LogFAQs > #895496707

I suppose it kind of depends a bit on in what way I'm answering it. Favorite for the horror itself, or favorite from a game perspective...I'm honestly hesitant to even consider the RE games horror games. I guess they are, but it just seems so...silly and quaint compared to Silent Hill for example.

RE struck me more as action games with a horror backdrop. I guess that's slightly unfair though. They DID try. Sometimes.

So... Favorite horror game in terms of actual horror, would be SH3 I think. It's definitely a SH game so it's basically just me trying to choose between 1 2 and 3. I think 3 was the one that had the most appeal to me.

In terms of as a game I think it'd be RE3 however, I really enjoyed that game a lot, and played it a ton.

I will give a shoutout to Eternal Darkness as well. It's not the best game around or anything and it's certainly got flaws and in ways can feel sort of unpolished, and the most standout mechanic you are incentivised from even experiencing (sanity meter) which is weird. But, even ignoring the concept/narrative-structure, it's actually a really interesting game, design-wise. Because, well if you don't know, Eternal Darkness is a survival horror game. Absolutely. It has many of the trappings of one... But, where it differs most is in the blending of themes and time periods. This is a game where you will use everything from a roman sword to a sort of modern day assault rifle, and magic. Yes, magic. Literally magic. There are a variety of spells including healing and protective and the ability to even enchant your weapons, as well as an attack spell and a summon spell...

I'm not sure if there even exists a single other game that plays quite like Eternal Darkness. I can't say how much you or anyone new to it would really like it, especially since obviously by now it's dated and the gameplay is so weird in what it merges that it's hard to predict who would get into it. But perhaps it's worth a look purely for the sake of that it's a pretty unusual game, so what it does have to offer, you probably haven't seen elsewhere.

But yeah, it's a survival horror game, not too much unlike SH or RE (classic ones, rather) in how it plays, in a basic sense, but it does have a somewhat evenish focus on both firearms and melee weapon combat, but also has magic, and it's Lovecraft-inspired, very clearly so, and the narrative structure is that you play as a main character reading about all these other people's experiences that tie together throughout time, and by learning about them you play as each as their own chapter, so there's variety there. Also a choice you make near the start of the game will have a lasting impact on what you face throughout the game so there is some incentive to play through it multiple times if you're into that.

Actually you know what, I'll also throw in The Suffering. The Suffering I recall being a bit crude in some ways, but I remember it being a fairly solid (for the time at least) third person (but IIRC with the option to go first person if you want) action game. Like, it doesn't use horror as an excuse for controls that make you feel inept. That also happens to be a horror game. And the enemy design I think was really good on it actually. Both in appearance and diversity in how you fight them. It also had a sequel I do not recall liking very much though the details of why are lost to time, but I just remember feeling pretty lukewarm on it.

One thing The Suffering did is that it would randomly show you flashes of images while you play, accompanied with various jarring or eerie sounds. Now on the surface these are a cheap jump scare at times I suppose, but I appreciated them because of WHAT those images showed, tended to be clairvoyant. So the game was randomly showing you flashes of horrors yet to come that you may be nearing, or cryptic images that will make sense later. I thought that was neat. Of course it's peanuts compared to Eternal Darkness' sanity effects.
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