I finally finished SOMA just now and I need to go outside and lay face down in the grass for a while. just... fuck. Hands down, the best horror game I've ever played. Possibly the best piece of horror media I've ever consumed, period. And I will NEVER FUCKING PLAY IT AGAIN. ...well okay maybe I'll do another run or three with the Wuss Mode mod so I can explore and admire the scenery and enjoy the jumpscares without having to also worry about being murdered by biomechanical horrorterrors. Spoiler: that ending tho FUCK I KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. What happened at Omicron was foreshadowing--okay, a LOT of shit that went down either in-game or offscreen and revealed through docs could arguably be considered "foreshadowing" but leaving Simon In Imogen Meatsuit behind there was weapons-grade foreshadowing. And I was still not prepared for the gut punch of Simon-in-meat-suit realizing he was not on the ARK. To be fair... Simon, Catherine explained this to you and even if she hadn't, have you no fucking clue how data works? Like, Simon? My guy? You know how uploading a cat picture to imgur doesn't make the cat picture disappear from your device? YOUR MEAT SUIT IS YOUR DEVICE. THE ARK IS IMGUR. YOU ARE THE CAT PICTURE. IT'S YOU. Yeah, I'm really glad we got to see ARK-Simon and Catherine at the end, because just leaving it with Simon alone in the pilot seat would have been entirely too much to deal with.
Damn, now I need to play Soma. Especially since my favorite author praised it. (Well, as close as he gets to praising anything.)
I was playing it but the glitch effects make me kinda sick, and the "turn off visual effects" setting doesn't get rid of them all.. I should pick it up again now that i'm home for break though, hmmm
HELL YES - wait you're so much more resilient to horror than i am? why are you a wimp about this specifically?? (i'll message u)
I watched The Invitation tonight and it was pretty good! Slow build, high tension psychological thriller. You watch like 3/4ths of the movie doubting your own instincts and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I recommend~
@Ruevian I might join you in the review thing! Dark Was The Night and The Wailing look particularly up my alley, so I may well give them a shot tonight :) Also I'm being daft, but is SOMA short for anything? I'm a sucker for a good horror-game LP, and I feel like I've exhausted a lot of my opinions atm. (Doesn't help that I'm very picky about youtube gamers and prefer to watch story-heavy stuff without commentary XD)
Honestly I'm not sure but "SOMA" might have been a term carried over from the original plot (which was interesting and pretty wildly different from what actually shipped, and there's a "supersecret.rar" file in the game's folder that includes a lot of docs and about 20 minutes of early gameplay footage from it); the term comes up maybe twice in passing in the game.
So if I just put 'SOMA let's play' into youtube it'll come up with the right one? Also I'm having a bit of a netflix horror night - I'm about to watch The Wailing, will report back once it's over - and I noticed a few Stephen King classics that I haven't yet seen on the US version of the site. What I want to know is does the ending of Cujo-the-film follow the same route as the book? Spoiler: endings tw death aka does the kid die? Also how graphic are the depictions of what three days in a hot car will do to a human? Because if so I am not emotionally ready for that atm XDD EDIT: SO APPARENTLY NETFLIX CAN NOW TELL IF I'M USING A PROXY THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT D: SOMA it is, then!
Was thinking about people who don't watch horror because protags are always doing stupid shit. Something I really want to see, because it's great and terrifying, is competent people making all the right decisions... and bad things still happening. Like if the cops get involved they suddenly forget all their training, and it's infuriating. Firefighters who get trapped in a room and sit there and scream instead of looking at what they've got and trying? Fuck that with the sandiest lube. 80 grit for them! I don't want a genre-savvy protag who can list all the "what not to do in a horror movie" tropes, but someone who works hard to keep their head and not do blatantly stupid shut. And then bad things happen because it's a force that can't be stopped, and being smart isn't enough because nothing is. It's why I like facility horror, stuff like Helix and SCPs, though there's a lot of idiot ball there as well. I want a story of a bunch of professionals doing everything proper but shit keeps going wrong anyway, especially with the added bonus of them turning on each other because someone must have fucked up- a quarantine setting where nobody forgets to check the seals or leaves a door partially open ffs but whatever spreads anyway because it can't be contained, your protocols are cute but ultimately pointless. Something like that where I don't end up harpy-screeching because people are at fault for their own deaths and that's only a little scary, and more anger than fear-inducing that they get other people killed. (Unless of course the spookything possesses someone into making mistakes to help it, that's different, but only if there's clues that's what's happening. That's actually scary!)
The only way I get through those kinds of shows is just repeating to myself 'In horror movie worlds, there is no horror fiction'. It's the only thing that makes any kind of sense XDD
this this this ALL of this Like how is it not scarier to think that this thing can still get you even if you do all the right things? Or that it can force you not to do them? Than just "lol they're gonna die because they're idiots, this will be fun to see" or "okay THAT guy's an idiot and we will take great satisfaction in watching him die because of all the other people he got killed" It's either ragey or it's funny, and both of those things kill fear.
So we watched The Wailing and Last Shift. The Wailing: slow build, very long, METAPHOR OUT THE ASS. I thought it was interesting if not exactly exciting, and I'm always fond of movies where you watch it wondering who's in the right. Had to wiki it afterwards to understand the ending, has the sort of slow art film vibe I usually associate with k-horror Last Shift: in sharp contrast, this movie was short and shallow, but I liked it too. All the usual cliches and jump scares, an overarching plot that's superficial and a twist ending any long time horror fan will see coming a mile away. It had its creepy moments and I liked the overall aesthetic. Sort of like popcorn. Two more movies I'm gonna watch: The Silenced and Clinical.
I genuinely did like that movie, I just wish I couldn't hear Joss Whedon masturbating the whole time :P I'm trying to think of other works that do similar things because I know I've encountered some!