Inverting Survival Horror

[Erkki]

After seeing the FEAR movie, I was wondering is it possible to make an interesting game based on an inversion of the survival horror concept.

By the inversion I mean that the player character would be doing some scary things as part of gameplay. For example if the player would play the part of that little girl in the FEAR movie. If this would work, then probably only in first person. But I can't quite imagine what the gameplay would be like exactly.

What do you think?

[RLacey]

  Erkki said:

After seeing the FEAR movie, I was wondering is it possible to make an interesting game based on an inversion of the survival horror concept.

By the inversion I mean that the player character would be doing some scary things as part of gameplay. For example if the player would play the part of that little girl in the FEAR movie. If this would work, then probably only in first person. But I can't quite imagine what the gameplay would be like exactly.

What do you think?

Fancy giving people like me who haven't seen the film the general gist of the plot?

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Well, so far from what little hot, wet information Monolith has secreted to us drooling public*, the idea involves an unnamed special** member of the clandestine government organization, First Encounter Assault and Recon (think X-Files but with assault weapons and combat uniforms). He is sent with teammates to investigate an apparent hostile takeover at a skyscraper in some city where, to his shock (and natch his team and handlers), all the hostages have been slaughtered, truckloads of blood everywhere, and strangely, there are no evidence whatsoever of them being being shot (no bullet holes, no shell casings, etc.). Worse still, the team's radio communications are intermittently aflutter with constant static (Ha! Remember the radio in the Silent Hill games?). Even worse, that mysterious and creepy little girl, and deeper into the plot some of the teammates are unexplicably ripped apart to death whenever the girl appears.

[cue Twilight Zone music]

* That's sounds deliciously disgusting, yes?

** Special in that key members of the squad possess their own little psychic talents. This explains the 'bullet time' in the game.

[arrr_matey]

There's a computer game my girlfriend used to play called Ghost Master. It's like a strategy kind of game, where you're given a map--say, a sorority house--and you have to choose the best ghosts to scare all the college girls out. It's pretty funny. So, I guess in that regard it's more like comedy-horror, not survival-horror.

They should have let people play as zombies for the entire game in Resident Evil Outbreak multiplayer. Not just for two seconds after you die, or whatever.

I agree with you though, the concept of an inverted survival-horror would be quite fun.

[Erkki]

Yeah, I've played Ghost Master demo. And indeed that's not what I had in mind.