Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

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Corrupted_Loremaster
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Post by Corrupted_Loremaster »

While the game as a whole wouldn't count, certain parts of Neverwinter Nights come to mind, especially the ghost town in the origional game, and the underground winged-elf village from the underdark expansion. Actually...both could be made in to islands with very little editing at all.
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Drinnik Shoehorn
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Post by Drinnik Shoehorn »

What about Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem?
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vipera aspis
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Post by vipera aspis »

Nightmare Creatures for ps1 was awesome. That has to be one of the gothest things i have ever played. The main badguy is A. Crowly who leads the HellFire club!!

I also firmly suggest all of you fellow Lovecraft fans search for De-Animator the flash game. A perfect lovecraftian hero.
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Post by LordGodefroi »

Most of the games I would include have already been mentioned: the Ravenloft PC games, the Gabriel Knight series, and the 7th Guest / 11th Hour duo.

One game that hasn't been mentioned is Gothos, a Canadian game that slipped under the radar in 1997. It got mixed reviews with most skewed toward unfavorable. But, I had a great time playing it.

Find screen shots at
http://fourfatchicks.com/Reviews/Gothos/Gothos.shtml

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Ail
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Post by Ail »

A great little game that is also freeware and very lovecraft-like. Try it, you'll like it:
Fiend.
http://www.freewarehome.com/index.html? ... ure_t.html

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Sylaire
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Post by Sylaire »

Okay, after a half-year of occasional lurking, this topic made me come out of the shadows and register, 'cause you're missing the cream of the crop here:

Koudelka (PS1): Pure Gothic-horror setting; the title heroine is summoned to a crumbling monastery in 1898 Wales by a woman's spirit and becomes involved in a plot of insane magicians, the living dead, and the dead living. Resurrection isn't always what you bargained for... Koudelka features an excellent story, exceptional voice acting (with some of the most well-rounded characters I've ever seen), good music, and some genuine creeps. The entire game is almost a template for a Ravenloft dungeon crawl, and there are story ideas and adventure hooks to be pruned throughout (to take just one example, one of the midboss fights can be completely avoided if you lay a ghost child to rest by praying at her grave and by showing her the years of letters her mother wrote to her). The three PCs are extraordinarily well-developed; all of them have their dark sides. The down side is that gameplay is a little clunky, especially in combat, which will turn off some people, but it's worth playing through just for the sheer volume of Gothic-horror possibilities.

And it had a sequel!

Shadow Hearts (PS2): Best. Gothic. Horror. Game. Ever. A straight RPG, Shadow Hearts features exceptional characters, a fun game system, a twisted and complex plot set in the real world, and the best darned soundtrack for a Gothic horror game imaginable. MotRD players could be pruning ideas from this game forever.
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Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

Here's an oldie:
Nocturne by Terminal Reality

Set in the 20's and 30's, the game followed the pulpy hero The Stranger as he battled vampires, werewolves, and Franken-mobsters.
This was a really tense game that featured realistic shadows which were cutting edge back in the day.

TR latter used the same engine to create the Blair Witch games, and shortly thereafter disapeared off the radar.
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Post by Isabella »

There's a game my brother owns called "Kuon", where you play a japanese spirit medium in a ghost and zombie infested house. Creepy atmosphere.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

Post by HuManBing »

Bumping this thread, and requesting a sticky. I keep reposting my "must play list of Gothic videogames" in different threads, and I figure it might be simplest to just post them all in a dedicated video game thread.

Before I started a video game thread, I did a search and discovered that we already have one here. So, sticky requested. I'll post my own video game findings here.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

Post by HuManBing »

Blood

Superficially a gunslinger game, this game actually had some pretty engaging backstory to it. Set in rural-Gothic early 1900s USA, it chronicles the revenge quest of a single revenant against his murderer. But this is a vengeance tale with a twist: his murderer was a demigod, and the path is beset with fantastic and fearsome otherworldly monsters as well as ruthless human cultists who won't stop until he's dead again. This game is now available for legal purchase and download from Good Old Games (search for "One Unit Whole Blood"). Features some very creepy levels in temples, cathedrals, cave hideouts, and even grisly hospitals in an abandoned war-torn city.

Some highlights from the game:
  • Caleb, the protagonist, takes more damage than most contemporary shooter game protagonists did. He had to heal himself by claiming the life essence of his enemies - which manifested as glowing ghostly hearts floating near the ground when they died.
  • The monstrous enemies rarely had ranged attacks, making them melee fighters primarily. Those that did have ranged attacks were usually better off closing to melee anyway (gargoyles, spectres). Most monstrous enemies had comparatively high life - humans are weedy by comparison.
  • The human enemies were all cultists, and they had a variety of ranged attacks. The most basic cultist had a shotgun - higher-up cultists had tommy guns - and superior cultists had a charged energy gun. All cultists would occasionally throw dynamite to smoke Caleb out of hiding places. Thus, although human enemies were physically weaker than monstrous enemies, they had the advantage of explosives and firearms.
  • Caleb's backstory is surprisingly bleak, and not at all like the typical hero story. Razed farmsteads, murdered spouses, insane survivors clutching dead infants...
VIEW CONTENT:
  • The minibosses are a giant stone gargoyle, a giant spider that constantly spawns fresh spider minions, and a two-headed hellhound. The first boss emphasizes mobility, the second spawns huge numbers of mooks, and the third is sheer firepower.
  • The final boss is a giant, decayed demon that has manifested partially in the human world. It has three attacks - one is a short-ranged melee attack that obliterates anything living and will kill Caleb instantly. The second is a mid-range entropic blast that causes feathery bursts to fly towards Caleb, and which have a potent kill radius. The third attack is a long-range line-of-sight attack that causes burning damage over a long period of time while the end boss can see Caleb.
  • Caleb's initial quest is to rescue his lover and fellow gunslinger, Ophelia, from the cult. By the end of the first chapter, Caleb already knows she has died and been sacrificed to the dark god and he refocuses his goal to bringing down the dark god for good.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

Post by HuManBing »

System Shock 2

The spiritual predecessor to the much-later, much more popular Bioshock. SS2 was a sci-fi FPS game, but it had serious elements of RPG survivalist horror gaming too. Ammunition was scarce, resources were scarce, and enemies were everywhere. Your character started off a simple marine, but as you progress through the game you received cyber modules which you could use to boost your stats, your skills, your weapon familiarities, and even psionic powers. The later game Bioshock was almost a carbon copy of the earlier game, with somewhat more limited replayability but much more slick presentation and atmosphere. Both are well worth playing for a great handbasket of "alone in the dark with lots of bad guys" horror game tropes, including a few well-done plot twists.

SS2 Monsters:
  • Possessed zombie-like humans, some with melee attacks and others with slow shotgun ranged attacks.
  • Worms, easily-missed enemies low to the ground with a weak melee attack.
  • Possessed droids, which would lurch towards you and then explode when nearby.
  • Maintenance/security droids. A variety of attacks, ranging from spark welding lasers to heavy plasma blasts.
  • Eggs. While non threatening by themselves, they would release a toxic cloud if disturbed by the player. Some eggs contained swarm enemies, which could not be killed by damage - the player had to flee them and wait for the swarm to die out.
  • Spiders. Jumping melee attackers. Some were partially invisible.
  • Infiltration droids. "Cyber ninja" type enemies - threw shuriken at range.
  • Nurse. Horrifying unwilling cyborg victim - female human from the waist up, tottering robot from the waist down. Fired a small plasma bolt while murmuring gentle reassurances as if to a patient.
  • Rumblers. Very large mixed-flesh creatures with a potent melee attack and surprising speed.
  • Psy reavers. Brainlike levitating monsters with potent psychic attacks. Would regenerate even if "killed" unless a root brain and spinal cord structure was destroyed.
VIEW CONTENT:
In both games, the player makes contact with a guide via audio link. In both games, the guide instructs the player to fight a common enemy, but halfway through the game the guide reveals that they are a different person, and then becomes the player's main enemy.

In SS2 the change of allegiance is not so sudden, as the player still needs to fight against the original foe. But in Bioshock the change is very dramatic, as it occurs after the player has eliminated the original foe and now discovers there is an even greater enemy lying in wait.

SS2 did not have any minibosses per se. Bioshock had key personnel to eliminate, which were essentially just powered-up versions of the usual humanoid enemies. Bioshock's initial foe, Andrew Ryan, is a non-combat enemy. It's worth playing the game or watching the Youtube videos of the confrontation with Ryan just for the profound plot development therein.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

Post by HuManBing »

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

A vintage game that takes the watchword "make everything real, detailed, and mundane... before you throw in the supernatural weird stuff". A great example of some very interesting and effective ideas, and in my opinion one of the best arguments ever made that "first person games make the most immersive horror". Your character is a standard detective investigator, not an experienced gunman. You don't even get a gun until about a third of the way through the game! Stealth is crucial to survival, and there are some very interesting puzzle-solving bits too. Once you do get a gun, the tempo of the game changes slightly, but you never lose the feeling of vulnerability and being out of your depth.

Before you can shoot to defend yourself, you've got to draw your gun. Are any enemies nearby? Because if they are, they might hear the noise you make drawing your gun (same goes for reloading it). If you just blast away without aiming, you'll be making a lot of noise and will probably miss all your shots. Aim, and your peripheral vision contracts, leaving you potentially vulnerable from the sides and rear. Aim too long, and your arms will get tired and your attention will waver, eventually forcing you to cease aiming.

If you get injured, your vision goes red and blurry from pain, and your limbs and body will register the injury. You can't get better until you heal up - but you can't just hit a button to heal yourself. You need to find a quiet, undisturbed spot to open your medical field kit. Then you have to examine your body for scrapes (require gauze), deep cuts (require sutures), and breakages (require splints). Then and only then can you start using them on yourself, which takes a decent amount of time... and which will prove nerve racking if you're hiding from enemies!

Finally, no Call of Cthulhu game would be complete without some insanity element to it. First-person games are especially good at this, because you see all the visions and hallucinations first hand. Your vision swims as you struggle to comprehend the impossible. Expose yourself to too much sanity-blasting weirdness, and your character might even bring his hands up to choke himself to death, or put a pistol to his own temple! An excellent game, and well worth checking out. (Note to potential gamers: the PC version of the game was hurriedly ported and features several game-breaking bugs. A variety of websites feature tools and saved games to help you past those bugs.)
VIEW CONTENT:
The game has several fascinating puzzle elements to it, including the use of a cipher postcard overlaid on a calendar to figure out a safe's combination, ringing the bells in a chapel in a certain order to open a secret pathway, and using a gong to deafen yourself so an enemy's musical psychic attack wouldn't work on you.

Notable enemies included:
  • Dagon - attacks your gunboat, but is driven off by using the ship's main gun.
  • Hydra - maintains a psychic barrier - the player must possess a Deep One and activate switches in order to make her vulnerable.
  • Flying Polyps - you only fight two of them, but it takes place deep underground in a wind-filled vertiginous cavern.
The game also makes use of flashbacks, showing the main character grappling with a gap in his memory and incongruous details from an alien world. The end sequence of the game shows that the character had swapped consciousness with a Yithian time-traveling mind, and the character had learned many occult secrets from them, which had been imperfectly mindwiped from him afterwards. Could be a good way to represent the Darkonian memory drain effect.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

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Thief - The Dark Project

Probably the best fantasy plot of any FPS game I've ever played. Thief was developed by a studio that was something like 33% or 50% female. The gameplay is extremely cerebral, focusing on studying patrol patterns and light sources and walking surfaces. Stealth is crucial as you navigate the levels as a thief, stealing as much loot as you can before making your escape. The second half of the game involves a dark cult, and a truly chilling series of cutscenes. The plot and pacing of the game is superb, with earlier verses and poems coming back to rude significance later on as events take a very disturbing turn. Has two sequels and a full-game-length fan mod (Thief II: The Iron Age).

A good game to study for low-combat horror. Some enemies are extremely scary when you're an isolated thief working alone in the dark.

The game also has a faint philosophical subtext: it pits urbanization and mechanical industry against nature - but it does not portray nature as some pristine paradise. The forces of nature in this game are dark, cruel, and brooding - something unknown and arbitrary and capricious. It's unobtrusive but if you look for it, you'll find this thought-provoking take on the usual man vs. nature debate.
VIEW CONTENT:
For me, one of the scariest moments was in the Dark Cathedral. I had seen several skeletal swordwraiths maintaining guard patterns, and I knew that attracting their attention would mean a fight I could not possibly win. However, while in a side room, I accidentally made a noise. The swordwraith outside immediately began walking towards my room, with its attendant otherworldly laughter and ghostly jingling getting closer and closer by the second. I hid in the corner, and I watched in abject horror as the door swung open. The thing stood in the doorway for a moment or two - then its footsteps and ghostly laughter began to recede into the distance. The door had blocked me from its view. I was still alive. Quite possibly the scariest moment I'd ever experienced in a game!

The game was also developed partially by the same people who did System Shock 2 and Bioshock. The game features a similar plot twist - Constantine turns out to be a whispered demigod and he maims your character in a horrific cutscene. The true scope of the game design's skill is in how they established the existence of the demigod. The previous mission briefings all have a hidden reference to the god, and about how he has left the world. What initially starts off sounding like a prankster god becomes increasingly cruel and ominous - until you see Constantine's own transformation and the god returns to rude health.
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:What about Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem?
I'm not sure you can call Eternal Darkness Gothic per se. It's more eldritch horror: dealing with sanity-shattering truths, things that exist outside of time, facing god-like beings and their servants. Then again eldritch horror, first created by Lovecraft, draws heavily on Gothic horror so it's not completely un-Gothic. There was a sequel being made, but last I heard it was up in the air. The teaser in the first game (if your Sanity dropped low enough to hallucinate) seems to be the title: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Redemption.
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Re: Great video games to play with a Gothic atmosphere

Post by Trike »

Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a good Ravenloft-style game.

Particularly the Carpathian areas where you have to chase the Witch and fight her minions before wandering around ancient catacombs and mausoleums.
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