I have yet to respond horror movies the same way I did. At one point, I felt hair stand on my arms, my beating is quick when someone comes down with a black corridor backed by marks stiffness strings, when the camera pops up and produces a demon display on the screen either Pennywise in the pull of a storm. I still enjoy all those moments, but they no longer scare me.
Maybe it's because the soundtracks or scenes have become so predictable. Or maybe the real world is terrified these days. But just as much as I love bad movies, video games the only way the horror media made me cry so much was that my neighbors came to ask if I was alive.
Of course, not every horror game is bloody-curdling-scary. Same thing He died during the day just fun, good old fashion, and when you play Friday 13: Game the longer you can get the better by escaping Jason. But the important difference is that video games are a viable option rather than just a film. For film, I often look at a character from a third-party point of view and walk around the apartment while yelling, "You can't do that" on screen. It doesn't matter if it is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Babadook, or Cool Location; despite the quick panic escaping, I don't feel like the filmmakers intend to discuss.
Anyway, horror video games still shock pants on me and even make funny comments because they are a viable option and you often play them from a first-person perspective. I lean for me to survive. I can panic, hit the wrong key, turn to the beast trying to suck my soul or brain out and bite the dust immediately. I have to do it over and over again until I get through that part of the game. In Read and Alien: Solate there's a hilarious plan to tread past the invisible monsters, whether that's quiet enough so that Terry Akers doesn't use his good ears to find you, or have a super quick time to set the Facehugger on fire before it gets in your face.
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Vice versa Read, Outlast and Outlast 2 leaving you with no means of defense. But instead of a torch, you have night vision on your video camera that runs out of battery power very quickly. (I can't tell you how many times I've run packing batteries in the panic and ended up being killed in the dark.) These games use many of the same tracks from bad movies – light burning, hiding clothing, dead bodies coming down from the roof in front of you – but the situation is worse because he is a main character, he does not sit back in your bed watching the story unfold. Hell, 2D, Inside gave me an adrenaline rush many times, as well as an opening Dead Space 2 it still gives me a shiver.
Other similar games Until Dawn whose branching narratives often force you to choose between who is alive and who dies, stretching out your moral fabric until it is completely gone. You feel humany responsible for the lives of all the characters, even if you think they are the most annoying people in the world. In a game like this Medan's husband (also from Supermassive Games), when the goal is to try to keep everything alive, that charge is laid thick if you miss an important time event and are the reason the character is dead. On the flip side, a game like this Masochisia it creates the same guilt, the same unpleasant feelings by forcing the player to choose the victim in the eyes of the killer. It's a deep emotional game, not a playful game. By comparison, I don't feel personally guilty watching a movie like that Seven, which is a good movie, because I'm not personally involved. As games interact, I have no idea what's coming to me, even if I'm playing a game. There is always another storyline or other way of doing things that can make the experience different for the first time. You get a lot of details, like when you're watching it's the same movie over and over, but it can't be more predictable than the movies – and if you're playing enough scary games, that performance can match you to horror movies. At least that's what happened to me. It doesn't mean that I don't feel comfortable or have bad movies released from time to time (Ari Aster Independent make a number), or get an emotional toll on the characters, because I do. They don't scare me anymore, not as much as video games can do, but I will always want to benefit.
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