What kinds of horror games scare you? Are you scared by games at all? In this episode of Gaming: The Podcast we're delving into what it is that games do that scare us and make us feel fear. We ask what it is that personally scares us, we look at the different types of horror offered by games and how they work.
If you've got an Alien itch you can't quite scratch until Alien: Rolumus releases, GameSpew has rounded up the best Alien games to tide you over.
Got an Xbox and a Game Pass subscription and want something spooky to play? Here are the best horror games on Xbox Game Pass.
There are many ways that a game developer can choose to raise the difficulty in their games — but which ways are the most effective?
A great example on how to do difficulty in a video game is DOOM ETERNAL. Started playing on ULTRA VIOLENCE but then I started playing on NIGHTMARE after a couple hundred hours of playing on UV . What makes DOOM ETERNAL fun, is on Nightmare, the enemies are very aggressive ,but they give you the tools to defeat difficult enemies , you just have to learn how to use them .
Doom Eternal was so tough, but it felt so amazing to finish that game, even when the enemy feels unfair and gang up/box up into a corner.
Personal dislikes are bullet sponges and bosses with regular enemies thrown in. Just make the boss hit harder if it's too easy.
I think Helldivers 2 really gets it right. If enemies are easy, they swarm. If they're high level, they tend to have good defense and need strategems to take down...or bait.
I never feel too angry if I die by swarm because it is usually my fault for not checking my 6. I don't even mind dying if a teammate drops a bomb on the swarm that is gutting me.
I don't like cheap deaths. When the game allows you to progress only to hit you with an enemy that is suddenly immune to all the things you've unlocked and mastered is just dumb. If the game doesn't do hit boxes right and you get killed in lame ways it is dumb.
The screenshot is from Elden Ring, a game I really enjoyed, but the scaling was silly. I didn't do the Eligtree til late game so it was goofy difficult. I thought the Elden Beast was rather cheap. Not a fun skill based match, but just cheap enemy. There was no sense of, "oh it defeated me because I did this or I did that" like all Souls/Borne games.
1. Intelligent opponents that don't have some set, optional strategy to win and requires more critical thinking.
2. Game provides players with the knowledge and tools about a game world to stand a chance (or at the very least, the opportunity to gain the knowledge and tools).
3. Don't insist on enemies having much more health than the player arbitrarily. Sometimes, you'll have more durable enemies who are armored or inhuman which I would say is fair. The best approach to this I can recall in recent memory is Naughty Dog games: You're extremely vulnerable without armor and can get picked off pretty easily, but your enemies are pretty beatable with the right weapons and strategies where you can't just brute force it. That said, ammo is in short supply, so you engage at your own risk.
4. Depending on the type of games, make resources more scarce without necessarily making enemies bullet sponges. It simply means you'll have to choose your battles carefully and have damn good aim. Like Uncharted. If you're not good at headshots, Crushing is a rough time.
