Unintentionally Spooky Cityscapes in Video Games
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- Опубліковано 16 жов 2024
- Looking into some examples of unintentionally spooky city levels in video games.
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A nice parallel to times where the game environment itself is the eerie horror element might be found in Kitty Horrorshow's work. There's a couple of games in their free "Haunted Cities" series that are basically just that, namely Leechbowl and Scarlet Bough which both feature relatively urban environments, granted it's hammier than the understated horror of it happening unintentionally.
Holy hell. Played a few of their games in the past but had no idea they were made by the same person. Very epic.
"Atmosphere is when the game finally shuts up" that's actually a really interesting way of looking at it, honestly.
And yet there was so much talking in this video that I couldn't take in the games' atmosphere at all.
@@ethanfreeman1106 that's because it's a video on what he's talking about, you aren't playing the game, Ethan.
Ah, good to seeya mate! Love your videos!
Its so annoying to hear him dismiss his own perspective when its so interesting
God tell me about it. This video is honestly ahead of its time even if the phenomenon it's related to is relatively recent. Joyless discussed that feeling and concept now popularized as "liminal" before most people realized it. We've all felt this way at some point in our life. We've all gotten this eerie discomforting feeling we couldn't explain when looking at empty spaces normally bustling with life. For someone to go out of their way to play terrible shovelware and give an otherwise boring and poorly designed game some kind of unintentional enjoyment is utterly brilliant. Among the sea of react youtubers trying to make a quick, easy buck, finding someone who's passionate about such unique introspective they've discovered on their own is something to treasure. Joyless has absolutely earned my subscription and I'm really looking forward to what he has to say about other things moving forward.
@@mindmonkey00 thats very eloquent, nice one
Agree. Not even a minute pass between the times he shits on himself. And it's a shame because the production of the video is great and the content is unique yet totally relatable; a lot of us have played those types of games and a lot have felt that way while thinking ourselves to be irrational for that.
And I get self deprocating humour and all of that, it's just so much it becomes heavy.
@@Tomahawks360 dont think it is just a humour,i think he really is he way he is,people like that exists,me included
What an interesting video.
The only reasons I don't explore open world games (or levels) exhaustively like you've demonstrated here, are lack of time and eventual boredom.
It says a lot about your interest in game design. Exploring uninhabited or unscripted spaces (without secrets or bonus incentives) is something I assume most gamers only do for a short while, just to mix things up a bit, but the idea that you prefer to explore these spaces more than following the games linear or narrative paths is fascinating.
You're not alone man. Ever since I was young, I've been able to get deeply immersed in every aspect of video games. For me I feel it came from a real place of loneliness and boredom. Looking back now I realize it lead to some of the most important moments of my life. Real self discovery and artistic inspiration. There's something about letting your imagination take you away while in someone elses world, whether it's a game or music etc, that's an escape like no other.
I remember turning off the music in Metroid Prime 1 after beating it a few times. There's so much effort put into the ambient sound design that it almost becomes a different game entirely, and I love how it feels. The music's great, but my goodness is the game tense with only the weird hum of alien machinery and screeching beasts.
Disney's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding is basically the Disney equivilant to Silent Hill...
I'd love to see it
Jay this is how I play games too. It was subconscious for me though I never thought about it this way. Now You mention it I've been doing this for years. GTA 3 through 5 are all treasure troves of unintentional atmosphere. Keep up the good vids mang.
Hell yeah dude, finally someone else.
@@Joyless same. i've been doing this since i was a kid. it started with mario kart's ghost time modes.
Saints Row 3: It's strange how creepy a game world can be at night even though it's supposed to be funny and wacky. Between missions you can find places with no pedestrians, no music, and just a run down city with doors you can't open and windows without lights in them.
the barges and docked ships are even creepier because they're completely uninhabited outside of story missions, like the one boat where you rescue kinzie for the first time, it does exist in free roam
Too young to be allowed randomly away from home, but having the desire to explore, I used to play some of the PS1/2 MoH games up to the end of the missions, and then walk all the way back to enjoy the sceneries and checking out every detail before once again moving to the exit.
YES! I did this exact same thing too
I used to get freaked out by loads of PS1 games for some reason, I think its because the graphics used to warp and tremble quite frequently and so any time I played a Tomb Raider game or some weird obscure thing that I can't even fully remember it would always seem like a horror game, even that FPS style South Park game is creepy as hell to me because it's just covered in fog and turkeys come out of nowhere...
I subbed to you when I was still CenturionDan and I didn’t know you rebranded. Super great stuff as always Jay.
Hey man, thanks. Missed you dude.
Second Life has loads of broken places to wander around. Most of the "sims" (id est environments or levels) are dead, and places like Hangars Liquides can get you lost for hours just basking in the ambience.
Yeah. You’d need a guide though. Trying to find all that on your own you just wind up in some pretty disgusting places.
This is some true youtube shit here, love these hyper deep dives that smaller creators like you can actually make and find an audience for.
subscribed,
Great video man, it's awesome to see you build on your old gta 3 video about it unintentionally creepy atmosphere, also damn that audio from the goofy skating game was downright terrifying.
Old Pokémon games feel like that to me. Because there are people in the cities, but they repeat the same thing every time you talk to them. And your own character doesn’t even respond. You can go into every house and no one cares. If the music wasn’t so cheerful everywhere it would be such an empty, depressing world 😂
You should play Unreal, Deus Ex and especially the original Thief trilogy. If you’re one to take in the environment, you’ll love the feel of ‘em.
The inner city level from Second Sight, or the urban levels from Timesplitters 1. Free Radical sure knew how to make interesting/unnerving levels, and the audio was great too
dude, SO relateable. tony hawk games that let you go on foot + freeskate mode = MONTHS of my life just trying to figure out what the hell was going on in these cities, arenas, hellscapes, islands, buildings, and the glitches within them. it started to affect how i saw the real world; id look out the car window & think “what a nice skybox, i can’t even tell where the jpeg repeats or how many layers it has” LOL
UA-cam finally recommended someone crazy as me! Keep it up bro
*Damn, Jay you're an extremely underrated youtuber! you're quality is consistent and you aren't a sellout*
*You deserve to have over a million subs!*
Really nice follow up to your GTA 3 video. Killing it as always dude!
Pretty sure the creepy sound in goofy's skateboarding is either a failed attempt at a wind noise or a slowed down sound of a skateboard in motion.
I’d say gm_bigcity gives off this feeling, it’s a mix between your mouth multiplayer maps and this video
Yes
The city in that Extremely Goofy game is extremely creepy
I was pleasantly surprised to see glimpses of Urban Chaos or C-12 here, because in my childhood the atmosphere of those games quite stood out to me. And the reasons for that were rather similar to what this video is about. The city of Urban Chaos was an unpleasant place, but I was always eager to see more of it with its narrow alleys and rooftops. Early open world done right. The C-12 had run-of-the-mill aliens stuff as a context for its story, yet its atmosphere was delivered strongly with visual and audio design. I have fond memories of these games.
And surely there are plenty of like-minded people out there, who value the atmosphere of game worlds and stuff like that. Take that "laminal spaces" concept for example.
For a channel called joyless I sure got a lot of joy out of this video. I do think that's false advertising tho bro I might sue.
I just discovered your videos and holy shit I think I'm addicted. Your voice and humor are so it. I almost couldn't believe how small your channel was. You've definitely earned a new subscriber.
I've always played games like this.
Driver 2 is a great example of what you're talking about. It was the first "open world" game I got even though it was more of just a free roam with nothing to do besides get in police chases and find the 1 hidden car in each city. The empty Wrigley Field full of a cheering 2D crowd where each person was like 5 pixels on a flat panel was super eerie.
I know exactly what you mean about the sound sliders! One of the best things I did when I was playing Earth Defence Force 2017 was turn off the music one level to listen to the sound effects, and it's amazing how much I was missing out on when I had the music so loud. Subtle sound cues like being able to hear enemy attacks even when the enemy was off-screen was super helpful, but above all else, when the high-octane, blood pumping music was turned off, along with the cheesy dialogue, it turned a campy game about shooting giant spiders into an actually unnerving game about shooting giant spiders, as you could hear all of their footsteps and movement before you could even see them... Great video as always, I completely forgot about that before this!
If you make a sequel to this video, you should include the city levels from the spiderman 1 game on GameCube. The atmosphere at the top of the buildings is rather spooky and desolate
Same! Played that a ton back in the day! 😅👍🏻
Your channel, is so underrated. The type of videos you post are so interesting and are normally what I think, when someone associates the word “creepy” with games. Much love from Portugal and hope to see new stuff (I know this was uploaded 1 year ago but still, I have to give credit where credit is due)
Alright alright. This video was in my reccomended and it's the first vid of yours I've ever seen. Fifteen seconds in and pausing the vid to write: That starting line "A lot like severe caffeine addiction; 3D video game environments are something I have never been able to fully get over" is gold. Gonna watch the rest now, but damn man that line probably cut close to home for a lot of people including myself.
omg I love how you put the feeling I had since I started gaming as a kid into actual words and an actual video. I also feel similarly while playing pretty much any game, just staring at it for minutes at a time aw man I just thought I was weird, by the way that wind ambient sound in the old 3d era gta games is one of the best things ever, just standing somewhere high up or overlooking the city in gta vice city is pretty much orgasmic, nevermind now I seem even weirder lol.
The ps2 spiderman game had a tutorial level that was a few empty buildings with nothing but some enemies to kill in the later ones, the entire skybox was black with a grid surrounding the area and it had a weird atmospheric sound, always creeped me out as a kid
Enter electro?
@@dtxspeaks268 I think it was Spider-Man, released in 2002 I believe
@@mrbenis8044 oh ok. I havent played that one in a long time so my memory is foggy
glad to find someone else that plays games like this >.<
PS2 jank is probs my favourite for soaking in that atmosphere.
Oh man, I dropped playing this deer hunting game when I was a kid because it did creep me out so much! What a relief to know I'm not alone anymore.
ThorHighHeels send me here. Amazing Channel!!! Keep it going and the subs will follow!
On a whim I looked up reviews of the Army Men games, found your vid on it, and now I'm binging a ton of your stuff. Great work
You never fail to give a great combo of nostalgia and entertainment. Love the videos keep it up 👍
i know it's horror themed, but when talking about needlessly spending time in a game location doing nothing, i have to say the place i do it the most in is borderlands 1's zombie dlc
that place gives me the creeps, it's pretty out of place and the ambience is top notch. good shit, subbed
if you played a game for 7 years that you'd be so used to the UI and mechanics you don't need to understand words. That's why I played League in Japanese just for the aesthetics/anime voice actors. Just to make it more interesting after getting numbed with the english VA.
Bro, yes! I've always just explored city scapes and just looked around at tins if little details! The power ranger game you showed reminds me of another game I used to play all the time, but does the kaiju small city detail much better! War of the monsters! You could see all kinds of little details, cars drove around, little police helicopters would attack you, and there were even little people screaming for their lives in the area that you could indeed step on and it would make little splats of ketchup on the ground! Such a great game!
I've always done that with games! I love exploring open worlds and cityscapes, and games where you're giant and everything is really tiny REALLY gets my imagination going for little detail! It's another reason I love miniatures and micro machines! 😅👌🏻 I always liked to think about who lived there, or what was life like there in that place? I thought about that in a lot of games! Another good game with the tiny stuff in the city is the cyberpunk mech game slave zero! That also has early 3d city graphics with little vehicles and such. There's so much ambiance, art, and detail in games I feel gets overlooked and un noticed, especially sound work! Some sound design is insane and sometimes it's never noticed! Ambiance is important and immersive!
Well said and good stuff, man! This is stuff I love too! Everything is made up of little details and I love to see that effort put in by artists and sound design! 😁👍🏻
Rebranding won't spare you having to make my goddamn Prince of Persia video Jay
I'm so glad you added Dino Thunder to the list. This game is always, weirdly at the fromt of my mind when i think of weird, trippy feeling early aughts games. I rented it for like, 10 weeks straight from blockbuster as a kid, and hust basically ran around, especially in that starting water filled crater area. And man I felt like I was the only one who played that game until now!
I totally relate. I've always enjoyed exploring open world game maps. They can be unintentionally eerie
Dude, this unintentionally spooky shit in video games series you do sums up hours of my childhood roaming the empty halls of completed missions, before I would finally exit the self imposed limbo.
This was brilliant. A whole bunch of points I’d thought about when playing games, but had never put into proper words before. It really makes you appreciate how transformative a soundtrack is - levels in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 without the music are creepy, oddly lifeless despite having other NPCs in them, and you start seeing it less as a series of skate-themed obstacles and more as this weird bit of liminal space that people have to live in.
And holy shit! The brief clip of The Italian Job for PS1 got my attention right away. I’ve never met anyone else in real life that played it.
Just found this channel- I always go through every corner of a game space, exploring as much as the game will let me, looking at all the details, etc until there's no choice but continue with the story/gameplay (I'll sometimes save sections of the map in more open games for later though so I'll have a whole area to scout top to bottom later)
Holy shit I thought you were gonna be some big boy you tuber but you only have like 14k subs. Good shit bro quality ass videos fosho
I appreciate that man, thanks a lot.
This kind of exploration is really soothing to me, I used to do it on empty cs 1.8... yeah 8. Cs go more recently, call of duty black ops 1 and 2 a bit, and modern warfare 3. I didn't always dive into so much detail as I would do now and as you did. But I guess you could say I kinda get it, or I get it
By the way one of my favourite games is Silent Hill Shattered Memories, and half of the game is just this. It's intentional tho, I think. But it is in my opinion my best experience with this kind of exploration, probably thanks to it's perfect soundtrack in my opinion by Akira Yamaoka
I love that you have made these videos, thank you
Infamous: Festival of Blood does this amazingly, especially if going into the mission creator and loading up the empty city is just, eerie. First because it's a familiar place to any Infamous 2 player but at night (a distinctly different sort of night to the in game night time) with the saturation and brightness being a little off and the whole place like a ghost town, more so in the empty map as the party zones are abandoned too, but still have sounds of talking, music and fireworks shooting off. It makes the goofy faux-scary vibe of Halloween actually creepy, even more for people who've played Infamous 2 a lot as it's like playing a totally different game wearing the face of one you know.
Joyless: zones out and just admires the environment of games
Me in dragon quest 11 on ps4 doing the same: those flowers look great
One game I've played for many many years, still do here and there, is called Driv3r. Something about the cities in those maps are so odd, the scary sounding music melodies in Miami and Nice give off that feeling of "negative emotional aura" when visiting the empty mission locations and empty edge-of-map spots that you shouldn't be looking around at, as it's a driving game, not a walk and explore game.
It really takes your mind off when you're doing tricks and car chases, but once you stop and just kinda take a look around at these locations, like the Go-Kart easter egg area, or other spots where this collectable enemy named Timmy Vermicelli shows up at, it can change the entire feel the game seems to have been going for.
I actually had a similar feeling come up while playing a game from my childhood again; Thrillville Off the Rails. See, if you go up high enough when building a coaster, you can see that all of the Trillville parks are actually islands. In the middle of an endless expanse of ocean. With no other landmasses in sight.
Really unnerves me in a kids park manager game, where it encourages you to make people sick to drum up ticket sales, or play arcade games to impress girls.
You should not think about your way of playing games to be weird, for if it wasn't for you, a lot of these things that the developers created on purpose or not would go unnoticed. I appreciate that it makes your content very unique.
Sly Cooper 2 is a great game for this sorta stuff, and I remember spending countless hours in that game as a kid just walking around the hub worlds taking in the sights and not actually playing the missions. Especially the first world which was Paris at night, I would always get up onto the roofs and just sit there and look around and listen to the ambient noises. Same with the Alaska world with the train that ran through it, I would climb to the top of the mountain and just chill there and watch the trains run through the level.
Glad to see that I'm not the only one who messes with the games audio sliders from time to time.
8:08 Bruh that's Xen
Those cut to black are driving me crazy, but yeah i like being surprized by a weird feeling when playing a video game, i think there's not enough games that do that...
I love in open worl games with vehicles to just put on some chill music and just drive, not trying to go anywhere, just driving, sometimes this makes you stumble in some really cool spots you normally just never go too because the area has no missions, no loots, no allies, no ennemies, no weapons, nothing, it's just there, off to the side, with low or no NPC population, an is actually surprisingly pretty, and somewhat hard to get in when you activelly try to.
There's a stealth mission in the game SiN (from 1998) where you are infiltrating an enemy warehouse that takes place at night and are surrounded by a cityscape. Even though there are guards that you have to sneak around and take out, the level does give off this odd kenopsia feeling.
I think what doesn't help that Goofy Skateboarding level is the fact it really doesn't look like a skateboarding level. I don't remember the flat empty streets level in any Tony Hawk game...
You should check out the Doom mods "A.L.T" and "Sacrament", they are right up your alley!
Wow... I'm not alone with this feeling :O
The weirdest kind of horror i feel (even if it's populated) is going into Gold Saucer in FF XIV, turning the music off but leaving the abient sound only on. It creeps me the fudge out :O
I dunno why but I find the Landlords Super map to be pretty creepy, I spent a good portion of my life growing up in the North of England and to see that represented, in PS2 type graphics, rather than a generic US city, is extremely disconcerting.
Dude I remember playing Dino thunder on the GameCube and actually enjoying the environment since it was the most isolating thing I’ve ever seen. Just like when I took a stroll around Manhattan during the pandemic. Like it’s so calming, and inviting. Yet so surreal. A guilty pleasure of mine for sure.
Someone needs to revist the untapped market of open world robot dinosaur games
Old Thief games clearly had a particular image of The City, but the low-poly geometry and small textures really add some liminal vibes.
My favourite cities are from Prince Of Persia 3D (1999) though.
I never thought i would find a person who shares my view on seeing things,that were supposed to be as just a background of the game...
I envy your not having grown tired of/accustomed to video game environments. I've certainly lost that sense of awe and wonder.
I'd recommend playing Mafia 1 - some of the environments were quite eerie (namely the mission in which you are purchasing illicit alcohol at a disused farm in the middle of a rainy night).
You're definitely not an idiot - you offer intriguing insight delivered with humility and wit.
Totally agree with pretty much everything said here. Ambient sound design minus gunfire and dialogue is usually super disturbing. One of my favourite examples is Urban Chaos on ps1. Super off if you mute the music. Manhunt too but that's kinda the point, even if some of the level layouts are eerie even outside of the games context
not sure if this resonates with anybody but: i'm lowkey scared of video game water. specifically n64 era. it looks harrowing and empty, like you could fall in forever.
Fuck that moat
Gotta love finding channels that talk about weird gaming topics
Kirby air ride is one game that I spent countless hours just exploring the city in free play mode
we got to see this in real life only a year later
Got PTSD to when I played Goofy Skateboarding as a kid 10/10
stop bullying me
Joyless oh shit it I guess this is you confronting internet bully madeline orrom
I really understand what you feeling . I have two examples from my own .
One is Fallout 3 when I played for the first time 2015 , the almost empty super-market in the begin of the game and the destroyed ruins of a urban areas frozen in time ,really game the feels whend I played for the first time.
The second one is True Crime :NY ,this one is kinda funny I used to play ths game all the time whend I was a kid ,but when you reach 100% in the game ,you unlock a secret mode ,the game is always busy wih cars,noise ,people,close and distant chat ,like any gta game .But in this mode you are in nighttime only without acess to cars ,streets are empty and it always raining and crazy people attack you from time to time ,seeing that for the first time was one most horror experencied I had .
I just recently stumbled over your videos. really interesting stuff!
Wow. Honestly I was like “I’ve never played any one these games I’m just gonna click through” and then I saw the Goofy Skateboarding. This game has lived in my pre-10 year old mind and I never knew what it was.
Nice to see some footage of Urban Chaos from the PS1.
empty gmod maps are way scary
u just earned a sub.....nice video bro
The entire not like other girls phenonoma has given me such a feeling of ever calling myself weird less i be cancelled but this video really makes me feel like were one and the same.
I still haven't forgiven you for not renaming this channel "Jayless"
It’s joyless but yeah
@@dimitrifrog7845 I know, but it should have been Jayless lol
As someone who used to climb the top of buildings in tony hawk games and look out at the city while listening to the music, I can safely say you're not alone
I feel the same way as you the cityscapes look great and scary
omg i used to have dino thunder as a kid. That game is weird and i remember all the stuff in it being unintentionally creepy *other power rangers content is like that too at times*
I think the ambient audio thing in that Goofy skateboarding game might be meant to maybe accentuate the sounds of skating and jumping with the skateboard. Either way I see the point you're getting at, but I have to admit that other than GTA and Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness I don't really see it in the other examples because it's clearly low budget and technical limitations and I can't really get my brain to see it in any other way.
I think Manhunt would fit this really well too
The first Driver game on ps1 had some creepy looking cityscapes in my opinion. Look at Los Angeles.
Absolutely. The way it's aged gives it a style that a lot of games go for deliberately nowadays.
@@Joyless It's almost like most games seem to thrive off of the "dystopian" landscapes, even if it's a family friendly game.
Man the 6th gen really was an uncanny shitshow where graphics were good enough to somwhat convey detail but still vague enough to feel wrong
Forgot how good this was. Nice
Interesting. What do you think of the levels in games like "Manhunt", "Twisted Metal: Black", and "War of the Monsters"?
Those games were deliberately made to be horror, but still...
Whenever I try to look up the word for feeling a place should be bustling but is empty, it leads me to a plant lol
Try "kenopsia". I think it's my accent, a lot of people are having trouble with that.
@@Joyless Yeah I managed to find it a few hours after the comment, but thanks for specifying.
Could you play the 3D tours in Microsoft Encarta
What game is at 12:05 ?
Namco Museum environment were something else.
Goofy: Gawrsh! This place scares the A-HYUCKS outta me!