Do you feel desensitized to scary games?

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The below game gave me nightmares for weeks. I think I am scarred for life.

The below game gave me nightmares for weeks. I think I am scarred for life.

I find that most horror games are badly done. Particularly the stupidly-named "survival horror" genre. I'm sorry, but all of Resident Evil's stupid zombies and such arent very scary when you're given nuclear death beams or whatever to destroy them with. Yes I know that's not an actual weapon in the game but for the purposes of me being sarcastic, I've said it anyway. There's no "scary" in games like that.

Though I guess that's why something like the Freddy's games caught my attention. No rocket launchers in that. You cant run, you cant move, you cant fight; Freddy and his pals are simply too strong and it's made very clear that they have power beyond just what the simple animatronic bots, unposessed, could do. Screw up, and you are dead in an instant. And for the most part, the series doesnt drop the immersion aspect. You dont lose control to watch some cutscene really. The later games have their "minigames", but... those ended up being very different from normal "cutscenes" and were freaky in their own unique way (and again, control was not taken from you). Tension in the games is also created by the fact that the jumpscares are not arbitrary; they *only* happen as punishment for when you screw up. That's a very rare concept and one I find quite interesting.

Good horror games, to me, tend to have those qualities. There's another one recently that I think is interesting, with the bizarre name of "Emily Wants to Play". In that one, yes, you can run away, but that's all you can do, yet even then, sometimes that either wont do it, or will very specifically get you killed. As in the Freddy's games the various dolls that roam the house simply cant be fought off; you either follow specific rules for each in order to get them to go away, or you die. One of them is kinda like the Weeping Angels from Dr. Who, attacking you stupidly fast if you're not looking at her, and only vanishing if you keep her in your view long enough. Another one needs to be run away from, going away only if you get a certain distance from where he first appeared. Yet another specifically kills you, unavoidably, if you're moving when he turns and looks at you. It gets creative in how the various things work, and the story behind everything is found without ever once leaving any of that behind or losing control.

Though my favorite is Spooky's House of Jump Scares (which is, oddly, very low on actual jump scares). I dont want to spoil that one much, but... suffice it to say it isnt quite what it first appears to be when you see it. Spooky herself is downright adorable, and the game seems cutesy at first, until, well... there were more than a few moments in that game where you sort of go "OMG WTF NOPE NOPE NOPE" typically while running in the other direction. The further into it you go, the darker and more messed up it gets. At the same time it parodies a variety of other games. And again, you cant fight the monsters when they appear (with one very notable exception). It's not an action game, it's a "get the hell out of there!" sort of game.

None of those use much in the way of blood or gore either. Usually blood/gore in a game says to me that the developer either ran out of ideas, or tried too hard to be "mature" just because that's the trend (sigh). A *really* good horror game to me doesnt NEED those things to provide it's effect.

But your more typical horror games? Yeah, definitely desensitized. They usually feel more like action/adventure games to me, albeit with alot of blood and enemies that are more messed up than usual. But they're also very same-y and tend to use the same exact ideas over, and over, and over, and over...