june gloom on 18/5/2011 at 04:18

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That's terrible. I laughed.

EvaUnit02 on 18/5/2011 at 18:34

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Praying on the player's paranoia (and not in the Lovecraftian-esque game way, with sanity effects and stuff). Eg always making them question who they can trust.

They may've done this in John Carpenter's The Thing, but I never played that game. Although I recall reading that it's scripted for ALL of your squadmates to eventually turn into Thing meat puppets, so I'd assume that the execution of the concept in that game ain't so great.

DaBeast on 19/5/2011 at 15:17

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The early Resident Evil games were much more scary before 4 and 5. Possibly due to the fixed camera angles and changes in gameplay.

Often you would hear something, but couldn't see it until it entered the frame you were in or you moved forward to the next frame. It certainly added a level of discomfort.

In 4, you start off in daylight, maybe mid-afternoon? Not really scary possibly eerie, later when you go into the castle thing, it gets a little bit more tense, but only a little.

In 5, broad daylight, not scary at all. Probably just a change in gameplay from survival horror to zombie action as in the 4th.

Lighting is used to create atmosphere, classic horror themes kind of need darkness, as had been said, its what you can't see that builds up that fear.

Silent Hill 2 started off in daylight as well, but it had heavy fog. So it's certainly possible to make a horror game set during the day, but perhaps visibility has to be hindered somehow.