I don't want to play anymore...
Updated Mon, Nov 10, 2008 by Coyote
Silent Hill V: Homecoming is out, and I don't want to play it. Thus, the double edged sword of the horror game genre. These games are usually the most involved, the most imaginative, and have the best story lines...
...but they're also the most likely to get into your head.
It doesn't matter that I'm 34 years old. It doesn't matter that in those 34 years I have never seen ANYTHING even remotely monster-related that couldn't be quickly and easily explained as something logical. It doesn't matter that I know for a fact as an adult that my closet door is not a portal to a demonic realm full of living nightmares that just wait for me to improperly close it as I go to bed.
Games like this scare the hell out of me, and Silent Hill: Homecoming looks like it would enjoy doing it.
That doesn't look like a happy kid, and I think that they might be misleading us by using the term "Homecoming". When you think of "Homecoming" what comes to mind?
Dances and Little House on the Prairie, right?
Dancing is fun and festive even if you don't get to actually dance with a member of the opposite sex because you're going through your "geeky and gangly" phase and spend the entire festival cracking jokes about those who DO dance in order to hide your pain.
The Home Coming episode of Little House had a girl in pig tails and a field full of brightly colored flowers that stood out in stark contrast to the dress that she wore. The dress that her mother painstakingly made by hand using what appears to be several potato sacks and thread made from "catgut" when "catgut" wasn't just a clever name, but really guts from a cat.
Neither of these things scare you (Unless you have to touch the dress), neither of them bring up really bad and painful memories of a time in your life where you were shunned and cried yourself to sleep nightly, (Thank you modern sedatives!) and neither of these things truly get in your head. We're talking full body blanket cocoon complete with little air hole for breathing, in your head. Chair in front of the closet door with BELLS on it so that when your new kitten sneaks into your room in the middle of the night you pee a little bit, in your head.
But Silent Hill: Homecoming does.
And I had hoped to avoid it.
I'm not a huge console gamer, and games like this don't make it very easily to the Wii. The Wii is fun and light and stupid entertainment, so its inherent goodness keeps the demons at bay. I thought I was safe from all the effed up creepiness that Silent Hill has to offer.
I was wrong.
It's being released on PC. Which means not only will I have to buy it, I'll have to play it. And then it's back to...
You see, Silent Hill isn't full of zombies or werewolves or demonic dogs. It doesn't rely on fast-pace game play and endless hordes of enemies that you can grow numb to, or run past in hopes of finding a quick save point. Silent Hill gets in your HEAD.
Little kid monster things with their eyes and mouths stitched shut, ghostly figures crawling towards you and doing that "jerky-out-of-sync" motion that lets you know that bullets might not do squat, and countless other perversions of the normal world that subtly tell you that not only are you being drawn into the game...
...but all of this stuff is probably real.
And it's probably in your room.
Waiting.
These games do more than offer you an escape or entertainment - they suck you in. They transport you from your world to theirs and they affect your brain in ways that you actually consider for a moment that something might really be there. And as much as I love them, I hate them because my heart pounds, I get nervous, and depending on how dark I suddenly notice it is, I have to stop playing. But by far the worst thing about this genre is:
The other gamers.
People who roll their eyes, shake their heads, and call me names like "Weinerboy" whenever I point out that the horror genre occasionally gets it REALLY right. They listen to me explain the game, wave a dismissing hand and then tell me that they've played all of the games I've mentioned, and never once had their pulse rate even quicken. They find the games boring, the attempts at "scaring them" lame, and the Horror Genre does absolutely nothing for them because they are just too blasé.
I have a word for these people, and that word is "Big FAT F***ING LIAR".
I fully realize that not everyone is the dorkus that I am, but there is no way that you've played through the best of the best without so much as a droplet of pee sneaking out of your bladder. From zombie dogs in the hall ways of Resident Evil, to the creepy and perverted (in the bad way) nurses of Silent Hill...
...there is NO way that you are such a tough guy (or girl) that these games don't mess with you at least a tad. And if you say otherwise, then I have a single question for you there Braveheart...
...can...can I sleep over? With like the lights on?
Please?
-Coyote
((Monday Pimpings!! The new Avast Ye is up and running and ready for your viewing pleasure. Also - please note: I never ever mention other people's birthdays no matter how much these people need their birthday mentioned. Birthdays are private things and people react differently to the day of their birth, so I tread lightly.
Unless someone requests that I mention your birthday, then like Sandor, who is celebrating his birthday today, I STILL SAY NO. I won't point out birthdays - I'm sorry, I just won't do it on today, Sandor's birthday. No matter how much you ask. I have standards. -Coyote))
**UPDATE** The Fire Poker (Eh? EH?) is up to 1500 views, 17 comments (THANK you guys!) and 26 ratings - and one star for not singing asshats aside, I'm still holding a 4.5. If I'm even considered as a contender I'll celebrate by doing something extremely stupid and embarassing for you all to see that I'll regret at a later date. -Coyote
-
Zone Info, GuidesMon, Feb 13, 2012Halfshell
-
Basics, GuidesMon, Feb 13, 2012Ethec
-
Basics, FAQ, Misc Guides, GuidesSun, Feb 12, 2012Space Junkie
-
Features, OpinionsSun, Feb 12, 2012Saia
-
FeaturesMon, Feb 13, 2012Mem
-
Features, OpinionsMon, Feb 13, 2012Messiah
-
Basics, Class Info, Item Guides, Misc Guides, Zone Info, GuidesFri, Feb 10, 2012Space Junkie
-
Features, OpinionsFri, Feb 10, 2012Saia
-
NewsFri, Feb 10, 2012Martuk
-
NewsFri, Feb 10, 2012Martuk
I have that same love/hate relationship with horror games. And what's really wierd is that I HATE horror movies and won't watch them, but I gather up the Silent Hills, the Resident Evils, etc and play them repeatedly. And yeah, they can get into your head. Especially when you're home alone and playing them in the middle of a bright sunny day and then you suddenly notice that night has fallen and you have to keep playing at least until you get to the next save point even though it's now dark and you're still-open curtains are showing strange shadows outside that could be the undead...
On an unrelated note, it's a shame you decided not to mention Sandor's birthday because if you had then I could have known to say "Happy Birthday" to Sandor. Oh, well...
You can sleep over Coyote . . . just bring the nurses
Happy Birthday Sandor.
**UPDATE** The Fire Poker (Eh? EH?) is up to 1500 views, 17 comments (THANK you guys!) and 26 ratings - and one star for not singing asshats aside, I'm still holding a 4.5. If I'm even considered as a contender I'll celebrate by doing something extremely stupid and embarassing for you all to see that I'll regret at a later date. -Coyote
Bithy! You cheatin on me??? ;)
Yea It's a shame....would have liked to say Happy Birthday to Sandor.
Happy B-Day Sandor!
Happy Birthday!
Im with you on this Coy. Even now just thinking about what Doom did to me makes me go cold. I'd go to bed and dream about imps throwing fireballs at me, Id hear the dog noises in my head, Id see the bottom of street lamps and think they looked like rocket packs and fight the urge to drive over them to pick them up. When I played I played in the dark, and Id be tense with a cold sweat on my top lip.
After a month, and when Id completed it, I realised there was something wrong and never went back to that evil game!
Of course my eldest daughter played it when she was like 13 and thought it was funny. No monsters of course just running around. But the noises were still there.
*shiver*
System Shock and System Shock 2 were the ones to make me almost wet myself. I'd love to see a System Shock 3 come out.
Mad:
I got over being scared by DOOM when I modded it with The Simpson's and Three Stooges .wav files :D
System Shock 2 was AMAZING. But that gave way for Fallout and Bioshock as well..
Bioshock was worth the game play - friggin' horribly creepy, and Fallout 3 hits the shelves this months...
But System Shock 2? We are the one....we are the many.....
THAT game made me sleep with the lights on for a month
I think the worst mod I ever used was the torchlight in Doom3. The game went from being a little bit sinister to OMFG Did something just scuttle through my stupid X Files style thin beamed torchlig.....AARRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
Oh a side note, for you yanks, if you can get to see a new BBC series called Merlin, do it. Awesome.
Thank you Coy, until I read this, i never viewed any of my "horror" games from this perspective. Now however, I cant help but feel that things wont be the same
Im just a little scared that you know so much about Little House on the Prairie.
Pope if he was like me he was tortured by Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons by a sadistic baby-sitter *shudder*
Now had it been Little Wh*re House on the Prairie I probably wouldn't have watched it at age 7 . . . girls were icky then
Those of us who grew up with antenna tv only were stuck with this PBS crap.
*punches Laura Ingalls in the face
Happy Birthday, Sandor!
Happy birthday Sandor!
And Coy... I'd leave you a comment on your fire poker thinger, but I can't sign up for a youtube account... It's against my religion * nod *
I'll just settle for making sure that as many people at work see it as humanly possible, so that the next time you're out here for a visit, everyone comments on it to you ;)
I found the Zombie-filled town in Half-Life 2 incredibly creepy... so much so that, after playing late one night, I remembered I had to go and bring some stuff in from the garden, and nearly crowbarred the cat to death when it emerged from a bush next to me.
Happy birthday Sandor. Hope it's a good one.
Now I'm going to have to put all the lights in the house on as I'm having Silent Hill flashbacks.
I didn't wanna sign up for YouTube myself, but ya know...
The ELE?
I can push aside my values.
*nods sagely*
"People who roll their eyes, shake their heads, and call me names like “Weinerboy†whenever I point out that the horror genre occasionally gets it REALLY right. They listen to me explain the game, wave a dismissing hand and then tell me that they’ve played all of the games I’ve mentioned, and never once had their pulse rate even quicken. They find the games boring, the attempts at “scaring them†lame, and the Horror Genre does absolutely nothing for them because they are just too blasé."
This is me. Blasé is actually the perfect word - "Uninterested because of frequent exposure or indulgence". I grew up watching horror flicks (I mean "grew up" literally - I was watching old black and white b-movies in the crib, and my parents made me watch Halloween by the time I was about 6 or 7) and listening to Alice Cooper records - and I was DRAWING the stuff that hides in the corners of Silent Hills and Resident Evils before I was out of grade school.
It's not a tough guy thing at all - like yourself, I'm a member of the "will not sleep with a foot hanging over the edge of the bed" club - but movies and video games just don't get inside my head. That's not to say I don't enjoy them - I LOVE horror - but I laugh at it and draw artistic inspiration from it - it just doesn't scare me. Well-written books can get to me - but visual media can't scare me like I can scare myself in my head.
After the Fire Poker's .... er.... incident..... do you suppose it's back to "Is that red? Blue? What color IS that?!!?"
The awful part of when he scares himself with this stuff, is that I have to suffer as well. Plus, it's just fun to torment him more. Leaving the closet door open an eight of an inch, putting my feet over the edge of the bed. And, just when he's dozing off, whispering something next to his ear.
Yes, I'm evil.
That's why we love you Mrs. C ;)
I remember my first exposure to doom, it was when I was 7 and playing my brothers copy of doom 95 , and yes those imps did scar me for a few especially in the garage. So dark and cold. * shivers*