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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.

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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.

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