Shocktoberfest: Enter The Nightmare -- A Month-Long Journey Through The Horror Game Genre

When does this start?

Shocktoberfest begins on October 1st, and will last the entire month of October, ending at 11:59 PM on Halloween night.

What should I play?

Anything that falls under the classification of a horror game. Survival horror, action horror, a horror-themed FPS, anything with zombies, etc. In the interest of having fun, this can be more of a loose definition of what defines a horror game, and constitute anything that is more-or-less "horror themed". So games like Gears of War or even Luigi's Mansion are fine.

For me, it's very much the same outlook as Backlaugust -- I've got horror games in my backlog, and it's time to play them. How many games you want to play is up to you, whether that's just one game or a few games. Any platform, doesn't matter. They can be new games, old games. Even horror games you've already beaten long ago and want to replay. You don't have to choose all of your games up front; you can if you want, but it's fine to just take it one-game-at-a-time.

Who should participate?

If you:

a. Enjoy horror games
and/or
b. Have at least one horror game in your backlog
and/or
c. Plan on buying a new horror game (such as, I don't know, ZOMBIU!!!!!!!!)

you should do this.

The purpose of this is a little less about seeing how many games we can beat, but for everyone to share in the experience of playing something scary. A good horror game can be a tough thing to get all of the way through to the end, but with some moral support from the rest of the community that's going through the same thing, maybe we can all make it back into the light by November! That's what it comes down to -- having fun, and being scared shitless. And being scared shitless is a lot more fun when being scared shitless as a group.

One last thing -- for your fellow NW-er who hasn't played every game, try using spoiler tags whenever possible for anything major that's story-related, or just in general anything that should not be spoiled. So, "I can't believe Leon died at the end!" instead of "I can't believe Leon died at the end!"


Completed (18)



Kentucky Route Zero, Act 1 (Secret_Tunnel, 10/6)
The House of the Dead: Overkill (GameDadGrant, 10/7)
Dead Space (PogueSquadron, 10/11)
Kentucky Route Zero, Act 2 (Secret_Tunnel, 10/14)
Fatal Frame (TheBigG753, 10/17)
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (PogueSquadron, 10/20)
Dead Rising 2 (Zero, 10/20)
Dead Space Extraction (Mop It Up, 10/21)
Super Castlevania IV (Het_Nkik, 10/23)
Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir (GameDadGrant, 10/24)
Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Het_Nkik, 10/26)
ObsCure II (r_hjort, 10/26)
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (Jargon, 10/26)
Resident Evil: Revelations (ludist210, 10/28)
ZombiU (Mr_Mustache, 10/29)
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (TheBigG753, 10/31)
Project Zero 2: Wii Edition (r_hjort, 10/31)
Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen/Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (Het_Nkik, 10/31)


LEFT 4 DEAD (10)

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Secret_Tunnel, in progress)
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (GameDadGrant, *has thrown in the towel*)
Dead Space: Extraction (chrisguy, through 5 levels)
Doom II (Pokefreak911, 12 levels in)
Resident Evil Zero (gojira, at the Training Facility)
TellTale's The Walking Dead (Zero, finished Episode 3)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Pokefreak911, through Stone Tower)
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (Zero, finished first run)
ZombiU (gojira, Tower of London)
ZombiU (r_hjort, whack-a-zombie)


The Players (20)

chrisguy: Dead Space: Extraction
deathly_hallows: Cult County, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil: Deadly Silence
DrFinkelstein: ZombiU
GameDadGrant: Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir, The House of the Dead: Overkill, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
gojira: ZombiU, Resident Evil Zero
Hero_of_Hyrule: Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
Het_Nkik: Super Castlevania IV, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen
Jargon: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Dead Space, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
kriswright: ZombiU
ludist210: Resident Evil: Revelations
Mop It Up: Dead Space Extraction
Mr_Mustache: ZombiU, Castlevania
PogueSquadron: Dead Space, Castlevania 3
Pokefreak911: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Doom II
r_hjort: Obscure 2, Project Zero 2: Wii Edition, ZombiU
Secret_Tunnel: Dead Space 3, Kentucky Route Zero, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare.
Shadowlink: ZombiU
Stephen: Alan Wake
TheBigG753: Fatal Frame, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, Fatal Frame III: The Tormented
Zero: Dead Rising 2, Castlevania (III or Adventure Rebirth), Virtue's Last Reward, The Walking Dead


LAST YEAR'S THREAD

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@DrFinkelstein

I plan on getting some in on Friday. Not sure where I left off.

Well, after my Oracle of Ages debacle I decided that, despite the fact that I really only need to redo the end of dungeon 6 to the middle? of dungeon 7... I don't really feel like sitting around replaying stuff I have already played right now. Thus I needed another handheld game to get into. Thus I decided to finally start playing Virtue's Last Reward, which I guess sort of counts as a creepy Halloweenish game.

@Mr_Mustache

If you hold down the L button (non-trigger) to use your in game Wii U pad. You hold it up like you're actually looking through it in real life. Then you move the gamepad around and you'll see things you can scan. That's how you hack those camera boxes. But you can also search to see if there's loot in stuff. And as said before, you can tag zombies.

Then when you're playing the game normally the zombie will have an arrow above it.

I took a break from ZombiU and switched over to my other Shocktober game, Resident Evil Zero. I knew I didn't play much of the game when I first got it when it came out, but I think I only played about 20 mins or so. Because that's all that was familiar to me playing it this time. I know the story from reading the book and the Chronicles game on Wii, but the actual game is pretty much all new to me.

The single player coop aspect is pretty interesting. I must have skipped over the part where it tells you how to get the AI to follow you because I was walking through the train twice until I got to a part where it wouldn't let me progress until I figured out that function. That would've saved me a bit of time. And the whole item swapping and dropping aspect seems to work pretty well.

I just got off of the train and am now about to explore a mansion.

It's dark, the lights are out, and I think I'm gonna start Fatal Frame tonight because I'm about all GTA'd out for the time being. I'm going in blind with pretty much no expectations, hopefully it's a series I can really get into.

@gojira

I really, really don't like RE0, but I hope you get some enjoyment out of it for your sake. It's been almost 10 years now since I last played it, and if I never play it again it'll be too soon.

@TheBigG753

It's maybe a bit bland and past its' prime, but I don't really see anything bad about it. Unless you just don't like the old style of Resident Evil games.

I don't hate Resident Evil 0, but it is definitely my least favorite of the older games, and that isn't just nostalgia speaking because I played them in this order: Remake, 0, 2, CV, 3.

My main issue with it is that it focused too much on the large animals and such, which just weren't very scary to me. A giant frog? Ok. Plus it felt kind of too straightforward, I didn't know it at the time of course, but looking back on it it feels like a step backwards from CV.

Switching between two characters was kind of neat, I suppose.

@Zero

I definitely understand it being the least good. They kind of put themselves in a corner story wise by making it take place just a bit before the first game. It can't really shake anything up. And at the end you know Rebecca is going to go to the mansion. Rebecca herself is a fairly popular character, but not a very strong one. And Billy just seems bland.

So, I played a couple of hours of Fatal Frame tonight and I wish I didn't have to go to bed. I haven't played a "classic" survival horror game in a while, as far as those from the GCN/PS2-era and earlier, and so far its just what the doctor ordered. To say it's inspired by Resident Evil is a big understatement, as it could very easily be described as RE with ghosts instead of zombies, and a camera instead of guns. You've got a creepy mansion, fixed camera angles, blinky items lying around, "herbal medicine", safe rooms, the camera equivalent of typewriters, journal entries lying around, door loading animations -- right down to having almost the same menu fonts that the PS1-era RE games had. It's very much of the same ilk, to put it mildly. Which is a good thing because I miss playing this type of game.

It's definitely a creepy game, and it's refreshing to have that feeling of tension when walking around the next corner, or going into the next room. I'm fumbling a bit with the controls; there are certain button functions that I would have preferred to be swapped with other buttons, and my tendency to think "Oh, this button should be to run" or "This button should open the menu" leads me to press the wrong button more than I'd like, but I'll get used to it. But yeah, some really freaky stuff going on. Really wanted to keep playing tonight because I'm really digging the mood, but I suppose I have to go to work tomorrow. Can't wait to play some more after the weekend.

@gojira

Oh, I love old school RE, much prefer it to the RE4-style. RE0 just got really tedious to me, though, with all of the partner zapping-related inventory management. At a certain point, it just got ridiculous as to how annoying just giving your partner an item to use could be. Getting rid of the item boxes really hurt too. And as @Zero said, a lot of the content in the game was really lackluster, the enemies chief among those. It was just one of those games where I was putting up with gameplay that felt too much like a chore, to experience content that I couldn't get very interested in. It's not surprising to me that Capcom was obsessed with turning the series on its head after this game in particular.

But again, don't let my complaining stop you from enjoying the game. Plenty of people really liked the game, it even had its own official "Defense Force" on the IGN boards for a time.

@gojira I actually kind of liked Billy, although he was very cliche. The criminal who is stuck with the cop in a tough situation, but actually turns out to be a pretty good guy. Haven't seen that a billion times before.

@TheBigG753 I may have to try Fatal Frame out. Kind of seriously worried that I wouldn't sleep well after playing it though. I'm like 100x more creeped out by ghosts than zombies. Especially alone at night in my house. I feel like... locking my door would stop a zombie, but how the F do you stop a ghost!?

@Zero
That's one of the big reasons why Project Zero 2: Wii Edition is one of the scariest games I've ever played.

Ghosts could be, in my opinion, the creepiest "monster" to have in a game because of their non-physical nature. You can't kill what doesn't live, and all that. I've always been a zombie fiction kind of guy when it comes to movies, and think those scenarios can be creepier than anything, but the actual zombies shouldn't be the scariest aspect of good zombie fiction, as far as I'm concerned. I think they should be a means of conveying the horrors within human nature and modern society, like in George Romero's movies, rather than just some shambling corpses that want to bite you. Few games seem to be interested in that sort of thing, though.

Another creepy thing about the ghosts is that they, unlike other monsters, aren't necessarily driven by aggression or primal instinct like so many other monsters are. One of the scariest moments of Project Zero 2 is fighting a ghost that is just as terrified of you as you are of it. Their voice is on the verge of cracking up and they plead for someone to help them as you track them with your camera. It's as if you force them to relive all the terror and anguish they felt in the moments leading up to their death. It's disturbing but also almost beautiful.

Holy crap I need more Fatal Frame/Project Zero on my Nintendo systems.

Zero said:

I feel like... locking my door would stop a zombie, but how the F do you stop a ghost!?

Proton pack.

@Zero

Definitely, supernatural horror has always felt a lot scarier to me than something more grounded in reality (as grounded in reality as zombies can be, that is!). Slept like a baby last night, though, thankfully.

r_hjort said:

Holy crap I need more Fatal Frame/Project Zero on my Nintendo systems.

I would settle for any.

Finished an AWESOME part of Dead Space and then my game crashes. The PC version is incredibly buggy, ugh.

@TheBigG753
Yeah, I must say I've felt spoiled by NOE during the Wii/DS years. It's ridiculous that a game of Project Zero 2's caliber didn't get a worldwide release on such a successful platform. But I have to believe that Nintendo invested in the franchise for a reason, and that the both of us will get more ghostly paparazzo affairs in the future.

@r_hjort

I'd love to see 2 and 4 get eShop releases down the road, or something. I'm really surprised as well that Nintendo made such a push for this series and then hasn't really done much with it.

@TheBigG753
I'd love to see the details of this co-ownership of the franchise that was talked about, 'cause if it concerns the franchise as a whole there should be something more in the pipeline considering the news stories about the IP came just before the Wii remake's release. Then again, Nintendo works in mysterious ways.

Finished Dead Space (PC) and it only took me a year! Huzzah!

I liked it a lot, but the PC version was incredibly buggy. The game froze on my numerous times, and my PC was actually TOO powerful for it, sending my fans into a tizzy constantly. I would've turned VSync on to cap the framerate, but DS has a ton of issues when enabling VSync (fps locked to 30, super delayed controls).

I liked the story a lot, but upon beating the game I was confused. I had to look online to see what actually happened, because I was a little confused about who certain people were, and what exactly I was trying to accomplish. Maybe I didn't have the audio cranked up enough, but I didn't really have a grasp on what the Marker was and how it affected the Hive Mind and the Necromorphs. Either I wish the game was more articulate with this, or I wish I had paid better attention.

@PogueSquadron

Even at the end of Dead Space 3 I don't know if I understood the Marker and all that.

I like Dead Rising 2 a lot but I feel like it has the same fundamental issue that the first game had for me... it creates this really big, open zombie killing playground with endless amounts of fun tools to mess around with... and then puts a strict time limit on everything, so you rarely feel free to just run around and explore. Even when you're not rushed with the main quest for a bit, there are so many timed sidequests that if you decide to just explore for a bit you feel like you missed out on a lot of sidequest stuff. And then they added the mandatory (if you want to get a good ending) find Zombrex to administer to your daughter once a day thing that makes time even tighter.

Also it's just kind of the same game yet again with a slightly different setting.

@gojira From what I understand (after having to read about it), the Marker in Dead Space 1 was manmade, hundreds of years after the discovery of the original ancient Marker. This Marker has the ability to subdue the creation of Necromorphs and make the Hive Mind dormant. The humans put the Red Marker on a special pedestal which amplified its abilities. When the Ishimura removed the marker, the necromorphs started forming again and invaded the ship. I just don't exactly remember what happened to the marker at the end of the game. I guess Isaac just left it there, off of its removed pedestal, begging for the Hive Mind to stay awake and for more Necromorphs to form.

Needless to say, I'm very interested to play Dead Space 2. However, I fear that it will be just as buggy as the first game was on PC. Can anyone confirm?