site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1708 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 2, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As it's now Spooky Season '26, I wonder if you folks would be interested in sharing what your favourite works of horror media are. I'll get the ball rolling in the sub-threads below.

Video games

  • Silent Hill 2 (original, not remake): As reviewed here. The undisputed masterpiece of psychological horror, not to mention perhaps the best story ever told in the medium.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil REmake: The GameCube remake of the first game, later ported to Windows. Brilliant.
    • Resident Evil 4: For GameCube, PS2 and just about every other console going. Changed the way third-person shooters would play for literally decades. So many quotable lines.
    • Resident Evil 7: Successfully switched up the formula by moving to first-person. Wonderfully creepy and atmospheric.
  • Manhunt: As reviewed here. A remarkable fusion of stealth and survival horror, from the people behind Grand Theft Auto.
  • Alien Isolation: Successfully translates the vibe of the original 1979 film into a first-person stealth context. I knew from the first ten minutes of playing it that I would be coming back for more, and I wasn't wrong.
  • SOMA: My wife and I started a playthrough of this last night (her first, my second). The best game set in an underwater base ever made except for that other one.
  • Condemned: Criminal Origins: I used to play this once a year. Terrifying, with some of the most brutally realistic first-person melee combat I've ever seen.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Finished it once, a long time ago, and remember enjoying it. Tempted to try The Bunker this year.
  • Outlast: Terrifying, and spawned innumerable imitators.

It's interesting that there are a number of video games that are made in a horror setting but that don't really transmit a feeling of horror - not because they're bad video games even, just because they're too busy doing something else. "Telltale's The Walking Dead" (especially the first season) was a masterpiece of story telling but didn't really feel like a horror game despite the classic literal and metaphorical monsters. "Left 4 Dead" mostly just felt like an action game, "Little Nightmares" mostly just a platformer. The "Doom" games have you following demons to hell and back, but with such over-the-top action that the games hardly even suggest that you should fear the demons rather than vice-versa.

"Alien Isolation" felt like a pure horror game, though. I finally figured out the trick to it in Mission 6: lockers are dangerous places to hide, except if you hide in a locker and then turn off the game and then never turn it on again.

I think my favorite balance was "Alan Wake", which I guess I might call "impure horror"? Horror is still probably a plurality of the gameplay, but there's enough action that I rarely felt utterly helpless and enough story hooks to keep me going when I did.

Exactly; horror's root is about feeling powerless. The games that do it best are those "sneak around the unstoppable force" style "first person hiders": your Amnesias, Outlasts, SOMAs... Alien Isolation is just, IMO, the pinnacle of execution of that genre. Alan Wake is pretty standard survival horror, in the vein of the Resident Evil: the extent to which you feel powerless is directly related to how dwindling your ressources are and how uncertain your distance to some relief is (in Alan Wake, chapter ends, in Resident Evil, save rooms or more ressources). I thought Alan Wake was a bit too easy on that front.

I can't argue with "a bit too easy"; I think I just don't enjoy horror enough to push through it unless it's a little genre-mixed and a little too easy. I got through SOMA only because I really enjoyed the story, and in addition to quitting Alien Isolation I also gave up (even earlier!) on one of the Amnesia games. The Amnesia game (I forget which) hadn't yet done anything to hook me, but in the case of Alien Isolation it really was a good game, I just sucked too much to finish it.

One game that wouldn't be classified as "horror" but might be worth including is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. The entire game (at least early) is pretty close to being overall powerless, trapped with a metaphorical noose slowly and inexorably being tightened. It does a great job of instilling a claustrophobic effect.

Of course, this being MegaTen, you can eventually solve it by punching God, but still.

It's a fair point. The iconography of horror movies is a goldmine for game developers, but that doesn't necessarily translate into frightening gameplay. The games I listed above were exclusively ones which made me feel scared (even if only intermittently), as opposed to fun games which were marketed as horror but which never induced feelings of fear or dread. F.E.A.R. is an entertaining shooter, but at no point while playing it did I feel scared, not even during the bits where it was aping The Ring. I haven't played Dead Space to completion, but don't remember finding it scary.

"Telltale's The Walking Dead" (especially the first season) was a masterpiece of story telling but didn't really feel like a horror game despite the classic literal and metaphorical monsters.

I know what you mean, but were the TV show and comic even horror? I was under the impression they were both more like post-apocalyptic dramas in a zombie setting.

The "Doom" games have you following demons to hell and back, but with such over-the-top action that the games hardly even suggest that you should fear the demons rather than vice-versa.

My understanding is that Doom 3 is the major exception to this, although I haven't played it.

I've never seen the Walking Dead show, but I did finish the comic, and you're right there; it also wasn't a horror story so much as a post-apocalyptic adventure story with some horror elements. The zombie hordes were essentially dumb forces of nature that could be dealt with given enough preparedness and cooperation, and only the human villains could really inspire fear. Telltale's video game (and its sequels) preserved the tone well.

I beat Doom 3, and I guess it does include a few exceptions? There was some body-horror executed amazingly well, and then there were some jump scares that just fell flat. The game disappointed a lot of fans, because since it was really pushing the limits of graphics technology for its time, they had to figure out some way to avoid overtaxing everybody's GPUs, and they did so by limiting the number of enemies simultaneously in combat. Ironically that's probably what pushed them to try (half-successfully) to make it much better as a horror game, but many people didn't care because that style made it worse as a Doom game. I think Doom 2016 was so well-received because in hindsight it felt like that was what Doom was always supposed to be, and every prior game had just been choosing which aspects of the Platonic Ideal Doom to sacrifice to the limits of pre-2016 technology.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats