Official Horror games thread

Hopefully the American release has better dubbing. I'm really looking forward to this game.

Right now I'm trying to get the Nightmare ending for Fatal Frame 2. I'm getting bitch slapped on the last level, though.

Anybody know if the 4 horsemen game is ever gonna come out. I havent heard any thing about in a while.

I've been waiting for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for awhile now. It's coming out for the X-Box and PC.

"Call of Cthulhu" Screenshots:






Another interesting looking game is Zombies . The graphics isn't all that great, but the gameplay still might be pretty good.

Can this be stickified?

I just got home with The Suffering. Can't wait to put the kids to bed and check it out.

If you notice on this and all other sections of the boards, there is only one moderator, and he's never in here. He's been promising us the access, but to no avail yet. Kinda annoying, actually.

Last I heard it was delayed indefinitely. That's industry speak for 'shitcanned', of course.

I have my eyes open for any news, and of course come E3 I'm sure it'll be easy to find out confirmation.

It's too bad, had some amazing potential. How it could've gone so far and then gotten trashed is a mystery, that it is.

The official site is still online, so that's a good thing. At least we can see what we can't have...

Lance Henriksen saying "Death." That sounds so fucking cool.

3DO bought the bullet, and various properties were sold to different game companies - just not Four Horseman. Personally, I was a little wary about the game since 3DO never struck me as a quality game publisher but they had a few "hits" in the ballpark one in a while.

I'll be playing, simply because I loved SCEE's Primal. Not a whole lot of people loved Primal though because of the combat system, which has its problems but never really struck me as frustrating. Other than that, a fantastic story and sense of imagination. And the voice acting is perfect.

Not so sure about that one. I watched a video of it in action, and, well, it looked like it doesn't deliver.

You can say that again. I worked with 3DO during my brief stay in the game design world. The company I worked with was doing a PC port of a 3DO game called 'Killing Time'. The 3DO version was a real stinker, but we basically completely redesigned it from the ground up. KILLER game. Survival horror meets Duke Nukem (we used the Build engine, this was 1996) with the FIRST 3-D engine to support in-game AVI movies.

They killed it. Decided they didn't want to do PC games and intentionally cut shipments to a couple thousand pieces, so they could go to stockholders and claim it was a failure (like their other PC ports were). They did that and never got back into game design, they just bought design companies like 7th Level and New World Computing.

So yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all, and I'm still just a -little- bitter that Killing Time never got it's day in the sun.

Because you can't leave a horror thread w/o talking about Silent Hill - this being Silent Hill: The Room

New Screens 1
New Screens 2

What's with the jerky blurring on the crawling girl? Shades of Sadako/Samara?

And that baby thing is freaky.

I read somewhere possibly on Amazon that stan winston deigned some of the creatures for the suffering. Its to bad about 4 horsemen that game had potential espically with lance henricson (sp?) providing the voice of the lead charcter.

Stan Winston did the creature designs for The Suffering. It feels more like Clive Barker to me than SW though. What a freaky game. Awesome atmosphere. The controls are a little off it being a 1st or 3rd person game depending on how you want to play it. I'm playing it in 1st person. The audio effects and dialogue are top notch. Definitely not to be seen or heard by young kids. Kick ass game so far. These guys know horror.

I agree, Trip, played it for most of my day off yesterday and have no real complaints. Now, of course, I'm stuck and don't know where the hell to go yet (and my fellow inmate keeps fuckin' dying on me), but I'm sticking with it. I especially like the fact that once you insanity meter is up, you start having bizarre flashes of family and death. Great stuff.

Johnny maybe it's time for the CC forum to sprout wings. The veteran gamers board has about the same size membership as you do here and doesn't cost a whole lot.

I'd gladly donate.

What part are you on exactley. I just got to the East cell block I think it is.

The use of insanity in this game is sweet. Different than in Eternal Darkness but just as fun. It's comes in handy to become insane.

I really like when you come in contact with a gaurd and the nice soft female voice is saying "Don't hurt him" while the evil male demonic voice is saying "Don't trust him, kill him" at the same time. Very f'ing cool.

Not sure what block I'm in, I believe it's E, but you come to a passage that is on fire and you have to walk through it to get to the other side, which is the shower room. Once in there, millions of those...things...with syringes on them attack you, and I either die or run through it and find myself back where I was before. Very annoying.

The thing that I thought was cool with 4 Horsemen, is that Simon Bisley had designed a shitload of characters for the game, at least, I think he did. It's been a while since I heard anything about the game, so my memory's foggy on it. Either or, it was gonna be a kickass game full of killin' and a solid concept, so it's disappointing that it may not come out. Oh well.

Game I'm most looking forward to is Siren, for PS2. Hopefully, news of it getting released in America is in the offing, since E3 coming up. For those not in the know, it's a game that takes place in a Japanese villiage where it's starts raining blood, and all of the villiagers go crazy. You play through the game as a variety of characters, and follow multiple paths throught the game towards the conclusion. Coolest thing about the game is the ability to "sightjack" the crazed villagers. At certain points, you can see through the eyes of the villiagers to see where they are. As PSM pointed out, one of the creepiest things to do is to sightjack a villiager, only to see it bearing down on your character. Niiice. They even had to pull the game's commercial in Japan because it was so creepy. Now that bodes well.

Stay Frosty!

I'm at the same place. I've killed all the mainliners in the showers but can't seem to find out where in the hell to go after that. The cell blocks all seem to come together in a circle around the yards at this point. The crab-like creatures and the mainliners don't seem to like eachother.

Check out the behind the scenes footage in the bonus section. The programmers site The SHining as the major inspiration for the game and Giger for artwork. No mention of Stan Winston at all. I wonder how much he actually had a hand in the game if he did at all.

The game will have to wait til tonight for me to kick its ass a little more. I want to get out of the prison and onto the rest of the island, especially to the old sanitarium where I'm sure things will get even freakier.

Nazis definitely have a hand in all this somewhere.

I'm listening to the music from the game as it is in the menu man good stuff.

Oh and about the 4 horseman. The concept sounded awesome but I imagine since it didn't get picked up when 3DO went belly up that it must suck. Good horror properties are a gold mine these days, everyone knows that.

Trip, go back outside and look at the map. You have to find the ladder out there and climb up it, then your golden.

Hell I wrote for one of the bigger UK gaming sites for awhile covering the PC section. If the CC were thinking of making a larger games section I'd be up for the PC action.

JB I saw that ladder before I quit the last time but didn't know how to reach it. Once I get done listening to Porcupine Tree here I'm going to jump back in.

It's all for free. Most of the stuff on the internet is done for the love of it not the money.

Find a new gaming site or get to know the people on it. Write some reviews and submit them. Just work your way in. From there you have to start making contacts in the business. You can't just play a game when it's released and review it nobody'll give a shit then. Try to get copies of games before they are released, interviews, hardware in for testing and review, etc. It's all very simple once you have something credible behind you. Go for it man find a site. It's fun but time consuming. You gotta love it though.

Another site wanted me to write for them recently but I was too busy to commit.

Kittyinjammies is a mod as well maybe she can mod for the Corner.

The Suffering just gets better and better.

What's with the "let me out daddy" crap or whatever the kid keeps saying?

No, but I played and HATED it. Didn't even get through the first couple of major sections. Hate hate hate so much hate.

As we get closer to E3, more will be coming. Right now, short of The Suffering, we're kind of in a lull of horror games here in the States. Forbidden Siren is still not confirmed, to my satisfaction, for an April release here. Some sites say so, others don't have anything, and I can't get a confirmation from anyone in the know.

Anyway, there will be a review of The Suffering up tonight or tomorrow AM and I supposedly have a review copy of the forthcoming 'Midnight Nowhere' headed my way as well.

Of course, as I said above, once E3 gets close it's gonna get hot and heavy up in here.

I'll tell ya, I've been trying to get those guys to give me some love on that one, but no response. Seeing as how you require a USB headset to control the game and I don't have one, I don't see much chance of reviewing it myself. Due to the headset requirement, I also don't see it at any of my local rental facilities. If I were a rich man, I'd shell out $50+ to try it, but as it stands THAT isn't happening.

So far only one bad review of this game on here- Just read this and figured i would throw it up...

later
Tony D

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The commercial for Siren that ran on Japanese television clocked in at only 15 seconds... but those mere 15 seconds scared enough viewers so badly that the ad was quickly pulled. Isn't that just beautiful? It's the kind of story that -- even if it weren't true -- some really savvy PR rep would do well to make up, if they thought they could get away with it.

If a developer is going to attempt a game type they haven't tackled before, they might as well do it with gusto, and that certainly seems to be the case here. Siren boasts some small innovations in style, technique, and gameplay, but doesn't lose sight of the most important element: It's supposed to make an emotional connection with the players, and to make them regret it a little, if possible. It's supposed to be scary. Siren is scary.

The premise might seem a little subdued, even prosaic, at first. Something bad has happened to a small town in contemporary Japan, and the inhabitants have become something bad as well. The specifics are a mystery, but the signs are as obvious as they are clearly not good, particularly when red rain starts to fall. Not only is the town awash in red but, as the game title implies, there's that haunting warble of a siren in the air. Anybody who's familiar with Konami's successful and influential Silent Hill series (or any other piece of Japanese "tweak" for that matter) instinctively knows that the patented, distorted, Creepy-Ass Warning Siren(tm) is a very bad sign indeed.

Throughout the game, players will control and switch between over a dozen characters. In line with the strong psychic tug of Silent Hill, the characters in Siren are of a kind: Believable, everyday people of all ages and from all walks of life... and seemingly quite useless in some cases.

The teen you start the game with is perfectly suited for a horror movie. Pursued by a town cop (who has already succumbed to the red rain and "gone bad"), the kid's only weapon is a flashlight, which serves primarily as a bright beacon to attract the attention of the monstrous former-human he's supposed to be evading. Lovely. That's right, our "hero" can't attack at all. And yes, the zombie cop still has his gun. Looooovely. But wait, it gets a lot worse!

While some of the playable characters can bring weapons to bear (such as guns or more personal implements), the ammo situation appears abysmal. And here's the best/worst part: the ubiquitous red rain continually brings the "dead" back, reducing all notions of combat to a stall tactic at best. Happy Birthday and screw you, faithful gamer! Did we mention it gets worse?

Easy, iconic, visual health bars? Forget it, friend, they ain't here. All you need to know is that you can probably take a hit or two, but you won't know precisely how close you are to joining -- particularly apt phrase, in this case -- the other side. Stay out of harm's way for a while, and that damned rain will gradually do its healing work. See? It's not all bad.

The game's definite cool hook is a scheme that's come to be called "sight-jacking." Basically, the player's characters have the extra-natural ability (a side effect of the crimson rain) to "home in" on the senses of those nearby and to see through their eyes.

With a tap of the shoulder button, players can bring up a screen's worth of static, as though one were watching a television tuned to a -- so sorry! -- dead channel. From this eyeful of useless static, the player can essentially tune in to the mental frequency of a nearby person/thing/whatever in question by working one of the analog sticks with the meticulousness of a safecracker. They're then rewarded with a view of the immediate area as seen through the eyes of the person/thing in question.

This can lead to some brilliant, monumentally unpleasant moments. Imagine hiding in some dark corner, hunted by some God-knows-what, then tagging its "sight frequency" only to suddenly see yourself as it closes in. This is the kind of stuff nightmares are made of, and while the idea has been offered to some extent in earlier games such as Resident Evil, it's never quite been trafficked in such awful, chilling bulk.

Also chilling is the game's visual approach. If the achingly believable Heather from Silent Hill 3, the eerie visuals and soundscaping of Fatal Frame 2, or the haunted screen stylings of the movie Ringu pushed you anywhere near the edges of your mental "comfort zone," you can just forget about Siren right now, and save your money for the next candy-colored, mascot-centric PS2 platformer. Everybody else, stay tuned (heh-heh!).

We'll let you see Siren through our eyes when it releases this April.
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From some random game site I stumbled across...

Sounds good enough for my money...

later
tony D

Lifeline reminds me too much of text adventures from the old days. Times I don't want to revisit.

You can imagine my frustration when I beat the game for the third time and realized there is no new ending for beating the game on nightmare. It's the same as the hard ending!!!! Oh well, still a great game.

Has anyone watched the trailer for PsyOps on the Suffering disc? Amazing looking game...

fireflyfan, I missed that you were talking about Siren in your starting thread, sorry about missing that. I feel like a twit now. But still, the game looks intriguing to me. In fact, I started thinking about it, and I think it could even make a decent movie, if it's done right. Just for the idea where it starts raining blood, and everyone goes crazy. That could work.

Can someone reinforce me why I should play FF 2: Crimson Butterflies. I bought it, played it for 3 days and haven't put it back in my PS2, please forgive me. I pay so much money for games that I barely play. I bought Manhunt when it came out, and I'm finally getting into it..can you believe that?

Oh well what can you do??

BloodRayne - Guilty Pleasure. Unbelievably standard in terms of gameplay but there's something fun about using that harpoon. The sequel's coming along nicely though.

Blade 2 - Bad.

Eternal Darkness - Don't own a Cube.

BTVS: Chaos Bleeds - I thought it was pretty fun but not something I'd buy $50 for, massive Buffy/Angel fan I am. The gameplay can get a little tedious when enemies respawn constantly and they employ the "find the key" stuff loads of times. The ending is also a downer. Still, the fighting system is pretty nice and Giselle Loren has Buffy quips down to an art. The last level probably stands as my fave.