When you find yourself trying to remember a show (or any works) that's on the tip of your tongue but just out of reach, come here - the collective brain of the TVTropes community can probably help. Post all the details you can remember (examples help). If you're looking for a trope, head over to Trope Finder. Have general questions about tropes? Visit Ask The Tropers!
Maybe Eternal Darkness? The playable characters are pretty well armed (especially near the end when the setting shifts to eras with decent firearms) but the main risks are sanity damage and the fact it's a Cosmic Horror Story, meaning most of the characters suffer Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu fates.
Edited by Bisected8 TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
Thanks for the recommendation, I read the trope page for Eternal Darkness and found it fascinating - so fascinating that, for once in my life, I wish I had the prerequisite hardware. All I have is a general-purpose PC because I balk at the price tags on specialized gaming hardware.
Based on browsing the trope page and reading the description of using guns and magic, my initial estimation of the protagonists' and antagonists' Super Weight is in the range I specified, so even though I can't play this game, I'm pretty sure it still serves as an actually existing example of the type of survival horror I'm looking for (as opposed to the non-existent example I made up).
More suggestions are welcome!
Edited by Miss_Desperado If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.
Bump: Perhaps games like what I'm looking for are very rare because they're tougher to make than games with weaker player characters.
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.
Bump: I got the idea to poke around in the indexes containing the trope page for Eternal Darkness - this is gonna take a while...
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.
Bump: Search is still ongoing, more suggestions are welcome.
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.
Aw darn, I thought if there were enough games like this, we could index them.
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.
Usually the point of a survival horror game is to play a helpless protagonist that is -1 or 0 on the Super Weight scale. I'm looking for survival horror games where the protagonist is tougher than that.
There are action games that are easy to mistake for survival horror games - zombie shoot-em-ups as an example. I'm not looking for that, I'm looking for games where the player character's advantages aren't as helpful as they seem before you play the game.
I'm not looking for a specific game, just any that fit this category: Are there any survival horror games that are designed to put the player on the curb-stomped end of The Worf Effect? The player character would be roughly +1 or +2 on the Super Weight scale and gets curb-stomped by one or more enemies that are +4 or higher, and the explicit goal of the game - the best the player can hope for - is a Curb Stomp Cushion or Pyrrhic Victory.
As a non-existent example, imagine Slender: The Eight Pages programmed with yet another unlockable mode that replaces the player character with a vampire instead of a non-athletic human. The pre-game cutscene might show the vampire successfully catching and draining a human before entering Slenderman's forest. The goal is still to grab the eight pages, with the end-game still being Slenderman catching you no matter what you do. Excellent night vision (represented as Hollywood Darkness) negates the need for the flashlight, but mist still limits how far you can see and you can't become part of it. With no need to breathe, the stamina mechanic that governs how far you run is gone, but Slenderman's Offscreen Teleportation means he can still outmaneuver you. Attempting to fly off as a bat or bite Slenderman is a Press X to Die scenario. A Taunt Button has the player character hiss, with a chance of escalating the aggressiveness of Slenderman's movement pattern or causing an instant game over. THAT is an example of the tone I'm looking for.
Edited by Miss_Desperado