The Dord of Darien

Fear and loathing in video games

So pretty much everybody’s played some type of survival horror game by this point, right? I mean, Alone in the Dark came out eighteen years ago, and that was pretty much the moment when the survival horror genre sprang into being fully-formed from the head of Zeus. If you want to count Sweet Home on the NES or Haunted House on the 2600 (of all things!), the genre’s even older, but… I don’t know about that. I’d date it pretty much to Alone in the Dark.

Over the past twenty years, the survival horror genre has evolved to be a bit less about walking down hallways and not dying, and a bit more about actually playing a video game that you can interact with. Most people consider this a good thing. What do you suppose are the odds that I’ve found the one man alive who does not?

Amnesia: The Most Frightening Game That You’re Not Playing

While it’s technically true that I am not presently playing Amnesia — since right now, actually, I’m spending time making fun of you instead — it would be a misnomer to suggest that I’ve never played Amnesia. Because you know what? I have. It’s like: okay-ish. The short version would be that if you really like games where you wander slowly through a ton of empty rooms while your meter goes down, this is the game for you! Speaking for myself, I prefer when the rooms have stuff in them, and I like when my meter goes up. So I’ll stick with Borderlands.

Oh, and, also, if you like having to open the inventory screen to get to the meter, this is the game for you. I guess putting it on the HUD would break the immersiveness.

Somewhere along the way, games stopped being scary.

Well, I don’t know. They still make scary games. The first three Half-Life games were pretty scary, though Episode Two… not so much. Metroid: Other M, for all I bitched about it, was pretty scary in places; in particular, the lead-in to the final battle was downright tense. Even Bioware’s execrable Poop Age: Origins had some scary bits in the Orzammar caverns. Amnesia I wasn’t so scared by. Freaky-deaky camera effects and walls with blood smeared on them don’t scare me.

It seems as though nbody [sic] wants to go around snapping pictures of ghosts or running around in a short skirt from something in a clock tower anymore.

Well, it seems to me like tons of people want to take pictures of ghosts — so many people want to do that that a lot of people have convinced themselves it’s a real thing that you can do in the real world. And besides, I played Luigi’s Mansion. It was pretty fun. And when it comes to running from things in clock towers, I

… Hey, did you say something just now? You didn’t? You wrote this article five days ago and you really can’t respond like that just while I’m writing this? Huh. I mean, that’s the damndest thing, since I’d swear I just

Okay, now I know something’s going on. That wasn’t just my imagination. Maybe I should investigate. I mean, I won’t lie to you; I’m a little bit freaked out now, and the camera’s kind of doing this weird, blurry, shaky thing…

There! Over there! What is that thing? What is it??? My sanity meter is dropping! I think I need to complete a puzzle so I can make my meter go back up, you guys!!

Oh shit… I… fff… I’m getting the dick out of this clock tower!! It’s too scary for me!!

Also, do you seriously fantasize about wearing a short skirt? That’s pretty gay. But totally something you could just, like… do. For less money than it costs to buy a crappy game.

Even traditional survival horror series such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill now boast about their improved combat or their co-op modes – two very un-horrific traits.

Un-horrific, perhaps, but considerably more fun. Did you miss the bit where everybody stopped buying Resident Evil games because they weren’t really very much fun, and the novelty of zombies jumping through the windows and eating you was wearing off? Then Resident Evil 4 came out, and the controls didn’t suck, and there was actually something to do besides just saunter down the hall and then reload your last save.

Developers ripped out the dark, beating heart of horror in order to infuse the titles with more action-oriented mechanics to appeal to a larger audience.

I dunno; Resident Evil 4 was still fairly scary, while simultaneously being pretty fun. So long as you don’t mind the crazy arbitrary minigames, anyhow. But I guess I probably just don’t understand the "dark, beating heart of horror" — that sounds like one of those goddamn intangibles that all my acronyms and numbers can’t comprehend. But Derek Jeter understands. He gets it. He’s a gamer!

While this strategy has seen wild success

— on account of the games being more fun —

the idea of instilling fear into the hearts of jaded gamers has all but been abandoned like basic hygiene at a convention. (I’m looking at you, BlizzCon.)

Oof. That joke was awful. Probably would have worked better with more Medusa heads.

In a March 2010 interview, Gabe Newell hinted that they intend to return the Half-Life franchise to its psychological horror roots by exploiting the fans’ deepest fears, which he summed up as "the death of their children" and "the fading of their own abilities."

What? How did that get in there? Fuck off with your own self, Gabe Newell. The idea of instilling fear into jaded gamer hearts smells like a big bunch of jaded gamer armpits at some type of jaded gaming convention! I heard it on the internet. It must be true.

Also: Gabe Newell thinks Half-Life fans are old. Tee hee.

About two months ago, Frictional Games, the makers of the Penumbra series, released Amnesia: The Dark Descent which has steadily gained an audience.

Okay, quick aside here. I’d just like to point out that "Amnesia: the Dark Descent" is very possibly the most generic title any video game has ever had. I mean, seriously? You’re shipping with that title? You are aware that about 80% of all video games ever made feature a character with amnesia, yeah? And 105% of all D&D modules? And like half the run of Soap, for pity’s sake. Your title got sent up on Soap! Thirty years ago! It’s time for a new title.

Also, "The Dark Descent?" Edgy. Mysterious. Describes an even larger percentage of video games. Like, literally, everything except maybe Xenogears on the PSX, which was more about a dark ascent. You see how it is.

Played through a first person perspective, you never hold a gun or any other weapon.

Technically, there are a bunch of things you can hold — it’s just that they only things you can do with them once you’re holding them are spin them around for no apparent reason and throw them. The physics are a little weird, here — I once dropped a vase like two feet onto the floor, and it exploded violently. Which was probably the most fun I ever had playing this game.

A good bit of the game leaves you wandering through a series of dark empty rooms.

Yup. Sure does. Not doing anything. Just sort of chillin’. Wandering. Watching my sanity meter go down (which, if you’ve forgotten, I have to open the menu to do, since I can’t see it while I’m actively wandering). Nothing to interact with. Nothing to see. Maybe a spooky sound once in a while. Maybe the occasional lantern oil pickup.

This may just be one of the most ambitious titles to come out this year.

Well, maybe it was, up until the release of my even more ambitious title: Amnesia-er: the Darker Descent! You can download it here. It’s pretty fun, if you like games like Amnesia, where you’re just kind of stuck being in the dark with nothing to do. But it’s even darker — and scarier!

Amnesia should come with a free pair of pants because you’re going to crap yourself once you start playing this game.

Wow. Hello, PCXL. I’ve missed you these past ten years. How have you been? Pimped any hos lately, or whatever it is you people imagine you do when you’re not writing things like that?

As I Pondered, Weak And Weary…

I think this is a section heading. Or it’s supposed to be. In the real world, where we have games that don’t suck, we also have like different font effects we can use to indicate things like that. We also don’t generally use lines that, if you forget they’re the opening to a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, kind of make it sound like we’re tired of thinking about this damn game.

You start this darkened journey lost and alone in a strange castle.

Actually, you start it with like eight screens of popup disclaimers, all of which seem like the designers weren’t too sure of themselves. "Don’t worry!" one of them says, "there’s no quicksave button, but it’s okay! We save automatically!" From another, we get "hey, it’s okay if you don’t win. Just have fun!" Really, Frictional Games? You need like an entire crate of balls. If your game is so blindingly arbitrary that probably nobody’s going to beat it, maybe you should work on it a bit more.

After that, yeah, there’s the castle. Though I suppose first there’s a badly-acted flashback sequence where the main character stumbles around saying totally unoriginal things like "what has he done?" and "I must stop him!" But after that is the bit where you wake up in the castle. Enjoy it while you can — about five rooms in, everything will be dark for, as near as I can tell, the rest of the game.

The character you play, Daniel, mumbles to himself throughout the game as he tries to remember the circumstances that brought him up to this point.

That’s pretty much literally true, and it’s a big problem with the game. It would be way scarier with a silent protagonist, since Daniel’s constant muttering and whimpering and goofy heavy breathing sounds just made me laugh at the scary bits.

You have, as you can probably already deduce, amnesia.

Don’t really need to deduce, Captain — the title kind of lets this one out of the bag. As does the fact that it’s a video game.

Pieces of paper littering the seemingly abandoned castle speak of an archeological dig gone wrong and a nightmare chasing you throughout the darkened corridors.

They literally speak, mind you — there’s a voice over reading the notes for you, since I guess it wouldn’t be tense and creepy enough to let the player read the goddamn text. Instead, some terrible ham reads them to you, and again just makes you laugh when he should be scary.

Notes left for yourself speak of a man hiding deep within the catacombs that you’ll need to stop if you ever want to escape this nightmare.

They do. Also, they make the task seem super fucking easy, which doesn’t make the game scary. They tell you all about how weak and frail he is, and how you can totally kick his ass. Gosh, game, I’m worried! I hope my meter holds out long enough for me to get there so I can one-shot the boss!

Daniel’s paranoia is deliciously contagious.

His what? Paranoia? No, he’s actually in a haunted mine surrounded by demons and shit. That’s not what paranoia is. Or do you mean the bits where he jumps (you lose control of him here, which is super super annoying) and shrieks every time the wind bangs a door open? That’s not contagious. It’s just goofy and dumb. It would be much scarier if we were allowed to be afraid of things on our own. The way this game works is like a Friday the 13th movie — you watch your character jump at all kinds of false scares, and then you’re supposed to be totally caught off-guard by the real scare. It’s what dear Pauline Kael would have called a "boo game" if she ever played it. Not that she would, since those fucking video games absolutely are not the least bit artistic and don’t you forget it.

Even going into this game accepting of the horror genre, you cannot help but snicker the first couple of times your character jumps at seemingly random events such as the wind whipping by or strange sounds.

I didn’t snicker. I was really annoyed. I hate it when games arbitrarily autopilot my character. It’s my character, assholes. I should be in control. I should be the one initiating any jumping. If you wanted to make a movie about a simpering nitwit who stammers and pants while he walks through empty rooms, you should have done that.

But soon the character’s shallow breathing and barely audible heartbeat bring you further into his world.

Yeah, well, maybe if you’re afraid of dudes with bronchitis. I found the character’s constant noise-making to be a big fat wedge in between me and getting involved with the game.

The sound design is nearly perfect – catching every little hint of the wind or the scurrying legs of a beetle crawling across the floor.

But mostly wind. And doors slamming in the distance.

His fear has become your fear. And it’s around that time that insanity starts kicking in.

Hmm? Insanity starts kicking in, like, two minutes into the game. You were already scared by that point? Of what? The spooooooooooky purple blood stains on the carpet, or the eeeeeeeeeeeerie camera tilt? Hey man, do yourself a favour and don’t ever play this game. Your psyche will never recover from the quite frankly insane angles the doorframes are tilted at! Oh, also everything’s covered in blood, and blood is super scary.

Any Lovecraft-tainted game worth a hill of beans must have some sort of insanity mechanic involved, and Amnesia uses the light and dark effects to balance this out.

So score another point for originality by being exactly the same as every game. Including the Yogg-Saron fight in World of goddamn Warcraft.

Light is a commodity in this game. Find tinderboxes or lamp oil to light your path.

The one object the game does not allow you to pick up and carry with you? Candles. They’re everywhere, and I guess they’re all glued down, since no way no how can you pick one up. Gotta hunt for oil for the magical quick-burning lamp, which can go from full to empty in like four minutes.

Time spent in the darkness slowly drives the character insane, causing visual and auditory illusions as well as decreasing your mobility. It is, after all, rather hard to move anywhere in the fetal position.

"Slowly" my aching ass. Your sanity meter drains all the way in like one minute. And the hallucinations are lame; near as I can tell, they pretty much just cause the camera to wave around and tilt at odd angles. OoooOOOOoooOOOoOOOOOooO!

Limited supplies makes it nearly impossible to remain in the light but you’ll need the darkness to hide from the monsters.

I can’t parse this sentence. You sir have chosen the wrong conjunction. That or your brain is spoiled.

Yes, there are monsters in this game. No, you cannot kill them. You run and hide like a good horror character.

Which gets boring really quickly, incidentally. Reminds me of Assassin’s Creed — the first time you run from the guards and then like blend in with some dudes on a bench, it seems pretty boss. The twentieth time, it’s just something you’ve done before. And that’s pretty much the only play mechanic in this game.

Doors can slow down their progress, but you have to physically close them and open them by sliding the mouse.

Remember Trespasser, from, what was it, 1997? It had that mechanic. It wasn’t fun then, and it’s not fun now. There’s nothing intuitively sensible about sliding the mouse around to open a door; it’s just more steps you have to memorise. And:

With some doors not opening the same way, you can find yourself fumbling with the handle just as the thing behind you begins to tear you apart.

Yeah. Different magical mouse movements for each door. Bonus!

As The Nameless One Sleeps…

Another section heading, this one probably referencing the fact that I’m getting pretty tired.

As H.P. Lovecraft once discovered, the most horrible things lie in the minds of the reader.

And as Frictional Games once decided, the most horrible things aren’t horrible enough unless you tart them up with sinister camera angles and whimpering sound effects.

Amnesia sets a beautiful stage in a gothic castle environment and covers it with a nearly impenetrable darkness.

Game designers: darkness is not scary in video games. You know why? For the same reason that looking out the window and seeing that it’s night isn’t scary. We’re not there. Hey look, I can still see my drink right here on the table next to me. I can see the keyboard. Putting "turn all the lights off" in the eight screens of pre-game instructions is a goddamn cop-out; basically, you’re saying "hey, this game is a lot scarier if you go out and get good and scared first, and then come play it." No. You provide the scary. It’s why I pay you.

With amazing audio and the right visual cues, it’s more often than not the player jumping first before the character in the game even reacting.

Remind me again why the character needs to react? It’s pointless and distracting.

This is a truly a unique experience for fans of horror or anyone who happens to own a PC. Amnesia proves that horror isn’t dead, only waiting in the darkness.

The only difference I can find between Amnesia and a million other games that are all about solving retarded adventure-game puzzles and then reloading your last save because you didn’t know about that zombie down that corridor is that you don’t get to decide where your last save is. Woo-ee.

Plus, Amnesia is on sale right now for the Halloween weekend, and you can pick it up now for only ten bucks. Isn’t that worth a good scare?

Halloween sale’s over. It’s twenty bucks now. Not a dig at this dude — the article’s five days old, and he was right at the time. Just letting all y’all know that, hey, if you really feel the urge to play a game that’s mainly about walking through a whole bunch of empty rooms and waiting for something to happen, it’s not on sale anymore.

My fan-produced sequel, however, is totally free! You can thank me later.

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November 3rd, 2010 Posted by Darien | Games | 4 comments