Games you just can't bring yourselves to play?

[south carmain]

Fallout 3, I just found it so incredibly bland and boring I couldn't understand the hype behind it. Same goes for Oblivion too actually.

[Thief]

I don't know if this applies, but there are many single player games that I can't bring myself to play by myself. For instance, games like Kingdom Hearts and Mystical Ninja I used to play all the time with my old next door neighbor when we were little. We're still friends today, and just recently we got together to do a playthrough of Mystical Ninja. It just wouldn't feel right to play it by myself.

[St. Elmo's Fire]

I don't know if this applies, but there are many single player games that I can't bring myself to play by myself. For instance, games like Kingdom Hearts and Mystical Ninja I used to play all the time with my old next door neighbor when we were little. We're still friends today, and just recently we got together to do a playthrough of Mystical Ninja. It just wouldn't feel right to play it by myself.

That's pretty cool that you and your buddies still do that (cool to ME anyway! )

[Peter]

I can barely remember this one game I played years ago. I can't remember much about it, what it's called it whatever, but the thought of it scares me shitless to this day. Just as well I can't remember the name of it, but I think it was on the Xbox, and all I can remember was a scene at the beginning where you are walking down a corridor, and there are ropes with nooses hanging from the beam and when you looked up, 3 girls just appeared hanging from them.

Then at the end, you went into a room in the house and there was nothing there, but when you left and re-entered, there was a huge pool of blood on the floor and I think you had to fight a Japanese samurai?

I can't remember anythung else about it, but the thought of it still frightens me. Even if I knew it, I wouldn't play it again.

[south carmain]

^Was it fatal frame?

[Peter]

Oh wait yea, wasn't it when you took photographs, it went into first person mode?

Fuck yea it is, just Googled it. Even the pictures still freak me out! Nope, even in my 30s, I wouldn't go back and play that game.

[south carmain]

Yeah Fatal Frame was a really spooky game. They really did a good job at nailing the atmosphere in it.

[Peter]

I can usually handle horror, even Resident Evil has always been more fun rather than scary for me. But that specific game, they did nail the atmosphere to a T. The imagery, music, setting... That's a horror game.

But thats what makes me fear for the bad press VR will get. I bet anyone on here that a VR horror game will cause someone to have a heart attack and die. I swear it will happen.

[Henry Spencer]

Fatal Frame, or Project Zero as it's known over here in European territories, is the best horror game series out there, in my opinion. Always consistently good. The first game was definitely really disturbing, Peter, you forgot the decapitated head that follows you around, the women who's neck is so broken it's upside down (and she laughs when she grabs you) and the Blind Woman who scream about her eyes all of the time! And those creepy kids like the one who fell down the well with the disfigured face who cries and the kid with a broken back who crawls over to you saying 'let's play'. I couldn't imagine playing those games with full HD remake and VR goggles, even as a big fan of that series.

[south carmain]

Fun fact about fatal frame 1 that I just read: it's set in the same year as shenmue, 1986.

[ShenGCH]

I can usually handle horror, even Resident Evil has always been more fun rather than scary for me. But that specific game, they did nail the atmosphere to a T. The imagery, music, setting... That's a horror game.

But thats what makes me fear for the bad press VR will get. I bet anyone on here that a VR horror game will cause someone to have a heart attack and die. I swear it will happen.

I think we should be more worried about the forty year-old mums and cookie cutter politicians moaning about so-called 'video game violence', and how VR will make walking into a school and shooting children sooooo much easier, as well as the arse-talking by the usual suspects about how VR encourages misogyny and objectifies women, etc., etc., etc.

If someone has health issues that are likely to be exasperated by VR, they should have the presence of mind to avoid going anywhere near it. It'll be entirely their own fault, and no-one else's, should something bad ever happen. That won't stop people from blaming and trying to sue the companies behind the respective VR headsets, though.

[Axm]

I'm more concerned that people will play the new VR systems, realize they don't live up to expectations, and swear off VR for another twenty years, when perhaps a genuinely viable product could have been ready in 5-10 if companies hadn't rushed to market.

[ShenGCH]

I'm more concerned that people will play the new VR systems, realize they don't live up to expectations, and swear off VR for another twenty years, when perhaps a genuinely viable product could have been ready in 5-10 if companies hadn't rushed to market.

That's the problem, though: expectations. If people are pinning their hopes on VR being this god-like thing that will be the second coming, or whatever, they're probably going to be very disappointed. From everything we've seen and/or heard about VR, the technology works very well at what it's designed to do, provided developers harness its potential to the fullest extent, as opposed to being brought down to little more than screens a few inches from your eyes. Clearly, VR is not just a gimmick like the Power Glove or Virtual Boy - it's a very viable, tried-and-tested piece of technology - but it's not infinite, and people need to realise this before committing to it.

Let's take No Man's Sky, for example: thanks to the developers being extremely (and deliberately) vague in their descriptions of what you could do in the game prior to release, peoples' imaginations ran wild, and thus began the cruel mistress that is expectations based off very little information. As always, it was a very deadly combination. In the end, instead of being a brilliant execution of this grand and ambitious idea, the game turned out to be nothing more than Space Resource Farming Simulator 2016. Many, many, many people are disappointed because not only is it not what they expected it to be, but, thanks to Shaun Murray's bending of the truth and deliberate vagueness (in order to not give away that which might turn people off), it's not what they were promised either.

Never fall for the hype, especially when it's your own hype.

[Let's Get Sweaty]

That's the problem, though: expectations.

Not in this case, no.

Expectations of VR have been consistent for decades. They were in place long before these tech firms began work on their products. The definition of VR in the public consciousness is quite clear, but still too expensive with today's technology, so these companies are instead pushing out a product that they know falls short of that vision because they need the money now, not when VR as people know it has become commercially viable. The consequence is that that date will be pushed further back due to poisoning the well with disappointing approximations of the concept.

[St. Elmo's Fire]

I think we should be more worried about the forty year-old mums and cookie cutter politicians moaning about so-called 'video game violence', and how VR will make walking into a school and shooting children sooooo much easier, as well as the arse-talking by the usual suspects about how VR encourages misogyny and objectifies women, etc., etc., etc

Heh, that reminded me of this guy;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)