet Home (0.5pts)
6 – Luigi’s Mansion 3 (0.5pts)
5 – Silent Hill 2 (1pts)
This is a truly disturbing game where the horror feels very psychological. The thick fog throughout provides a tense atmosphere.
4 – Dark Souls 2 (2pts)
This was my first Souls game, so though it’s the black sheep of the series I have the most memories of it. Since any enemy can kill you pretty easily I found I was already on edge a lot in this game and some of their designs were just plain creepy.
3 – Castlevania Rondo of Blood (3pts)
Fantastic action platforming with branching levels and two playable characters to encourage replays. Really well done soundtrack does a fantastic job of elevating the gothic setting.
2 – Fatal Frame/Project Zero (4pts)
The first game in the series is set over such a small area there’s a real sense of claustrophobia about it. There’s jump scares throughout but the cut scenes can be genuinely unnerving. The game does a fantastic job of capturing Japanese horror films.
1 – Resident Evil: Remake (5pts)
A really fantastic atmosphere with the pre-rendered backgrounds still looking great to this day. The focus on item management as well as tank controls make even standard enemies a concern. There’s a lot of tension in the gameplay and the Spencer Mansion is one of video games most memorable locations to explore.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 1, 2020 16:18:54 GMT -5
I could pretty much make two lists based on different criteria, but ultimately I value gameplay and fun/engagement more than anything else and that meant I didn't include games like SH2, Snatcher, Another World, RE2 or Diablo. Anyway here goes:
10 – Gargoyle's Quest II: The Demon Darkness (NES, 1992/GB) (0.5pts)
9 – Castlevania: Bloodlines (MD) (0.5pts)
8 – System Shock 2 (PC) (0.5pts) -This one might've ranked higher but I haven't actually beaten it yet. It also seems to have some balancing issues and unexplored ideas, but I haven't looked at mods yet.
7 – Dungeon Keeper (PC) (0.5pts)
6 – Heroes of Might and Magic III (PC)(Long Live the King Campaign) (0.5pts)
5 – Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (PC)(Expansion) (1pts)
IIRC this expansion had a pretty consistently darker tone and focused on dungeon crawling, with a bit more complexity to how they were designed and being a bit more fun than most of BG1 simply due to being at a higher party level when you get to it (I guess you could access it pretty early but I think you would just get owned). The writing is also on par with the main game for the most part.
4 – The Typing of the Dead (ARC, 1999/DC/PC, 2000) (2pts)
As a successful edutainment title I can't recommend this game enough. As a horror game well, it's more like a satire and a comedy and at best spooky and gory, but that should still count so.
3 – The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB, 1993) (3pts)
Still my fave Zelda with a great atmosphere and dungeons, and some NPCs you care about despite minimal development. While the tone is more nuanced, there's this overlying sense of melancholy and dread due to the story and its conclusion.
2 – Starcraft: Brood War (PC)(Expansion)(4pts)
This game is just kind of depressing looking back at the story, it starts off pretty bleak and just gets worse. But as a game it's in my top 3 and the vibe is definitely in the spooky/creepy/horror vein.
1 – Metroid Fusion (GBA)(5pts)
This game used some simple but very effective tricks to make you feel paranoid, claustrophobic and stressed out, within the frame of a great MV game heavily based on the classic Super Metroid and with a few improvements to the controls.
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Post by Snake on Oct 1, 2020 18:25:36 GMT -5
10. Friday the 13th, NES - 0.5 pts.
9. Sweet Home, Famicom - 0.5 pts
8. Devil's Crush, Turbografx-16 - .05 pts
7. Clock Tower, Super Famicom - 0.5 pts
6. Splatterhouse, Turbografx-16 - 0.5 pts
5. The Uninvited, NES - 1 pt Loved the mood. It's creepy and suspenseful, while being a fun 8-bit adventure.
4. Nosferatu, SNES - 2 pts Love the the smooth movements, the animation. The music tempo adds to the mood. But here you are, a fighter, a slugger, daring to take on werewolves, demons, and a vampire with your bare hands. I really found the aesthetic visually pleasing. 3. Silent Hill, Playstation 1 - 3 pts Scariest game to me, on this kind of list. Supernatural horror. Plays with the imagination. And alluding to Astoria, the filming location for Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit, and The Goonies, is a cool plus for me.
2. Bio Hazard/Resident Evil:Director's Cut, Playstation 1 - 4 pts
Love, LOVE the voice acting, the B-movie live-action cut scenes. And real-life Jill Valentine is so easy on the eyes. Also love how the mood starts out mysterious, haunting. And then... you find out the truth. It's not so supernatural after all.
1. The House of the Dead 2, Dreamcast/Arcade - 5 pts Light gun, shooting action. What's not to love?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2020 8:03:00 GMT -5
Thanks for joining in both of you. Interesting and very diverse picks so far. I like that both of you included House of the Dead. I completely forgot about that series when making my list and I think the satirical approach is the reason. There's always a lot of comedy with horror in films though also so the sign of a good B movie vibe. Especially Typing of the Dead. Link's Awakening is a really interesting pick, because there's a completely unique sense of foreboding in that game. There's a real sense that we know where this is going and feel kind of bad for progressing through the game. Snake - I don't know much about Nosferatu, and haven't heard of The Uninvited. Nosferatu didn't release here in Europe so that explains that, perhaps that was the case for The Uninvited also?
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Post by dsparil on Oct 2, 2020 8:56:44 GMT -5
10 - Hocus Pocus (DOS) (0.5)
Not a horror game or even spooky for most of it, but over 25 years later, it remains the only game I have ever played that has given me nightmares so I think that should count for something despite being fairly mediocre.
9 - System Shock 2 (Windows) (0.5)
The only other game that's ever actually scared me but not to the point of nightmares. It is a classic, but has enough gameplay issues and unrealized potential to keep from ranking higher.
8 - Alone in the Dark (DOS) (0.5)
It's a bit too primitive to be all that scary today, but it's worth mentioning as an integral part of survival horror history. It still holds up relatively well unlike the sequels. Most of its warts are mainly the result of not enough testing and being developed under less than ideal circumstances rather than age.
7 - The Count Lucanor (multi) (0.5)
The set up is fairly simple with a boy named Hans being fed up with his impoverished life and ending up in a demon infested castle and stuck playing the eponymous Count's game to find a successor. The story has a nice horror fairy tale feel and even has multiple endings. This is however the most outright gruesome of the games I'm listing, but that is tempered by the sometimes cute pseudo-retro graphics.
6 - Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness (DOS) (0.5)
While it doesn't end up going as far towards horror as the Giger influenced design of the opening area would suggest, this fourth game's vampire-centric plot is like a darker flip side to the more conventional storybook feel of the first. The story and voice acting are top notch too and are enough to make up for the still dreadful combat.
5 - 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (DS) (1)
The first in what would become the Zero Escape series feels the most like a horror game. Virtue's Last Reward is better overall, but leans more towards sci-fi and Zero Time Dilemma is terrible. The story is twisty and the adventure sections are great.
4 - Stationfall (DOS/archaic) (2)
While The Lurking Horror was Infocom's explicit entry into the genre, Planetfall's sequel is much creepier. Much of that comes from a subversion of expectation and even listing it feels like a spoiler.
3 - Jenny LeClue — Detectivú (multi) (3)
This is borderline in being a thriller, but it sticks to some genre conventions and has light supernatural elements. It's framed as a the writing of the latest novel in a series that's fallen so far into banality that the publisher is threatening cancellation lest major changes are made. What starts out as some exceptionally minor teen detective situations steadily ramps up and doesn't stop. It gets into strange territory and keeps going.
2 - Resident Evil (PlayStation) (4)
Mix Sweet Home with Alone in the Dark, and you get Resident Evil which is literally what happened; it was planned as an FPS before Mikami found AitD. Resident Evil is such an influential game in ways that AitD could not be and is just a better designed game in general.
1 - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) (5)
I figured I should put the game I like the most as #1. Order of Ecclesia is my favorite in the series, but AoS fits better thematically and in gameplay.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 2, 2020 9:04:12 GMT -5
Nosferatu didn't release here in Europe so that explains that, perhaps that was the case for The Uninvited also? Uninvited (there's actually no The) was originally a Mac game that eventually got ported to basically everything at the time but possibly only had a limited release in Europe; I can only find references to some ports releasing in Germany. The NES version is the most well known, but it's cut down for space. It's part of ICOM's MacVenture line which includes Déjà Vu and Shadowgate which did see a wide European release for NES.
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Post by Snake on Oct 2, 2020 11:55:00 GMT -5
Snake - I don't know much about Nosferatu, and haven't heard of The Uninvited. Nosferatu didn't release here in Europe so that explains that, perhaps that was the case for The Uninvited also? Haha, I thoroughly enjoyed Typing of the Dead in the arcades. Proper edutainment in my opinion. dsparil's right! It's just Uninvited. I would say, even in the US, Deja Vu, Uninvited, got limited coverage compared to Shadowgate. Nosferatu is also a niche game. It's not a game that I ever saw on a store shelf, so it wasn't really pushed or marketed. A complete-in-box Nosferatu seems to go for around $300 USD on ebay at the moment.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 2, 2020 13:04:27 GMT -5
There's an arcade Typing of the Dead!!! Does it still have the Dreamcast backpacks?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2020 15:43:40 GMT -5
Disappointingly no I'm curious if anybody tried the sequels. I wonder how they are?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2020 1:44:04 GMT -5
Another really interesting list from dsparil. Two of you have selected System Shock 2 and that game seems to be right up my street. Very chilling, and I have tried it, but unfortunately I have struggles using a mouse and the game uses a lot of keys so a controller doesn't seem a good alternative. Jenny LeClue has been on my radar for a while now. Hopefully I get arpund to it some time. You've piqued my interest in Stationfall, especially with it being a text adventure. As for a non-specifically horror or spooky game like Hocus Pocus I think that what's interesting about horror is the subjectivity of it. We all have our own phobia's and of course anything is more likely to effect us when experienced as a child. Going back to Uninvitied, it seems it was published in a collection for modern PC and PS4 along with Shadlwgate and Deja Vu perhaps optimistically titled 8-bit Adventure Anthology Volume 1. Of course a volume 2 has never turned up so I guess it didn't meet those expectations. Quickly on Nosferatu being $300 I was curious if this was unusual for an SNES game in the States? It seems a pretty common price here in the UK now. Retro game prices are climbing at ridiculous speed and SNES has always been ahead of the pack. Heck, I was interested in picking up a game last week and found it was selling for £1000.
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Post by jackcaeylin on Oct 3, 2020 7:27:28 GMT -5
At first, I want to thank you for the thread. It is really interesting and I haven't played some titles that were mentioned. Time to increase my pile of shame/backlog.
I always have trouble with these lists, but I think I am quite sure with my choices.
10: White Day: A Labyrinth Named School (ps4, 2017) [0.5 pt]
I rarely get frightened by video games, but this game managed it with jumpscares and with the eerie atmosphere. The janitor was surely Rambo in his previous life, because he can easily detect someone, thus it is also really hard. This game has many endings, but I struggle to play it again, because of the jumpscares. I don't have a problem with jumpscares, but the janitor AI is really brutal, thus it managed to frighten me very easily.
9: Dead of the Brain 1 & 2 ( PC Engine, 1999) [0.5 pt]
It has a strong presentation. It is a VN/text adventure game during a zombie invasion. I had lots of fun, when I played it.
8: Majo-tachi no Nemuri (SNES, 1995) [0.5 pt]
Similar to 9, it is also a VN, but i really like the idea of the artstyle. It gave me eerie vibes. The use of photopgraphic backrounds improved the quality as well as atmosphere.
7: Yume Nikki (PC, 2004) [0.5 pt]
It is hard to describe it in the english language, but the surrealism and dreamlike scenes manage to give a melancholic vibe. There are many moments, where you feel alone and the emptiness of the world makes it more powerful.
6: Silent Hill 1 (PS1, 1999) [0.5 pt]
very strong psychological game, due to its nature there is always the feeling of intensity. The PSX graphics really improve the atmosphere as well as the 19-22 FPS.
5: Devotion ( PC, 2019) [1 pt]
I had sometimes trouble to look at the PC screen, because I always got the feeling that something will happen right now. They really catched the atmosphere with the sound. I really recommend to play it with headphones. The game has a strong intense feeling
4: Alien Isolation (ps4, 2014) [2 pt]
It is like White Day, but this time you have an Alien instead of a janitor. The Alien can surprise you at any time, thus it constantly create a intense feeling. The reason, why it is on the 4th place, are also the robots, because they have this certain movement when they see the player. This game was made with love and lots of details.
3: A Link to the past (SNES, 1991) [3 pt]
I know this sounds kinda funny, but when I was 8 years old, I saw the twist when you defeated the first 3 bosses, then you are in this nightmare land and it was kinda spooky in the eyes of an 8 year old person. Instead of beautiful green grass, you have barren land. As a grown up, it is kinda funny to think that the world is spooky, but it had kina an impact when I was in a young age.
2: Illbleed (Dreamcast, 2001) [4 pt]
It isn't that spooky, but it has the cartoonish festival halloween themed surroundings, which can be compared to some elements of Tim burton movies (Hansel & Gretel, Beetlejuice, moments in Batman). I welcome the derpy side of Halloween themed stuff with open arms.
1: Condemned 2 bloodshot (ps3, 2008) [5 pt]
Both games are great, but I only wanted to use one game of a series. The bear trick, the black white scenes, the use of the dirty Unreal Engine 3 (not quite sure, if it is the same engine, but it looks really similar) and details in this game made it such a great experience, especially with tense atmosphere and a certain melancholia in its story.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2020 16:05:50 GMT -5
At first, I want to thank you for the thread. It is really interesting and I haven't played some titles that were mentioned. Time to increase my pile of shame/backlog.
Yeah my backlog had increased with every post here, I'm really impressed with the diversity of these lists. My horror experience is mostly the mainstream ones so far. Thanks for taking the time to write your list, another really interesting one. Dead of Brain 1 & 2 is one I've wanted to play for a long time, but of course the language barrier prevents that one. Hopefully it'll get a fan translation one day. I really like the artwork in this, it's really vibrant. There's a few others on your list I don't know. I'll be sure to look into them.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 4, 2020 5:27:08 GMT -5
This has me realizing just how few horror themed games I've really played. I would have to get creative and dig my memory a bit to come up with a list.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 6:26:40 GMT -5
This has me realizing just how few horror themed games I've really played. I would have to get creative and dig my memory a bit to come up with a list. If you want to take your time and have a think before joining in feel free. I'm sure you'd come up with something interesting though.
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