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September 6, 2011 6:58 AM   Subscribe

Intruded is an atmospheric 3D flash game where you play a mysterious character caught in a labyrinth of traps under the surveillance of an unknown observer.
posted by codacorolla (18 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I can't bear the controls and camera angles. Takes me back to the worst of all the oldest survival horror games.
posted by Evstar at 7:32 AM on September 6, 2011


A game that's difficult because you can't see what's going on. That's always a great mechanic.
posted by Malor at 7:33 AM on September 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


I can't bear the controls and camera angles. Takes me back to the worst of all the oldest survival horror games.

That's intentional, I think.

The tank controls and truculent controls are essentially the challenge - makes walking down a hallway a bit more challenging.
posted by codacorolla at 7:39 AM on September 6, 2011


@evstar

i don't give even a fuck what anybody thinks, SH1 was smooth as fucking silk
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:01 AM on September 6, 2011


Yeah, but Alone in the Dark was like trying to control a fucking marionette.
posted by griphus at 8:20 AM on September 6, 2011


Unable to get a clear idea of where I'm trying to get to and finding out that what I'd been doing was pointless and having to start over.

If I was missing my job this would be the perfect tonic.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:41 AM on September 6, 2011


I just played that all the way through. What a piece of unutterable dreck.
posted by howfar at 8:43 AM on September 6, 2011


Yeah, but Alone in the Dark was like trying to control a fucking marionette.

Ahh, yeah, that's exactly what it felt like. I spun through the first 10 or so rooms trying to figure out why it was terrible in a familiar way, and that's it. Ugh.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:46 AM on September 6, 2011


i don't give even a fuck what anybody thinks, SH1 was smooth as fucking silk

The "oldest survival horror games" evstar is talking about did not use the real-time 3D third person perspective that the original Silent Hill had. Back in the early days of 3D games in the mid-90s, it was difficult to render both a complex 3D character and a complex 3D background. So while a 3D fighting game or driving game might get away with just rendering the important foreground characters and objects in 3D and including a low-res and uninteresting background as an afterthought, a survival horror game had a big emphasis on the environment and atmosphere so it couldn't get away with blocky and uninteresting backdrops.

As a sort of cheat to get around the rendering limitations of the early 3D gaming hardware, early survival horror games like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil used pre-rendered static backgrounds that were much more detailed than what could be rendered in real time, and stuck the 3D characters on top of that. The main limitation of doing this method was that with a static background there was no way to have an actual movable 3D camera, all of the backgrounds would only work from a single perspective. The developers actually used that to their advantage though, picking "cinematic" angles that would make the game more tense or frame the action in the best way visual. Which had the problem of making the controls feel confusing and clunky. The player might run away from a zombie by holding right on the controller to move through a door on the bottom left part of the screen, and appear moving left on the upper right part of the screen in a scene where going to the right will bring them back to where they just were. The constant changing of the perspective of the character with respect to the camera angle was jarring and clunky, and although the early games were successful despite those problems, once the technical limitations were removed the static camera angle technique was abandoned.

Silent Hill was actually one of the first 3D survival horror games to use real time rendered scenes, and it partially got away with it by writing the fog effect that was used by early 3D games to cover up poor maximum rendering distances into the game itself as a major part of the setting and aesthetic of the game.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:10 AM on September 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


Yeah, but Alone in the Dark was like trying to control a fucking marionette.

Alone in the dark with a "fucking marionette"... *ponders*
posted by Zorsha at 9:14 AM on September 6, 2011 [1 favorite]



I just played that all the way through. What a piece of unutterable dreck.


It was so terrible that I played through 24 maps! Blech!
posted by codacorolla at 9:31 AM on September 6, 2011


I enjoyed the poorly-lit, odd camera angles, unreliable-viewpoint slant to the game, until I got to the room with the actual slanting floors and the flying mace (the one that looks a bit like a maze).

I worked through the maze, realizing that I needed to be in the exact center of each path while also avoiding the mace, and had to make small adjustments to do so, getting closer and closer to the end of the level. Then, with the red ball a step away, SPLAT! the mace smooshed me into blood spatters.

And then my Mom called, and I lost interest.

So, points for creativity for the game developers, but the frustration factor is high in this game, and I'm not sure the benefit outweighs the hassle.
posted by misha at 9:32 AM on September 6, 2011


I gave this game two serious attempts to win me over. Just horrible, horrible mechanics here. The bad, often shifting in the middle of your move, camera angles, combined with the dark, grainy image quality, combined with less-than-precise character control makes for a frustrating and unenjoyable time, with no apparent benefit or pay-off for your frustration.

It's nice that game devs are experimenting, I suppose, so I'll give them that.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:01 AM on September 6, 2011


The last two maps, and the ending, switch things up a little bit. Even though I found some maps frustrating (god damn spike shooting twisty path room!) there always seemed to be a catch to making it through relatively easily. I'd recommend playing through.
posted by codacorolla at 10:19 AM on September 6, 2011


That was actually quite fun! I adjusted to the camera angles pretty fast, and I thought the grainyness was surprisingly well done. I didn't go for the orbs, though.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:58 AM on September 6, 2011


That was actually quite fun! I adjusted to the camera angles pretty fast, and I thought the grainyness was surprisingly well done. I didn't go for the orbs, though.

What happened in your ending / what modes did you unlock? I went for 8 of them, and unlocked ghost mode, plus an intriguing but not very satisfying ending.
posted by codacorolla at 12:11 PM on September 6, 2011


It was so terrible that I played through 24 maps! Blech!

Sometimes things are compellingly bad. This was truly awful. The "puzzles" are reminiscent of a weak C64 title from about 1987. The camera angles are a supposed innovation but they were done to death in the early 90s. The skittery distortion of the visuals added a vague sense of menace, until you stopped noticing it after two minutes. Also, if each level was a camera, it should only have been from one angle, unless these are magic teleporting cameras. The ending was both predictable and pointless. I carried on playing partly because it was piss easy and partly to laugh at the ineptitude of the whole endeavour.

Pretentious garbage made by people who apparently have not only never designed a game before, but haven't even played one.
posted by howfar at 5:19 PM on September 7, 2011


i liked the screen static and the music

also it's a 3d game in fucking flash, holy shit, even three years ago this would have been something i downloaded in an .exe

~progress~
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 4:51 PM on September 8, 2011 [1 favorite]


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