I’d also say that even if a lot of games aren’t terribly original, the act of putting you, the audience, directly into the action gives a huge amount of vibrancy to the sort of plots that would seem warmed over and basic in a book or movie. The story of Alien Isolation wasn’t that different from that of the original…

So that’s how Slenderman got his start.

My first thought was “It has never been a less awkward time to be a Star Wars fan”. Because never has it been more socially acceptable to love the shit out of some Star Wars. There are blow up stormtroopers in my freaking grocery store. There is a cardboard wookie at the entrance to target that makes wookie noises as…

I think for that sort of movie in particular, I need to feel like the protagonists actually have a shot at survival for me to be invested, and for the ‘and then they all get killed’ ending to have an impact. But horror is very subjective too, of course ;)

I’m glad to see Rec get on there, it was a pretty fun zombie movie. I’d also recommend some other Spanish horror movies, like Devil’s Backbone, The Orphanage, and Shiver. All of them were fairly psychological and spooky, and also nicely shot movies too.

I didn’t care for The Strangers. Their masks were spooky, but when your antagonists are just normal people, I think you need to see them slip up or creep around a little more. The way the Strangers were always right behind everyone or suddenly on the other side of the house was just a little too convenient.

Its also a difference in perspective... in American horror stories, usually ghosts are not the worst thing you encounter. They normally are just trying to accomplish some particular goal or finish some task that is something the protagonists can accomplish. Compared to a vampire, zombie, or other monster, they’re more…

Eh, I’d go with House of the Devil rather than Innkeepers... I liked the protagonist in Innkeepers, but good lord, there were just long stretches of nothing happening, and the ghost just looked too much like someone with face paint and contacts to scare me.

I quit before Cataclysm, but I had my fair share of good and bad hunters back then... I think part of it was that hunters back then could

Exactly... I knocked out Arkham Origins in like... 5-6 hours, and probably should have done it in even less time since a lot of the side missions were just “find and blow up these 6 things” which didn’t end up with any pay off.

I buy most of my games on Steam these days, so it doesn’t really bother me to have about 30 games waiting to be played. I’ll play one till its done, or till I decide that I don’t like it, and move on to the next.

Oh yeah, and the game people decided to build a real version of the game. Like someone building the island from Myst, and putting robotic minotaurs in there for some reason.

Yeah, the march of technology was one of the things that interested me about the show, especially since it did advance. One of the things that bugged be about the newer show Aldnoah Zero is that the antagonists in that show had amazing technology, but only put one style of weapon into each mech, and barely ever worked…

Its interesting how in anime you can get the characters that have a never ending grab bag of strong powers, and over the course of the show learn even stronger ones. And then there are those shows where they seem to deliberately give their characters just one limited power, and then find clever ways to use it.

Catholic priests kill people with exorcism too.

And some games give you a variety of choices... some of them spooky to the point of seeming like a psychological test themselves. I watched a video of harvesting a Little Sister in Bioshock because I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it in game.

Pyschology research seems like you should take it with a big boulder of rock salt. Much of its done on white, educated students that know they are being tested, and so may be induced to act in a certain way consciously or unconsciously. The results may not be replicated by others that do the same testing, or no one…

I think it varies from game to game too. In something like the Telltale Walking Dead games, where you have a few choices to kill or save various characters, its really hard for me to just stone cold kill someone, because the game makes you feel the impact of that act. Much more so than murdering tons of Orcs in…

I was totally one of those people. Installing Steam and getting an account set up to play my game? Ugh. I honestly still don’t like having to deal with that sort of situation for other games (Like Origin or Windows Live). Another password to remember and potentially forget.