Fear of the Dark

Inspired by Emily‘s recent blog about her descent into Amnesia (I’m here all night), I feel obliged to mention that she’s not the only one who isn’t that keen on horror games. You guessed it: Duncan! Me! Then again, the games that have scared me in the past haven’t exactly been what you would call “horror”.

When I was younger, I used to be afraid of the Robot Pirates in Rayman 2. Not quite sure what it was about them that I was afraid of, but I think it may have had something to do with their rather evil demeanour and the fact they seemed very unnatural. I had a similar problem when I played Metal Arms: Glitch in the System – there came a point where you have to pass through this junkyard-esque area filled with these rather abstract metal horrors that, put simply, were horrifying enough to keep me from progressing past that level almost for good. I eventually discovered that I had left the game at a point where I was literally mere footsteps away from finishing the last level that those things appeared in, which was quite unfortunate.

I think I remember being quite afraid of a vast majority of in-game enemies actually: the evil sun from that one level in Super Mario Bros. 3, the Flood from Halo: Combat Evolved and those creepy things in Amnesia: the Dark Descent that loiter around the dark places. Or rather, I’m sure I would be afraid of them, had I actually come across one yet. I’ve not seen any because, well, I’m too damn scared in case I meet one and thus have never gotten very far. It’s due to precisely this that I’ve often wondered if developers who make horror games often stop and think “hey, is our game too scary? What if people don’t finish it?”

Perhaps the very fact that I haven’t finished these games is because I have complete control over my own progress. I’m not watching some hapless protagonist get dismembered in a hundred different ways in a film, or being hurtled at 100mph towards the impending jaws of doom on a rollercoaster – in both cases, the administration of fear is beyond my control. With a game however, it’s entirely up to me whether I take small spoonfuls or inject it straight into my gaming arteries. Also in Amnesia‘s case specifically, the helplessness of your character in the face of danger no doubt adds to the horror.

That may be where games like Dead Space 2 and Resident Evil 4 – which I’m currently playing for the first time ever through it’s HD re-release on the 360 – succeed. They succeed because they’re… well… not really that scary. At least, not in the run-to-the-hills-in-fear kind of way. They are horror games, but it’s due more in part to the grotesque enemies and distinctly recognisable human physicality of each one; HR Giger employed a similar technique when he designed that instantly recognisable xenomorph from the Alien franchise. It’s a shame they never made any more films after Aliens (or is it?). As I mentioned previously regarding Amnesia, could Isaac Clarke’s and Leon Kennedy’s combat prowess be the reason for the lack of scares?

In any case, we can’t just go on having horror games that “aren’t really scary”, because ultimately the only people who would lose out would be the people who play scary games in the first place. Perhaps a solution to this would be for future horror game developers to include, alongside the traditional difficulty settings you find in most games these days, a scalable horror setting? Fear junkies could ramp it up to “Brown Trouser Factor 10”, while those who are less inclined to spend their entire life savings on new underwear could stick it on a setting that was noticeably less scary, or maybe even barely scary at all, if they so wished.