Ultimate Paradise

Video game horror is, IMO:

Atmosphere, and being helpless. If there's something that makes me **** my pants, it's not being able to kill an enemy. You know... like in real life. Ambient music, dark rooms/hallways that aren't pitch black, stuff that creates a tense and looming atmosphere, that is true horror IMO.

Video game horror is not, IMO:

Being able to kill enemies to the right and left, gore, and cheap scares. Basically, if I'm able to kill everything that comes at me, I don't get scared. Even if what I'm fighting is terrifying, if I can easily kill it, it's not scary. And on kind of the same note, gore is not scary. Being able to chop a monster limbs off, is not scary. Sure it can look awesome and disgusting, but it's not scary. And the worst offender of all.... The god damn cheap scares.

These are not horror. Cheap scares (AKA things that make you jump) are ONLY good if you have the best game ever made by man, and if there are only two or three per game. Cheap scares are just. Not. Horror. There's a difference between stuff that scares you just by being there, and stuff that startles you. I can startle you, but that doesn't mean I'm the definition of horror now does it? Cheap scares, if used in abundance, just shows that you're a ****-poor writer/programmer who couldn't write/program horror to save your own life.


What are your definitions of video game horror?

REmake has some amazing atmosphere, and interestingly enough it also has cheap scares. >_>

I'd say REmake falls under the "It's okay" category, based on what I've seen. It has elements of (what I think) is horror, which clearly shows that the people who made the game KNOW how to do horror, and therefor I can accept a few cheap scares.

Pretty much anything found in System Shock II and Eternal Darkness.

Nothing, as they all fail to scare.

Something that's clever. Something that has little tidbits through the entire game, and when you put it together it frightens you.

Shadows, noises, atmosphere. Shadows of something that is to come. It's there, but you can't confront it.

The feeling that something is following you. You turn around, nothing is there. You turn around to continue and it's there staring you dead in the face. And abrupt tragic music keys.

Absolute silence gets to me too.

Scenarios like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvsGYSF5TwY

It's all about suspense.  Every aspect revolves around building up suspense.  Atmosphere and music, it's for suspense, tension breaking scares, it's for the suspense, pitting you against situations where you honestly believe you can't survive through it, you but your ass it's for the suspense.

It's incredibly ignorant to write off a game as not being "horror" for including (or not including) elements that are completely besides the point.

That...actually scared me. >_>

this. i think one of the scariest parts of RE4 (i friggen love that game) is the long dark walway with the lights barely illuminating anything. you see the door at teh end of the hall but you also can hear the heavy breathing or a regenerator somewhere in the darkness. you start heading down the hallway checking every cell you come to until you finally reach the end of the hall only to find that the stairs are destroyed. its then that you realize the thing is right behind you.

scared the living **** out of me the first time. GOD, SUCH AN AWESOME GAME!!!!

I read "Fatal Frame" in the title, so I'm not surprised.

Yeah, ILS is kind of right.

One of the best parts of survival horror is that it makes you go to places you know are places you'd probably die.

It why they can be scarier than films because in films the character will do something you think is asking for death but in a game you have to do it which makes it so much more real than films can.