Creepshow 2 (1987)

So, I’m guessing that anyone familiar with Creepshow will already know what to expect with this one; but for those not in the know, Creepshows 1 and 2 were the workings of George A. Romero and Stephen King. Yeah, that’s right, the ‘…of the Dead’ guy, and the man who practically invented everything horror related in the past 30 years. Both films consist of several short stories, held together by a loose narrative element, and both have gone on to gather a pretty large cult following.

Just imagine Tales of the Crypt with more tits and decapitation.

To place everything on the table from the start, Creepshow 2 is undoubtedly the weaker of the two films. Romero’s step down from director to writer sees a significant change in tone for the film, and as a result, the first thing you’ll notice is how darned serious this thing takes itself.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a serious horror film, of course- but when your subject matter involves living statues and bin-bag monsters, I think you need to be willing to acknowledge the inherent comedy in your premise. Especially if it’s being hosted by a zombified Doc Brown.

The film is split into three separate outings, and it pains me to admit that none of them are really worth watching. It starts off with ‘Old Chief Wood’nhead’, a twist on the typical Native American revenge story that involves a living statue scalping young thugs. To tell the truth, I’m disappointed that they actually managed to botch that premise- because on paper, what’s not to love? Between the Native American vengeance element, and all the little shits getting duked, you’d think this thing would have been a sweep at the Oscars.

Yet it’s arguably the weakest point in the film, outstaying its welcome for far too long. Imagine a statue walking slowly around dusty old rooms for the best part of ten minutes, and save yourself the trouble of actually witnessing it. You’ll thank me in the long run.

The second segment is slightly more entertaining- titled ‘The Raft’. It follows a group of promiscuous young teens as they get up to typical teenage bullshit by an old lake. The characters are all easy targets- typically whiny and perverted; so if you’re going to be taking bets over who dies at any point in the movie, this is your best opportunity. There’s no black guy, and they’re all little shits, so it’s fair game.

Ahh, hijinks.

The third segment is the only thing that I would say is worth watching in the whole movie. Titled ‘The Hitchhiker’, it follows the story of- well, the Hitchhiker. You’ve probably seen it a million times: self-entitled city-dweller runs over a hitchhiker, only for the hitchhiker to return with the almighty power of guilt. Its paint-by-numbers as far as horror goes, but it has just the right level of tongue-in-cheek nonsense to keep you watching, plus a nice little cameo from Stephen King, playing his usual blend of middle-America prejudice and ignorance.

That aside, though, I feel like I need to make clear that this film isn’t ‘so bad its good’, like I might be making it sound- it’s just bad. I’m sure you can watch the highlights on YouTube or some other site and save yourself the trouble of sitting through what is otherwise a mostly uninteresting collection of stories.

Taking partial responsibility for the film’s quality are the intermissions. The action is occasionally broken up with an amazingly dull animated story that focuses on a small-town boy who discovers a mystical ’Creepshow’ magazine. In the first Creepshow, the animated segments were watchable, if, at the very least, forgettable. This time around, they’re intrusive and unnecessary, almost as if someone on staff thought that they needed a token animated story just because the first film had one.

You’ve got to appreciate a villain whose main method of attack is sulking.

Special credit must be given to the soundtrack though, which perfectly fits the intended schlocky nature of the film. Imagine a typical mid-80’s horror soundtrack and throw in some squealing guitars, and layer it over with the occasional jazz breakdown. Yes, that is as awesome as it sounds.

Overall though, you can watch it if you’re feeling sadistic, but just don’t watch it on your own. Any combination of friends, booze, or pizza might make up for the flaws- but as a film, it’s severely borked.

The first Creepshow, on the other hand…

2/5

‘Thanks for the ride, lady.’

Shadows of the Damned (2011)

The Japanese game industry is in an interesting place at the moment, that’s for sure. Things are looking mighty grim from the outside, giving the impression that most of its prolific developers are looking ready to pass their collective (and, might I add: metaphorical, for those unfamiliar with common business practices) baton over to Western developers. To quote ex-Capcom heavy-hitter Keiji Inafune, ‘Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished’

Developed by a veritable dream-team of Japanese talent (Suda 51 of No More Heroes, Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil, and Akira Yamoaka of Silent Hill fame) under the banner of Suda’s own Grasshopper Manufacture, Shadows of the Damned is a game that’s set on readdressing the balance and proving that, even if Inafune is right, the industry isn’t going down without a fight- and what better way to do so than with dick jokes.

Hundreds of dick jokes

 So what’s it about? Well, you might want to sit down for this one. Garcia ‘Fucking’ Hotspur, self-proclaimed hunter of demons and pendejo-slayer extraordinaire, has fallen out of sorts with the underworld, and has taken up demon-killing professionally, along with his disembodied, ex-demon, floating head/gun best-friend, Johnson (a few weeks ago, I thought that synopses couldn’t get any more insane than Barbarella’s. How wrong I was.)  In an interesting take on the traditional ‘rescue the princess’ routine, Garcia comes home one night to find that his girlfriend, Paula, has been killed and is in the process of being dragged down into the depths of hell. This is where the game starts, propelling us into a no-nonsense, balls-to-the-wall ‘road movie’ through one of the most interesting interpretations of the underworld ever committed to screen.

Despite being as crazy as they come, the whole thing is surprisingly engaging- thanks in large part to the degree of characterisation brought to all of the major players. Even bosses get a proper introduction by way of history books littered throughout the game, all of which are given the kindergarten ‘story-time’ treatment by Garcia and Johnson. As a duo, they’re unbeatable.

Sadly, the gameplay can’t be described in such glowing terms, and I can’t bring myself to label it any better than ‘functional’. The best point of comparison is Mikami’s Resident Evil 4, as it adopts a similar trek through spooky corridors, and an all-too-similar over-the-shoulder control scheme. It all feels a bit loose- admittedly lacking the spit-shine of its peers- and it never quite becomes fluid enough to truly allow you total freedom of control, ultimately failing to compliment the game’s more ambitious set-pieces. That said, while the input may feel loose, the output is anything but. Any and all shots on enemies are met with satisfying bursts of gore, and the guns all feel nicely weighted and ‘chunky’ when fired.

The best word to describe it, while seemingly redundant, is ‘videogamey’. Shadows of the Damned doesn’t aim to immerse, it aims to entertain- and in that sense, is more ‘retro’ than a lot of recent efforts flying under that banner. Regardless of any inconsistencies in the controls, you’re ultimately just being given challenges to overcome, and scenarios to play around in. In the same way that you don’t lament the lack of jumping in any 3D Zelda, you won’t mind that Garcia doesn’t quite move like you’re used to.

 In case I haven’t already made this apparent, Shadows of the Damned is different to most other games, and as a result, sits in a remarkable place. At times, it can have you shaking at the wrists, afraid to turn the next corner in fear of whatever bloodied monstrosity might jump out, while at others, it can leave you happily giggling as Garcia cracks wise about the length of his ‘big boner’ gun. There’s even an entire level that pays tribute to The Evil Dead- complete with swooping cameras, unrelenting walls of doom, and a  brilliantly foreboding cabin. It’s a game so clearly certain in its aims that it can comfortably switch between different styles and moods without fazing the player. Heck, most of the time; you won’t even notice things have changed until long after the switch. The folks over at Grasshopper are obviously highly experienced in game design, and they prove it with their confidently erratic pacing of the game.

You see, within the confines of key-hunting puzzles and corridor-shooting, Grasshopper have innovated to the point at which every chapter boasts a distinct mechanic and design, leading to a wealth of situations and challenges that you most likely haven’t seen anywhere else (or at the very least, haven’t seen blended together so coherently). While the game may not be that long, it sure gets through a lot of ideas during its 8 hour runtime.

When a topless man points his boner at you, you listen.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning, to conclude, that Shadows of the Damned isn’t doing so well at the moment. Between a marketing budget of approximately $3.50 and an execution that doesn’t quite lend itself to Joe Public’s ‘safer’ tendencies, its enjoyed increasingly poor sales since day one. Yet I would like to think that it can enjoy a second life on word of mouth alone, as proof that quirkier ideas can sell.

Sure, its short, and has no replay value to boot. Not to mention it can be crass, frustrating and rough around the edges, particularly in its largely directionless middle section- but surely all that speaks to the overall quality of the game that I could still recommend it in spite of its many flaws. I’m a firm believer in compensating my artist, and £40 is a small price to do so when faced with a product as grossly likable as Shadows of the Damned.

4/5

Don’t worry; I’m not going to bore you by talking about the implications of churning out sequels, or Hollywood’s obsession with reboots. As a matter of fact, some of my guiltiest pleasures fall under those exact criteria, so I’m going to edge slowly away from the issue. I never mentioned it. Honest.

Instead, I’ll just go straight to the heart of this matter and state that Cabin Fever 2 is not so good, knock-off or not. You don’t need to have seen the first one, or even be aware of its short-lived legacy to realise that much.

As a disclaimer, things get kind of bloody from here on in.

The film follows a group of students as they prepare to attend their school prom, which just happens to have coincided with the arrival of a deadly viral disease in town. As you’d expect, things don’t go too well. Vomit is launched, dresses are ruined, and punchbowls are spiked with reckless abandon, all against the backing of some gloriously cheesy disco tracks. If anywhere, credit has to be given to director Ti West for avoiding taking the zombie route with the virus, although that’s a small grace considering how overwhelmingly dumb the film turned out anyway.
See, Cabin Fever 2 is just what you’d expect from a direct-to-TV sequel, which actually makes me feel kind of bad about criticising it. I’m willing to bet that at least half of the cast were in it for the money, and the other half just wanted a good story to tell the grandkids (‘I was there when we filmed the janitor pissing blood into the punchbowl’). Ultimately, there’s no reason why this film exists other than making a quick buck off the success of the first Cabin Fever.

It also exhibits one of the key recurring problems with schlock-horror. Fucking. Lots of it. I’m aware that horror has always found itself somewhat intrinsically connected with sexuality, and I’m also aware that I might sound like old-man Jenkins down the road when I say this, but can’t you youngsters go more than five seconds without groping something?

Not that I’m a prude or anything. I wouldn’t complain about the sex in Teeth, for example, because it provides some classic gross-out moments, and more importantly, actually has relevance. The film is about a vagina with teeth, for god’s sake- of course it’s going to include sexual content. Yet this sort of thing in Cabin Fever 2 actually offends me, despite the fact that not one single schlong is bitten off (Trust me, I counted).

Relevance is the key word. If I’m watching a horror about a viral outbreak, I don’t want to waste my time watching faceless Joes get lucky in broom cupboards unless it ends in nightmares or some sort of meaningful character development (and let’s face it, the chances of the latter are slim). Anything else and it’s just not relevant to horror.

As an alternative to sex scenes, this screenshot doesn't really build a strong argument. Sorry about that.

Think about The Shining, when Jack enters room 237 and finds himself presented with a naked beauty. She’s glistening wet, perfectly figured: uneasily sexy. The two embrace, only for the camera to pull back and reveal a decaying, bloodied wench, laughing hysterically in Jack’s face, made all the more terrifying by the fact that you’re sporting a raging erection when it arrives. Kubrick uses sex not only to convey Jack’s developing frustration, but also to lull the viewer into a false sense of security before hitting us with some good ol’ fashioned shock-horror.

I can’t help but feel that Ti West’s version of The Shining would have ended the scene after the first embrace- removing all of the scene’s intended impact and replacing it with: ‘HEY, WE’VE GOT TITS OVER HERE’. While this is admittedly a small gripe, awkward sexual content is just one of many minor problems with Cabin Fever 2 that add up into something much, much worse.

Not quite as bad as this, mind.

I don’t want to suggest that you can’t enjoy it, though. There’s something hypnotising about witnessing a school filled with little shits play host to the dreaded lurgy, especially as they all begin to melt like the wicked witch of the west. Come to think of it, melting teenagers are probably the key draw of this film. Everyone hates teenagers: even teenagers, so watching them dissolve into mush is immensely satisfying- even in a film as poorly made as Cabin Fever 2.

Though I suppose it’s cheating to say that this film is enjoyable, considering the cheap routes it takes to deliver entertainment. It’s essentially bubble-wrap: the film. It’s cheap, completely dumb, and may leave you feeling somewhat ashamed afterwards, but at least it’ll stop you from having unprotected sex for a few hours. You dirty fuckers, you.

2/5

[Disclaimer: This film isn’t, strictly speaking, nice. If you’re easily offended, you're better off avoiding it altogether.]

Chances are you’re already aware of A Serbian Film, considering the furore that accompanied its release last year. Yes, it is one of the most heavily cut films of the decade, yes, it is banned in several countries, and yes, it does contain that scene. Don’t let selective facts taint your view of it, though. Give it a chance, and you might just be surprised.

So what’s all the fuss about? The narrative follows the path of Miloš, a retired adult actor who is drawn back into the porn business for an undisclosed, final film. The job, offered to him by a mysterious producer known as ‘Vukmir’, will give Miloš enough money to finally settle down with his wife and son, away from the trappings of Serbia. One more film and he’s set for life.

Something, quite obviously, isn’t right here.

What follows is a downward spiral of brutality and cruelty, the likes of which are rarely seen in cinema. The film has been oft-quoted by its creators as ‘tough’, and you’d be hard-pressed to argue with them.

Teetering just over the borders of taste like some sort of drug-induced exercise in masochism, A Serbian Film is uncompromising in its depiction of violence, sexuality and depravity, and will more than likely leave you feeling exhausted, and maybe even a little depressed. If it’s any comfort, you might be pleased to learn that this is all intentional.

Be aware, however, that this is not ‘torture porn’, as some reactionary critics have dubbed it. As easy as it would be to stick, ‘if you like violence, buy this’ into a paragraph and call it a day; I honestly don’t think that it would do justice to a film as ambitious and subversive as A Serbian Film.

True, if you’re sick enough to revel in the degradation and humiliation of the human form as it is depicted in A Serbian Film, you can look straight past the film’s intentions and enjoy it for a cheap blast of ultra-violence, yet that would escape its purpose. Director Srđan Spasojević has cultivated an experience that, for the majority of people, is repulsive and uncomfortable, and intentionally so.

This discomfort is the purpose of the film. A Serbian Film isn’t Hostel or Saw; it doesn’t aim to shock or provide a fun diversion. As Spasojević states in his introduction for the DVD,

it aims to recreate the experience of living in Serbia, something which can’t simply be drawn into a 2-hour drama and pushed out the door in a filtered form.

The film is an intentionally heavy-handed allegory for the ‘violations’ that the crew have experienced living in Serbia during the last 20 years, experiences that can only be conveyed through the kind of abstract, disturbing imagery presented in this film. The impact of witnessing a newborn child being raped at birth, for example, is a snapshot of the metaphorical ‘rape’ that the filmmakers claim to have experienced during their time in Serbia. As far as they’re concerned: they’re fucked from the moment they’re born, and they’re conveying the weakness and humiliation associated with that thought in the only way that will resonate with a modern audience. I don’t need to tell you how extreme this approach is, and different people will look at it in different ways, but I will make clear that I fully appreciate the director’s decision to film these scenes.

While we’re on the subject of that scene, by the way, it’s worth noting that paedophilia is not glorified to any extent within A Serbian Film, and neither is it expressly labelled as such. This content isn’t addressed as a sexual desire for minors, but rather, a sexual desire for humanity as a whole- a desire to prey on ourselves, to ‘whore ourselves out, just to make a living’, as it’s put in the intro. Vukmir even addresses the issue of ‘newborn porn’ in a lengthy monologue, directly comparing it to the state of modern society- even within the context of the narrative, it is clear that this scene is more concerned with metaphor than the literal act of child molestation.

You see, while I respect the opinions of those who criticise the film, I think that some sites are twisting the point in favour of easy page views. The real question of A Serbian Film’s success should be, ‘Are these scenes an acceptable representation of the situation in Serbia?’ as opposed to ‘Should a film contain these scenes?’ I’m not going to deny that incest, bestiality and paedophilia are all extreme methods to convey a point, but I’m firm in the belief that all of these things can be utilised to have an impact greater than their face value, assuming they are presented in the right way.

My view is that A Serbian Film gets this presentation just right, and that its message justifies its extreme content. Spasojević is quite obviously passionate in his belief that the Serbian government has victimised its people, and under this context, most of what the film has to display is appropriate. Sure, there are some scenes that I feel to be slightly unhinged, but in the end, it achieves its desired reaction, and offers a true glimpse into the depths of Spasojević’s emotions regarding his country and it’s ruling, whether you agree with them or not.

I think the key misinterpretation of this film comes from people’s expectations. Whereas many other films with similar aims and delivery might take the role of an exposé, this film is a sheer reaction. If you’re not already aware of Serbia’s tumultuous past and censorship, the film seems abstract: totally devoid of any narrative justification of its obscenities. The biggest flaw is that it’s a film that needs to be watched with complete understanding of the makers’ aims in order to appreciate the fact that this is an experience, and not a history lesson. I feel that the DVD intro achieves this to some extent, but without this, I can understand why areas of the mainstream press may have felt confused and sickened by the film if they were watching it without an appropriate introduction.

Of course, there are many people out there who legitimately dislike this film, and I can completely understand them. Watching the film for the second time, I could identify scenes that could easily be interpreted as either masterpiece or exploitative trash, depending on which side of the fence you fall on. In the end, it all comes down to how much faith you’re willing to invest in the film and whether or not you agree with its methods of soliciting a reaction.

Subjectivity aside, however, it’s worth noting that this film is a marvel to behold. It’s hard to believe that it was filmed on a budget considering how beautifully it was shot and edited- at times standing in harsh contrast with the gritty subject matter. This is coupled with a brilliantly dark and guttural soundtrack that perfectly evokes the movie’s brash delivery, cultivating a movie that- tonally- is appropriately sinister and intentionally contradictory.

It’s a shame that the movie will forever be recognised by its violence, actually, considering how well everything is put together. The acting in particular comes to mind, as Srđan Todorović’s depiction of Miloš succeeds in making the character relatable, and provides a basic moral compass with which to navigate the film. Given some of the actions that Miloš performs, this is no light accomplishment.

Overall, if there’s one thing that you should be positive about after all this, it’s that you’ll come out of this film feeling a wealth of negative emotions, that much is a given. However, what you decide to attribute these emotions to will ultimately decide whether you love or hate A Serbian Film. I think I’ve made clear where I stand.

5/5

(For the sake of clarity, my initial viewing was the censored British DVD release; however, I’ve since seen the uncut version- and can’t really draw a line between the two. Some scenes actually have more impact in the cut version, on account of the imagination filling in where prosthetic props can’t. If you’re looking to see the film, don’t feel too bad if you can only watch the BBFC’s cut, as the overall tone and impact of the film remain unchanged.)

It’s worth mentioning right here that I haven’t finished Dead Island yet. As a matter of fact, I’m nowhere near. According to my stats, after around 7 hours of play, I’ve only finished 10% of the main story, which is hardly clear of the tutorial. Yet my perceptions of the game have changed so much in such a short time; I figured it’d be better to throw my impressions of Dead Island up in instalments, as I learn to love/hate the game one chunk at a time.

So to begin with, I suppose it’s worth considering exactly what Dead Island is. Between haunting dead girls and booty-shakin’, guns-blazin’ action, Dead Island never really made clear what to expect besides zombies. Throughout its time in development, Techland constantly made reference to the technology powering the game, and the effect it would have, but never really gave a clear idea of what sort of title they were implementing said technology into.

Well at least now we can find out for ourselves. In a nutshell, Dead Island is an RPG- albeit a cleverly disguised one. If you’re familiar with Borderlands, you’re familiar with Dead Island. You’ve got a big wide world (in this case, the zombie-infested tropical island of Banoi), with a few quest hubs scattered around, and hundreds of enemies thrown in to the spaces in-between. You’ll find yourself running errands for the distressed locals in order level up your character and acquire new skills, and these will, in turn, allow you to explore further and take on more errands from even more distressed locals. At a glance, you’d be forgiven for assuming that this game was simply a re-skinning of Gearbox’s work.

Claptrap wouldn’t give me this shit

Combat unfolds in real-time, and mostly focuses on the improvised melee weapons strewn around all over the island. While it doesn’t offer quite as much choice as, say, Dead Rising- you’re likely to find a new weapon every time you turn a corner, whether it be a baseball bat or a chunk of broken wood, all with varying stats and presentations. Whereas Borderlands failed in many places to provide contrast between its weapons, everything you pick up in Dead Island will have its own distinct feel and complimentary play-style- and better yet, it’s all modifiable and upgradeable.

It’s a formula that works really well from a gameplay perspective, but doesn’t quite open itself up to much characterisation or story development. If you were expecting an experience at all reminiscent of the ‘dead girl’ trailer, prepare to be disappointed. It’s hard to feel any sort of deeper emotional response when you’re running around with the ‘sturdy oar of encumbrance’, slapping zombies around the face and watching numbers fly across the screen- all with the aim of delivering a bag of Doritos to your newest throw-away quest-giver.

Don’t take that the wrong way, though- I don’t want to suggest that the game is completely devoid of emotion, as what it lacks in story, it kind of makes up for in atmosphere- which is where the Borderlands comparisons end. Thus far, the island is beautifully crafted and decidedly eerie, so much so that even without the zombies, this game would still be a joy to explore- like a large time capsule, chronicling the exact moment when things got out of control on Banoi. You might actually begin to feel genuine emotion in some places. I stumbled into the remains of someone’s beach-side hut, only to find a half-eaten couple clutched to each other on the floor, lying amidst the wreckage of a larger conflict. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a lump in my throat after the discovery, even if it was offset by my subsequent desire to excitedly loot the house in its entirety. Implied tragedy seems to be what hits hardest in Dead Island, overpowering the shaky narrative, which falls flat on its face in its attempts to solicit an emotional reaction.

Although if there’s one thing you take away from this little write-up, make it this: switch to analog controls. The standard control scheme draws comparisons with Condemned- a simple case of timed swings in the general direction of the enemies’ noggin, until they fall down. Lather, rinse, repeat. Yawn. Analog controls, however, are where the game really comes into its own, allowing you to ready your weapon with a single button, at which point your right control stick becomes your character’s arm (If you ever played the reboot of Alone in the Dark, imagine that, only less goofy). Swipe from left to right with your thumbstick, the character will swipe from left to right with his crowbar. It takes a bit of getting used to, admittedly, but the level of control which it offers is – as far as I’m concerned – the pinnacle of melee controls in gaming, first-person or not. You can target specific body parts to lock-on to, so that all of your attacks will be directed in that general direction, and even break and slice zombie’s limbs to create tactical advantages.

On top of this, you have another button for kicks, and you can unlock different context-specific moves as you level up; creating an experience that gives you an unprecedented level of control. Tie it all together with jumps and dodges, and you might actually begin to surprise yourself with the finesse with which you dispatch the undead. As a matter of fact, when things quiet down and you finally gain some confidence going one-on-one with zombies, you’ll find yourself looking at each enemy as an experiment waiting to happen.

Whereas a game like Dead Rising prescribes all of its fun to canned animations, Dead Island allows you to explore different, emergent possibilities. By lopping off different limbs, or breaking bones in different combinations with different swings, you can toy with the undead to an extent limited only by the capacities of the physics engine. What happens if I take off this guy’s arms, lure him into the sea, and kick him over? Will he be able to get up? Can they breathe underwater? Does he really need those legs? What happens if I hit him like this? Any questions you have will be answered, often with surprising results.

It’s the controls that highlight my favourite aspect of the game so far: the level of interaction available with the world. Gordon Freeman isn’t a man, he’s a floating crowbar, and the same applies to Master Chief, Soap McTavish and any other recent FPS hero you could care to name. Dead Island kicks the trend and plants you firmly within the world by giving each action you perform a clear tactile response. Whether you’re drinking an energy drink, getting into a car, or throwing a wedge of plywood at a shambling corpse, everything seems suitably weighted and human. For this alone, I’d at least recommend renting Dead Island, if just to witness what the first person viewpoint is capable of.

Though that is really all I’ve picked up on so far, and where it goes from here remains to be seen. Heck, if I had decided to write this a few hours earlier, I would have most likely declared the game dead on arrival, and yet here I am, singing its praises. I have no doubt the development team over at Techland were conflicted throughout the entire production, and ended up resolving said conflicts with the ‘kitchen-sink’ approach. Borderlands-esque progression, 4-player co-op (which I’ll get onto later), token dramatic side-stories: all of these ideas are included and refuted within a seven hour playtime, and I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t mar the experience. Maybe it’ll become more consistent as it progresses, who knows?

One thing’s for sure: it’s too early to come to any sort of concrete conclusion yet. I’m just hoping it doesn’t shit the bed by the time I post the next update (Which can now be found here).

Well, approximately 20 hours later, I’ve explored Banoi to its limits. I’ve met all of its citizens – both good and bad – and drank so much in-game Red Bull that my character can’t legally walk down the street without a pilot’s license. I’ve swum the shores of tropical beaches, stumbled my way through hostile jungle and ‘shopped’ the markets of Moresby, and overall, I can say I’ve enjoyed my stay. Kind of.

In my last post, I opened proceedings by declaring that Dead Island was essentially a re-skinned Borderlands, and these are words which I have now come to regret tenfold. Outside of the quest progression, this game drops almost all ties with Borderlands by the end of the first act, and by the sixth chapter, you’d be hard-pressed to even identify it as an RPG. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when you consider that the game’s stronger points (such as the combat system) actually flourish without the constraints of role-playing clichés, yet I’d have preferred it if the game had followed one path consistently. This game doesn’t blend genres so much as stand them next to each other and expect them to get along.

Sure, the levelling-up sticks around, and you buy the occasional new skill, but by the time the second act rolls around, the choices you’re presented with begin to feel no different to the natural progression of any other game. It’s a shame, because with a little more work, it could have enjoyed a nice balance between both RPG and action, instead, it seems to have inherited the former’s weakest points, and the latter’s strongest. The best example of this might be a familiar foe to some readers: level scaling.

For those unfamiliar, level scaling is a trait usually reserved to RPGs, in which standard enemies will level up with your character (usually in order to prevent you from being able to go back to ‘low-level’ areas and milk them for supplies). It’s the role-playing equivalent of racing’s ‘rubber-band’ AI, and it’s been the subject of controversy in almost every game it touches, Dead Island proving no exception.

When scaling is done well, each enemy will usually have its own algorithm to calculate its level based on your own, in order to provide some semblance of progression in the face of enemies that inexplicably match your abilities at every turn. Scaling is a great means of sustaining challenge and regulating progression, a trait which I’ve always embraced in games like Final Fantasy 8 and Mass Effect.

Yet in Dead Island, it feels strangely inappropriate. There’s no narrative justification for the fact that regular zombies are withstanding blows that would have killed them five minutes prior to levelling up, and this opens the floodgates for all subsequent frustration. It also means that whether you’re swinging a broken plank at level 2, or an electrified fire-axe at level 36, zombies will always take the same amount of punishment, making each new weapon feel more like a mandatory upgrade than an exciting new piece of equipment.

Not to mention the occasional difficulty spike, when enemies inexplicably scale up above you. Every once in a while, you’ll have to battle through relentlessly tough enemies, only to level up again and find the same zombies a piece of cake. Maybe if it had been balance-tested a bit more thoroughly, I would have accepted the scaling- but ultimately, it wasn’t, and I didn’t.

This doesn’t kill the experience, mind, as there are a wealth of positive points that go some way towards overpowering any and all niggles. I stand firm that the controls are the ‘pinnacle of melee controls in gaming’, and I remain impressed by the level of interaction available with both your character and the world around them. The island is consistently beautiful and believable throughout, and the story, while lacking a strong conclusion, really came into its own shortly after my first post.

As an approximation of a society torn apart by a zombie apocalypse, Dead Island fulfils most of the fantasies that Max Brooks planted in your head eight years ago. This is a game that is defined by the shambling masses that inhabit it, and actually succeeds to great extents in placing you in the mindset of a lone survivor. The world is desolate, the soundtrack is decidedly eerie, and the undead are genuinely menacing. I’m not the biggest fan of the 28 Days Later-esque caffeinated zombies, but I came to appreciate their inclusion in Dead Island as a genuine threat, few and far between enough to instil a genuine, permanent sense of dread in the player, one that would be unachievable with the standard Romero drones.

When you enter the second act in particular, you may find yourself genuinely quaking with fear, shifting your vision uneasily between hundreds of separate side streets with the knowledge that you could be attacked at any moment. Trust me, when you get to the city area, turn off the lights, close the curtains, pump up the sound, and get ready for goose bumps. As safe areas get further and further away from objectives, you’ll begin to truly appreciate zombies as a threat, something which I feel that no game has achieved up until now. For that alone, Dead Island now holds a place in my heart.

On top of all this, there’s a 4-player co-op mode, which is an absolute blast. Having only played with dirty, dirty randomers, I can’t comment with any degree of authority, but this seems like the sort of thing that would be unbeatable with friends (which is why it’s such a shame that there’s no split-screen option). You remember that scene in Shaun of the Dead, where the survivors circle around a lone zombie, beating him with pool cues to the beat of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’? Well that pretty much encapsulates every encounter in Dead Island’s multiplayer, and it is glorious.

As a matter of fact, Dead Island is an entirely different game when played cooperatively, eschewing the single-player’s melancholy tone and tactical play in favour of a team-based experience not too dissimilar to Valve’s Left 4 Dead. Single-player is the better experience if you want to soak in the atmosphere of a zombie apocalypse and feel some genuine chills- but if you’re after nothing but some good ol’ fashioned zombie-smashing, co-op is the way to go.

That’s assuming you can get into a co-op game, mind. Dead Island is plagued with bugs and glitches, and the multiplayer in particular is hit hardest by poor coding. Some glitches are hilarious, like the occasional goofed animation or flying zombie, others are more serious, in some cases forcing you to restart the entire game. As of the time of writing, one patch has been released; fixing some of the issues, but unfortunately, Dead Island remains inexcusably broken. If you’re lucky, you’ll play through comfortably from beginning to end, never experiencing a single hang-up, otherwise, you’ll come to fear random glitches and crashes just as much as the undead hordes.

Yet despite being severely affected by certain issues- all the way through to the end, I couldn’t help but feel confident that Dead Island deserves its position as the surprise smash of the summer. It’s ambitious, original, and – despite being a zombie game in a sea of zombie games – completely unique, and for these exact reasons, it hurts to consider how it could have been so much more. Between a few poor design choices and a sizeable batch of programming errors, Dead Island has fallen short of its potential by a considerable mark, giving us an experience that only manages to approximate the developer’s initial vision.

Overall, you’ll love it for everything that it’s achieved, but loathe it in equal measure for what it hasn’t.

3/5

John Carpenter’s The Thing, based on John W. Campbell, Jr.’s short story ‘Who Goes There?’ has been recognised since its inception as a classic of the horror genre. From its iconic performances through to its unparalleled creature design, Carpenter’s work has held a large influence over my (and undoubtedly many others’) interests in film, and as such, I was nervous approaching this 2011 prequel to the tale.

The basic premise tracks a team of researchers in Antarctica following the unearthing of a frozen alien life form. Needless to say, the creature doesn’t stay frozen for too long, and violently emerges with the sole intention of finding its way onto more populated shores. The Thing itself has no set shape or form, and adapts the appearance of anything it’s come into contact with, shape-shifting into its victims in order to infiltrate and stalk the isolated research station. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Yes, Ramona Flowers) takes the lead role in this adaptation of the tale, heading up a firm cast that all manage to bring something interesting to the research team with no hope. Think Invasion of The Body Snatchers meets Hellraiser.

One of the main points of contention leading up to the film’s release, and even continuing now following public showings, is whether the film is a remake or a prequel. As far as the narrative is concerned, this is undoubtedly a precursor to Carpenter’s narrative, yet the execution and general marketing implies that it’s intended to be perceived as more of a remoulding of past successes. I’m assuming that the production have left the issue intentionally ambiguous, in order to appease both the die-hard fans and newcomers, however this hasn’t come without a price.

In failing to distance itself out as a prequel, The Thing has positioned itself amidst the slew of recent horror remakes; from Halloween to The Hills Have Eyes, and even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, leaving it in a bad position to begin with. It’s already indicative of a negative trend in modern cinema, and carries a certain stigma with it as a result. Every cheap scare, every predictable ‘creep in the closet’ moment is automatically drawn under the microscope for derision, and if you go into this film with even the slightest weariness of the current state of film, you won’t exactly come out instilled with hope.

Although funnily enough, my biggest gripe with The Thing’s transition to modern cinemas is how afraid it seems of tripping over the original. As great as Carpenter’s take on the story was, I’d like to think that the fundamental story is one that is perhaps relatively unexplored in film, and yet we’re essentially given the same Thing all over again. As cool as it would be to see a new take on the tale, this isn’t so much of a reimagining as a retelling, something that refuses to let the film achieve it’s potential.

Worse still, areas that were perhaps better left untouched are where all the changes have been made. Take, for example, the soundtrack to the original. Along the lines of Carpenter’s earlier work with films like Halloween, the theme played throughout 1982’s The Thing is solitary proof of the effectiveness of ‘less is more’. That familiar note, beating twice before falling into silence, was emblematic of the loneliness and tension that Carpenter’s film delivered so well- and arguably rounded the film out into the cult classic that it is today. For whatever reason, however, the 2011 version has opted for a more traditional orchestral scoring – brash, shrieking violins and all. Between the misjudged soundtrack and the narrative’s tenuous attempts at severing its characters links with the outside world, the film never comes anywhere near the vital sense of isolation that Carpenter’s work came to be renowned for.

As a matter of fact, the ‘Thing’ name does the film more harm than good in giving it such a high standard to live up to. Back when the prequel was first announced, I doubt that anyone actually held any hopes of it capturing the magic of the original, even more so following the release of each subsequent trailer. Surprisingly enough, however, it occasionally shows promise of breaking off into a more unique, substantial work, only to hang its head in shame and reel itself back into line with the original. In many ways, Carpenter’s lore holds the film back from finding its own voice, and it seems that even the crew were aware of this. Most of the direct links to Carpenter’s film are established quite literally at the last minute, during the credits (seemingly by obligation), and are bludgeoned into the viewer rather than suggested, spoiling what would have otherwise been a nice interpretive conclusion.

All said, though, I’m aware that I’m being a bit harsh. If you look at The Thing in a vacuum, independent of the 1982 original, it’s no doubt an entertaining bit of horror. It won’t be sweeping up awards any time soon, but fundamentally, it breaks far away enough from the herd to stand on its own two feet. Perhaps the highest praise that I can sing of it is that it’s believable. Although all of the scares remain predictable, the population is anything but, and the film eschews the traditional ‘don’t go in there’ theatrics on a fair few occasions, giving way to a refreshingly different kind of horror set within the dynamics of the group. The tension builds to a gripping high around halfway through, when the remaining characters engage in their inevitable conflict, and the viewer is led to realise just how much of a danger the characters are to themselves, perhaps more so than the creature potentially lurking in their midst. It’s genuinely frightening to watch things devolve into chaos as quickly as they do, and there are a few sequences that really shine in portraying this three-way battle in all its glory.

That said, scenes like these never prolong the scares for long enough, and often never even achieve their promised terror in the first place. The film seems to find itself in a conflict of interests as to whether to revel in splatter, or play it safe with the tension of the unseen, and finds an uneasy compromise between the two, to the detriment of the film’s pacing. The constant switches between passive and aggressive horror may leave you feeling confused, and more than likely burnt-out after the hour-mark, as you struggle to comprehend exactly what the film is trying to achieve.

The design of the monster itself is also especially underwhelming, regardless of whether you’ve seen the original or not. The entire basis of the ‘thing’ is that it has no defined shape or structure, and very few identifiable patterns or mannerisms; to call it a ‘thing’ is to describe it perfectly, something that is touted ad nauseum within the film itself, and something that – in spite of this fact – flies straight over the production’s radar.

At the end of the day, the creature is presented more like a traditional villain, moulding itself into the same, identifiable shapes over and over again, and attacking just like any other traditional sci-fi creation would. One of my favourite aspects of the original was just how outlandish the alien could seem, highlighted in particular during the kennel scene, in which we’re presented with a writhing mass of flesh, with whipping tendrils, screaming dog-heads and more than a few generous buckets of blood thrown on top. The Thing, as it was presented in that scene, is symbolic of exactly what the alien should be – completely foreign, completely unrecognisable, and just a tiny bit terrifying. The Thing as it’s presented in this prequel is more symbolic of everything you would expect to see from a monster, particularly in the way that it more often than not shifts into insect-inspired shapes, and deftly pounces around the station. It all feels a bit too familiar.

In this regard, it’s a shame that The Thing eventually comes to comply with a lot of the negative perceptions of modern horror cinema, as its earlier half shows a lot of promise. Perhaps if it had taken less inspiration from John Carpenter’s The Thing, and more from the book that spawned it, it would have been free to explore some of its more interesting, suppressed ideas, and relieved itself of some comparative criticisms, but unfortunately, it didn’t. As it is, this prequel is nothing more than an imposter in a 30 year-old film’s skin.

2/5

I suppose it’s worth prefacing this review with the admission that this film is weird; something which fans of its director – David Cronenberg – will no doubt be accustomed to by now. Since its release in 1983, Videodrome has gained a strong cult following, and taken pride of place as one of the kings of the ‘body-horror’ sub-genre, alongside
works like John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Cronenberg’s prior work, Scanners. It’s gory, it’s abstract, and maybe a little goofy – and your experience with it will invariably vary.

With that out of the way: Videodrome follows Max Renn (James Woods), the owner of a Toronto-based UHF station who, during a search for new extreme programming, stumbles across an obscure underground show depicting violence and murder: the ‘Videodrome’. Initially thought to be nothing but another sleazy acquisition for his network, through a series of hallucinatory sequences the truth about ‘Videodrome’ is revealed to be something much more consequential to Renn, and possibly the entire world around him. Along the way, he’s haunted and guided by Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a sadomasochistic radio personality, who comes to personify the mind altering effects of the Videodrome, and Renn’s involvement within.

If this all sounds a bit high-concept, that’s because it kind of is. High on the film’s agenda is to make both a literal and metaphorical statement on our adoption of technology, in many cases at the expense of a coherent narrative. Luckily, Videodrome isn’t just smart for smart’s sake, and invites you into the experience with brilliant performances (particularly by Woods himself) and some clever effects work throughout. Special credit has to be given to the sheer creativity on display when the Videodrome’s mind-bending effects kick in, allowing us to witness walls bubble, ooze, breathe and gasp around Renn as his body begins to shift and contort to accommodate ‘the new flesh’ of Videodrome’s grasp.

For the most part, there’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before about the film’s narrative. Gripping, well-paced, and unafraid to place the burden of interpretation on its viewers, Videodrome is refreshingly cerebral in a genre that seems fixated on viscera and little else. This is perhaps why the film has developed such a strong following, as it abstains from the cheap thrills typical of body-horror, and instead opts to apply some significance to the on-screen carnage. For a while, this approach couldn’t work better.

Unfortunately, the film’s later half become a bit too heavy handed, painfully attempting to verbally explain the visual symbolism that’s already hard-trodden into the head of the viewer. It was around the point at which I witnessed James Woods elatedly shout ‘long live the new flesh’ into a microphone that I had to acknowledge that the film may have taken a plunge into murky waters. Woods’ characters’ revelatory philosophical mantra is delivered with all the gusto of Matthew Lillard’s crane-necked cries of ‘hack the planet’ in 1995’s Hackers. This isn’t a good thing.

All said, though, it’s worth exercising my strained capacity for basic math to note how strange it is that I should come to view Videodrome thirty years after release, considering how archaic many of the concepts within are. Videotapes are a distant memory – if even a memory at all – to most new viewers, and the ideas of home-viewing and distribution have long surpassed the novelty with which Videodrome views them. Funnily enough, however, it’s here that the film presents its strongest hand for contemporary viewers.

While audiences of the 80’s may have been able to meet Videodrome with a degree of cynicism – scoffing in the face of Cronenberg as he speculated on the emergence and growth of technology – for modern audiences, concepts as distant as VHS and Betamax come to highlight the film’s greater messages and ideas which, in many ways, are more relevant today than they were at the time of the film’s release. With the advent of the internet, the saturation of ‘subterranean’ content has bloomed into a global industry, to the point at which anyone can essentially watch anything: good, bad, or worse, through their browser. The idea that technological saturation could grow to influence a person, to force us to conform, is now a regular topic of debate given the rise of sites like Youtube and its ilk, and especially relevant given the recent SOPA debacle. This is a film that has managed to stay relevant by never aiming to be so; taking on questions of human identity and sexuality at their roots in order to remain applicable to media beyond the video tape.

It’s in this that we find the true draw of Videodrome: as a film completely driven by metaphor; a film that explores sexuality, technology, violence, and the media by simultaneously basking in all four. Videodrome, for any negative impressions it’s sure to impress on its viewers, never attempts to guide you into a single line of thought, or along a single narrative course. Just as Woods and Harry’s characters are led to explore a degree of sexuality and beauty in the bootlegged image of a young torture victim, the viewer, too, is encouraged to find a certain beauty in the film’s abnormalities and their depiction – lucidity in a world that would, under any other helm, be filled with nothing but terrors.

Cronenberg has always been lauded for his approach to the abstract in moviemaking, and nowhere is it more apparent than here, where even indoctrination, technocracy and subjugation are given their own positive forms of visual magnificence. Even at its worst, this is a film that is so lovingly, beautifully, and above all, surreally crafted, that you can’t help but revel in the spectacle of it all.

Even now, so long after its original release, and in defiance of the long-forgotten formats that drive it, Videodrome remains horrifying, entertaining, and in some cases, charmingly laughable, all at once. It seems strange that such a strong representation of our times should have been made more than thirty years ago, let alone delivered through the medium of a vagina in James Woods’ chest, but heck, I’ll take it where I can get it. This is a cult classic that is just as engaging as ever, weird as they come, and well worth 90 minutes of your time.

4/5

It’s a good time to be into horror, that’s for sure.

Just last week, the internet pledged its collective support to Parsec Production’s Slender, a free, Unity-based ‘spook-em-up’ based on Something Awful’s long-running ‘Slenderman Mythos’; and I’ve got to say, the game has quickly become something of a daily routine for me. It’s ugly, short, and ever-so-slightly goofy, and yet all of that becomes moot the moment you’re thrown into the experience and realise, first-hand, how goddamned terrifying the thing is. Consider me firmly stationed on this particular bandwagon.

If there’s one truly great thing about it, though, it’s the attention that it’s brought to all of the other independent horror titles floating around out there, from the frustratingly tense SCP-087 to the terrifyingly abstract Hide. Games geared explicitly towards the insane and foolhardy are getting a second chance through the public’s renewed interest in horror games, and it’s succeeding in turning the genre into a serious talking point once more.

Slender isn’t the only good thing happening in this regard, either. The continued rise of the Youtube ‘Let’s Play’ trend, now spearheaded by users like ‘Toboscus‘ and ‘PewDiePie‘, is only helping to spread the fear, giving us hour upon hour of footage of dopey commentators screaming at all kinds of new horror experiences, with viewer counts in the tens – and even hundreds – of thousands checking in with each instalment. The horror genre hasn’t been so prominent in the public eye since the late 90’s, an innocent time when a few polygonal dogs jumping through a window was the height of terror, and fog was a technical necessity, rather than a design choice.

Haversine’s ‘SCP-087′

Let’s not forget the fallout from TheChineseRoom’s trailer for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the follow-up to 2010s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the game that arguably kick-started the whole horror resurgence. Click right here, watch the trailer, and tell me you don’t feel uneasy afterwards. I simultaneously can’t wait, and wish it didn’t exist at all. The Dark Descent is often held high as the pinnacle of horror in video gaming, and… well, it kind of is.

Trust me; I say that with authority, considering I’m in the middle of a long-running war with the game. To this day, I’m still making desperate attempts to reach Amnesia’s fated conclusion, only to find myself chickening out after about fifteen minutes each time I play. Heck, occasionally, I’ll load the game up, only to run away with my tail between my legs as early as the first loading screen.

Notice, by the way, how I said that without a hint of shame. This is mainly because I know that statistically, if just out of sheer stubbornness, I’ve probably inched my way further into Amnesia than most players ever will. User testimonials scattered across the web seem to suggest that the two-hour mark is where most people will whip out the white flag and graciously admit defeat. As it stands, I’m entering my seventh hour, worthy of a badge of honour unto itself. I’m just wishing it would end. Anywhere else, that statement would be the hallmark of a bad videogame, but here, it only stands testament to how damned effective Amnesia actually is.

Frictional Games’ ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’

Clearly, if there’s one question to be asked here, it’s ‘why?’ Why are people sitting up and taking notice now, and perhaps more crucially, why are people playing horror games in the first place? There’ll always be an innate humour to watching Toby Turner scream like a girl playing through Amnesia, but who, in any right state of mind, would put themselves into such a situation? More to the point, who would enjoy it? Why do I play these things?

Conveniently enough, the way I see it, a good place to look for the answer is Slender. After all, the sheer number of mentions it’s gathered in the last few weeks seems to suggest that this is a game that has genuinely worked its way into the public’s subconscious, encouraging many a sleepless night worldwide. If so many people are actively talking about it; playing it in darkened rooms, allowing it to scare them silly, and still coming back for more- it must be doing something right, right?

So in order to understand why anyone would want to play Slender, it’s probably worth taking a quick look at its mechanics.

The game drops you into an enclosed forest, with no back-story, and very little idea of what’s to come. All you’re given is a single prompt: ‘Collect all 8 notes’, and then… silence. With nothing but a narrow flashlight beam to illuminate your path, you’re simply encouraged to stumble forward into the darkness, knowing full-well that things aren’t going to pan out in your favour.

The moment you collect any one of eight notes scattered around the world, the eponymous Slenderman spawns, a disproportioned ghoul with a penchant for horror movie theatrics. Initially little more than a peripheral shadow in the distance, he slowly and surely works his way closer towards you, stopping only when caught in the player’s line-of-sight. If you’re familiar with Doctor Who’s ‘weeping angels’, just imagine meeting them in a dark forest.

As you collect more notes, the Slenderman’s appearances become more frequent and he becomes increasingly violent, eventually making active attempts to kill the player. Before long, you’re forced to start dealing with him up-close, an experience that is, for lack of a better word, horrifying. Every time you start getting comfortable, he’ll show up, most likely accompanied by a sudden jump-note and flashes of static across the screen, the game’s way of telling you it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge. The player’s aim is, quite simply, to find the notes scattered randomly throughout the forest, and avoid the Slenderman at all costs – which, by the way, is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

Considering the way that the world is structured- full of enclosed spaces, dilapidated buildings and ominous tree lines; all potentially harbouring either a precious note or the Slenderman, I’d like to say that the game plays into a clear risk/reward mentality. You take a gamble every time you put yourself in a dangerous space, in the hopes that you’ll find another note to get yourself closer to that elusive number eight. Yet the more I think about it, the more I realise that this isn’t the case. Slender is a game composed entirely of risk/risk scenarios, nothing but an endless series of ‘catch 22s’, stacked against you until you draw your last virtual breath. There’s never a ‘safe’ option.

For example, although staring at the Slenderman will bind him in place, if you do so for too long, the screen will begin to fade into static, and he’ll take it upon himself to fuck your shit up. If you instead opt to run away, he’ll pursue, and in many cases, will reappear in front of you, ready to start the whole process again. Heck, even if he doesn’t reappear, in most cases, he’ll travel faster than you, expressly for the purposes of getting close enough to fuck your shit up. Every decision you make is the wrong one, every road ends in your untimely demise at the hands of an unknown presence, one that can’t be fought, and, for most players, can’t even be escaped. Once pursuit begins, you’re unlikely to stop running. Slender is a relentless chase through a darkened forest, with one, and only one, outcome: death. In short: Slender is not a fun game.

It’s a game that revels in removing power from the player, placing you in control of the uncontrollable, stalked by an unpredictable force that seems more focused on toying with you and making you jump than actually killing you. The narrow beam of the flashlight, the player’s deliberately slow speed, plus an emphasis on keeping your flashlight off (!), it’s all there to keep you, quite literally, in the dark.

So is it wrong to say that I really like this game?

Nucleosys’ ‘Scratches’

Giant Bomb’s Patrick ‘Scoops’ Klepek recently wrote a piece about his experiences with horror games – titled ‘Fear and Loathing in The Dark Descent’ – in which he posits the main reason he enjoys being scared is because it affords him a means of self-discovery. In his own words: ‘knowing my fears helps inform the whats and whys of my own behaviour’, an idea that rings particularly true for me. Essentially, by making an effort to scare ourselves, we’re taking a peek under the hood of our subconscious, at the engine that powers our actions.

Under this interpretation, being scared – or ‘knowing your fear’ – is an introspective experience. When we’re enjoying a good horror game, we may not necessarily be enjoying the components of what scares us, but instead whatever we see inside ourselves. As such, the real value of Slender must lie in how it approaches the scares on a person-by-person basis, how it taps into the fears of each player and what it shows them about themselves. The way it approaches the ‘whats and whys’ of our behaviour might explain why we’ve all latched onto a game that, conceptually, suggests nothing but misery.

Looking closer, then, if there’s one behavioural trait common amongst Slender’s player-base, it’s that we all enjoy and seek the fear inherent to the game’s mechanics; for some unknown reason, we enjoy being scared, and from this, we can also gather that the game successfully scares us all. As such, there must be some sort of deeper unifying trait amongst the player-base, that we should all find terror in the same concept and execution.

In a piece on the neuroscience of horror games, Maral Tajerian identifies several key factors that contribute to our fear when gaming, from ‘anxiety’ to ‘priming’, and everything along the way. You may notice that most of Tajerian’s points apply to Slender in some form or another, however, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to suggest that ‘helplessness’ is the most prominent; the ‘loss of control, the belief ‘that if you move, even an inch, a certain and horrible death will soon ensue’. Ultimately, the inability to combat the Slenderman’s advances is what defines Slender as a horror experience, and thus we could argue that any fan of the game looking to understand their own ‘whats and whys’ should come to the conclusion that, to some degree, they desire – or at the very least get kicks out of – the idea of ‘helplessness’.

That’s not to say all fans of Slender have a desire to be dropped into a forest and relentlessly stalked, but it does mean that they can relate to some of the aspects of ‘helplessness’ in a positive manner. There’s some sort of internal voodoo that allows us to derive enjoyment from the feeling.

Frictional Games’ ‘Penumbra: Black Plague’

It’s a common conception that any pleasure we derive from horror is purely cathartic. It’s often stipulated that we don’t enjoy a scary film or game until we’re on the other side, and that we merely ‘survive’ our way through any given experience in order to attain a greater emotional release after-the-fact. To me, however, Slender seems different. Between the constant peril that the game places you in, and the anti-climatic and often senseless deaths that you’re likely to face, it seems that there’s very little room for ‘release’ here. Slender has no uplifting qualities, and no downtime – even its ‘game over’ screen is a simple prompt to retry, a reminder that the experience is far from over (especially when you consider the overarching, unresolved, alternate-reality format of the Slenderman mythos itself). Slender doesn’t lend itself to catharsis, because there’s very rarely a genuine escape – it just keeps going, whether literally, through the retry function, or figuratively, through its ambiguous endings and the mere existence of the expanded fiction around it.

Slender makes it clear that catharsis isn’t the sole reason we play horror games. Klepek’s statement hits upon this, upon the fact that, far before catharsis kicks in, fear allows us to confront ourselves ‘in the moment’, and thus gain some form of validation. We gain enjoyment simply from the self-analysis that these games encourage; confronting and attempting to understand our fears as and when they crop up. A study by Eduardo Andrade and Joel B. Cohen recently hit upon this very idea, that ‘people may actually enjoy being scared, not just relief when the threat is removed’. Our fear, as a form of self-exploration, is enjoyable, even if it’s not necessarily comfortable.

As far as I’m concerned, this is why Slender is enjoying such a widespread amount of success, because it’s stumbled into a gap in the market, allowing people who desire the feeling of helplessness to explore an avenue of their psyche that, until now, has gone largely underrepresented in videogaming. The feeling of helplessness is the specific trigger that allows them to pop open the hood and enjoy a look at their inner workings – to become involved in an experience that, by virtue of being the thing they want least, becomes the thing they enjoy most – a close-up view of the things that shape their behaviour.

Jasper Byrne’s ‘Lone Survivor’

Of course, this still leaves some questions floating around. What does our helplessness show us? Why are some more scared by this than others? Well, these particular questions, as it turns out, are a lot more personal. Why somebody desires the helplessness that Slender provides is a question that Slender alone can’t answer, one that relies on the participation of the player, as much as the game.

In his article, which primarily deals with Amnesia, Klepek considers why he desires to seek out his darkest internal workings, theorising that Amnesia’s scares, which focus around the ideas of loss, grief, and once again, helplessness, allow him to confront ‘the lack of anything truly horrific’ in his life. He presents the argument that horror games allow him to empathise with those in situations of grief, people in situations that he feels guilty for not understanding (a particularly relevant point, given how outspoken Amnesia‘s designer – Thomas Grip – can be about the importance of empathy in crafting roles). Klepek goes on to reject his reasoning, but nonetheless, it stands firm as an example of the sort of psychoanalysis that we need to tap into in order to understand what we’re confronting when we scare ourselves.

So once again, I ask myself: why do I enjoy my time with Slender? Why do I want to feel helpless? What does it allow me to confront?

I suppose if I were to sit down for some armchair analysis, I could speculate that it’s because I feel I have too much control in my life – because I’m afraid of responsibility. Maybe, through Slender, I want to be taken to a place where I feel justified being completely helpless, where I feel like I have no responsibility, no part to play in my impending doom. There’s something to be said about the certainty of death in Slender, that’s for sure, and as such, the feeling of helplessness, while terrifying, can paradoxically be an inverted, calming experience.

Or heck, maybe I just like Slender because I’m a closet masochist. I’ll have to keep on playing, and thinking, in order to truly find out, I suppose. What’s clear, however, is that Klepek really hit the nail on the head when he outlined horror gaming as a reflective experience. We may not always think in such analytical terms while playing these games, but I have no doubt that, semi-consciously, when we explore our fears we ask these exact questions of ourselves – and on some level, that’s the part we enjoy.

Andrew Shouldice’s ‘Hide’

… although if you think this is all a bunch of hooey, I can’t really blame you. You see, as a final note, it’s probably worth knowing that I didn’t always feel this way about horror games.

You may have noticed, following the rise of Slender, Amnesia, and creepy games in general, that we’ve also seen a proportional rise in the number of ‘internet tough-guys’ out there. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those guys who seem over-eager to prove their own worth by asserting how ‘tame’ they found experiences like Amnesia and Slender to be. Maybe they’ll cite Silent Hill 2, or an obscure Japanese game as the ‘scarier’ game, or maybe they’ll posit that videogames can’t be scary at all.

Maybe they’re right- after all, everyone has different ‘whats’ and ‘whys’, and as such, no game or film is ever going to scare all the people, all the time. That said, as I’ve found out, sometimes people will deny themselves an experience that’s tailored to their exact preferences, by outright refusing to buy into it. I should know, considering I used to be one of ‘those guys’.

Perhaps this is why I felt the urge to write this post, given that for a short period, ‘why are people playing horror games?’ was a question I was eager to find the answer to. I suppose, in large part, it’s a mindset that owes its debts to the competitive foundations of a lot of modern day videogaming, wherein if I didn’t feel like I was ‘winning’ every battle – if I was noticeably startled by a particular scare, or had to quit the game through fear – I felt like I had ‘lost’, like the game had failed my needs for instant gratification. This feeling of disenfranchisement often leads into an odd cycle wherein you block out the horror from your mind. You need to ‘win’, and as such, you begin to mentally prime yourself in order to do so, failing to realise that the horror is, in many regards, the raison d’être of the whole experience.

Of all games, I think it was Resident Evil 3 that finally caught me off guard one night. I wasn’t even the one playing the game, and yet its antagonist, Nemesis, immediately worked his way under my skin. Being able to witness the person playing the game visibly recoil at the sight of him made me realise just how entertaining our fear could be – this is how we were supposed to feel. It was then that I realised horror games shouldn’t have a leaderboard mentality; they aren’t about who gets scared the least, or who has the balls big enough to blaze through them in one sitting. They’re anecdotal- you handicap yourself to the right balance – whether it be through turning on lights, or gathering friends – so that you don’t feel the constant urge to quit, but so that you can also still be freaked the hell out, and appreciate the game as intended. You have to buy into the experience and just go for it, and then laugh about it later. That’s what horror games are: an experience, not a badge of honour.

As I soon gathered, in most cases, you have to want to be scared. Horror games and films ask that you sit alone in a darkened room with the sound cranked up, and a willingness to be given the heebie jeebies, because ultimately, the heebie jeebies are what keep us coming back for more, and what make the experience worthwhile. Part of what makes these games so terrifying (and enjoyable) is our willingness to make them so.

Remedy’s ‘Alan Wake’

To come back full-circle, and answer my title question in one fell swoop: we put ourselves through experiences like Slender and Amnesia because, quite simply, we’re willing to. Fear is a mindset, and at the end of the day, there’s a twisted kind of fun to be derived from entering said mindset and giving yourself the willies (no, don’t Google that). While we may not always recognise it when we’re in the thick of the experience with our fingers primed over the escape key, if you keep returning to anything in your leisure time, chances are, it’s because you actually enjoy it. That’s what horror games are: enjoyable – just not in the traditional sense. The eventual release of catharsis is addictive in a familiar way, and the self-exploration that goes hand-in-hand with the fear ‘in the moment’, is the complicated thing that allows us to laugh, smile and simply have a good time, even when we’re hiding in a cupboard wishing it would all go away.

Whether you’re scrambling to grab a note off a tractor, investigating an ominous noise in a basement, or descending a never-ending staircase, on some level of consciousness, you’re facing your own weakness, and discovering yourself in the process. I can say with confidence that this is what keeps me coming back to these games – even if, by this point, the only thing left to discover is how much I dislike loud noises.

Download/ Purchase Links:

Alan Wake

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

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Lone Survivor

Penumbra: Black Plague

Scratches

Slender

SPC-087

(Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fixed Camera Angle)

Eleven years ago, I had to give up on Silent Hill 2. Even under the direction of a friend – who informed me that he’d just found the ‘coolest game ever’ – I could barely make it past the game’s first ‘proper’ challenge: the labyrinthine apartment block that acts as its introduction (and an introduction which, for the record, dominated many a nightmare for years to come). Driven by a desire to see the experience through, however, I returned to it again and again, each time beating my chest and throwing out countless hollow platitudes, taken by the belief that I could make the horror go away. After a long series of weeks, I finally arrived at the game’s conclusion, and breathed a long-deserved sigh of relief.

At the time, I’d enjoyed it, but the way things go; it became just another one of those dumb games I’d played to pass the time before growing up. I’d appreciated it, if begrudgingly, for the countless hours it took to finish, but never really looked back; Silent Hill 2 became a footnote in the grander scheme of adolescence.

Cut to about two weeks ago, however, and I was once again sat at the game’s title screen – this time on PC – having decided to give it another run to see whether all those nightmares were justified. Cut to about an hour after that, and the game was shelved once more, set aside for a braver day.

If there’s one thing to be noted returning to Silent Hill 2 after ten years, it’s that it remains an unbelievably intimidating experience.

Having mostly forgotten the specifics of the game, the first thing to jump back at me was the soundtrack. Composed by Akira Yamaoka, it’s a muddy, grinding mess; a jumble of bassy synths, heavy breathing, and screeching machinery, occasionally broken up with a bit of light acoustic guitar. Far removed from the tired, wailing strings that have come to dominate the genre, Akira’s work blends the innocent romanticism of the American Northeast with something much more sinister, and the dissonance between the two creates a tension that never quite resides. The more I think about it, the more it sums up the game as a whole.

The titular Silent Hill is a place defined by its juxtapositions. The merging of an otherwise-innocent community with the unspeakable horrors of hell is hardly a revelation – Stephen King has written that book at least thirty times in his career alone, but here, the concept really delivers on its promise. The game’s narrative is one of the richest in videogaming, and slides to great effect between the metaphorical and the literal without ever quite revealing itself.

At its core, it’s a story of love and loss, but in a more bodily sense, tackling the ideas of sexual repression and low self-esteem that can stem from a life-shaking personal event. Silent Hill 2 doesn’t present a doomsday scenario, or contrive lore to explain its every creation scientifically; it doesn’t have a codex, or an encyclopaedia – it’s simply a story about a small group of people coming to terms with life, set in a town that gives them the means to do so. The Silent Hill franchise may have flown off the rails in trying to give the town global/universal/dimensional significance, but back when Silent Hill 2 came out, the idea was still pure, focused and personal – and all the better for it.

Pictured: Purity

Silent Hill 2 throws its player into the shoes of James Sunderland, a troubled widower drawn to the titular town in the belief that his wife may still be alive there; despite the fact that he witnessed her death at the hands of cancer two years prior. As in the rest of the series, Silent Hill adapts itself to the worries of its protagonist, and it’s from here that the game progresses, funnelling James deeper into a literal manifestation of his own psyche in the search of answers. As a result, the town is heavily laden with symbolism; a compacted vision of his time with his wife, and little is left to cutscenes or text dumps other than the key story beats. In Silent Hill 2, the town is the story, and we’re guided into assumptions based on James’ visions of Silent Hill and his reactions to them.

All the while, there are four additional characters roaming the town’s streets, each as downright weird as the last, each plagued by their own set of horrors resulting from their own – and James’ – grievances. If there’s one thing that struck me about the whole experience, it’s how concentrated it all is. As large as the playable area of Silent Hill may seem at first, in the context of the story progression, it’s surprisingly small. As is typical of survival horror, it’s entirely possible that you could blow through the game in just a few hours and be done with it, and where Silent Hill finds its value is in the attention to detail along the way. Every character is drenched in their own subset of imagery -their own themes; in the audio, the video, and the narrative – and it all comes together to form a cohesive picture of grief, albeit one painted in blood and tears.

The game’s prolonged stop at Silent Hill’s decrepit hospital, for example, is no coincidence. The increasingly begrimed walls and images of death and decay evolve and spread like the cancer that killed James’ wife, and come to represent his internalisation of the few visits to the building in which he would eventually watch her die.  In this regard, the hospital serves as the game’s thematic core, and the rest of the experience spirals outwards from it, taking its players to key areas from its characters’ pasts in order to explore the woes of love, loss and regret in explicitly physical terms. Silent Hill 2’s narrative continually proves itself to be darkly intelligent, much more so than I remembered.

If the dichotomy between the doe-eyed James and the horrifying environment of his mind’s creation wasn’t enough; Maria (pictured) further explores the duality of the human psyche, representing a sinister, sexual image of his wife, Mary.

If you’ve read my bit on the recent outbreak of indie horror games, then it should come as no surprise to learn that Silent Hill 2 isn’t even a fun game; it’s an oppressive glimpse into humanity’s immoral tendencies, and the overall experience of playing is topped with a relentlessly unforgiving atmosphere reflecting this grim outlook. Movement is deliberately slow and laboured, placing a greater emphasis on smaller encounters, and – following the precedent set by the first game’s technical limitations – the whole thing is drenched in fog and darkness, so much so that you’re lucky to ever see more than a few feet in front of your face, even when equipped with a flashlight.

That last point may prove particularly irksome to some, too, considering that there are some genuinely unsettling creatures lurking behind the fog, topping out at a moving, writhing depiction of incestuous rape. As much as I feel like I need a shower after typing that, it’s contextualised within the narrative and subtle enough that it comes across as more sophisticated than the shock value of its description would suggest (but that still doesn’t make it any less unpleasant to witness).  Silent Hill 2 is a horror game with class – walls drip with blood, sure, but in moderation; and while a lot of its scares may be tried-and-tested in the bigger picture of the genre, it paces and delivers them in such a way that they seem new. Nothing appears contrived for shock value, or created purely to look as grotesque as possible, and as a result, it doesn’t give us anything quite as ridiculous as Resident Evil’s shoulder-eyeball antics.

The man responsible for this decision, monster designer Masahiro Ito, has made clear that his ‘basic idea in creating the monsters of Silent Hill 2 was to give them a human aspect’, and it’s this human aspect, and it’s concentrated removal, that keeps Silent Hill 2 grounded and believable, even in its most bizarre moments. The aforementioned hospital environment, for example, introduces its own monstrosities to the fold, the now-stalwart ‘bubblehead’ nurses; silent, faceless apparitions of the building’s former workers. As what can be seen as the beginning of the game’s ‘deeper’ exploration of James’ anxieties, the nurses are, in a strange turn from the game’s previous offerings, somewhat sexy, sporting short skirts and coyly exposed cleavage – rotten and bloodied, of course, but still conforming to a physical ideal atypical of standard horror creations.

As character artist Takayoshi Sato explains, ‘everybody is thinking and concerned about sex and death, [so we] tried to mix erotic essence…this is a kind of a visual and a core concept’. The twisting, faceless nurses that inhabit the hospital’s wards exemplify this ‘erotic essence’, embodying James’ sexual frustrations during his wife’s illness, and a guilt over his natural sexual urges. In speaking on the ‘main factors that evoke fear’, Sato expresses humanities reluctance ‘to see concealed their true-self’, a fear made all-too clear in James’ visions of the nurses (and the rest of the game’s creatures, for that matter).

Again, it remains impressive just how concentrated Silent Hill 2 proves to be, reigning in videogaming’s tendencies to aim for the stars and instead portraying something more realistic and relatable. Given this microscopic focus on detail, even something as simple as James’ radio – the game’s analog to a radar, which floods with static as enemies come closer – serves as a firm symbolic statement of communication, a means through which James can converse with his subconscious, and in gameplay terms, avoid the negative manifestations of his own mind that threaten this conversational ability. When it comes to the surreal and the weird, it helps if there’s some underlying support holding everything together, a thematic backbone that can make the inexplicable explicable, and in this regard, Silent Hill 2 never strays too far from its own support.

To get back to the nitty-gritty, however, one of the biggest surprises for me was how nicely the game holds up for its age. Sure, it’s still positioned in that awkward PS2-era bracket where animations and geometry can come across stiff and flat, but it’s sure enough in its art direction and texture work that it ignores system limitations, in a similar vein to Resident Evil 4 or Shadow of the Colossus.

The denizens of Silent Hill are as grotesque and gnarled as ever, from the mechanical spiders that roam its streets, to ‘those guys with pyramids on their heads’; visually, Silent Hill 2 still stands its ground. I suppose polygon count doesn’t stand for much when ninety percent of your creations are twitching masses of flesh. To this day, the bizarre spasms of an approaching ghoul are still enough to give me a severe case of the heebie-jeebies, probably even more so now that I understand what they’re meant to represent.

Complementing this, Silent Hill 2 tries it’s hardest to shy away from the Resident Evil/Dead Space ‘monster in the closet’ approach. Creepy as they may be, enemies are sparse in Silent Hill, especially towards the game’s earlier half; and if you’re familiar with the genre, that can end up being the scariest thing about Silent Hill 2. Subtle, one-off audio cues are thrown at you to brilliant effect, from the sudden, cut-off wail of a woman’s scream coming from a toilet cubicle you just checked, to the thunderous, approaching footsteps of something better left alone approaching you in the darkness, a vast majority of which might not ever culminate in any actual action. ‘Pyramid Head’, the game’s closest analog to an antagonist, serves up the occasional ‘boo’ scare, but almost everything else is left within the mind, and it pays off tenfold.

There’s one part in particular that cemented Silent Hill 2’s greatness for me and, like the rest of the game, it went largely unannounced. Through a lovably contrived twist of fate, there’s a point towards the game’s later half in which the player is left defenceless, forced to roam Silent Hill’s familiar, twisted halls with the training wheels off. It’s a segment that’s just about as mischievously evil as you’d imagine, leaving the player with no option but to crawl into the corner, adopt the foetal position and mash every button on the controller in an attempt to bite at the ankles of their aggressors, while they take their opportunity to return in kind. It’s spooky as they come, and especially clever in the way that it mixes up enemy spawning patterns, meaning that even when you decide to kick the controller into ‘flail and run around screaming’ mode, you still can’t quite predict how to get past the ghouls in your way.

For me, the most chilling and game-defining moment was an unassuming corridor just seconds into that section; a simple ‘L’-bend that branched off into a small corridor with no purpose, other than to look intimidating. If the screenshots dashed around the page aren’t enough indication, Silent Hill 2’s particular blend of third-person action is dictated by fixed camera angles, the kind that could instil a sense of claustrophobia in an industrial mine-worker. As anti-climactic as it may sound, that single corridor, obscured by a shifty camera, and completely inoffensive in the grand scheme of Silent Hill’s horrors, scared me more than any other section. I must have stood at its corner for nigh on a full minute, just waiting for something to emerge and grab me out of the unknown.

Pictured: One man’s terror

It’s because of cases like these that, come any discussion concerning Silent Hill, or the earlier Resident Evil games (or in some rare circles, Alone in the Dark or Dino Crisis), I’ll always catch myself sighing when the popular consensus inevitably turns to the conclusion that fixed camera angles, and by extension, ‘tank’ controls, are a bad idea.

While the sole bastion of any self-proclaimed ‘hardcore’ gamer will be the vacuous entity known only as ‘the gameplay’, I’m a firm believer that, unless you’re looking to make an ‘arcade’ style game wherein mechanics sit above all else (and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that), the developer’s first concern should be the desired experience –the story, the feel; and the gameplay should work in favour of this experience.

Especially in horror – gameplay decisions that aren’t necessarily conducive to the arcade ideal of ‘fun’ shouldn’t be seen as bad things. Tank controls might be a misstep for a more action-oriented game, but in horror, they play perfectly into the feeling of powerlessness and tension that are the staples of the genre. The fixed camera angle isn’t practical – heck, it isn’t even realistic – but then, neither is using a £20 hunk of plastic to manoeuvre around the world.

The problem with chasing realism in videogames is ultimately: until we reach that zenith of an immersive virtual reality, we’re still just guys and gals sat on our asses in front of a row of buttons. A realistic horror experience, ironically enough, isn’t a horrifying one in videogaming, because we’ll always be that one step removed from the ‘reality’ presented. More responsive controls might help us better approximate real human movement, but they’ve killed more experiences than I can count. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s better that we handicap ourselves with restrictive styles like the fixed camera angle if it conveys the fear of a situation more appropriately than pin-point, Halo controls. There’s a reason why Amnesia’s sanity effects spat in the face of the precision of a keyboard and mouse.

Silent Hill 2 has an odd evolution of the fixed camera angle, one that can obscure vital information about what’s to come, and trick the mind into seeing things that aren’t there. It has sluggish controls, and makes turning corners in a pinch much harder than it would be in any other game – essentially condemning the player to a slew of stressful encounters, and slowing the game’s pace down to a crawl. By most conceivable metrics, Silent Hill 2’s entire system of control seems regressive – and yet this only works in its favour.

It may seem unnecessary to dedicate so much real estate to one small feature, especially one as debatable as this game’s cumbersome controls, but as I’ve come to find, it’s these little things that prove most endearing in Silent Hill 2, and videogaming as a whole; the unannounced details that creep up on you and hit you where you least expect it. A lot of Silent Hill 2’s  design decisions may seem ass-backwards when starting out, but I found myself agreeing with them more and more as the experience went on, to the point at which I’d say it couldn’t have been done any other way. Games like Dead Space and Condemned, as fond as I am of those particular series, fall into one of the worst traps of modern horror, in that they grant their players too much power over their horror  elements – they don’t take enough risks, and as a result, announce all of their scares

In Silent Hill 2 this idea is completely inverted – it may occasionally present you with an ammo dump or a ‘keep out’ sign so obvious, that you can’t help but find yourself on edge. It might throw a storage cupboard into view, full of goodies, then funnel you into a wide, open space- and leave you free of enemies for upwards of ten minutes, left to suffer from your own anxieties and assumptions. It’s a game where the scares are derived from the player’s knowledge of the medium, in tandem with the developer’s understanding of interactivity, rather than some tired Hollywood ideal of what should go bump in the night. Very few punches are telegraphed in Silent Hill 2, and it helps keep the player on edge; and draws attention to some of the smaller details, fostering a sense of paranoia than only grows as the game progresses. You probably won’t find the ‘corridor of doom’ as terrifying as I did, but I have no doubt that there’ll be something else in this game that will eventually get to you; whether it be a shivering wall of creatures or something as simple as a flickering light.

Again, it’s these sorts of juxtapositions that define the game; bad ideas made good, the innocent perverted, and perhaps most important of all, a videogame made clever. If you were like me, and never quite got around to putting the lid on this game – or better yet, if you’ve never played it at all: pick up a copy on PS2 or PC (not the god-awful HD port) and set aside some time in the dark to get into this one, because it remains one of the most relentlessly atmospheric and rewardingly cerebral games ever made.

I took some time away from this little write-up before posting, just to make sure I’d support myself in such a bold closing statement, but heck, I can’t think of a game more set in its aims, and more accomplished in delivery. It has its quirks, sure, but taken holistically, Silent Hill 2 is perfect.

If you want to find out more about Silent Hill 2, then you can view the once-DVD-exclusive ‘Making Of’ here (transcribed here), or head on over to Silent Hill Memories, a series-specific site that borders on the fanatical, in the best possible way. Shamus Young has a rather neat plot analysis over on his personal site and Twin Perfect have collected every reason not to buy the HD collection as part of their season-long look at the series. Failing that, Wikipedia is always just a click away, assuming you’re willing to brave a potential mugging by Jimmy Wales.

At risk of generalizing, it’s not often that we talk about videogame writing. Game narratives aren’t discussed so much as graded; there are games with ‘good’ stories (stories you don’t notice) and games with ‘bad’ stories (stories you actively ignore), and the talk in-between is usually reserved for working out what the acronyms stand for in Hideo Kojima games.

So it’s satisfying when a game manages to break type and get its narrative noticed – especially in the mainstream – as was the case with Telltale’s episodic The Walking Dead last year. Riding high on the zombie zeitgeist and equipped with a wrench pointed squarely at our guts, The Walking Dead’s first season told a story with characters that were three-dimensional beyond polygons, and likeable, to boot. It was, for all intents and purposes, good stuff.

To tide us over while we wait for season two to start, Telltale recently released The Walking Dead: 400 Days, a short ‘bonus’ episode composed of five interlocking stories, told shortly after the events of the first season. For better or worse, The Walking Dead is back.

Sadly, the move to a shorter narrative form doesn’t sit well with the series. Last year, Telltale’s writing staff stumbled into a successful formula for manipulating the player’s emotions, and here, they seem to be trying too hard to imitate the natural successes of old. Every ‘shocking’ moment is delivered in woefully blatant shorthand: the twist of a friend unintentionally killing a foe, or a child sinking into depression, isn’t subtly revealed so much as thrust into the player’s face, and it ultimately weakens the emotional impact of the whole package.

When it came to a close, the first season of The Walking Dead appeared to revel in excess. Limbs were amputated, people were impaled – heck, one particularly grisly scene involved spreading the guts of a rotting corpse over a small child. In isolation, these situations were ridiculous – they only worked so well because we were already invested in the characters. Here, there’s no such blessing. By the time you develop anything resembling a connection to the new cast, they’re either dead or gone, replaced by the next rent-a-character, ready to engage in a familiar greyscale shock-a-thon, minus any emotional investment.

I am disappointed in 400 Days, chiefly because Telltale’s writing staff seem to have become lost in their own hype. Of the five stories within, only one – Shel’s – contains anything near the same level of emotional depth as the original series – the rest are one-trick ponies; soulless, telegraphed exercises in despair – seemingly crafted to revolve around a single ‘oh shit’ moment each, if just because those were the parts people raved about previously. On such a small scale, it’s just not interesting.

Not to mention, on a scene-to-scene basis, 400 Days’ writing amplifies the flaws of previous episodes. The ‘choice’ gimmick, for example, is needlessly stressed; the outcomes of the player’s decisions are left to expository lines of dialogue, delivered so heavily that they tend to disrupt the flow of otherwise well-crafted exchanges. At one point, a key character breaks rank to reference an oddly specific ‘man with a moustache’, in a direct call-back to the previous episode; a neat touch for fans, but one inserted so haphazardly that it kills the scene dead.

Sure, there’s still some great stuff in here. Conceptually, the ‘Vince’ storyline hits all the right marks, focusing on three ambiguous characters all competing to atone for their sins – a dynamic that left me pining for more – while the minute-to-minute gameplay has been tightened to flow continuously forward, shaking off the incongruent adventure game elements that felt so odd in the original few episodes without devolving into David Cage-esque mundane theatrics. In the context of the series as a whole, however, 400 Days does little to improve on the original – more often than not taking steps backwards into the predictable and the exploitable.

Ultimately, while 400 Days’ short length and frenetic pacing may be its biggest downfalls, underneath, there’s even cause to be concerned for the long-form second season of The Walking Dead. Everything is now on the surface. References and emotional beats that should be left in the background are now being thrust into focus, warts and all, and it seems indicative of a negative trend in Telltale’s games, of which The Walking Dead’s first season was the exception to the rule. Here, subtlety is missing; lost in self-indulgent and outright dumb writing practices that undermine everything that made prior episodes so endearing.

I’ll give Telltale the benefit of the doubt for the season to come, but the fact stands that 400 Days is a disappointing continuation of a great story, more in line with their formative efforts than any of their greats.

2/5