This week’s episode of the Mobcast brings a magnifying glass to the survival-horror genre of games. Raychul Moore and Ethan Einhorn join the cast, forming a three-man cast with Dan Hsu due to the unfortunate Skype issues of Konami’s Tomm Hulett.
The most prominent topic discussed is Raychul’s – the do’s and don’ts of survival-horror games. Her list injects a bit of personal preference, evidenced by her praise for the Fatal Frame series and dismissal of more modern titles like Dead Space. Despite some potentially divisive suggestions, a majority of the tactics discussed could certainly do some good if some progressive developers came up to bat.
One of the more muted topics was Ethan’s, concerning the value of helplessness in survival-horror games. It’s a fairly daring choice in modern games, where empowerment is intensely desired, but Ethan brings up some good points that could even have some implications on gaming as a whole.
Bitmob’s Horror Week kicks off with an all-horror Mobcast. Dan Hsu is joined by Sega’s Ethan Einhorn, and horror-expert and gamer, Raychul Moore. The podcast got off to a terrifying start when technical difficulties/ghouls killed off Konami’s Tomm Hulett, but the surviving group bravely decided to stick together and honor their fallen podcaster.
Runtime – 50:51
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I’m sick to death of people patting themselves on the back about how they weren’t scared of Dead Space. Rachel bashes Dead Space for having jump scares as if they don’t count towards a games scary atmosphere. I’m a grown man and I played Dead Space in the dark by myself and I was constantly jumping out of my seat. Dead Space was an excellent game that deserve tons of recognition. I don’t think people who weren’t scared by it should trash talk it just because they’re such bad asses. I know I might sound like I’m giving Rachel a hard time, but its nothing personal, she seems like an intelligent person, this is just a pet peeve of mine.
I’m right with you, I just didn’t want to inject too much of my own opinion in my writeup. I thought that Dead Space had one of the best atmospheres of any recent game – hell, that’s the whole reason that their extension of their product line into other media wasn’t such an outlandish idea. The Ishimura was incredibly detailed and the whole contextual menu system seemed to be the epitome of their stylistic push.
I thought Dead Space had terrific atmosphere, but it never really did much to it. The beginning, where you watch the dude get sealed in that room, and they tell you to run… that was awesome. I ran my ass off. But later in the game, it was just a lot of creepy noises (the woman singing), dudes scampering across the screen, and not much else. I eventually learned that there wasn’t much to be scared of, and went about my business killing guys while trying not to waste ammo.
Thanks for taking time to stop by and comment Aaron. I need to get back to Dead Space. I am in the 8th or 9th section and haven’t picked it up in 6 months or more.
I never hit that point where it wasn’t scary anymore, but if I had, I probably would have finished it long ago. Scary games aren’t exactly the first thing I grab when I want to sit down and relax with a game.