Games Or movies? The ultimate scare debate.

[lskennedy]

Which Format is the beast way to portray horror? Would you say gaming, or Would you say movies?


I feel it is games because the enemy isnt always in the same place, while movies are always going to be the same, always. Also, games can twist and turn if using an engine that does the random room generator and such. Games all the way.

[Psyborg]

As it stands now, movies are far superior. (Well, they can be far superior, I wouldn't particularly say that current horror films are as good as they could be by any means) However, once we get that darn full on virtual reality I've been waiting ever so patiently for, games will pull ahead, regardless of whether the scares are as telegraphed as Doom 3 or as genuinely creepy and frightening as F.E.A.R.

[rtanger]

My only input into this is--

No movie has made me leave my lights on for three nights straight.

Silent Hill did.

[BahamutBBob]

Silent Hill had the best atmosphere of all survival horror games IMO. Creepy empty town with unexplained craters blocking intersections. With....stuff....that happens to the town to make it even more creepy.

I would say games definitely have more potential to scare the hell out of me than movies do. The only movies I've been scared of were old movies that I watched as a kid. And they weren't scary movies either, I just got scared when the guy died at the beginning of The Dark Crystal.

(I actually found myself laughing at some of the "scary" movies during the more tense parts. Dawn of the Dead remake scene with the chainsaw in the bus? I laughed.)

[Atomic Waffle]

It's pretty much equal for me, in most respects. I find games more suspenseful, and movies more horrifying.

[Manbearpig]

No movie has ever made me question my sanity, Call of Cthulhu and The Suffering did.

[Garcian Smith]

I can't really say that I become genuinely afraid of horror movies anymore. Naturally, when I was younger I had an irrational fear of horror movies because it's more difficult to understand that such a thing isn't real. Nowadays, films that depict real-life events that would genuinely terrify me (the Normandy sequence in Saving Private Ryan is an excellent example) are more likely to evoke fear than some scary corridor or psychological horror.

However, despite that reason I still find it very easy to be scared of (some) videogames. The previously mentioned Silent Hill games, even though the original is archaic in terms of visuals, still fills me with a certain amount of dread. Others, such as FEAR and Doom III scare me because of their fairly standard 'cupboard' scares.

I think the reason I find games more scary is because unlike films, there is - in Silent Hill especially - no glaringly obvious hints that something scary is about to happen. It's not a linear sequence of scares (to quote Max Payne), but rather a dynamic sequence that can differ everytime you play the game.

Basically, the player being in control directs the attention of the scares towards him/her rather than characters totally removed from the observer.

[brokenfridgehinge]

I literally couldn't sleep after watching The Ring, that movie scared the pants off me. F.E.A.R. did the same, but in a different way , as it was pretty similar to The Ring. DOOM 3, well, what can I say. At first it was tense, but after a while it got really old, and don't get me started on the whole flashlight thing...:rolleyes:
One game that really freaked me out was Stalker, in the underground labs. (X18 anyone?) I think it was the combination of the dynamic lighting, the ambient sounds and how realistically rendered the labs were that had me on edge.

[Flarty]

only one film has ever truly scared me, and it was john carpenters the thing which i watched when i was about 7, ( i had to make my mom stand outside the toilet while i went i was that terrified).
But yes games emerge you in such away that when it pulls such a punch you do react. Even games like css make me jump sometimes when someone sneaks up behind me and blasts me in the head with a deagle.

[flame]

I become much more immeresed in games than films, and because of this extra immersion it's a lot easier to make me jump. Resi 4 and Resistance fall of man both had enemies jump out at me when not expecting it. Both caused me to pause the game and take a minute to recover. No film has ever caused me to pause it because it was scary.

[Psyborg]

Now that I think of it, everyone else is right and I'm wrong. Films do suck in comparison to games when it comes to the fear department. I'd forgotten about playing F.E.A.R. and Silent Hill- I was thinking more about the recent playthrough of Doom 3, which left me actually quite bored instead of chilled.

[Flarty]

Now that I think of it, everyone else is right and I'm wrong. Films do suck in comparison to games when it comes to the fear department.

yes we just didnt want to say :P

but its obvious that games take the biscuit when it comes to the fear department, what really needs to be asked is can games actually be just as funny?

[Psyborg]

They can be, but film has had more practice. Games also have to be concerned with making gameplay fun, so it can't have the same abundance of jokes that film can. Not to mention games are generally much longer than films, so the same number of jokes would be much more spread out over the course of a game as they would be in a film or TV show.

[Flarty]

well imo point and click adventures seem to have it locked down when it comes to comedy, only a few other games succed

[flame]

Portal?

[Flarty]

one of the few

[Dr.Aaron]

Silent hill 3 scared the **** out of me. :P

[Requiem]

I consider myself a grown man, (others will deny this) but I cannot play Silent Hill by myself. Whenever I play with friends, we try to make fun of a bunch of things on the screen to not feel scared, while running away with the baby headed,large hand creature chasing us....

[Winged One]

While movies put you into an uncontrollable universe, where you are following a character you have no connection with other than the fact that the story follows her, games allow you to experience a character's story first hand. You get more involved, thus you are scared more.

[Ares]

Actually, if books were in the list I'd choose that.

The thing about movies: You feel too detached from the main character, and horror movies are suffering from a plague of bad writing and acting. Most horror movies these days seem to go more for shock value of nasty/disgusting/graphic images rather actually building up good suspense with a good plot.

The Thing About Games: They're games. One bit of bad level design, a bug, anything can break immersion and remind you that it's a game. Most horror games also seem to follow either one of two approaches. The first, the atmosphere is creepy, but they give you a ton of weapons and ammo. That crazed serial killer lurking around the corner suddenly is a lot less dangerous when you're a special forces guy clad in 20-30 pounds of ceramic and kevlar armor wielding a shotgun powerful enough to take whole limbs off at range.

The other approach I've seen horror games take is providing the right atmosphere, but making their game arbitrarily hard. Giving me 1 magazine of 7 shots to kill 9 zombies that take 4 shots each even if you hit the head that can kill me in 2 swipes, and then cutting off my escape route with something like an old, locked wooden door that I could kick off the hinges in real life is neither intense nor horrifying nor cool.

Another thing... you can miss details in games and movies. In horror books, the author can make sure you're aware of every creak, every little trail of blood, every faint smell of rot. Nothing like a good bit of HP Lovecraft at midnight in a storm to get the nerves running!

[Psyborg]

Here Ares is correct. Literature pwns all.

[Manbearpig]

I'm a huge fan of the Mythos and I have to say, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of The Earth really conveyed horror quite well and was pretty true to the subject matter. Actually, I have the idea of remaking it as a source mod, as soon as I can find some slaves..Uh I mean "programmers"

[BahamutBBob]

Here Ares is correct. Literature pwns all.
I would have to disagree, from the one "scary" book I've read. (The Shining) Recommend me something to get from the library.

[Psyborg]

For scary books? I haven't read many, but you should be safe with some Lovecraft, or maybe some King if you're feeling in the mood for some poppy, bubblegum scary reading. Try The Mist, or 1408, both included in his Skeleton Crew book of short stories, I believe. Those were good.

[Manbearpig]

Eternal Darkness is scarier then any movie and the voice acting is superb, especially for Maximilian Roivas. Here are a couple of his autopsies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE-q48pmap8&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07M3xlax2c&feature=related

[JTower]

Games aren't that scary but jumpy.
I.E. Re1 where the dogs jumped through the window in the hallway.

[Manbearpig]

Then you haven't played Eternal Darkness, that fear stuck with me. The images, the characters still get to my by mentioning it.

[rtanger]

Eternal Darkness- Where the line between fear and seeming gameplay glitches is inextricably blurred.

[Manbearpig]

They're called insanity effects and Eternal Darkness is the only game to have insanity effects that break the forth wall and actually screw with the player. Like when it says it deleted all your saves or when it says your controller is disconnected and all you can do is watch your character be ripped apart only to find it's a hallucination.

[Bigspfan]

I LOVED Eternal Darkness, it creeped me out, it's one of the only games to do so. I believe in the future, games will be the unparalleled media used to scare and creep people out. I'm waiting for a game to come out where you play as the character through different parts of his childhood, just to throw you deeper into the protaganists shoes.(like flashbacks of his childhood or something) I think that is a pretty cool arrangement for a videogame. ALSO, movies are classic devices in making people jumpy, videogames are used to creep people out.

[Disc0]

I'd say games are best IF they're made well and IF the player plays his role. Because of the freedom to guide the story, action, and interaction in the game, the player can essentially ruin the atmosphere, or the game can do the same. For instance, if I get stuck in Silent Hill and wander around aimlessly looking for a key for an hour, those moans and groans from the mist are just going to irritate me.
In a movie, there are no such problems. Cut from scene 14 to stage right, and things move right along as planned. So it's quite a bit easier to set up scary moments and scenarios.
But man, when I really get into a horror game, it's a tangible dread unlike anything I've felt from a movie since I was in elementary school.

[Nick_Fury]

If I get really sucked into a game and things are very tense, then I have been known to jump or literally have a feeling of dread about going around a corner or through a doorway. Usually the feeling will just ramp up and continue. With movies, I do get scared about certain things but it usually doesn't last (except for that dead chick who crawled down the steps in The Grudge. That made me turn lights on whenever I walked in hallways or on the stairs in my house for weeks.)

[Kester]

I've also experienced levels of tension in games that a film has never got close to. Whether that be a corp action on Eve, or those final few rounds of a clan match on CS, the tension is far greater than any movie or book can ever give me.

[Winged One]

Condemned gave me a sense of dread around every corner, especially when I discovered that the maniacs could hide in closets and lockers.

[Viktor Berg]

Condemned gave me a sense of dread around every corner, especially when I discovered that the maniacs could hide in closets and lockers.

That's a very scary game right here.

Here is my opinion on this debate: horror movies will never be as horrifying to me as horror games. There are 2 major reasons to this:

1. The game is interactive. Yes, movies can be scary and stuff, but when one plays a game, one immerses more or less into it, more so than with any movie ever made. Therefore, if something scary happens, it tends to scare more if one's immersed in a game than if one's watching a movie.

This is especially true with the newer games, which have close-to-photorealistc graphics, and, therefore, have an immense immersive ability (especially late at winter night alone in a cellar with lights off). Begone, evil mannequins! + (-.-) + (crosses his fingers).

2. The continuity - whenever you are watching a horror movie, unless you use some weird TV goggles, you always have the option to cover your eyes and wait out whatever scary scene is going on the screen. You can even cover your ears for good measure (although that is overkill).

With the games, however, unless you are watching someone else playing, you HAVE to advance through the game, even through the scary parts, simply to continue past said scary parts. You can't close your eyes because you'll be unable to play and finish the scary part. Thankfully, one can cut off the sound, but that doesn't help much if a zombie goast jumps at you from the dark in complete silence, amiright?

I first experienced this horrifying truth when I played FEAR in the beginning, and first got into that corridor filled with blood. I had to run through it, with my eyes open and all. If I didn't I'd simply die and had to restart the part again. I was scared. I'm of weak and feeble mind, that was a bit much for me. Thank God I wasn't alone at that time, or I fear the worst'd happen (gee, I dunno what).

[vincian]

I'd say games, if only due to the fact that you are interacting instead of watching.