chainsandguns wrote:
I have a question regarding such games as well: Which game is it where the game would F with you even in the title screen, and would make your game file disappear sometime when you would hit load and then make it mysteriously come back when you tried to load it again?
It sounds like you're trying to describe Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on the Gamecube, though that's not quite how it works. Which brings me to what I was about to post...
Great episode, guys. I don't have much experience with horror games; I've only played RE4 and Eternal Darkness, but I'm planning on picking up the REmake and one of the PS2 Silent Hills soon (don't have a 360/PS3 yet, there just isn't anything that makes me want to shell out the money for one right now). So I'm not sure if it really fits in with the "survival horror" genre, but I thought ED was a great game. It wasn't necessarily
scary, but it was very creepy and had a great story. I'll touch on it for anyone who missed out.
ED was a very interesting game, and very creepy. I'd even go as far as saying that the game was scarier when you
weren't fighting monsters/zombies. It featured something called the "sanity meter", which would be slightly depleted when a monster spots you, although some monsters would drain a significant chunk out of it (one even
continuously drained it). The lower your meter went, the more frequent/intense the "sanity effects" would become. These effects could be subtle things, like marble bust statues turning their heads to follow you around the room, bleeding walls and ceilings (which would spurt blood when attacked), the camera becoming tilted, and creepy sounds such as screaming women, crying children, monstrous roars, someone whispering in Latin, and an unnerving warbling sound. Play this game late at night and all by yourself, and all these things will really start to creep you out. Then there's the more direct stuff, like your body exploding when you go to use magic, for you to enter a room with a sliver of health and a room full of zombies (and the door locks behind you), shooting yourself when you reload a gun, and emerging into a room only for it to be upside down. Then there were the effects that make the player think
they're going insane, like bug-shaped shadows crawling across the screen (I thought there was a roach in my tv!), for your inventory to suddenly disappear, a literal BSoD, for the screen to flicker and go dark then display the "Nintendo" logo as though the system reset, and then the one that is every gamers worst nightmare which I won't mention here. And how do you refill your sanity meter and stop hallucinating? By frantically hacking your defeated enemies to bits, of course.
There are also many location/character specific events, which are some of the scariest stuff in the game. I was in the room with my friend when he first encountered one of the most infamous of these (bathtub); he just sat there terrified for a few seconds, then his cat suddenly fell off a desk. He literally jumped right off his bed and landed on his back, then proceeded to turn on the lights and turn off the game.
The game itself isn't all that scary or challenging, though it will creep you out if you keep your sanity bar low. While ammo is limited, melee weapons are actually very effective. You play as 12 different characters across 12 time periods 2000 years apart, and each has their own balance between health, magic, sanity and stamina. And I have to admit, I was kinda disappointed that you guys didn't mention this game, but I know how it is.
Edit: ninjawondr!
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