Horror games

A lot of games can have good scares if they try hard enough. Games like Koudelka, System Shock 2, and Thief 3 are more action/stealth oriented, but they all have their share of moments and missions that range from vaguely disturbing to genuinely scary. (The Shalebridge Cradle is a work of VG art.)

As for the main horror series'... Resident Evil games are fine if you like action, but they're nothing I'd consider all that scary. A lot of "boo!" scares and "crap, I'm out of ammo and there's a zombie eating my head!" scares. But honestly, the scariest things in the first game were the atrocious voice acting and how few saves you get (damn ink ribbons). They're good as action games, but less so as horror games.

Silent Hill wins in the horror genre. The plots, the characters, the mix of disturbing monsters and intense psychological scares, the soundtracks... Even SH4, the most mediocre of the series, has more to offer than most horror games out there. If you're interested in horror games, Silent Hill is your best bet. If you haven't played Silent Hill 2 yet, do so. Right now. It's generally regarded as the best game in the series. And it has Pyramid Head.

The Fatal Frame/Project Zero games are... Well, they're interesting. I've played the first two, and they're both like playing a Japanese horror movie. They're a very mixed bag, though. They're like Resident Evil in that there's a lot of backtracking to look for items and solve puzzles. Their plots run closer to Silent Hill; a lot of occultish rituals, trapped souls, things like that. The difficulty is all over the place; some parts of the games can be ridiculously easy, then you'll suddenly run into a section or a particular enemy that's insanely hard. (They love to throw in enemies that can kill you in one hit.) The ghosts might be a bit generic as enemies when compared to the monsters in Silent Hill, but that doesn't mean they're can't be scary. No matter how many times I saw certain ghosts in Fatal Frame 2, they always managed to creep me out. Especially after learning how some of them died.

If nothing else, Fatal Frame had one thing going for it that Silent Hill and Resident Evil don't: a near-constant sense of danger and tension. You have no uber-weapons. All you have to beat back the homicidal ghosts is a camera. And no room is safe. In SH and RE, however scary the setting might be, you can clear out all the enemies with effort and be more or less safe. Even when you haven't done so yet, certain rooms are safe havens. Fatal Frame has none of that. You can be attacked anywhere at any time. Ghosts can spawn randomly in most rooms if you hang around too long, save point rooms included.

So for the OP, which series you go for really depends on what you're looking for and what appeals to you. Get Resident Evil if you want something more action-oriented than plot- or character-oriented, and that usually falls back on "boo!" scares or "fuck, there's three zombies coming at me down the corridor and I only have four shotgun rounds left!" scares. Get Silent Hill if you want more emphasis on a strong plot and characters, and more emphasis on psychological horror than action-intensive horror (though it's certainly not without action). Get Fatal Frame if you like Japanese horror movies or good ghost stories, and want the scares that come with a constant sense of tension and danger.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Elixir

Yeah, this is why I don't like Fatal Frame. I scare pretty easily, I must say. But random ghosts spawning in rooms you're just browsing around? Fuck, that's scary. It's like the house is alive, or something. I honestly can't and won't play the first game because of things like that.

Unless the third game somehow manages to top it, the first game is EASILY the worst for randomly spawning ghosts. The...fourth night, I think...has those GODDAMN WANDERING MONK GHOSTS. They're hard as hell to beat, almost as hard to run away from without taking damage, they tend to follow you through at least a few rooms before giving up, and they spawn ALL THE DAMN TIME.

At least the often-spawning ghosts in the second game aren't nearly as annoying or persistant, if only because they're easier to run away from. Though having the Samara look-alike ghost spawn randomly behind you when you're trying to use a save point is worth a scare or two.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

Silent Hill has a constant sense of impending danger and tension, especially SH2 and SH3. Well, for me at least. Picture it: It's pitch black, your flashlight only lights up a small cone about five feet long, there are horrible noises (say, a slurper or pendulum) very close to you, and when you approach them, the bone-chilling background sounds start playing, boring into your brain like cold ice picks.

And even when there are no monsters around, you still can't see what's out there. My fight or flight response was active the whole time I was playing that game.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love the Silent Hill games, and there's rarely a moment in those games when I feel in any way safe or secure. But as creepy as any given room can be, the SH games just don't tend to have enemies randomly spawn on you in places you've already explored, especially not for dawdling too long. You might not feel particularly safe ANYWHERE, but chances are you could walk the protagonist into any empty room, put the controller down, walk away from the game for a while, and Harry/James/Heather/Henry will still be alive when you come back. If you do the same thing in Fatal Frame, chances are your character will be dead when you get back thanks to a randomly spawning ghost.

Overall the Silent Hill games ARE scarier and more disturbing. But one of the scares they tend to lack (or at least, use very sparringly) is that "there IS no safe place" fear. In SH, save points = safety. In Fatal Frame, they don't. Whether that's scary or annoying depends on your tastes.

Quote:

For those of you who haven't played a Silent Hill game, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkYtf...ent%20Hill%203

That is the kind of insanity that awaits you. Be sure to turn the sound up loud.

Ooh, I remember that room. They don't show it in the video, but the door locks behind you after you enter, and won't open again until the whole sequence finishes. Silent Hill 3 had its faults, but it had some of the best, most disturbing scares in the whole series, that room included.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.