Dead Money, Design Breakdowns

[Alphadrop]

Edit2: And I'm still eagerly awaiting the moment when a game simulates a crash to desktop only for you to see that your desktop is melting and blood is coming out from under icons. But only if the game detects you've been playing for a long while and it's early morning/very late night.

It worked really well in Eternal Darkness for the GameCube. Part way through the game you get a memory card error that says it needs to be reformated.
Bricks were indeed shat before people realised it was the game playing with them.
Actually Eternal Darkness covers most of your points.

 

[C2B]

tons of games do similiar things to this.

I don't really think its that good and sometimes its downright stupid.

 

[archont]

It worked really well in Eternal Darkness for the GameCube. Part way through the game you get a memory card error that says it needs to be reformated.
Bricks were indeed shat before people realised it was the game playing with them.
Actually Eternal Darkness covers most of your points.

PCs are a more difficult platform, but also offering more possibilities. After all the user could be running the game on anything from the now-legacy windows XP to windows 7, not counting things like whether it's a hardware-accelerated desktop or not, or if some third party input management/ user interface software is layered on top of explorer.

But the possibilities are greater as well. As per my example, seeing your own facebook picture somewhere in the game, especially if it's just flashing by and something you can't take a second/good look at - something that would definitely scare a lot of people, IMO.

I know the 3rd wall breaking of this kind can and does occur every so often, but so far I found it to be a console thing. That Hideous Kojima guy likes to do this, I've seen.

Too bad the game you mentioned got released on the console equivalent of a leoplurodon. Then again after a quick look at the auction sites and I can get one for half the price of an AAA game.. I think I'll actually get it, just to play this Eternal Darkness game. It sounds very interesting, though disappointing that such great ideas went to waste, unappreciated due to bad business decisions.

I don't really think its that good and sometimes its downright stupid.

Thanks for your comprehensive post. I fully understood what you meant to say and what specifically you were referring to...

 

[randir14]

It worked really well in Eternal Darkness for the GameCube. Part way through the game you get a memory card error that says it needs to be reformated.
Bricks were indeed shat before people realised it was the game playing with them.
Actually Eternal Darkness covers most of your points.

There was one point in Arkham Asylum where your screen freezes, the graphics screw up and you hear a buzzing noise. It was supposed to make you think your hardware was failing.

 

[archont]

That game wasn't much of a horror game though, was it? Saw it on youtube - clever idea.

I generally don't think breaking the 4rth wall (did I type 3rd?) is something that should be done everywhere and at every opportunity. However it's invaluable for horror games, as it wrestles control from the player and breaks his preconception of what a game is and how it operates. Ultimately the goal of a horror game is to make the player terrified. Breaking the fourth wall means the game skips the player avatar as the proxy altogether and attempts to unhinge the player directly.

If done poorly it's nothing more than a stupid and silly distraction. If executed with skill however, the emotional impact, I feel, can be much bigger than anything that is strictly in-game. After all, it shakes the most fundamental coping mechanism for stress in games - "This is just a game, the player character is my proxy, everything bad that happens, happens only to this proxy and not me".

 

[Alphadrop]

That game wasn't much of a horror game though, was it? Saw it on youtube - clever idea.

It's not but it does have Scarecrow in it who pulls a Psycho Mantis on you.

 

[junkevil]

It worked really well in Eternal Darkness for the GameCube. Part way through the game you get a memory card error that says it needs to be reformated.
Bricks were indeed shat before people realised it was the game playing with them.
Actually Eternal Darkness covers most of your points.

There was one point in Arkham Asylum where your screen freezes, the graphics screw up and you hear a buzzing noise. It was supposed to make you think your hardware was failing.

arkham asylum is the only time i've ever seen an effect like this and flipped out because i thought my gpu/cpu had just melted.