OOC Chit-Chat

[Seon]

Song that Jack is singing.

[Kadael]

I wrote a letter in German to Maria. I expressed my displeasure towards Stuttgart and asked where, exactly, she was in Silent Hill. Then I drove my car into a lake.

It was extremely silly.

[Garrett]

I beat the crap out of a priest, saved a little girl, scared the shit out of an older girl, chipped a tooth and discovered my long lost sister was alive.

Holy crap baskets.

[WilliamLandressy]

Hey guys and gals, pleased to make your aquaintance.

Now my character is sorted and posted I'll be joining you on this plesent stroll through sunny Silent Hill.
I'm not nearlly as experianced in Play-by-Post as you guys (has been many years since I used to play DnD on sites like this) so please be gentle.
Glad to be able to join this group on it's (mis)adventures.

[Mr. Handy]

Welcome, William!



"I wouldn't mind paying a visit to 1940s Silent Hill."

[WilliamLandressy]

"She had legs that just wont quit, and another pair where her arms should be..."

[Laraqua]

hehe ... I like it. I like it a lot.

[WilliamLandressy]

The funny thing is, when I first got attck by those leg monsters in Silent Hill 2 I freaked out like it was going out of style.
I will find my man pride and dare to play/complete that game some when.

[Mr. Handy]

"She had legs that just wont quit, and another pair where her arms should be..."

That's a good one!

The funny thing is, when I first got attck by those leg monsters in Silent Hill 2 I freaked out like it was going out of style.
I will find my man pride and dare to play/complete that game some when.

I've completed Silent Hill 2, but it's been years. I've been wanting to replay it (and go through the entire series). I played the first game for the first time last year, but I've been busy playing other things since then and won't have room for it in my playlist for a long time.

[WilliamLandressy]

Isn't that always the way with games. Skyrim is my current time vampire, though I have a feeling that when I get X-COM Enemy Unknown I'll have a new one.

[Mr. Handy]

I know. Back in the 1990s I had plenty of time to play games but couldn't afford a whole lot of them. Now that I'm working full time I can afford all the games I want, but I hardly have time to play them. The only Elder Scrolls game I've ever played is the first one, Arena. I never finished it (if there even is a way to finish it, considering what a huge open world it has); I got so lost in the vastness of the world that I just stopped playing and never picked it up again. I have all of the main series of Elder Scrolls games except for Skyrim, but I've never played the others. I have all of the original X-COM games and have played all of them, but the only one I ever completed was the first game. I haven't bought the new X-COM yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm waiting for the price to come down to something reasonable.

I only tend to buy games after they've been out for a while and their prices have dropped. After all, it'll be forever before I get to play them anyway. Lately I've bought a lot of games on GOG during promotional sales and a bunch on Steam, where I wait for games I want to go on sale for 75% (or more) off before buying them. On Sunday I just finished playing through the Tex Murphy series. The only one I'd played before was Under a Killing Moon, but that had been so long ago it was like playing it again for the first time. Now I'm playing through the Broken Sword series of adventure games. I've played the first three games, but not the fourth. The bundle I got on GOG as a reward for backing the new game on Kickstarter also includes the Director's Cut of the first game and the remastered version of the second, which I've never tried before. After that I really want to replay the Quest for Glory and Ultima series. It's been ages since I've played those. I'm sure I'll put those on pause when some of the games I've backed on Kickstarter are released next year (especially the new Broken Sword and Tex Murphy games).

[WilliamLandressy]

It's the old triangle of age.
When your young you have time and energy but no money, when your an adult you have money and energy but no time, when your retired you have money and time but no energy. Though I think saying adults have money is a bit false, most of it's spent before you get it in my experiance. :p

I've got a question for everyone. How do you like to experiance your horror and why?
When I say 'how' I really mean what media do you like your horror served on. Literature, films and video games being the big three but smaller sub-sections of media are cool to keep in mind too (TV series instead of films, roleplaying instead of video games, poems instead of prose are just some examples).
Just thought it'd be cool to see what the consensus is on this.

[Laraqua]

Videogames, definitely. The nerves that the atmosphere generates can create adrenaline which fits into the mood which gets ramped up in the odd combat. It's a difficult alchemy but when it works it REALLY works. Also, while they're still a bit samey they have a bigger bag of tricks than movies because it's how they do things and when as much as what they do.

Horror works best in the novella form but that's the hardest to get published in. Short stories get to the quick so fast it can be hard to differentiate between them, in my view, and novels generally feel padded - especially if it's the chill version.

Movies can be cool but a single successful one spawns so many different ones.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

[Mr. Handy]

I don't really have the energy either. It takes me longer to do most things than normal people, and I usually only get to play for half an hour or so at a time (if that). I've bought quite a collection of games in the past twenty years (nearer to thirty if you count the games for my Apple IIc), and I don't think I'll ever have time to play all of them through to completion. I literally have hundreds of games that I've never even started playing yet, but I only buy them cheap unless it's something that goes right to the top of my playlist.

I prefer my horror interactive. I don't want to shout "Don't go in the basement!" at my TV only to have the hapless fool ignore me and go down there anyway to meet a horrible fate. I want to be the hapless fool and go down in the basement in spite of my common sense screaming at me not to do it. Or, you know, not. But either way, it's my decision. Video games are great because they can be very immersive and atmospheric, but there's a limit to what a computer can do. If the program doesn't account for my choice of action, I can't do it. Roleplaying games are wonderful because there's a human running the show who can respond intelligently when I do something completely unexpected instead of giving a stock "nothing happens" response, and who can alter the opposition's plans on the fly in reaction to my meddling rather than having a program or gamebook rely on prescripted outcomes. You have to use your imagination in a roleplaying game in order to visualize what's going on, unlike in a computer game, but I have a vivid and strong imagination.

[WilliamLandressy]

I have to agree with both of you on the interective and video game front, nothing works me up like having the key to progress the game being in the room with the flickering lights that I haven't explored yet. Though films and literature may be similar as they force you to watch as character A searches the room, having to make the choice yourself (no matter how inevitable) is always scarier. As they say, it's scarier when it's happening to YOU! :p Saying that, films and books (and music TBH) have there place in the horror spectrum. I still re-re-re-re-re-read HPL's works constantly and it still has me looking over my shoulder on dark and eerie nights.

As we seem to all prefer video games let me ask one more question if you will.
What is your favourite horror game? If you can't bare to put just one on a pedestal then perhaps describe your biggest scare in a video game.

[Laraqua]

Ooh, so many:

Silent Hill 1 really rammed home the tragedy of horror. Nurse Lisa, anyone?

Amnesia. The vulnerability. It was scary until I learned how to predict it.

Dead Space (original). I'm only playing it now and I started playing with a keyboard and a mouse which is a bit clunky. As I don't normally play action games on PC, the unfamiliarity with the keyboard ramps up my sense of vulnerability. I expect this will fade after I die the first couple times.

Project Zero Series (aka Fatal Frame). For the all round experience, especially the 2nd one, these games really have an exquisite background of horror that is, pardon the pun, quite haunting. The plots, hints, and other bits and pieces are things that I think about again and again. I think what makes it the worst is that it turns the usual Call of Cthulhu scenario on its head. What if stopping the sacrifice *causes* the horror? What if our ideals and common standards of good is misplaced? If you had to murder one person or let a hundred get caught in an agonised ghostly experience, what would you do? Stain your hands with the action or inaction? That's what stuck with me. I mean, *that* is scary.

I really wish Call of Cthulhu published scenarios were brave enough to play with this as the straightforward dualistic morality of normal vs. abnormal (if not good vs. insanely evil) minimises some of the horror as you know what's good and what's bad - even if the good is essentially meaningless. Cults are bad, mmkay? But why? Why couldn't the cultists be in the right this time?

Of course, it is a harsh sucker punch to throw if you have the investigators be the ones who screw it all up, but having them come along to pick up the pieces and see the issues of do goodery could be interesting.

[WilliamLandressy]

Having played both Dead Space one and two, and enjoyed both, I found they startled more than terrify. I liked them a lot, especialy the second one, but when I was armed with my favourite upgraded weapons and I'd put countless necromorph ghoullies under my firm space boot the atmosphere was lightend. I still like them as games, just not in the same way that I like other horror games.

Que Project Zero 2. That game blew my god damn mind when I was a teenager! So much so that I've barely been able to cobble together the courage to play it to completion (though losing my copy goes some way to preventing that). The blind ghost woman was the worst, hearing her wail from somewhere "MY EYES!" before appearing infront/behind you and knowing that if you didnt move so very slowly and carefully you'd be f****d.
Listening to the stones on the spirit radio didn't ease the tension either, that game strings your nerves tighter than suspension cable.
Many games have scared me (Doom 3, Alan Wake, Resident Evil 1) and those games have immersed me, but none of them made me feel like a little girl trapped in a lost ghost infested Japanese town with nothing but a magic camera.

My girlfriend asked me why I don't like ghosts once........that game had a lot to do with it.....

[Laraqua]

Did you get to the falling ghost who fell down the stairwell?

[WilliamLandressy]

Nope, thank god. If I remember correctly I was

Here,Where your twin sister is behind latice wall and is obviously possesed

.
Really need to see how much a copy is for PS2 on amazon.

Oh and thanks for the coffin by the way. Of all the items I've been given to progress in a game a suddenly appearing coffin is the creepiest.

[Mr. Handy]

The Silent Hill games are my favorite. The second game is probably the best, but my memories of it are very vague. I only played the first one for the first time last year, and I was struck by how much Lisa is like Sarah Carpenter, one of my characters in Ash.

I've played Fatal Frame 1 on my PS3, and I have the other two (bought them used), but I haven't had time to play them yet. I have both Dead Space games but haven't had time to play them either. I also have all of the Resident Evil games except 6, but I've only played the first three so far.