Hi Dark, I suspect Halloween here in the States is more or less the same as in the U.K. During the month of October Halloween is pretty much a holiday where kids dress up in cheap costumes and go around the neighbor hood asking for sweets or candy. Movie channels like American movie Classics plays a wide arrange of movies which they feel are seasonal, and as said before what is and is not appropriate for Halloween is really a slippery concept. You might end up with anything from old science fiction classics like War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman to slashers like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Plus an assortment of the old Hammer films like Dracula and Frankenstein. Its a pretty open ended genre as far as I am concerned, because anything with a slightly horror theme to it seems to be included as being Halloween related. Although, it really comes down to personal opinion as to weather or not something like War of the Worlds is a horror movie at all let alone as having any relevant's to Halloween beyond Orson Well's 1938 radio broadcast for Halloween.
That's what gets me about Charles saying Shades of Doom is not a "Halloween game." I don't know what criteria he is using, but I personally think many of the basic horror movie game elements is there and it should be classified as appropriate for Halloween. We have a largely empty lab filled with monsters from mutated humans to mutated dogs, blobs straight out of films like the Blob, silent walkers that reminds me of the Invisible Man, and the Boss kind of scared the crap out of me the first time I fought him. LOL! Cheers! On 10/6/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Well I'm afraid I'm a little uncertain what you mean by "halloween games" > there charles, or how Shades is not one. > > This could of course just be cultural since I suspect haloween is more a > major thing in the Us than it is over here, ---- usually here it's confined > > to tv, the odd themed party or evening for social groups, and occasionally > kids showing up to extort money or sweets nominally in costume. > > I therefore assumed "haloween games" meant games with a creepy or > frightening atmosphere, which certainly would count shades and nightjar > simply for their atmosphere, just as the Horror genre of literature or films > > is more about atmosphere than about subject. > > Harry Potter I agree is not a horror series, it's fantasy, though ideas like > > the dementors are pretty nasty, where as a book like Steven King's It, > despite involving very many fantasy elements I'd definitely call horror > first for the high amount of monster related deaths, warping of reality in > many passages and often very atmospheric descriptions. > > interestingly enough, I'm reading doctor sleep at the moment by Steven king > > which I wouldn't! class as horror, simply because it hasn't quite had that > level of reality bending weerdness, although it is a sequel to the shining, > > which certainly was horror. > > Really, it's a slippery concept at the best of times, especially since it > can occur in so many different genres from psychological fiction to Sf. > Heck, Doctor who frequently dips into the horror genre, yet one of the > scariest and most horific Doctor Who audio plays I've ever heard was the 8th > > Doctor Story The Cannibalists, in which most of the characters were actually > > robots! For why I found it particularly scary see the review I wrote on: > http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/cannibalists.htm > > Thinking about it, if we call "horror" simply stuff that is scary, well > haunted house and chillingham probably need removing from that list since > both were more comedy themed around old monster or ghost ideas, like a Ghost > > train at a fair, than seriously spooky, or at least I found them so. Then > again, what an individual finds scary is probably very much dependent on > that individual's own experience, and though some ideas like warping of > reality or alteration of the everyday into something alarming are pretty > universal, whether you find these terrifying or just interestingly > atmospheric is likely up to you. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
