Poll of the Day > Do you enjoy games where your player character is helpless?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Obviously, atmosphere is important for these type of games, but this topic assumes the atmosphere is good.

There are many horror games like this for example, where your player character is often not allowed any option other than to just run and hide when a threat appears.

Sometimes, this isn't really even justified, as there isn't a given reason why you don't even try attacking or being proactive about the threat, and the threat isn't portrayed as something that can't be attacked.

Or there are other games where your character is unrealistically weak which is where the difficulty of the game comes from and why certain things are a threat at all.

Given, games where you are not allowed to engage the threat at all are not my personal cup of tea, I'm okay with games like Resident Evil 7 where you can fight but your resources for doing so are limited so you never feel like you're safe, or a game like (the original) F.E.A.R. where you were an amazing badass but the enemies were such a threat comparison that the game still had a horror element (when combined with the atmosphere).
---

I don't play games with that kind of mechanic and it doesn't sound appealing to me.
---

I tried outlast

Scared the shit out of me and I never played it again
---

No. It's too stressful to me. Without any ability to defend myself I get really freaked out and I am more scared than having fun and it's just not that enjoyable.

I like them. I'll get pretty scared of them, but I kinda like that feeling. Haha. But I'm horrible at them, too...
---

Only when humourously helpless - like Prop Hunt
---

Love me some Oddworld
---

bump
---

Only times I've played anything close to that is when fleeing from a giant creature or something in a platformer, which I've never really liked as I hate being rushed.
---

No. I hate them.
---

clock tower 3 was good
---

no, fuck them.
---

I enjoyed the Clock Tower series and the Haunting Ground off-shoot, so yeah.
Was that the first game to have that sort of concept? Seems like most "survival horror" games that are presented as being like Clock Tower, you actually do fight back, quite a lot....

It's not something I'd want to play often, but once in a while it's a nice change of pace, and is the only sort of game that really makes me feel scared.

No... but I have yet to play Alien:Isolation and I hear it actually does that well.

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

No... but I have yet to play Alien:Isolation and I hear it actually does that well.

I found the game mostly boring. The story started to get silly pretty early as they keep dangling a "carrot on a string (your goal of escaping)" in front of you and yank it away right when you reach it and after about the 3rd time you start rolling your eyes as you know you're never really going to accomplish anything because the game needs to extend it's run time. The main character herself makes contrived decisions where the goal is seemingly just to further extend the game's run time. It quickly becomes obvious almost everything will always go wrong "because horror" so it feels like everything you're doing is pointless.
---

i liked outlast and amnesia/penumbra. can't really recall any others i've played.
---

Sure, they can be fun. In general, I'm less fond of horror games where you can easily plow through enemies -- excluding stuff like Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Monster Madness, of course.
---

Zikten posted...

No. It's too stressful to me. Without any ability to defend myself I get really freaked out and I am more scared than having fun and it's just not that enjoyable.

This exactly.
---

I feel like the wording in the initial proposition is biased versus proposing the two dichotomies as of equal value (or that various types of personal enjoyment exists beyond the poster's.)

Also, I would say there is a spectrum of helplessness exampled with even the classic Resident Evil games allowing plentiful ammunition, the ability to decapitate enemies, use environmental weapons etc. There are few horror games where there are literally zero offensive options.
---

BigOlePappy posted...

Also, I would say there is a spectrum of helplessness exampled with even the classic Resident Evil games allowing plentiful ammunition, the ability to decapitate enemies, use environmental weapons etc. There are few horror games where there are literally zero offensive options.

The original Resident Evils were horror, but it was the version of "horror" where your character couldn't really do what they really should have been able to do, where in in later RE games all the protagonists were action heroes which took all the horror out since your characters were portrayed as too strong.
---

Honestly, in games where I'm completely helpless, the horror is kinda muted and I have a tendency to charge into death a couple of times for some laughs. It's almost like I'm extra bold because I don't stand a chance anyway.

Being completely helpless kills my immersion and makes the pursuer or hazard seem less organic. It's more frightening to be pursued by something, know you could fend it off, but can't because it might attract something worse.
---

TigerTycoon posted...

The original Resident Evils were horror, but it was the version of "horror" where your character couldn't really do what they really should have been able to do,

Those games were survival horror and one could only use the ammunition available. With the qualifier "should," it is best to specify the grounds of "should" since within the framework of that genre of game they did exactly what was intended.
---

Depends. the old prince of persia pc game you felt helpless falling into spikes.
Oregon trail makes you feel helpless sometimes.
---