Horror games make the game unenjoyable for me, thus I refuse to play them. They destroy the meaning of entertainment. I play games as a pastime - to have fun, not to get scared. If I want to get scared I'll go watch a horror movie.
I suppose it's different for everyone then. Some people like to get scared / it is enjoyable for them, so that's why horror games exist. It's entirely understandable if you don't like it though.
Horror outside of actual horror games is a mixed bag to me. For me, it's getting kind of predictable for indie games to start out disarmingly cute and then whip out the proverbial Giygas at some point. That kind of creepypasta-esque horror never really worked for me, nor did i ever find it as scary as actual horror games.
To be honest HAL seems to do a lot of the sort of "Here's this cutesy game now time for this horrible
thing final boss" and I personally never really deemed it as horror more than just ... interesting? At most I was a bit creeped by Zero from Dreamland 3 it's little
eye thing it does when it loses all it's life, but besides that the "horror-esque boss twists" that go in games usually are more interesting / thrilling to me than they are scary. Considering HAL made the Mother series, i'm assuming doing that with the final boss is also a sort of trademark of theirs, and others kinda decided to overuse the concept from them. Dunno for sure, but I still like how HAL does it better than any other game creators. Maybe i'm biased because i'm a sucker for HAL's games...
I'm fine with horror, and jumpscares too when done in limitation. You cannot rely on just plain atmosphere alone to drive a horror experience, sometimes you need a "Something bad its happening and it could KILL YOU!" moment to keep the tension going.
I really hate loud jumpscares, that stuff needs to eff off. I should be scared of the game, not scared that i might eventually go deaf.
Oh god yea I know what you mean. For the most part things that just appear in my face without a sound just startle me for a moment and then i just... laugh though. I don't know, there was a thing in a game I watched awhile back that just popped out of nowhere and I forgot if it made a sound or not but i just remember it popping up and then it was gone and the main characters had 0 reaction to it so just started cracking up because the game was meant to be serious. Then again the game had more of a reliance on jumpscares than I'd like- for the most part i didn't mind jumpscares revolving around the monsters chasing you and whatnot because it made
sense- but god there were just pointless jumpscares at points.
I believe it was Until Dawn? Still a pretty good game I suppose, but the unneeded jumpscares just to keep the player on edge or whatever were just kinda unnecessary especially for the ones that the characters don't even react to.
