07.30.07
the horror, the horror
The quest Choco and I have embarked upon to play every horror game in the world ever continues apace, with the completion of Silent Hill 3 (a previously gaping hole in my gaming experience) and tonight’s commencement of a play through Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly.
Previous games on the circuit have included Silent Hill 2 (mostly punctuated by Choco shouting at me for being rubbish at the controls), Siren 2 (which was ace and caused an impressive level of screaming) and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii - which is bloody brilliant, greatly enhanced by the wonderful Wii controls, but still not very scary once you get the hang of it. The early section in the village remains one of the finest pieces of gaming I’ve ever experienced, though.
All this horror gaming has given me pause to reflect on how intensely personal the experience of “horror” is to different people. To some extent, it’s a simple question of storytelling, and how each story resonates with you; Silent Hill 2, for example, is considered by many people to be an incredibly affecting, sad and powerful story. For me, I lost sympathy with most of the characters by the end of the game; I recognise its quality as a piece of fiction and its wonderfully atmospheric storytelling, but in me the emotions provoked were largely anger at the characters rather than empathy.
I think the very fact that people can have such differing reactions to game characters probably means that on some level, the medium is Growing Up. Were I writing this as a feature on game storytelling, one of my favourite drums to bang, I would declaim this as being Important.
On another level, however, our reactions to horror games are more primal; they’re a question of what we, individually, find scary. Silent Hill 3, for example, scares the pants off plenty of people I know; it simply didn’t have that effect on me (although I recall honestly, genuinely sleeping with the light on after playing the original Silent Hill many years ago). It was enjoyable and interesting, but not frightening.
Project Zero 2, though (that’s Fatal Frame 2 to Americans in the audience) - well, this is a rare one in our play-throughs, since I’ve played it before but Choco hasn’t. As such, I should presumably be more immune to its horror tricks. No such luck; about an hour in, all that it has done is to remind me of how bloody creepy, shocking and disturbing it can be. I think I’m finding it far more scary than Choco is, the exact reverse of the situation with games like Silent Hill and Siren.
I think a large part of this is simply down to the question of imagination and empathy. What scares me isn’t a ghost on screen, but my mind’s own insistence on reconstructing what it is that made that ghost, the story behind its suffering - and Project Zero is wonderful at hinting just enough at that to make it disturbing. The story you build up as you explore the world is genuinely harrowing, if you allow your imagination to run free with it - and each new revelation just defines the mental image more clearly.
Similarly, Silent Hill - the original game - only gradually revealed the true horror of what had happened to Alessa and the results of her torment. Both games do a great job of keeping you confused, gradually revealing the meaning of hints that have been dropped throughout the environment; as I recall, the first Project Zero game was great at this form of storytelling too. (I remember almost dropping the controller when I found the incredibly nasty Blinding Mask, and realised just what the ritual the game was leading up to actually comprised.)
For some people, horror is about being shocked or disgusted, a visceral, basic response - and one which I generally only get to spiders, so I guess I should be thankful there aren’t more spider-based horror flicks about! For others, myself included, it’s about injecting the framework for a harrowing fiction into our minds, and letting our imagination fill in the pain, suffering and tortuous details in a deep and personal way.
Where films do the former, and books the latter, games can cross between both approaches to horror. I do wonder whether there’s scope for someone to create, some day, a game which actually encompasses both; something that sets off that visceral, skin-crawling reaction along with stoking our own capacity to imagine the macabre and empathise with the tortured.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s best if such a game never exists. If it had spiders in it too, I may well actually die.
Technorati Tags: horror, Project Zero, Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, videogames
