#honestly? if there's any silent hill game that needs a remake it's 4

[silenthill2ps2]

WALTER SULLIVAN MENTION!!!! SH4 REMAKE CONFIRMED SH4 NUMERO UNO RAAAAHHHHHH

[themainspoon]

Goddamnit, I hate when I create stupid fucking rules and traditions for myself that I feel the need to follow.

The reason I’m complaining about this is because of one rule I have which is temporal in nature, it dictates that there is a certain thing I can only partake in at certain times.

So, growing up in Australia my parents never let me celebrate Halloween, because it is an American holiday and ‘we don’t celebrate it here’ (we actually do now, and we did back when I was little, not to the same extent, but the fun horror holiday is probably the only non-negative thing that the US’s attempts to expand its cultural hegemony ever gave us).

So, as a kid I never went trick or treating, never got to dress up, and as an awkward teen I didn’t get invited to any Halloween parties either, despite the fact I knew they were happening.

October always used to be a bit of a downer of a month for me, and I spent my entire childhood feeling like I missed out. So, now that I’m an adult I decided that in order to make it up to little kid me in a way he would probably think was a great idea, October would be “Emulate retro horror games” month. Emulating and playing through old horror games is what I do now during October, and only in October.

Last year I sat down and played Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, and it was a great time, I genuinely fell in love with the franchise. But now we get to my issue: After last year I planned to play through Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room this year.

But I’m growing increasingly impatient.

Like Goddamn, I just really have that old school survival horror itch atm, and I am honour bound to not scratch it. It’s not even fucking September yet, could October hurry the fuck up please?!?!

There is also another issue I face, what do I play next year after I beat Silent Hill 3 and 4? Those are the last of the Silent Hill games that are actually worth playing. After that what do I do? Honestly the 2002 remake of the OG Resident Evil seems like it could be interesting, and maybe the first Fatal Frame could also be fun. But what do I play after that? How many good PS1 to PS2 era horror games actually are there? When does the tradition have to die?

Also, just while I’m talking about this I want to shout out SilentHillMemories.net, a Silent Hill fansite that contains a whole treasure trove of information on all the games, including detailed walkthroughs available in English and Russian (at the moment). It isn’t a wiki, but it’s still a pretty cool site, and it is really nice to be able to access all this stuff on a site that isn’t fandom or some dumbass gaming journalism website trying to projectile vomit ads and other stupid bullshit directly into your eyeballs. So huge shoutout to them:

[rivaiin]

i just checked what bloober has done regarding abuse and metal illness in the past and im ready to start biting

[fishpuncher]

Reviewing Resident Evil games I’ve played for fun

I bought the Resident Evil 2 remake in April of last year and since then I’ve become a fan of the franchise, so I figured I’d do a little review of all the RE games I’ve played listed in sort of release order (remakes taking place of originals)

Resident Evil 1 Remake (2003)

The third RE game I played after the 2 remake and 7, so my introduction to the older games/originals. Honestly a lot of fun, it took me a while to get used to the fixed cameras and the controls (I used the updated alternate controls, not tank) and I never really mastered it but the game is super good. Great puzzles, great atmosphere, and it still looks pretty great 18 years later. The story is also good and isn’t particularly convoluted like some of the later games get lmao

Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019)

The first RE game I played, and what got me hooked on the franchise. I never played the original so I have nothing to compare it to, but this game is almost perfect imo. The puzzles are good, the environments are amazing, and the characters are likable. Mr. X is terrifying (at least in my first playthrough, he’s a lot less scary in subsequent playthroughs) and his chase music is phenomenal. Overall I can’t recommend this game enough.

Resident Evil 3 Remake (2020)

Pretty much everything I said about 2 is applicable to this one as well. Jill and Carlos are great characters and I only wish we got more of them. I know people say that the remake is way shorter and cut-down than the original, but I haven’t played it so I don’t have that frame of reference. As a standalone game, it’s extremely good and the final boss fight is extremely badass.

Resident Evil - Code: Veronica X (2000)

My introduction to tank controls. The game is extremely good, and I’m enjoying it immensely. It can be quite punishing if you forget certain items or don’t conserve your ammo, as I’ve read about players getting to the final boss and having to restart the game because they didn’t bring an item that the game doesn’t even tell you to bring. Luckily I’m an item hoarder in these games, as I’d already grabbed the item before I couldn’t go back for it. The puzzles are good as always, if not confusing as I’m forgetful and have to look up where new items go as I don’t want to spend an hour searching every wall in the game. My main complaint is the sniper battle halfway through the game, as the hitbox for it just seems random more than anything. I love that we get more of Chris too. His casual “Hey” after being thrown by an explosion just kills me. Steve is whiny though and kind of the worst.

Resident Evil 0 (2002)

Pretty okay game, but one that I can’t really recommend. The partner system was pretty good, and made for some amazing puzzles/gameplay at times (getting split up at the beginning and then getting split up in a castle-ish area later). I thought both of those were great uses of the partner switching and more than justify it. However, the reason I can’t recommend this game is almost entirely due to the way you’re supposed to handle items. I play the RE games like a hoarder, every single item goes in the chest. Except this game doesn’t have a chest. You have two inventories with only six or eight (I don’t remember) slots each, and no item boxes. Instead, you can drop items on the ground and pick them up again later. For a hoarder like me, that means a whole lot of backtracking when you advance to the next area. Another annoying thing was the final two boss fights, as they were confusing for my simple brain since one of them is legit just shooting them until they die, but there’s never any indication that you’re affecting it, so I’m running around the room looking for something else that will kill him. In the final fight, it’s the same thing, except the game makes a point of showing you certain parts of the room that are obviously interactable, so I immediately run to those. Only those aren’t used until the second phase of the fight. I like Rebecca and Billy though, and hope that they’ll return at some point.

Resident Evil 4 (2005)

Very fun game, the over the shoulder is a welcome respite from the fixed cameras of 1 and 0, even if it is still tank controls. Leon is very quippy and I’m not a huge fan of his constantly hitting on the woman on the radio, but he’s an entertaining protagonist for sure. Escorting Ashley through most of the game isn’t that bad, as you can have her hide sometimes, or she’s pretty decent at taking care of herself (though I definitely accidentally killed her a few times oops). I thought Ashley was like 15 for the entire game so her asking Leon if he wanted to fuck at the end of the game absolutely floored me (though I’m still not a fan of that unnecessary comment honestly). My main complaint is that I was playing the Steam version at 60fps, but QTEs just do not work at that framerate, so I had to lower it to 30fps just to get through certain parts of the game (I did that minecart section like five times). Overall a great game, though I wouldn’t say it’s the best in the series, as many do.

Resident Evil 5 (2009)

People say this one is bad, but it’s such a blast playing co-op with a friend. I didn’t have to deal with the AI partner, so I can’t talk about that, but this is such a good co-op game. Getting to a spot where you both need to interact with it and mashing the button so Chris yells “SHEVA SHEVA HURRY COME ON HURRY SHEVA” over and over is always funny and always annoying when you’re on the receiving end. I still don’t really get the story and how Umbrella and BSAA are related or anything, but the gameplay is super fun, I highly recommend this one if you’ve got someone to play with. Although, we did have to install some files in order to play online co-op, but it’s a pretty simple process.

Resident Evil: Revelations (2012)

This one is rough, as I got halfway through it before I got bored and quit. The game introduces Raymond as a bad guy pointing his gun at you, then there’s a flashback and his backstory is “guy silently standing in corner of room.” Back in present day, five minutes after being introduced as a bad guy, he’s helping you out. Jessica isn’t that bad but her character design is incredibly awful. The first minor thing is when she’s on a mission with Chris in snowy mountains and she’s wearing pounds of makeup. Then later they have her in a wetsuit but some hair is outside of it??? I guess so you know she’s a sexy woman. Plus her wetsuit is literally missing a leg. It leaves her left leg completely bare. The dialogue regarding her is sexist too. Overall, the gameplay is very meh and the plot is kind of dumb, even for RE.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)

My second RE game to play, but probably the first one I watched. This game is amazing and I highly recommend it. The first person makes the setting much scarier, and it lets you relate to Ethan and immerse yourself more. I like that Ethan is just Some Guy with no training, he just walks his way through this whole mess like a champ. The boss fights are great and the characters are so memorable. Not to mention the DLCs for the game are wonderful: playing a fucked up version of 21 and then fighting goop monsters hand to hand are seriously fun.

Resident Evil Village (2021)

The most recent RE game and quite possibly the best. Village combines the first person perspective of 7 and the inventory system of 4, making an incredible game. The four lords all have such different environments and it makes for such good variety. My favorite one was the Silent Hill-esque house with the dolls, as scary as it was. The Duke is a fun character and I love that he’s part of the story. Chris’s section at the end turns the game into Call of Duty but it’s a fun massacre through the village, easily destroying enemies that have troubled you all game. Overall one of my favorite RE games.

[spacezeta]

Devlog - About combat, or: let’s threaten the player

So here’s the devlog about combat that I was going to write the other week but then the camera one turned out way too long!

And if you thought the camera one was long, boy do I have a surprise for you...

So here’s a fairly long (and a little bit rant-y) write-up of my thought process about to combat or not to combat, and how to raise the stakes in a horror game in order to give more substance to the ‘horror’ part.

*Emphasis on thought process because as the game is still in development, I’m still figuring out the proper mechanics of it all

---

When we first started making this game, one of the first things that we ended up establishing was that there would be no combat. And looking back I’m not sure why - it just kind of... was. I guess it was to make things easier, but on hindsight we really should have thought that more thoroughly.

So that was the first version of the game that we developed (we had a sort of demo alpha thing done as a student project), but right away there were some glaring issues that needed to be addressed (hence the whole ‘reestructuring of the game’ that I’ve mentioned a few times before). One of the biggest issues weren’t exactly about combat, but rather how to create a tense atmosphere for the player. So follow me down the rabbit hole until I get to the bit about combat!

So. We’re making a horror game, right? And when you’re making a horror game you don’t want the player to feel all safe and happy and calm, you want them to feel tense, to be on edge, and, most importantly, you want to scare the living shit out of them. So how do we go about achieving that?

(No, not jumpscares, you cut that shit out right now)

What I think you should to (emphasis on I and think, as in, personal opinion, and you should, as in, me making this game) is basically make the player feel threatened. You make the player feel scared to enter a room because they don’t know what might be lurking inside. Have a constant threat of something looming over the player’s head everywhere they go. And while that might be an easy concept to grasp, the big issue lies in what exactly that threat is.

(No, not jumpscares! I said stop that!)

So here’s the thing about jumpscares:

They’re not a bad thing... when used in conjunction with other things. Used by itself, it’s just a very cheap way to get a reaction from the player. Sure, a monster popping out of nowhere to scream in your face is going to startle you - but that’s just it. It’s startling the player, not scaring them. If your brother hid in the dark to pop out and scream at you when you come in the room, you’re gonna be startled. And then you’re gonna be angry because that’s just not what normal person should be doing, Peter.

But anyway. A jumpscare is also only really effective the first few handful of times, because after that it loses its power and the player will probably just be going ‘Oh, boo to you too, Mr. Monster’. You need to save up on the jumpscares to only use them when a perfect opportunity arises (like when the tension is at its highest, or when the player is least expecting it and quickly build tension). There are a lot of situations where a jumpscare can come in handy, but it should never be used by itself. If you’re gonna Boo! at the player, Boo! at the player and then do something else along with it.

(Also I have a jumpscare pet peeve when jumpscares make absolutely no sense in-universe. Like, I can understand a monster screaming - monsters are, you could say, prone to shrieking and loud noises, so it makes sense. But when a horror game or movie have a thing pop out with a loud sound, a thing that by all means and laws of physics should make no sound whatsoever, it just grinds my gears so friggin much. Worse yet when the characters react to it! Boo, camera cut! Boo, title card says TUESDAY! Boo, there’s some paint on the wall! Boy what a loud wall!)

But I digress.

So, about the threatening the player bit...

How do we threaten the player to make them feel unsafe? That was the trickiest part to figure out during initial development.

One option is going for the being chased by enemies route. Think something like Outlast or Amnesia, where there’s no combat and you have to run away and hide from monsters to survive. Aaand we kind of just ruled that out. Partly because the map isn’t all that big which might have just ended up with the enemy and player running around in circles, and partly because if you don’t do it properly you might end up with something less threatening, and more troublesome. Like, say, you’re in the middle of completing a puzzle and suddenly an enemy pops out and you have to drop everything to run all the way back to shake them off to finally be able to go back and do what you were trying to do in the first place - that kind of troublesome.

A second option is having combat. Or enemies that appear and that you can deal with in one way or the other. Aaand we also ruled that out and I just don’t know what the friggity frack we were thinking. I was very dumb, essentially. I think I was influenced by this current trend in horror games to have no combat whatsoever, in order to maybe leave the player feeling helpless in the face of danger. And honestly, I should have just taken a long hard look at the horror classics that are influencing this game and realized: the!! friggin!! combat!! it’s there!!! dammit!!

So, no chasing and no combat. What the hell do we do?

Basically I did this thing of trying to make an idea work that clearly does not work but I tried and tried anyway instead of letting it go and it’s basically a really bad thing that I do, and now that I’m finally aware of doing it I’m trying really hard to stop.

Note to self: if an idea isn’t working, let it go! Try something else!

Long story short what we tried to do was this thing where being around an enemy drained your health/sanity/whatever and you needed to escape the room to be safe by pressing a series of quick time events to open the door and leave. It didn’t work.

So there’s combat now! The end!

Well, okay, not really.

So, combat at last.

When I say combat, I don’t mean the action-game-one-man-army kind of combat. I mean the combat that’s of the I-have-a-rusty-pipe-and-will-smack-the-shit-out-of-any-ugly-thing-that-comes-my-way-oh-god-what-the-hell-is-that-maybe-I-should-just-run kind. Think of the first Silent Hill games, the first Resident Evils and even Fatal Frame, where the combat essentially boils down to being a ghost paparazzo.

So, now that we’ve decided on combat, the looming threat that I mentioned before becomes fairly well defined: it’s the possibility of an enemy encounter. You can even play with that expectation, like having one or two fake out scares (just do not overdo - I’m looking at you, scenes of a random cat jumpscaring you out of nowhere), or by pulling the rug out from underneath the player by having an enemy pop out in a seemingly safe area and give them trust issues.

But for the player to dread meeting an enemy means the combat can’t be easy - but it also can’t be frustrating otherwise it just fails as a game mechanic. The player can’t breeze through enemy encounters, each one needs to feel like an actual threat that the player has to deal with (either by killing them or tactically retreating a.k.a. running away please don’t hurt me).

Kind of a side rant: Honestly, if someone asked me what the downfall of the Resident Evil games as a horror series was, I’d probably say it started with the combat. Not all of it, but I’d say a good deal of the blame was there. *Please note I haven’t played either RE7 (as someone who tends to get motion sickness, first person games are things that I avoid) or the RE2 remake (this one I will get as soon as it goes on sale because games are expensive and I got no money).

I mean, I still love RE4 with all my heart and those Regenerators will live on inside my nightmares, but I thought earlier games felt much more tense because the combat in 4 was a lot more action-y than horror-y, though it hadn’t entirely tilted over to the action side... Then 5 came and ruined it all and then 6 came and was like ‘what’s a horror game’ (and I say this as someone who had fun with 6!) and the rest is history.

But it did get me thinking about one thing: the combat mechanics. I found myself frustrated when trying to go back to older Resident Evil games and struggled to deal with the bare bones combat and the clunky tank controls (granted, the latter more than the former), so I started wondering how much of the tension in older games had to do with actual horror, and how much of it was due to the insecurity you get when dealing with awkward controls in a moment of crisis.

Playing around with combat mechanics

So, having figured out that I wanted combat, the question became ‘how to combat’. Or something along those lines. I didn’t want to make things too easy, but I also didn’t want to make the player frustrated.

Here’s the part where I repeat what I said right at the top of this post: as the game is still in development, I’m still figuring out the proper mechanics of it all.  So basically I’m just gonna register here what my experiments have been so far, and, like I said in the camera devlog, there are no tank-like controls because those are just a pain to deal with.

So at first I made it so you could only attack after aiming... But then that felt clunky as hell considering this is melee. So I scrapped that idea and made it so you could walk and attack at the same time.

I did keep the aiming part though, but made it optional: you can still walk and attack, but attacking while aiming will deal higher damage.

And in the spirit of keeping the player from just mashing the attack button I’m trying out a little something: Chaining attacks to deal higher damage but also making it so that, should the player press the attack button again too fast, the animation will restart, basically cancelling the previous attack. This would be a nightmare in a fast paced action game but since it’s not, I’m hoping it’ll force the player to be a bit more careful when confronting an enemy without it becoming a frustrating mechanic so, again, it needs more playtesting!

Also enemies can also chain attack you for higher damage!

And that’s basically it! I’m sorry if after all this buildup it ended up being disappointing oops

But considering Observo is going to be a somewhat short game I don’t have the time to develop a complex battle system that’s just not gonna be used a lot in a game with puzzles as the main focus. So that’s it! Thank you so much to anyone who’s still reading this at this point, haha

[aion-rsa]

E3 2021 Needs to Find a Way to Stay Relevant in Changing Times

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The ESA has revealed that E3 2021 will run from June 12 to June 15 as an “all-virtual video game showcase that will be 100 percent free for attendees.” So far, the ESA is touting “early commitments from Nintendo, Xbox, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Games, and Koch Media” with more possible presenters to come. 

Considering that the fate of E3 2021 was very much in doubt after last year’s event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies everywhere hosted their own digital events as the ESA failed to organize the same, this announcement may be more than E3 fans could have hoped for. E3 shouldn’t be an in-person event quite yet, but a digital version of E3 featuring heavy hitters like Nintendo, Capcom, and Microsoft certainly feels like something close to that return to normalcy that so many of us crave. 

Just as there are questions about what normalcy means after the events of the last year and the circumstances which propelled them, though, E3’s organizers, fans, and presenters will have to answer some tough questions about how the event will stay relevant at a time when its greatest attribute often feels like the memory of what was. 

Make no mistake that E3 was in trouble even before the 2020 event was canceled due to circumstances beyond its organizers’ control. In recent years, studios like EA, PlayStation, Activision Blizzard, and even Nintendo (to a degree) decided to abandon their traditional E3 presentations in favor of their own dedicated shows and broadcasts. The reasons for their departures vary, but as Sony’s controversial (and largely underwhelming) 2018 E3 presentation showed, the pressure and costs of constructing a yearly presentation with competition undertones sometimes aren’t worth the potential payoff from a business perspective. 

The absence of those companies was certainly felt at E3 2019 which had its fans but its best-remembered moment was a Keanu Reeves cameo that has lost some luster since we’ve all played the game that was clearly not ready for the spotlight it was afforded at that show. 

Many of the companies that have left E3 have used the word “change” to justify their decision. Former Sony Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden said in 2019 that “the world has changed, but E3 hasn’t necessarily changed with it.” In 2020, longtime E3 partner Geoff Keighley said that “the show does need to evolve.” Both Keighley and Layden noted their desire for E3 to look beyond the booths and show floor and find new ways to connect with fans, preferably digitally. 

While leaks suggest that the ESA’s own suggestions for change involve an emphasis on influencers, live gimmicks, and even potential paywalls for digital content, E3 2021 doesn’t currently seem to feature any of that. Based on what we know now, it might actually be that largely digital event that will move beyond the physical boundaries of E3s gone by that some have complained about and instead reach a global fanbase directly in their homes. E3 2021 has a chance to become the E3 that some former major presenters seemed to hope it would become years ago. 

However, the biggest potential problem with E3 2021 isn’t its changes but rather the expectations of the one group of people who seem most insistent that E3 doesn’t change: its vocal supporters. 

There’s no universal reason why fans love E3, but the most common reasons fans look forward to the show tend to involve key elements such as the surprise of big game reveals, the competitive nature of the show (and subsequent arguments over who “won”), and the feeling of celebrating all things gaming during a big-budget week that seems to bring everyone to the same place one way or another. 

There is no beloved element of E3s of the past that has become more outdated and dangerous than the expectations of the big reveal. A quick look at reactions to E3 2021 confirmation across social media reveals that fans are already hyping themselves up for the following games:

Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill sequels/remakes

Grand Theft Auto 6

Metroid Prime 4

Breath of the Wild 2

Starfield

The Elder Scrolls 6

Maybe some of those games will appear at the show in some capacity, but we’re once again in a situation where the absence of impossibility fuels unreasonable expectations which burrow their way into even cynical minds and become the standard. What’s worse is that the hype for these potential announcements is amplified in many cases by the belief that E3 2021 will be different from the various digital events that we saw throughout 2020 which were hyped to the moon in the days leading up to their premieres but rarely featured the kind of big announcements fans hoped they would. 

The fact that there’s a semi-popular belief that E3 2021 will be substantially different from recent events in that respect already suggests that not enough people have realized the situation the video game industry faces right now. As more and more games are delayed to 2022 and beyond, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on production schedules everywhere should be much clearer than it seems to be. Digital showcases weren’t underwhelming because they took place outside of E3; they were often underwhelming because studios were trying to figure out how to finish games from home while creating digital presentations from the same place. The elements that impacted the impact of those showcases are as prevalent as ever.

Even if they weren’t, pre-pandemic E3s have made it increasingly clear that those mind-blowing reveals that defined E3s of the past are becoming much rarer. Leaks, quarterly expectations, and a constant news cycle mean we rarely see a game at E3 that we didn’t already know or strongly suspect was coming. When we do (such as the reveal of The Elder Scrolls 6) it’s often for a game that is so far away that it might as well not even be confirmed. Yet, we still have fans expecting to see those games even as developers do everything in their power to tell us that they’re years away. Even those who know better find themselves weighing what we do see against the games they really want to know more about.  

Read more

Games

Best Games to Play in 2021

By Chris Freiberg

Games

Best PC Games to Play in 2021

By Chris Freiberg

More importantly, the fact of the matter is that the video game industry is burdened by crunch culture and skyrocketing costs that often force employees to work unreasonable schedules to complete games that more often satisfy increasingly unreasonable ROI expectations than the vision of their creators or even the desire of fans. In that dangerous environment, we’ve built this monolith to gaming that seems bright to outsiders but is being propped up by the members of an overworked and sometimes unstable industry that must constantly find ways to satisfy a yearly expectation for the big new thing. 

Yet, there may be no weaker E3 tentpole than the idea of industry competition. It’s absolutely true that E3s of the past directly played into that competition element. The very first E3 was even highlighted by Sony’s surprise PlayStation release date and price announcements which essentially ended the Sega Saturn’s chances before they even got started. Subsequent years also saw companies take potshots at each other in an attempt to steal the biggest spotlight the gaming industry had. 

Now, though, we’ve got Microsoft and Nintendo working together, Sony putting PlayStation Studios games on Game Pass, and PC players laughing as they get more games than ever. It’s not that competition in the industry is gone so much as it is that companies really aren’t interested in continuing to take shots at competitors that they’re more willing to work with than ever before. What we’re often left with in the wake of E3 isn’t a debate over the best showing but a petulant justification for outdated fanboyism that rarely amounts to more than which console will get the special DLC hoodie in the next Assassin’s Creed.

That leaves us with the idea that E3 will live on as this event that gets people excited about the gaming industry and brings them together, which is honestly what E3 2021 is going to have to capitalize on if it’s going to battle against times that are slowly walking towards the door as E3 tries to keep the party going with stories of that time that went to the lake in college. 

You can assign E3 a fiscal value, but I can tell you what E3 is worth to you. I also can’t deny that even the worst E3 tends to be more exciting than the best digital showcase we saw in 2020. After a year of searching for hope and answers, I’m looking forward to a generally harmless event that makes millions of people feel good and feel a connection with each other. 

But in the same way that Blockbuster launched Blockbuster By Mail years after Netflix showed them what the future was going to be, I can’t help but feel that this year’s digital E3 showcase reeks more of necessity than the ability to read the room and truly innovate. What can E3 do with a host of presenters that already struggled to host their own digital showcases who must now scrape together enough new games to justify a spectacle? The show’s inability to innovate in years when it was positioned to do so raises serious doubt about its ability to innovate in areas that it’s intentionally avoided for years.

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Maybe E3 2021 will be an effective enough stopgap and get us to E3 2022 when the novelty of being able to join crowds of people at a video game event (or watch those proceedings) will suddenly feel new again. However, E3 2021’s real job may be convincing us that this event has figured out something about digital presentations that has eluded some of the industry’s heaviest hitters so far.

If E3 2021 can capture that magical something that even mediocre E3s of the past have benefited from, then maybe it can overcome all of these hurdles. At the very least, it can delay the need to justify its place in a video game industry that keeps finding new ways to tell us that it needs to move on from the burden of our sometimes nostalgic ideas of what gaming was and what we want it to be. If it can’t, then those winds of change that we’ve been feeling more and more recently may blow over the empty halls of the L.A. Convention Center come June 2022 as we all realize that the tough answers to the questions of the future are rarely found in the past. 

The post E3 2021 Needs to Find a Way to Stay Relevant in Changing Times appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[psyclownsis-a-blog]

cyberyond replied to your post

piri i need horror movie recs it's been too long since i saw a good oNE

this ended up becoming Piri’s Ultimate List Of Horror Recs (2017 Version) so i’m putting it under a cut rip

note: this list has trigger warnings but i am operating under the assumption that you are okay with the standard level of explicit sexuality, vulgarity, violence, and gore present in mainstream horror movies

horror

original nightmare on elm street series, but especially 1, 3, 4, 6, and freddy vs. jason (tw for implied pedophilia and explicit child murder, tw for rape in #6)

friday the 13th (original and remake)

honestly all the friday the 13th sequels are A Treasure but if you want The Core Canon watch 1-3

my bloody valentine (original)

psycho (original) and tbh all its sequels (tw for sort-of-kind-of incest vibes)

psycho ii and psycho iv are my favorites because (1) meg tilly is adorable in psycho ii and (2) psycho iv has a harley/norman cameo and nobody can convince me otherwise

child’s play, child’s play 2, bride of chucky, maybe some sequels after that idk i haven’t seen them yet :(

scream franchise

not the mtv scream series

i mean s1 is decent but there are definitely other horror shows that i would recommend more

1-3 are the best, 4 is worth watching if you really like the characters but as a concept the series has p much run its course by then

tw for rape mentions in scream 3

predator

peeping tom

kenneth branagh’s frankenstein (tw for a graphic depiction of death in childbirth)

james whale’s frankenstein

bride of frankenstein

the phantom of the opera (1925)

the phantom of the opera (1989) (tw for a much grosser depiction of the phantom story than the 1925 or 2004 versions; i wanna say all tws are left at implication but i haven’t seen it in a while so i’m not sure)

alien franchise

the wolfman (2010)

darling (tw for rape)

house on haunted hill (original and remake)

final destination franchise

medium raw: night of the wolf (tw for pedophilia and child murder)

the babadook

the final girls [horror comedy]

the shining (tw for implied child abuse)

the cabin in the woods

hellraiser

heathers (tw for eating disorders, suicide, everything high school kids are insensitive assholes about)

from dusk til dawn

an american werewolf in london

the guest

it follows (tw for dubious consent)

nightwatch (tw for implied necrophilia/descriptions of necrophilia, self-mutilation)

re-animator (tw for rape, pedophilia mentions)

carrie (original) (tw for child abuse, religion iconography)

the remake had some interesting like... subtext/imagery but other than that it was pretty *wet fart noise*

the awakening

the craft

the blair witch project

honestly i loved the book of shadows: blair witch 2 bc it kind of parallels the crucible but i can admit that objectively it is Terrible

elvira, mistress of the dark [spooky comedy]*

american mary (tw for rape, (consensual surgical) genital mutilation)

fright night (original and remake)

jaws

halloween franchise

1-5 are the best imo but no matter what skip #3 because it literally has nothing to do with any of the other movies

not the rob zombie remakes, those are awful

let the right one in [swedish (?) film, watch with subtitles]

rosemary’s baby (original)

night of the living dead (original)

28 days later

suspiria

silent hill (tw for child molestation)

crimson peak (tw for incest)

the lost boys

interview with the vampire

the ring

one missed call

the raven (2012)

repo! the genetic opera

teeth (tw for rape, incest, t’s??????? about a girl who has razor-sharp teeth in her vagina and how that coincides with her sexual awakening as a very straight-laced religious person???? so idk like watch it for The Wild Ride if you want but watch at your own discretion)

american psycho (tw for rape, general misogyny)

sweeney todd

speaking from experience, this is much better live, the movie sucked out all the fun and humor that wasn’t literally written into the lyrics, so i recommend watching the original broadway cast on youtube or something

there’s also a 1936 movie but i haven’t seen it so i can’t speak to its quality BUT i would recommend it on the basis of it being made before the musical was created and thus being based more directly on “the string of pearls” novel which is where the sweeney todd urban legend was originally documented

abott and costello meet [insert universal horror monster here] [spooky comedy]

little shop of horrors (original and remake) [spooky comedy]

the last man on earth (1964)

adapted from the same book i am legend (2007) was adapted from but the last man on earth stays much closer to the original book

c. h. u. d.

ghostbusters (1984 and 2016 versions) [spooky comedy]

ghost ship

sick girl (tw for bugs, pregnancy horror)

misery (tw for torture)

puppet master (tw for rape)

the haunting in connecticut

zombieland [horror comedy]**

jurassic park series

lizzie borden took an axe

*spooky comedy: a comedy movie with a spooky premise that i am categorizing with horror movies due to the genre overlap, but that lacks the intense violence, gore, etc. of a horror movie

**horror comedy: a spooky comedy that does not lower the level of violence, gore, etc. that is standard in a horror movie

thrillers

stoker (tw for incest, has a scene in which the protag’s mother verbally abuses her)

m [german film, watch with subtitles] (tw for themes of pedophilia/child molestation/child murder, but it’s worth noting that the whole point of the movie is to condemn and demonize pedophilia)

also one of if not the very first detective movies

nightcrawler (tw for rape)

the vvitch/the witch/however the fuck it’s spelled

rear window (original)

zodiac

hannibal lecter franchise (tw for cannibalism, obviously)-- the silence of the lambs, hannibal, red dragon, manhunter

manhunter is adapted from the same book red dragon is (red dragon) except manhunter was made before anthony hopkins became The Iconic Hannibal Lecter(TM) so it focuses much more on will graham and francis dolarhyde

hannibal rising is worth watching for gaspard ulliel’s performance but the book was much better

the hannibal movie adaptation changed the ending of the hannibal book while still maintaining a really good and really compelling storyline so the book and movie are definitely both highly recommended by me

gone girl

shutter island (tw for asylum horror)

pan’s labyrinth

documentaries

cropsey (documentary on child murders)

urban legends (another documentary, by the same people, talks about how real-life crime affects the american psyche and lives on as urban legends/horror tropes)

the poisoner’s handbook

h. h. holmes

nightmares in red, white, and blue

his name was jason

never sleep again: the elm street legacy

television

bates motel

ahs s1 (tw for... literally everything)

slasher

similar basic premise as ahs, but imo ahs is v exploitative and builds the plot on violence and vice, whereas slasher builds the violence and vice on the plot

supernatural (LISTEN........ LISTEN....................... conceptually it’s the bees knees okay)

penny dreadful (tw for constant explicit sexuality, religious iconography/sacrilege, asylum horror)

criminal minds

bbc broadchurch

bbc river

bbc sherlock but literally only ep. 3.4 “the abominable bride”

rosemary’s baby (2-part made-for-tv movie)

podcasts

the black tapes podcast

small town horror

alice isn’t dead

king falls am [spooky comedy]

limetown

welcome to night vale [spooky comedy]

video games

until dawn

outlast series

[maxwell-n-blog]

Nearly Twenty Years Later, the Original Metal Gear Solid Still Has a Unique Atmosphere

(Originally written for The Snake Soup, published on May 24th, 2017)

Praise for Metal Gear Solid (MGS1) is certainly not difficult to find. Since the day of the game’s release in 1998 on Sony’s PlayStation (PS1), it has been revered and raved about within nearly all forms of media possible. People have talked about its influence on the games that followed it, and how Hideo Kojima’s love for film and the desire to make games more like movies resulted in possibly the first true cinematic gaming experience. The story and themes of this game, such as the need for war, the responsibility of nuclear power, questioning reality, the philosophy of being a soldier and more have been talked about on and on for the past two decades. Rightly so.

Instead of lingering over the said and done, I want to talk about the aspects of MGS1 that, for me, make up the unique “atmosphere” of the game; impressions that have remained with me since the first time I ever played MGS1 right before the end of the last millennium and elements I am drawn back to when I occasionally replay the game. Some of these elements, I find, are not talked about as much or at least are deserving of a reiteration.

I’d also rather look at MGS1 and its atmosphere as its own game, with little reference to the franchise that came after it. For me, the game remains disconnected from what came after. It stands solitary.

Make it all MGS1 starter-pack.

If I try to conjure up a sort of generalized mental image of MGS1, the memories immediately come in shades of green and black. Sure, there are some other colors, like the blues of fluorescent lights, the whites of Alaska, and all the grays in-between. But the more time you spend in the game, greens and blacks remain prevalent. The world presented exists primarily in colors which remind me of a calculator or Game Boy screen, though I guess the theme was more-so based on computer terminals. And, unlike what you see in big budget movies today, the characters and environments are not bathed in a color-graded overlay. The color scheme in MGS1 actually makes up the world around you, with characters and places existing within it, instead of it being a lazy and gaudy splash all over the place.

The choice of colors and textures might have been born out of limitation, but led to the creation of a completely unique environment. I remember that, during my first play-through, it all looked otherworldly, like fantasy despite being realistic than other more cartoonish games I had been playing at the time. I could feel the isolation that Solid Snake was feeling, sneaking around a cold and unfamiliar map.

Why does everyone seem to have your Codec frequency?

When huddled into the confined, minimal, green-and-black UI of the Codec screen, the colors present themselves the same way. Contact with HQ is disconnected, like it exists somewhere behind the scenes that you can never reach. Within the story, when you start to realize that HQ might be using Snake as a pawn as part of a massive government conspiracy, the Codec screen becomes a space even more confining than before, despite the fact that you start getting unauthorized calls and witness events that have an impact on the world outside.

A stealthy musical score, which doesn’t hide its synthetic quality, coupled with some organic sounds now and then, emphasizes all of this. And yeah, a lot has been said about the soundtrack in the past, but what really stands out in my memories is the few times when the score transitions into a sort of ambient BGM thing.

Now this might sound weird but, for me, the very first time Snake crawls into the air ducts, and the ambient sound of the ducts comes in, is a really memorable moment. What is that sound? Maybe it’s the ventilation system? In any case, that low rumble, with a rounded, rolling, industrial noise that phases through the left and right channels; it just grabs me and makes me really aware of the game’s world and where I am in it. It reminds me of ambient sounds in Silent Hill 1 and 2, where it’s hard to discern if the sounds are part of the score or a nearby machine. Right as you enter the “Comm. Tower”, there’s a similar moment, with synth sounds stinging in and out within a rumbling wind. Considering that the first time you hear it, it’s right before all hell breaks loose, having to fight your way through what seems like a hundred Genome soldiers (a.k.a spamming the stun grenade), it is a somewhat foreboding sound in retrospect. Once you enter the tower again, the sound makes you wary. Is something going to happen again? The suspense lingers around.

This guy found a way to read PlayStation Memory Cards with his mind! Sony executives hate him!

I’m not sure if Psycho Mantis’s mind control music counts as an ambient score, as it is both part of the score and music playing within the world of the game. It for sure sets up the tone for events to follow. I remember playing, as a child, dying multiple times during the boss fight and having to walk up that hall, having Meryl being forced to be a puppet and so on. It imprinted that music in my mind, which I suppose is the point, but at the time it was just unsettling. Psycho Mantis directly intimidating you, the player, through the fourth wall, didn’t help make it any less spooky.

Despite all these themes working against optimism, and the game taking place in a hostile and uninviting location, the game breaks in and out of the fourth wall like this all the time. Both for the sake of humor, and for the sake of communicating with the player.

I remember it was an odd experience for the game’s characters to take turns talking to Snake, and then to the player, interchangeably. It stayed with me, and though I wasn’t sure about all the silliness at first, as an adult I have come to appreciate the cheesy humor more than ever. It takes a wink and a nudge to the player to an unprecedented extreme for the time. This would be annoying usually, but what makes it work is that when the fourth wall is broken by a character, the other characters do not acknowledge it. In that moment, that particular character is talking to you, the player, reminding you that you are needed in order to progress the story. Instead of breaking immersion, this actually serves to be a very engaging way for the game to convey its theme of questioning reality.

The words coming out of the mouths of the characters breaking the fourth wall are not their own, but rather messages from the writers and developers of the game. It’s as if the characters are possessed by the creators for a minute in order to communicate with you; like ghosts, this is the only way for them to reach your physical world directly. In my mind, the game is a partial comedy because of this. It’s like you are an actor in a movie, playing Solid Snake, and all the inside jokes are things shared by the cast and crew. Unlike other experiences, this time, you’re in on the joke. The comedy exists within the game but it exists outside of the main narrative; it is almost never acknowledged within the context of the story. It seems to exist for you alone.

Staying on this tangent of humor, some lines sound like they belong in a cheap thriller novel, though I am not honestly sure if some of them were meant to be funny (at one point, after shooting Liquid’s chopper down, Snake walks looking away from the fiery explosion, and says, “See you in hell…Liquid. That takes care of the cremation”). The cast of baddies is a bit goofy to say the least. While their ideologies, and sometimes lack thereof, are interesting and at times provocative, something about imagining these dudes hanging around the water cooler is outright hilarious. However, it all blends into the pseudo-80′s espionage movie feel of the game.

Wisdom of the Sioux people [from Metal Gear Awesome 2].

While the members of FOXHOUND at times talk like inferior versions of Saturday morning cartoon villains, they remain mysterious and appear to have deep backstories that we are not meant to fully know; this only adds to the charm. It’s like paths intersecting, for damaged people fighting their internal demons externally. But, you know, some of them might be able to use physic powers to control the DualShock’s vibration and read your memory card, or be able to tell if you are using auto-fire during torture. Or freeze you with their crow head tattoo powers… in order to read your bloodline? I am still a bit unclear on that one.

Regardless, you don’t need to know anything about the characters aside from what you can assume from their dialogue, and you can always listen to optional Codec conversations if you are inclined to learn more. That beats forced exposition any day.

One of the many memorable moments from the original MGS1.

Looking back at all of this, it becomes very obvious why I dislike any attempts to remake MGS1 and its locations. Like most art, once something groundbreaking has been created by a certain individual, or a team of individuals, that specific idea is bookmarked in history. MGS1 is an example of something happening at just the right time, with just the right people, at that specific point in time.

We [at The Snake Soup] have, years ago, covered just why The Twin Snakes is an inferior remake that, frankly, does not even come close to conveying what made the original game unique. If it aimed to be a different take on the game, it was certainly a pointless endeavor.

Shadow Moses did not feel the same, again, when it was fan-service-ly revisited in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In the context of that game, sure, it was supposed to be different, but the environment felt more like a 3D graphic design student’s homework than the body of the actual place. It felt like a cruddy copy, not a true revisit. All it did for me was make me want to play MGS1 again, which I did in one of my many attempts to forget that MGS4 exists.

I consider MGS1 to hold a unique place in the history of art and video games. It’s not because it is a perfect game—far from it, actually—but it was one of the first games to actually use the medium to its fullest potential and invoke an actual atmosphere that truly made you feel like you entered another world. A very unique world, standing on its own, where I believe it stands to this very day.