I‘ve made note of all the titles that have been listed – not sure which one I’ll play.
I also want to play Scorn if it's out before Halloween.
Anyone play Man of Medan, Little Hope, or House of Ashes?
@bwood i'm curious about this too! only played the first one, but have the rest
@bwood I played “Little Hope” and “House of Ashes”. Both can be fun in a schlocky way.
"Little Hope" is a stream of horror scenes that don't seem to make much sense until a final twist so poorly executed that I thought it was even brilliant in how it trivializes the player's choices.
I liked "House of Ashes" better because the premise is terrible: US soldiers during the Invasion of Iraq (along with The Only Good Iraqi Soldier (TM)) versus... Babylonian vampires. Closer to movies like "The Descent" or "Aliens" (but with bad writing and awful politics) than a typical slasher.
Both I think can be enjoyed well in company. I can't say the same for "The Quarry": the previous ones had a poor story and full of clichés, but in an almost silly way. "The Quarry" instead seemed to me that the clichés were there to cover up the laziness of telling any story at all and, instead, I think it's closer to what people expect from these games: teenagers dying in different grotesque ways.
@IrishNinja yeah, that Fatal Frame is the one that has a bad rep but I love it. Looks great and I loved exploring the mountain. YMMV but I think it's great in a PS2 way.
I'm with you on CVX as well. Been wanting to replay it but it isn't my favourite RE so I hope a remake improves some of the parts I dislike.
@bwood I was the lead designer on Man of Medan (though I before it shipped). It definitely suffers from being the first one in a series that was trying something difficult. Making an Until Dawn-like work in 2 players was a nightmare and you can see the cracks in it pretty easily but I think it's a fun little romp for 3 hours or so.
Sorry for the multiple posts but this thread has popped the Siren games back into my head. I keep trying get through the original but it is so hard to play. I love looking at it but every enemy encounter is too frustrating. Has anyone played it through?
@Irishninja Anchorhead is an old IF game that recently got a more user-friendly steam release. Just a solid lovecraft horror story with great atmosphere. And Darkwood is a totally overlooked sort of horror game that has more of an unsettling occult feel than like genre horror. It‘s similiar to forum favorite Pathologic 2 that way. From the outside it looks like another indie base defense survival game, but the story and setting are way way deeper than you’d expect. It's really good imo
Couple of recommendations here:
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Divine Frequency takes place in a dystopian world where dreams and reality collide. Contents of the unconscious and the external world are integrated under an emerging constant, which gives rise to anomalies throughout the landscape. You will confront the highest peak and deepest depth to reach transcendence.
https://youtu.be/TqLDgBxCDd8
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Decades ago, every known star and habitable planet mysteriously vanished, along with whatever and whoever happened to be on them, leaving behind an empty universe of asteroids and lifeless moons where the only remnants of humanity are those who were on space stations or starships at the time. With supplies gradually dwindling and infrastructure falling into disrepair, the survivors have spent the subsequent years frantically searching for any trace of remaining natural resources. Up until now they have been unsuccessful…
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Then, a mysterious anomaly known as a Blood Ocean was discovered on an otherwise barren moon. It‘s not the first Blood Ocean found since the vanishing, but initial scans show a collection of potentially useful anomalous locations in a deep undersea (underblood?) trench that require further investigation.
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And you’re the unlucky sap who gets to investigate, in an aging submarine cobbled together from rusty space station parts.
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Find your way to the marked locations, photograph whatever you find there, and try to finish before the sub collapses around you… or you're discovered by whatever lurks in the blood…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58XkJzd1ZqY
Played a bunch of coop phasmaphobia. Each of us in the group have naturally fallen into roles getting used to different tools. In game voice chat is proximity based. You also use your voice to talk with the ghosts calling its name and asking questions. Voice recognition felt pretty slick when we found a ouija board in the prison area. Still haven't figured out the spirit box, but a lot of the fun is trial and erroring tools and then freaking out when a ghost finally reacts to it. The game is in first person and the models move their whole torso when you move the camera around. Been enjoying watching the team twist and crouch around setting up gear.
I also played through Mothmen 1966. It's dumb and it's pulpy and it looks cool with its 8 or so colors. The look is supposed to based on 80s PC games, but I don't know anything about the era. I ended up on [macintosh garden](https://macintoshgarden.org/games/all) while trying to research. Some goofy looking screenshots over there haha.
horror games are such a blind spot for me, though i love them conceptually and have watched many a youtube playthrough. maybe i'll finally get around to finishing silent hill 2.
_omori_, man... very mixed feelings about that game, but i certainly can't say it doesn't do what it sets out to do. i keep telling myself i'll revisit it for one of the alternate routes but i haven't yet felt like putting myself through that again. i'm curious to hear other folks' thoughts on it.
Fully agreed here on both the mixed feelings, and not feeling like putting myself through it again. I wrote a bit on Backloggd about it.
~ SPOOKY SEASON HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN ~
okay! so update on the games ive played/am playing
**Layers of Fear** - after the latest round of silent hill rumors (...) i gave this one a go...it's like 4-5 hours maybe? tries some neat stuff, few scares here & there, mostly unsettling. my impression of blooper in this hypothetical of them making an SH game: they would neither be the best nor the worst studio to do so
there's a sequel to this one but i don't know that i'll get to it any time soon
**Oxenfree** - this was good! short point & click, great lovecraftian vibes. really liked the ending that we got, curious if i'dve seen another if i was nicer to whats-her-name
this one also has a sequel coming next year apparently
**Omori** - this was really, really good. fuck.
as an earthbound fan i should've seen it coming, but this one managed to be such a fun romp during the adventurous sequences and...absolute fucking gut punches when the twists come. shit, what a ride...this one took me most of the week but i don't regret any of that time. said twists build to one of the most interesting final "battles" ive seen in an RPG.
wish the OST was on vinyl, i'd buy it on sight. prolly gonna overpay for the art book/strategy guide preorder soon.
**Visage** - very early on in this one, and as someone who may never heal from the loss of PT/silent hills, i love the influence here so far, coupled with the eternal darkness sanity meter. this one is being played in spurts because it's stressful and i'm also playing too much diablo 2 resurrected at the moment haha
what about ya'll, how's the season going so far?
I started playing the original Silent Hill. My previous interaction with the series was watching a friend play either the second or third one for maybe 15 minutes and watching the first movie. Looking forward to finding out what this series is all about!
I‘m playing on easy because I’m a big ol‘ wuss when it comes to horror games but I’m thinking it might be a bit too easy so far. I wasn't planning on using a walkthrough but I did find myself stuck pretty quickly in the school. (Turns out I just missed a thing in a room I already explored)
I also started Dracula: Crazy Vampire for GBC but haven't played much. So far it seems like a mess but a potentially interesting mess?
mentioned it in another thread but The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is real good
As I threatened earlier in the thread, I played Daymare. It has some animation and shooting responsiveness problems that mean I won't go back to it but it did make me laugh when the shooting tutorial makes you execute an unarmed civilian.
I also tried The Evil Within DLC. It is all stealth based which was the most frustrating part of the main game. I quite enjoyed the main game once I put it on easy and played it like a shooter. I was hoping the DLC was more of that but alas.
I took a long break but I‘m back playing Hunt Showdown which is the scariest game I’ve played.
Think I'm gonna finally play Silent Hill 2 (well, I played the first 20 minutes or so uhhh 13 years ago(?) then forgot to keep playing more).
I am a couple of hours into omori and I‘m finding it to so terribly bland that I don’t think I‘m going to go back to it. I’ve played earthbound and yume nikki and love them both to death, does this do anything that those other games don't?
@SlumWolf i haven‘t played yume nikki but i have played earthbound, and my educated guess is… probably not, at least until the end of the game. it goes into a much more plot-focused place than either yume nikki or earthbound, but that doesn’t start gearing up until maybe the halfway point.
if you haven't made it to the real-world segments, i'd stick it out for a bit longer; if you have and you're still not into it, maybe look up plot spoilers and see if that's compelling.
oh man, i wish i loved yume nikki like others. ill try it again sometime, but didn't really get the hype