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Alone in the Dark

 
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table_and_chair
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Joined: 15 Jun 2007
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Location: mississippi

PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:03 am    Post subject: Alone in the Dark Reply with quote

Hey, I've been reading about Eric Chahi and Frederic Raynal and just sort of re-connecting with this stuff. I've also been playing the original Silent Hill for the first time. It continually occurs to me that Silent Hill is more like the original Alone in the Dark than Resident Evil ever was/probably will be. So i`m thinking there are two sort of sub-genres here within the survival horror framework.

Also, I am noticing, since these are some of the first steps for 3d avatars, a sort of similarity between this and maybe the original Prince of Persia? I am thinking that the tank-like, somewhat unwieldy control scheme of Silent Hill masks an attempt at a perhaps subtle realistic movement of the character itself, like Prince of Persia whose movement looks very convincing but actually controls a bit strangely.

Anyway, with that in mind, in the top of my mouth I have been tonguing the idea that Silent Hill vaguely reminds me of Fade to Black by Paul Cuisset, and I am wondering if that game, through time and influence, has become any sort of third descendent in this lineage.


They look similar, the somewhat wonky controls, the almost adventure game focus on exploration over violence (but violence is there).

At the time, the comparison for fade to black was a poor man's tomb raider, and in that it did fail miserably, but what about in this context. I am curious.

Aside from Silent Hill 2, any other iterations come to mind?

Siren?
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Last edited by table_and_chair on Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:22 am; edited 3 times in total
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Six
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Joined: 15 Jul 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I never noticed how much Harry looks like Conrad! From behind, anyway. Definitely potential awkward material if you see one of them in the street and call him by the other guy's name or anything.
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Ethoscapade
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

oh my god shaq fu does look like out of this world!
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:22 am    Post subject: Re: Alone in the Dark Reply with quote

Man, I haven't played Alone in the Dark in years. I remember when I first got a copy of it and had to run the game at a friends house because my computer couldn't handle it. We played through huge chunks of it at a time and finished it in a couple days. It wasn't "scary" but it was awesome at the time. I never liked any of the sequels I played for it unfortunately.
table_and_chair wrote:
Aside from Silent Hill 2, any other iterations come to mind?

Are you referring to the exploration over combat perspective? If so then Silent Hill 4 is great at that.

Siren is kind of a toss up. It's not very combat based, but ... like, you die a lot. It's messed up is what it is.

From a pure exploration standpoint, Rule of Rose might be something that falls into this category.
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table_and_chair
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

exploration/mood atmosphere > violence. I just realized Ico being a quasi-descendent of Prince of Persia fits this Silent Hill thing, minus the inventory/health management. The shadow-things you fight are mostly a deterrent. anyway, i've been meaning to check out Rule. i`ll do that.

but yeah, the part in Silent Hill 2 at the beginning where you can just walk for awhile until you come to this gazebo and nothing attacks you or anything, but its definitely a bit scary; that will probably never happen in Biohazard, which is clearly more of an action game. I`m thinking there are obvious other examples, like fatal frame -i just don't care for those. At least not the first one or two.

And about Alone in the Dark: I tricked my church going parents into buying it and played obsessively for a couple nights until i became convinced the box was possessed and threw it away. : )

edit:: the first Onimusha.
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sharc
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i dunno about rule of rose. it gets a good atmosphere going at times, but the fights that you do encounter were awful and frequent enough to ruin the rest of the game for me. the enemies were just unfair to deal with, and the game liked to corral you in enclosed spaces and force you to fight your way out. that and, y'know, pretty much none of the bad guys were even a little scary.

along the lines of more explorin' than fightin': have you considered the echo night games? i don't know anything about the ps2 game, but had a good time watching the ps1 game when a friend played through most of it. there's not any combat, from what i saw; when a "monster" shows up you run like hell or die. your concerns are solving mysteries, and if you stand your ground without some kind of defense the enemies will eat you alive.
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table_and_chair
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried Echo Night for ps2 and it seemed pretty boring. The name keeps coming up though, i`ll look into the original while i`m on this psone kick.

To sum up:


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