On that note, this video has some moments where there seemed to be some genuine fear in there.

P

This is Eversion.

And speaking of horror games, I just saw this, and while they were obviously laughing and having fun they did seem quite scared at points. Maybe the secret to horror is multiplayer?

I have no idea how much I eat. All I know is it's far less than I WAS eating.

Basically, I just go with "no snacks, just breakfast, lunch and dinner". And because I buy my own food, studying at Uni in Brisbane and all, I can control what I eat as well.
I wish I knew how to make a salad I would eat.

The Big Brother thing had me way off, making salad instead of hot dogs and working out in tuxs and all =P

---

All that said, I think the biggest challenge to starting is procrastination. Y'know, it's always "I'll start next week" or "when I run out of butter" or whatever, when there's absolutely no reason not to start right while they're saying that. I should know, I do it.

Last time I checked I was around 90kg. And unfortunately I am nowhere near as physically fit as I would like to be. I think the majority of that is because of where I live - there aren't any pools or gyms within a bus ride's distance away, and the bus stop is about a twenty minute walk away. I would walk more but the roads near my house are potentially quite dangerous for pedestrians - narrow, winding, very little visibility, and the occasional idiot who likes to drive down them at break-neck speed.

While I was in Australia in June I got into the habit of watching what I ate, and walking everywhere quite often, and I think I lost about 5kg over four weeks. Although the next month - staying at people's houses, having large meals, not really having a way to keep track of calories and having nowhere to exercise - I put that weight back on.

I think I will try to start eating more responsibly soon. Maybe a small chicken roll for breakfast/lunch and whatever I am given for dinner. There would be around 1500 calories max in that.

1000 meters is nothing really; if you're having trouble with 50, you are working too hard also, i saw what you did there.

If you are trying to lose weight, diet should be your number-one priority. I like the diet of eating whatever you like, just keep the portions down. A new thing i'd like to try though is alt-day fasting, which is laboriously expained in this bbc horizon.

Holy shit! Well, maybe the 1000-1200 meters part is only suprising to me because I can barely swim 50 meters >.< I'm a terribubble swimmer.

I dunno, I've just noticed I've gathered up a little more mass than I used to have, so I'm looking to trim down.

downloading =)

i was just thinking about making a csgo MP minigame similar to this idea, where teams would have to escape or die an area of the map by the end of the round, with a scenario like a hazard course, or saw-like devices to keep you moving forward. (teams would also have the option for combat, but at peril of dying in the impending traps)

another idea was to spawn each player into their own room, and they have to find a way out before something kills them. there would be a limited amount of rooms you may get, but the same exit would not necessarily work if you got the same room twice(if that makes sense). survivors of thus first trap-room would continue to the combat area, probably a knife arena.

For the record, walking is not really exercise, as you could walk from here to the moon, and you and you'd still be fat and out of shape. (powerwalking on the other hand, is exercise)

I swim 1000-1200 meters almost everyday, which is not a lot, but it helps to get my blood pumping and my brain working right. at home when i'm dicking off on the computer, i will do tabata sets of push-ups/crunches/full situps and yoga(sometimes) whenever i get up from my desk, so i don't completely turn to jelly.

Jeff: i'd love to Parkour with you sometime maybe if i move to canada =) it' also funny we both exercise whilst on the computer

Scotch: running is the best exercise you can do, as long as your knees and other joints can handle it, good for you

System Shock 2 is in my opinion, one of the scariest games I've ever played. Its got EXTREMELY dated graphics (looks worse than half life but came out after it, what?) and it isn't a dark game in terms of environment at all. (There's no flashlight nor any need for one)

The real thing that makes it scary, is randomly spawning enemies. As you backtrack through corridors you thought deserted, and you hear noises, and wonder if those are just scripted, or if something is really there with you, or having that moment of "OH HOLY SHIT" when you happen upon a creature that wasn't there in any one of your other 9000 play-throughs.

It also creates a creepy atmosphere without overusing darkness, which contributed greatly.

EDIT: And then literally seconds after I posted, I clicked on PB's blog link and realized he already talked about SS2 to some length. So just go read that.

I've been trying to get into the habit of doing pushups and situps while waiting for my computer to boot.
...But I'm not very active or fit. I wish there was someplace around here I could do Parkour on/with. I want to try that out. I imagine I would get fit very quickly doing that. Or injured.

As a truck unloader, my shift consists of 8 hours of grueling physical activity 5 days a week.

As bad as that might sound, im a lot more fit than I was, say, 4 months ago.

i run once a week but usually go for several walks if I havnt been doing much in the day.
i do power walk a bit at work too, as a waiter.

Well, I was surprised to see a small Half-Life mod released with some custom coding however, the overall mod is very poor. While experimentation is not a bad thing at all, and it was kinda refreshing to play a mod that didn't revolve around generic security guard #139 at Black Mesa, the overall idea didn't work. The main mapping wasn't very distinguishable from the purposely terrible mappack the player goes through, and not to mention for it to really work it should've been much more lengthy. Some of the maps seem to have not changed at all from the initial release and it still contains a picture of me from Halloween for whatever reason. Overall, not the worst mod ever created, but nothing great or worthy of your time. Dr. Amazing still has a bit of mapping to learn.

IMA WZERD SCTH. WN C MI WZERD PWR?

What you should do is get Amnesia. It's considered one of the scariest games of the time.

Sure, there's darkness, but the game is also about avoiding the darkness, or having enough materials to brighten it up. It basically punishes you for standing in it for more than 5 seconds.

Heh, for a month now my schedule has kind of cha...

ELLIOT LUCAK IS BACK!

Anyway, my schedule has become a lot more demanding from me since I started college. Walking 1-2 km each day, definitely more in some days, and a lot of studying( or should I say, lack of.. I'm a bit behind- hopefully though I'll pass the exams...). This translates in my increased need of sleep. I find myself taking naps a lot more often than I used to do in high-school.

Kinda have to look it up to play it. What is it. Searching for "Eversion game" came up with some kiddy platformer involving sheep. Help a gamer out!

Also, Grey... yeah. It's not helping the genre for me. Been startled a lot now that the action is kicking off but the environments are more of the same dark grunge. I understand the concept that these environments are meant to be alien and threatening, but I've seen them in every other mod... so they're familiar and dull...

Walk almost every day for at least 1-2km. School then chilling with friends.

Not an amazing workout but at least I can comfortably walk several km unlike some people who can't because they travel everywhere in a vehicle and never get proper exercise.

I do quite a bit of running as a delivery driver. It definitely keeps me in shape.
I probably wouldn't exercise at all otherwise.

Eat sleep play (weekends)
Schoool days: Study Play Eat study Sleep

Not at all. I will be walking for 30 minutes every week day when my office moves later this month but that's about it. I used to do a 3 minute upper body pump every other day but I kinda stopped.

I think I'd be in better shape if I didn't work at all. Need to win the lottery.

I've been meaning to start walking. Not gonna happen as long as I have this %¤#&! cold.

I walk back home from my faculty every day.

I would definitely like to see some more horror games that 'try harder'. Darkness and jump scares are probably the most easy and effective ways to produce fear and uncertainty, but they are definitely not the only ways.
And Urby, play Eversion. Don't look it up beforehand, just download it and play it.

And I think the fear of the deathclaws was somewhat ruined for me as I had the dart gun for my first deathclaw encounter. And every deathclaw encounter after that come to think of it.

Wow. Thanks for the input guys.

I guess I'm like Pb in that I don't particularly enjoy being scared, but as I said, so many games and mods fail to achieve it.

I'll certainly look at things with a more open mind though. I downloaded Grey last night and started playing through it. A few startling moments in the opening level and several disturbing scenes (At least I believe they were meant to be disturbing but I thought they were pretty tame). I'll let you know my thoughts when I get into the thick of it.

Also, I'm glad JeffMOD brought up the fallout games. They did genuinely make me fearful quite often. The deathclaws are a good example. You hear about them a few times during the game, but then one day whilst wondering around the wasteland and you see your first one, you freeze. Worst case scenario is it sees you before you see it and the music changes to a more tense tribal drum beat. You desperately spin around on the spot trying to work out whats spotted you, and then you see it, barreling over a hill a few metres away, straight towards you.

Shat a brick.

I think it plays on the uncertainty like you mentioned in your blog post Pb.

Lovecraft said "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." and I like to think he knew what he was talking about!

We are scared of what we can't see and don't understand and nothing conceals something better than darkness. That's simply why it's used, and it works. Flashlights or lanterns aren't just there to help you see, they're extensions of your character. Tools for him/her/you to try and make sense of, and fend off a world that's growing increasingly alien.

As for jump scares, there's a reason they're used, but it's not an excuse. Our lives are (typically) built on routine, and when something disrupts it, that's when we panic. It works in games, too. Sadly it gets taken too far, with now-predictable jump scares breaking up long periods of silence or puzzles. I completely agree that it's stale and annoying.

I believe it's possible to make a game where you spend days just going about your usual routine, with the game learning and planning ways to destroy that. The best horror games I've played, and films I've watched subvert those ideas. A horror game set in sunny, everyday locations would at some point have to flip those comforts on their head. It may be possible to avoid it with some inventive thinking, but I haven't seen any game do it yet.

For an example, Silent Hill. This is a fog-filled, living, breathing town. Not the people in it, the town itself. It looks into the very being of it's visitors and punishes those who deserve it with manifestations of their deepest shames and fears. Surviving on the streets, exploring and learning, becomes routine. Almost comfortable. Then the game plunges you into the Otherworld and all bets are off.

It literally subverts the typical horror landscape by throwing you into something unpredictable even by horror standards. And yet it's still dark and grungy. But don't pick out the darkness and use that as an example of it's quality, look at the psychological tools it employs. I hadn't heard of those maps until now, so I'm going to give them a shot and see how they fare, thanks!

Fear is being out of your comfort zone. It's not seeing or understanding the threats ahead of you, and not knowing when an end to the madness is in sight. I love it.

I do feel that most modern horror titles are not up to par with what they used to be. For me the best horror title I've played recently is Cry of Fear because it mixes so many elements of scare into it. It managed to stay away from common horror game complaints too, it only had a couple of jump scares from what I remember, did not make you conserve ammo all that often and most certainly did not continuously use the same scare tactics.

In general however, when I'm in the mood to be scared I don't play a game, or even watch a movie. I find myself most scared by reading scary material simply because it leaves a lot to your own mind, which most often will make it much scarier. That is the main reason I think modern horror has gone off track, they don't leave anything to your imagination anymore. They directly show you what's supposed to be scary when they should let you stress it out for bit.

Jumpscares do not make a horror game; they aren't scary, they're just startling.

To achieve real horror, you have to do either of these things:

1. Give the player a complete alien feeling. Older horror games are considered scarier because it was back when video game animation was very poor. So the creatures moved inhumanly, and was very unsettling. But now, since everything is based off of human movement....

And something unsettling can be gained from complete silence: watching an old sound-less projector show footage of people being murdered, hearing nothing but the rattling of the projector.

2. Make the player feel hopeless. Not completely hopeless, even though that can and will make players shit their pants (like Amnesia), but hopeless enough. You know that tension you get when you have to run away from the gargantua for the first time in Half-Life? Isn't it fucking horrifying? Well extend that--stress it more, like having to escape from a gargantua while having to linger in the same room, forcing you to run away to draw it somewhere.

Or you could do the 'not fit enough approach' where you take a single, dull enemy that you could easily take on alone, but then make a dozen of them. So many that the player won't be able to take any of them on, even if they do have full ammo and health and everything.

Urby has given me new purpose: to make a horror mod set in bright daylight

2much: It's partially about psychological horror; taking a familiar and safe environment and warping it. Dark environments like sewers do not seem safe in the first place.

Sadly, most horror games rely on dark environments, low ammo, and jump-scares. Which results in annoyance and startling, not actual fear. It's quite hard to make real fear in a game, I think, and basically impossible to do it in such a way that allows a second playthrough to be as tense. I'll admit, I don't have Urby's nonchalant "yawn" attitude to horror games, but they tend to be more annoying than scary, and never worth a second playthrough.

Actually, come to think of it, the scariest moments I've had in games come from non-horror games like Fallout 3. Most of these times I've found myself thinking either "Oh my god oh my god I'm gonna die I'm gonna die oh my god ..." or "HO-LEE SHIT!!!"

EDIT: I just remembered that I played Amnesia at a friend's place once. That was pretty good. But more for the lore and sanity elements, rather than the "horror" itself.

FEAR is not a horror game, neither is Dead Space. They're action games with horror elements. A bunch of amateur HL2 horror mods do not define a genre, that's a pretty poor choice for examples.

I'm no authority on horror games (Strider is), but if you really want to experience the genre you should probably point yourself towards Amnesia or Silent Hill. I don't know of any "normal" environment horror games, because by definition, normal isn't scary. Sounds like you want a horror game that has no horror in it However, Strider might know of some games like that.

Incidentally, as somebody who doesn't like being scared by games, I blogged about my experience with the more actioney horror games last year.

Why don't you just ctrl+s, ctrl+s, ctrl+s?

Just to contrast the constant slew of dark gloomy sewers and tunnels. It's like why the Hell would you even be in such an environment to begin with?

Also, I've seen some of Cry of Fear's gameplay. It's largely pretty dull and the enemy models are hilariously bad.

Cry of Fear takes place in a nighttime deserted city, with a mix of indoor and outdoor environments. A very late section of the game takes place in broad daylight in a suburban street.

Anyway, I am curious, how can a normal bright outdoor daylight location be scary and be classified as horror? Are you hoping for some sort of surrealistic occurrence? Or is it something else? Not sure how that works.

I have not, though that one did spark my interest purely because of the character relationships and moral choice aspects.

Have you tried The Walking Dead game ?

lol

Ok, I've since played up to where Urby was complaining about and I disagree.

1. The instakill tank wasn't instakill, I easily avoided its blasts by beelining for a nearby cave. There IS another problem here, though. A soldier operating a mounted gun did not shoot me. When I killed him, HIS GUN STARTED SHOOTING.

2. The crate hole with the battery and supplies that cannot be jumped over: there is one AND ONLY ONE breakable crate there, but they all look the same so good luck bashing around.

3. There is a cave area where you must advance under cover from two autoguns shooting at you, but right after that is a cliffside jumping puzzle. UNFORTUNATELY, THE GAME ASSUMES YOU DIED AND FADE TO BLACK when I jump on the third ledge... ok wtf

Final Judgment: This APPEARS to be a decent mod and has challenging gameplay, but some bugs show up later in the game and make it seemingly impossible to complete. A shame.

Haha, true there

Works fine for me.

Frankly though, 250mb for this thing is just unnecessary.

I just hate firefox for >100mb downloads, gets stuck everytime

ASMR doesn't get you thrown out by the wife. Porn is for late night relaxation.

Well, I died at the part with the truck which is pretty annoying because everything up to that part was a walk in the park. Tried it a few times and each time I tried to get out (With 100hp and 25 armour) I was insta-killed by a tank.

Impressions up to that point though were not good. Some pretty horrible level design and the texturing is beyond fucked. 4/10

EDIT: I managed to get past the insanely fast instakill tank by pure chance and then I was treated to a jumping puzzle where I fell down a gap between a crate and a wall and got stuck. 2/10

Not playing anymore because it is just a horrible horrible mod.

Some watch porn some watch Medical examination. To each his own they say.

Truth is i don't even know who made that map. But i guess so.

Away we go ! Btw the download is broken

What Urby said !

Challenge accepted.

Guess he needs to stop being shit at EVERYTHING then.

Ouch, ITS A REAL SHIT WHEN THAT HAPPENS! It just freezes and crashes, and the bloody thing autosave reloads 5 hours back to the base _____ so bad, why don't they update it and make it better? o.O