Resident Evil Village

[dux]

[FMPONE]

I need to play this one. Anybody have some first hand testimonials?

[-HP-]

I'm taking my time with it, playing like 20/30 minutes a day. The environment art is phenomenal, paired with really decent lighting system and well idealized art direction.

Gameplay is just more RE. I feel they tried to blend the best things about RE4 with RE7 on this one, with varying degrees of success. I can tell you there's muuuch more to the game than just the stuff they've shown in the trailers, which is really awesome. 

Oh, also seems like you can be done with it in 10/12 hours, which is perfect for me. 

[FMPONE]

2 hours ago, ┌HP┘ said:

I'm taking my time with it, playing like 20/30 minutes a day. The environment art is phenomenal, paired with really decent lighting system and well idealized art direction.

Gameplay is just more RE. I feel they tried to blend the best things about RE4 with RE7 on this one, with varying degrees of success. I can tell you there's muuuch more to the game than just the stuff they've shown in the trailers, which is really awesome. 

Oh, also seems like you can be done with it in 10/12 hours, which is perfect for me. 

Is it actually scary?

[-HP-]

27 minutes ago, FMPONE said:

Is it actually scary?

There was a couple times where I clenched my butt cheeks, that's about it. But let's be honest... Was RE ever a scary game? I think 7 was pretty grim, but that one was actually against the norm of the franchise. It's a action survival horror franchise sure, but they were never meant to be horrifying and terror inducing games.

[FMPONE]

10 minutes ago, ┌HP┘ said:

There was a couple times where I clenched my butt cheeks, that's about it. But let's be honest... Was RE ever a scary game? I think 7 was pretty grim, but that one was actually against the norm of the franchise. It's a action survival horror franchise sure, but they were never meant to be horrifying and terror inducing games.

I wish games actually attempted to be scary. It’s hard to focus on that goal while providing good gameplay. I feel like developers are either scared they will frighten their audience away, misunderstand that things can be scary without being annoying, or confuse being gross or disgusting with being tense. 
 

I still like action horror though, it’s a lot better than making players totally defenseless. 

[Vaya]

RE has always been more 'jump scare' and one hit death enemies than dread to me.

[dux]

From what I have read it is call of duty evil 8.

17 hours ago, FMPONE said:

I wish games actually attempted to be scary.

I think it can be hit and miss. If devs try too hard for scares then it feels forced. It's gotta come naturally so gonna toot my own horn and say subnautica is scary because we never intended for it to be.

[dux]

17 hours ago, FMPONE said:

I still like action horror though, it’s a lot better than making players totally defenseless. 

If you are given weapons that can kill what's trying to kill you then the game ceases to be genuinely scary.

Edited May 19, 2021 by dux

[FMPONE]

1 hour ago, dux said:

From what I have read it is call of duty evil 8.

I think it can be hit and miss. If devs try too hard for scares then it feels forced. It's gotta come naturally so gonna toot my own horn and say subnautica is scary because we never intended for it to be.

I agree, Subnautica is scary. Being underwater is just terrifying conceptually.

In terms of being defenseless, I don’t really like Amnesia-types. That whole “hide from scary monster” is unplayably tedious to me. For some reason Jeff from Alyx didn’t bother me even though he fits the mold, I guess because they clearly explained to players that he reacts strongly to sound and it’s not an entire game of that gameplay.

[blackdog]

4 hours ago, dux said:

If you are given weapons that can kill what's trying to kill you then the game ceases to be genuinely scary.

Mmh what about having a weapon that can do that, but can break/wear out, or simply you have very scarce ammo, so you can kill someone in front but you might not be able to kill the next, and they could be more dangerous. Might be that the enemies are hard to hit and they counter you very hard if you miss. Or using a weapon means that more dangerous enemies will come round…

I dunno, I think we’d need to agree first what it means to be scared (in a videogame environment), in the sense we’ll never be so immersed that we’ll be genuinely scared like when your life is actually at stake.

In the general sense (from the dictionary) that fear is a sense of (deep) anxiety… I think there are many games that already achieve that.

and I think we forget that big part of the emotional response we get for stuff like this really has nothing to do with the (game) design, rather intangibles like art (lighting, characters) and most importantly (IMO) the sound effects. There are two-three games that I remember give me an actual chill along my spine: FEAR (the last escape scene), I think Alan Wake at some point, and… Untold Stories, which is a text adventure(!). The latter was really a perfectly timed combination of suspence and triggering sounds at the right time.

Edited May 19, 2021 by blackdog

[Buddy]

The biggest scare of RE8 is it's FOV

[dux]

On 5/19/2021 at 9:53 PM, blackdog said:

Mmh what about having a weapon that can do that, but can break/wear out, or simply you have very scarce ammo, so you can kill someone in front but you might not be able to kill the next, and they could be more dangerous. Might be that the enemies are hard to hit and they counter you very hard if you miss. Or using a weapon means that more dangerous enemies will come round…

System Shock 2 did that, and while I loved it because SS2 can never do any wrong in my eyes, the actual concept can be annoying and come across as an artificial way to create tension for the player.

[ThunderKeil]

On 5/19/2021 at 10:53 PM, blackdog said:

Mmh what about having a weapon that can do that, but can break/wear out, or simply you have very scarce ammo, so you can kill someone in front but you might not be able to kill the next, and they could be more dangerous. Might be that the enemies are hard to hit and they counter you very hard if you miss. Or using a weapon means that more dangerous enemies will come round…

I dunno, I think we’d need to agree first what it means to be scared (in a videogame environment), in the sense we’ll never be so immersed that we’ll be genuinely scared like when your life is actually at stake.

In the general sense (from the dictionary) that fear is a sense of (deep) anxiety… I think there are many games that already achieve that.

and I think we forget that big part of the emotional response we get for stuff like this really has nothing to do with the (game) design, rather intangibles like art (lighting, characters) and most importantly (IMO) the sound effects. There are two-three games that I remember give me an actual chill along my spine: FEAR (the last escape scene), I think Alan Wake at some point, and… Untold Stories, which is a text adventure(!). The latter was really a perfectly timed combination of suspence and triggering sounds at the right time.

I think it really just comes down to the psychology with which you go into the experience - it's like fight or flight, except if the enemies can't be killed, you're restricted to flight. The difference between a game where you can fight back and one where you can't, is that in one, dying implicates failure much more so than the other. If you can fight back, failing at doing so triggers a very different response than ''getting caught'' when you had no chance to fight back in the first place.

Simply put, when you can't fight back, getting caught is scary - when you can fight back, getting caught is frustrating. Horror as a genre is largely built on creating a sense of helplessness - the lack of (full) control over the unfolding situation is what what makes it scary.

Limited resources or opportunities just emulate this by making you intermittently helpless - but it comes with the aforementioned caveat that players are more likely frustrated when they squander resources or opportunities, not scared. Failure is feared in life, because it has consequences - but in a videogame the only consequence is needing to replay this part of the game. Failure isn't scary in a space of limited consequence, it is annoying.

Conjecture: when a player fires 5 shot into an enemy which doesn't go down, their first thought isn't ''oh shit he's tough'', it's ''fuck I wasted my ammo on an unkillable one''. I find that resource scarcity far too often takes a person out of the experience, and compels them to start metagaming. This is fine for most genres, but it doesn't work well in horror since it's so deeply reliant on keeping the player immersed.

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I've played Alan Wake - I liked it a lot. The gameplay loop of ''shine your light at the enemies until they blink to indicate you can shoot them'' was not a leading cause in my enjoyment.

[FMPONE]

On 5/19/2021 at 11:53 AM, dux said:

From what I have read it is call of duty evil 8.

You weren't kidding!

Spoiler

 

I never played RE7 so when I started shooting my gun a lot in the beginning I got kinda pissed and thought "this is whack". But then they slowed the pace down to virtually nothing, which worked super well to keep me engaged. Overall it's clear this is going to be a well designed game even if it's really "loud" at moments.

The constant vistas of the Castle are so captivating, I'm fully on board for that shit!