Saturday 17 November 2007

Just a small article on my own criteria

So when it comes to horror games one of the sites i frequent most is Chris' survival horror quest , Which is stricly survival horror only and includes his reasoning for why, and what he concludes is a survival horror game, following certain criteria he has come up with. Being he is a games designer and i am a film maker our ideas of "the rules of horror" are obviously going to deviate at a certain point, so i thought i would use (steal) the idea to express why ill be choosing the games i choose for this site.
On his site Chris' has stated something along the lines of not wanting to do all "horror" games in his quest to play them all and as such focused purly on survival horror. Personally im not on a quest, nor am i in any hurry as my lack of recent posts will attest, to complete a list. This is just one gameing fanatics opinions on games in the horror genre and all its subgenres therein and i will review games and post articles at my own lesiure and i am, most importantly, not aiming to play every one ever so i will just review what i can when i get a hold of it.
As such i dont need to limit myself to one subgenre, of even just videogames, and can include any game i choose as a 'horror' game. Sohow do i go about it?

1:Whilst it goes without saying that the game must have horrific themes there is a degree of leneincy to games that arent scary but fit the theme, such as the gothic rpg koudelka.
2:There is such a thing as horror comedy (ala the evil dead) and i would list some games that arent exactly serious like zombies vs ambulance or the gregory horror show as such but others are comedic to the point of sheer absurdity and for my own personal tastes i wont focus on them.
3: ive got to own it, this may sound stupid but every game i review is in my possesion, this isnt a deal were i rent it specifically for this purpose, these are games hand picked from my own collection to be used as an article within this site, this means i will "go back to" any game and replay it for a fair and up to date review.
4: I dont limit to just a 3rd person shooter like resident evil or silent hill either, text adventures, point and click, fps and rpg are a few other genres which posses horror games hat fit my criteria.
5: it has to genuinley scare me, though not allways but this immediatly qualifys i as an entry.
6:Though not allways another genuine immediate reason is if the character dies, and i dont mean falls off screen or runs out of lives i mean actually only has a life and will die for good, usually on screen, they dont come back, hence the need for survival.
7: the artisit approach, again another giveaway but the locations, lighting ,sound ect all the "mise-en-scene" of a piece is crucial evidence if it is horror or not, this is more based on my studies of film than gameing but it still applies ,especially as the bridge between the two mediums draws constantly closer.

those are the 7 rules for now, though thats easily subject to change. I m fair in all my reviews and hope to, in a year or two have this place as a comprehensive site to find reviews and articles to honestly give well gauged representations of games in the horror genre.

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