Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it's time for
Speaker 1: a spooky episode. I thought I would devote this week
Speaker 1: to some scary stuff, and so we had the rerun
Speaker 1: of the Spooktacular Halloween Special. Today, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about spooky and scary games, video games and computer games.
Speaker 1: So I thought I would give kind of a rundown
Speaker 1: on some games. Some of them are really well known.
Speaker 1: In fact, most of them are well known. A few
Speaker 1: of them are a little more obscure. And it's all
Speaker 1: about bringing out the season of spookiness and interactive ways.
Speaker 1: And we'll be looking back at some classic titles, not
Speaker 1: just stuff that's come out recently. It will be a mix.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to acknowledge early on is that
Speaker 1: there has been an incredible boom in horror games from
Speaker 1: the indie developers sphere. Sure we've all heard about, you know,
Speaker 1: Silent Hill and Resident Evil games and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but there's some really great independent titles out there, some
Speaker 1: that take a very bare bones approach to game design
Speaker 1: and yet are no less effective than Triple A titles
Speaker 1: that are in the horror space, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to give that that scene a shout
Speaker 1: out to that end. Part of what inspired me to
Speaker 1: do this episode is Sean McLaughlin, who's better known as
Speaker 1: Jack Septic. I not not that he needs a shout
Speaker 1: out from me, because he is way more of a
Speaker 1: superstar than I will ever be, but more to the point,
Speaker 1: he will often play horror games on his YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: and he tends to have a really positive take on
Speaker 1: the titles he lazy. He's really good at picking out
Speaker 1: the things and games that he thinks happen to be
Speaker 1: really effective or interesting, even for games that might at
Speaker 1: first gland seems fairly primitive and simplistic. So shout out
Speaker 1: to that guy, because this content is really entertaining and
Speaker 1: like I said, largely positive, so I really like his stuff.
Speaker 1: The horror genre is, of course enormous, and it covers
Speaker 1: a wide range of games and game styles, from action
Speaker 1: oriented first person shooters to slower paced mysteries and everything
Speaker 1: in between. So one of the things I'm really going
Speaker 1: to do is eliminate a bunch of stuff with one
Speaker 1: fell swoop. I'm mostly interested in talking about games that
Speaker 1: create a sense of unease or dread, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: that actually initiates the fear response as you play the game.
Speaker 1: So games like Splatter House, which have an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of violence and gore, don't really make the cut because
Speaker 1: those types of games are more about blood and guts
Speaker 1: and more about disgust than creating a sense of dread.
Speaker 1: And I'm also not really counting jump scares because while
Speaker 1: jump scares can be effective in startling you, afterward you
Speaker 1: usually just kind of shake it off and you don't
Speaker 1: really think about it ever again. Right, So, if you
Speaker 1: see a movie that's guy Ala jump scares in it,
Speaker 1: you might, you know, scream as you watch the film
Speaker 1: for the first time, but you're not really going to
Speaker 1: be thinking about that very much afterward. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: see a movie that really disturbs you and stays with you,
Speaker 1: that's the sort of stuff you talk about later on,
Speaker 1: maybe years later. Really effective horror stays with you long afterwards.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to focus on games that I feel
Speaker 1: had enough style and presentation to achieve that, which thankfully
Speaker 1: makes this list a lot shorter than it would be otherwise.
Speaker 1: But even so, covering every horror game that manages to
Speaker 1: make the player feel uneasy would require multiple podcast episodes,
Speaker 1: even if we just restricted the discussion to games that
Speaker 1: I have personally played, let alone games in the space.
Speaker 1: So this is more of a highlights episode of some
Speaker 1: important and influential titles. So if your favorite spooky game
Speaker 1: doesn't make an appearance, I'm not omitting it on purpose.
Speaker 1: It's just that I'm not allowed to release a twelve
Speaker 1: hour long episode. And I invite everybody who has a
Speaker 1: favorite scary game to let me know about it, send
Speaker 1: me a message on Twitter, text stuff, hsw All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into it, shall we. To start off, let's
Speaker 1: chat about some of the very, very very early games
Speaker 1: in the horror genre that I don't think anyone would
Speaker 1: ever find scary. I don't think anyone thought it was
Speaker 1: scary when they came out, but they do help create
Speaker 1: some of the common features that would be found in
Speaker 1: future horror games. One of the earliest came out back
Speaker 1: in two for the Sinclair z X eighty one home
Speaker 1: computer system, one that's not widely known here in the
Speaker 1: United States. This game was called three D Monster Maze.
Speaker 1: It was designed by J. K. Gray and Malcolm Evans,
Speaker 1: and the game puts the player in a simple, low
Speaker 1: resolution three D maze. It's from a first person perspective
Speaker 1: as you navigate a maze. There is only one exit
Speaker 1: in the maze and the mazes layout is random from
Speaker 1: play through to play through. And to complicate matters, the
Speaker 1: maze is also home to a Tarrannosaurus rex, which is
Speaker 1: intent upon making you it's lunch, so your job is
Speaker 1: to navigate the maze and avoid the t rex. As
Speaker 1: you moved through the maze, you will see one of
Speaker 1: several messages that indicate what the t rex is doing
Speaker 1: at that moment. So, for example, the message rex lies
Speaker 1: in wait is the best message you could see. It
Speaker 1: just means that the tarnostaurce rex is dormant. It's not
Speaker 1: actively hunting you. If you see a message that says
Speaker 1: footsteps approaching, that's not so great. It means the t
Speaker 1: rex is not too far away. It is possibly coming
Speaker 1: at you, but it is way worse if you happen
Speaker 1: to see a message that starts with run, as it
Speaker 1: means the t rex is actively pursuing you. Now you
Speaker 1: can outrun the t Rex. You actually move faster than
Speaker 1: it does. However, if you hit a dead end in
Speaker 1: the maze, it's curtains for you. The graphics are really simple,
Speaker 1: but you could argue that the urgency of the messages
Speaker 1: makes all the difference, creating the stress needed to push
Speaker 1: the game into you know, that's slightly creepy territory. It's
Speaker 1: not scary outright, but it creates that sense of urgency
Speaker 1: and it reinforces that, which in turn gets a response
Speaker 1: from the player. The Atari twenty six hundred console had
Speaker 1: a few horror titles, though I think using the word
Speaker 1: horror is a stretch. One of these was Haunted House,
Speaker 1: a game in which you play as are of eyeballs
Speaker 1: floating around an extremely simple series of rooms, trying to
Speaker 1: find and then escape with and earn while avoiding a ghost.
Speaker 1: It's not at all scary. The ghost is just a
Speaker 1: little cartoon ghost that comes after you. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of other cartoon monsters you can encounter, but it
Speaker 1: does stress that your only recourse when encountering the ghost
Speaker 1: was to run. You couldn't fight the ghost really, uh.
Speaker 1: You could pick up items that would let you survive
Speaker 1: for a second before the ghost could get you. But
Speaker 1: really it was about avoiding and escaping the ghost, and
Speaker 1: that would become a staple of horror games and years
Speaker 1: to come, the idea that you can't necessarily confront the
Speaker 1: enemy's head on. And I actually owned this game. I
Speaker 1: didn't remember that I had owned it. When I was
Speaker 1: looking at titles, I was like, I should look into this,
Speaker 1: and as I looked into it, I thought, oh, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, that's what that was. I had that game.
Speaker 1: Also on the Atari twenty sire were several games that
Speaker 1: would be tie ins with existing horror movie franchises or
Speaker 1: just horror movies in general, and that marks the beginning
Speaker 1: of a long history of video games and film and
Speaker 1: sometimes TV that I would call it checkered. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of games out there that tie into these
Speaker 1: franchises that just are not very good. So this was
Speaker 1: really an effort to tap into horror movie junkies and
Speaker 1: get them to buy these games. The primitive graphics and
Speaker 1: sound of a twent games weren't likely to give anyone
Speaker 1: a hint of the Heebie GPS, however, so your mileage
Speaker 1: may very A company called Wizard Video Games actually made
Speaker 1: a couple of these. One was a tie in with
Speaker 1: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, sometimes referred to as the the
Speaker 1: precursor to the modern slasher film, and another one cashed
Speaker 1: in on Halloween, the John Carpenter horror movie. Both games
Speaker 1: were a bit more violent and graphic than standard at
Speaker 1: games at the time. In some cases, you could argue
Speaker 1: all more than a bit graphic, but the low resolution
Speaker 1: graphics on screen didn't exactly translate to real chills. Like that,
Speaker 1: you were seeing the depiction of violence on screen, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't at all realistic. It was very blocky and
Speaker 1: low rez. You might even look at games like these
Speaker 1: as part of the trend that contributed to the video
Speaker 1: game market crashing right around that time. Even so, while
Speaker 1: the technology wasn't really sophisticated enough to elicit scares, it
Speaker 1: was obvious the game developers saw opportunity in the horror space. Now,
Speaker 1: from the early nineteen eighties, we can skip over a lot.
Speaker 1: We had the big video game crash of Night three Slash,
Speaker 1: which was so big that it spilled over a bit
Speaker 1: into the computer game world, though really it was primarily
Speaker 1: the console market that was devastated the most Nintendo would
Speaker 1: bring that back with the introduction of the Famicom A
Speaker 1: gave the Nintendo Entertainment System UH. That system was famous
Speaker 1: for bringing back console gaming, introducing the world to stuff
Speaker 1: like Super Mario Brothers and more, but it also introduced
Speaker 1: some horror games. One game you could find on the
Speaker 1: NES as well as PC systems was Maniac Mansion from
Speaker 1: Lucas Arts. It published in nine now. This was a
Speaker 1: point and click adventure style game in which the player
Speaker 1: could control a couple of different characters as they tried
Speaker 1: to rescue a woman who had been captured by a
Speaker 1: mad scientist. The game had a lot of zany humor
Speaker 1: in it, which was a hallmark of Lucas Arts games.
Speaker 1: They also made stuff like the Monkey Island series. But
Speaker 1: the game also had some tense moments that featured perma death.
Speaker 1: So you would play as a protagonist who could bring
Speaker 1: two friends along. You had a selection of six potential friends.
Speaker 1: You could take two of them with you. However, if
Speaker 1: those friends should croak they stayed dead. They there would
Speaker 1: actually be a little tombstone with the character's name out front,
Speaker 1: so the choice of characters would determine how the game
Speaker 1: would play out. And you couldn't just win the game
Speaker 1: with one set of friends then play through it the
Speaker 1: exact same way using different sets of friends. It actually
Speaker 1: would change the game. The game also featured multiple endings,
Speaker 1: so there were several interesting ideas here that would find
Speaker 1: their way into future horror games. Though I would argue
Speaker 1: that Maniac Mentioned itself is not really a scary game.
Speaker 1: It's just that it helped cement certain game features that
Speaker 1: would be later used to great effect in horror games
Speaker 1: of the future, like the Atari twidd The NES also
Speaker 1: had several horror movie tie in titles. You know. They
Speaker 1: had Bram Stoker's Dracula. There was a Nightmare in Elm
Speaker 1: Street game. There was a Friday the Thirteenth game which
Speaker 1: gave us Purple Jason Jason Vorhees the antagonist in the
Speaker 1: Friday of the Thirteenth movies, at least after the first one.
Speaker 1: First first film was his mother, Mama Vorhees. But again,
Speaker 1: the low resolution graphics of the NES and the eight
Speaker 1: bit era never really struck me as particularly effective when
Speaker 1: it came to creating scares. There was a Japanese game
Speaker 1: called Sweet Home that managed to be pretty darn creepy
Speaker 1: and allegedly. I mean it would actually serve as inspiration
Speaker 1: for a future game franchise that I'll chat about a
Speaker 1: little later. But I never really got to play Sweet
Speaker 1: Home myself. I've seen video of it, but I've never
Speaker 1: played it. It was never officially released outside of Japan.
Speaker 1: You could track down an import of it and with
Speaker 1: an adapter play it, but you know, you had to
Speaker 1: go through a lot of effort in order to get
Speaker 1: your hands on a copy outside of Japan. The ne
Speaker 1: Nes also saw the first entry of the Castlevania series
Speaker 1: of games. Now, while Castlevania was more of a horror
Speaker 1: themed platformer and would become one half of the games
Speaker 1: that would create the Metro metroid Vania genre of platformers,
Speaker 1: Metroid being the other one, and the Castlevania series would
Speaker 1: eventually spawn some titles the gamers said, we're legitimately unsettling. Now.
Speaker 1: I've only played a little bit of Castlevania games, so
Speaker 1: I can't really comment on this from a personal perspective.
Speaker 1: To me, it was just sort of a horror themed
Speaker 1: platform or not something that I found particularly scary, But
Speaker 1: I've had limited experience with it. This era around the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System nineteen eighties era would see game developers
Speaker 1: come up with ideas that would be incorporated into more
Speaker 1: sophisticated games a few years later down the road. And
Speaker 1: while there were a few titles that might have had
Speaker 1: some interesting moments in them, for the most part they
Speaker 1: were still pretty tame. But those gameplay elements would really
Speaker 1: become important later on. While graphics and sound design would
Speaker 1: do a lot to set the atmosphere for a game,
Speaker 1: it would be those gameplay elements that can turn something
Speaker 1: that's just you know, gruesome or shocking into an experience
Speaker 1: that is more powerful than that. So let's jump ahead
Speaker 1: a couple more years in a company called info Grames
Speaker 1: would help launch a new genre. The game that did
Speaker 1: this was called Alone in the Dark, which would spawn
Speaker 1: a series of games. Now. The Guinness Book of World
Speaker 1: Records names Alone in the Dark as the first three
Speaker 1: D survival horror game. So in the game, you explore
Speaker 1: a mansion this would become a common theme in horror games,
Speaker 1: and you try to solve puzzles while you avoid or
Speaker 1: defeat supernatural enemies like ghosts and monsters. And I think
Speaker 1: it might be a good idea to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks of the survival horror genre or sub genre,
Speaker 1: and what makes those games tike So As the name suggests,
Speaker 1: the survival horror genre largely leans on the player trying
Speaker 1: to keep their character alive for the duration of the
Speaker 1: game despite numerous threats, and the horror part plays in
Speaker 1: this too obvious lee and that the threats tend to
Speaker 1: be scary and unsettling and often supernatural in nature. And
Speaker 1: a lot of games the player controls the character or
Speaker 1: entity that gets more powerful as the game progresses. You know,
Speaker 1: other other subgenres, this is very typical. Right you play
Speaker 1: the game, your character gets more capable, more powerful, gets
Speaker 1: more equipment or more abilities. They might level up, they
Speaker 1: might receive upgrades, and fighting enemies is a common game
Speaker 1: feature for lots of other subgenres, but this is not
Speaker 1: the case with survival horror games in general. Typically, in
Speaker 1: survival horror games, it is far more common to stress
Speaker 1: the need for stealth and agility rather than combat. Many
Speaker 1: survival horror games have no combat systems at all, which
Speaker 1: require the player to try and out maneuver or avoid enemies.
Speaker 1: You might spend more time hiding in a locker or
Speaker 1: a closet or sweet squeezing through like a tight spot,
Speaker 1: and music and sound effects can really help to create
Speaker 1: tense moments, increasing the sense of urgency as you try
Speaker 1: to evade the beings that wish to do you harm.
Speaker 1: By removing the ability to fight back against your opponents,
Speaker 1: these games also remove the player's sense of comfort and complacency.
Speaker 1: You can't count on your lead gaming skills to pull
Speaker 1: off a quick headshot or get you out of a
Speaker 1: tight spot like that. Danger may lurk around any corner,
Speaker 1: and so you're on high alert whenever the game is
Speaker 1: in motion, as a different type of emotional experience than
Speaker 1: playing something like Doom, which you know falls into the
Speaker 1: horror game genre but clearly does not qualify as a
Speaker 1: survival horror game. Some survival horror games do allow you
Speaker 1: to fight back at least a little bit, but these
Speaker 1: games may have other mechanics built in so that fighting
Speaker 1: back isn't necessarily the best option. Survival horror games might
Speaker 1: be incredibly stingy with stuff like ammunition and health kits,
Speaker 1: for example, so every shot counts and it's much better
Speaker 1: to not get hit rather than have to figure out
Speaker 1: how do you deal with the fact that you've been injured.
Speaker 1: And these same games may make enemies particularly difficult to
Speaker 1: take down, so you have both limited ammunition and if
Speaker 1: you do choose to engage with an enemy, you may
Speaker 1: have to shoot it multiple times just to make sure
Speaker 1: it's not gonna keep coming after you. Another frequent game
Speaker 1: mechanic is giving items durability ratings, so using items decreases
Speaker 1: their durability, and eventually they need to be repaired or
Speaker 1: they just playing break and you've got to get a
Speaker 1: new one. By metering out stuff like weapons and tools
Speaker 1: and health kits and AMMO, the game forces players to
Speaker 1: make tough and often quick decisions while trying to survive.
Speaker 1: Some games that fall into the survival horror genre play
Speaker 1: with us a little bit more than others. There are
Speaker 1: the Resident Evil games that we'll talk about more later,
Speaker 1: especially the later Resident Evil games up to about part seven,
Speaker 1: where you start finding more weapons and AMMO and options,
Speaker 1: and these games become a lot more action oriented. They
Speaker 1: turned into more of a shooter game rather than a
Speaker 1: survival horror game. Now, to be clear, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. You know, an action horror game is a
Speaker 1: legitimate type of genre. Doom is definitely an action horror
Speaker 1: first person shooter, and there are doom titles that are fantastic,
Speaker 1: but it is a different kind of experience. Alone in
Speaker 1: the Dark had pre rendered backgrounds, but the character you
Speaker 1: controlled was a three dimensional figure made up of polygons.
Speaker 1: So this was right around the age that that computer
Speaker 1: characters were emerging from being these little two dimensional sketches
Speaker 1: into more three dimensional characters. One nice thing about the
Speaker 1: game is that you could choose to play either as
Speaker 1: male or female. Now this was in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: This was a big step, although of course there was
Speaker 1: still a lack of representation for non binary type characters.
Speaker 1: Either way. The character needs to escape a mansion another
Speaker 1: common thread, and must defeat enemies and or solve puzzles
Speaker 1: in order to do so. Part of the game is
Speaker 1: actually linear, that means you have to go through a
Speaker 1: specific sequence to progress through the game, but other parts
Speaker 1: of the game are nonlinear, where you can tackle different
Speaker 1: challenges in whatever order you prefer. Some of the elements
Speaker 1: would find their ways into other types of horror games
Speaker 1: as well, and Alone in the Dark would become an
Speaker 1: important foundational title for the horror game genre. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll look at some more influential horror themed
Speaker 1: games and some real standouts in the subgenre. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. In Virgin Interactive Entertainment published
Speaker 1: a game called The Seventh Guest, a horror themed mystery
Speaker 1: in which you solve various puzzles laid out within a mansion,
Speaker 1: of course, and this game also featured clips of f
Speaker 1: m V a k a full motion video. So the
Speaker 1: PC world at the time was going through a revolution
Speaker 1: as CD ROM drives became available for the first time
Speaker 1: and made it possible for software developers to create more
Speaker 1: sophisticated games that wouldn't just fit on a floppy disk
Speaker 1: or they would require way too many floppy disks. So
Speaker 1: within the game you would get these little video sequences
Speaker 1: of actual live action video played in the game. Actors
Speaker 1: in costume would appear occasionally as sort of ghostly visions
Speaker 1: to deliver lines in a way that reminds me of
Speaker 1: some of the worst community theater I have ever seen.
Speaker 1: I loved it, but yeah, if you have never played
Speaker 1: The Seventh Guest, go to YouTube, do a search for it.
Speaker 1: Watch some of those FMV sequences. They are ad and
Speaker 1: gloriously so there are actually videos of the full game
Speaker 1: up on YouTube. If you don't have the patients to
Speaker 1: solve all those puzzles yourself, and I have to be
Speaker 1: honest here, at least a couple of the puzzles in
Speaker 1: the game are pretty lame. Some of them are fun
Speaker 1: and challenging, others aren't not good. The plot combines elements
Speaker 1: of weird fantasy, murder mysteries, and supernatural horror. In a
Speaker 1: sequel titled The Eleventh Hour published, but that didn't quite
Speaker 1: fair as well as its predecessor among both the critics
Speaker 1: and the public. Also in Sierra released Fantasmagoria, a horror
Speaker 1: game that looked at the FMV that was in The
Speaker 1: Seventh Guest and The Eleventh Hour and said, but what
Speaker 1: if we did that more. Fantasmagoria has a couple of
Speaker 1: dozen characters, all played by different actors, has tons of
Speaker 1: full motion video. It required seven CDs to hold all
Speaker 1: the datum, which was excess at the time. The game
Speaker 1: has some pretty grizzly imagery, even in the intro of
Speaker 1: the game, which has not one but two waking up
Speaker 1: from a nightmare sequences back to back spoiler alert. The
Speaker 1: style of game is a point and click adventure game,
Speaker 1: but instead of controlling like a little animated polygonal figure,
Speaker 1: your choices guided an actress named Victoria Morsel who was
Speaker 1: playing a protagonist named Adrienne Delaney. So if you clicked
Speaker 1: on a door, Victoria as Adrienne would walk to the
Speaker 1: door and try to open it. So I imagine it
Speaker 1: must have taken a very long time to capture all
Speaker 1: the different variations of actions that could potentially play out
Speaker 1: in the game. As for the plot of the game,
Speaker 1: Adrienne is a novelist who along with her husband Don,
Speaker 1: has purchased an old mansion since the theme yet and
Speaker 1: the mansion's previous owner was a stage magician with a
Speaker 1: dark lee passed involving multiple marriages and the mysterious death
Speaker 1: of his wives. Adrianne encounters various supernatural puzzles and different
Speaker 1: kind of supernatural happenings in the house as the story
Speaker 1: plays out. It ultimately leads to a showdown with a demon,
Speaker 1: as these things are wont to do. The game was
Speaker 1: a pretty big hit, and it was a definite step
Speaker 1: up on the production side from games like The Seventh Guest,
Speaker 1: though a lot of reviews criticized that the puzzles in
Speaker 1: Phantasmagoria were a little too simple. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up this trio of games, in
Speaker 1: particular Seventh Guests, Eleventh Hour and Phantasmagoria is because they
Speaker 1: were almost an overcorrection of some of the issues I
Speaker 1: had with earlier horror games. Right, the earliest horror games
Speaker 1: were so simplistic, and the primitive graphics and the really
Speaker 1: you know, low fi sound design acted as detriments to
Speaker 1: the effect of the game. They weren't going to make
Speaker 1: you feel scared, really, they weren't really unsettling. The era
Speaker 1: of the CD ROM gave game developers the ability to
Speaker 1: use actual video of real human beings in their games,
Speaker 1: so there was no need to create realistic graphics if
Speaker 1: you can replace graphics with actual video. But video is
Speaker 1: inherently limited, especially for interactive purposes. You can't shoot every
Speaker 1: possible variation of an action that a player might think
Speaker 1: about while they're playing a game, so by necessity, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff a player might try would need to
Speaker 1: result in a kind of message like I can't do
Speaker 1: that or that doesn't work, because otherwise you would need
Speaker 1: a nearly limitless amount of time to shoot video, and
Speaker 1: that's just not practical. So what was needed were games
Speaker 1: that could be atmospheric and have that level of production
Speaker 1: value along with effective gameplay. And these were pieces that
Speaker 1: were slow he starting to come together. I argue that
Speaker 1: fm V games can be very entertaining, they can be
Speaker 1: good games, but it's very hard to make effective gameplay
Speaker 1: with them because you can't control live video the way
Speaker 1: you can a they generated video game character. Another point
Speaker 1: and click game that came out in was an expansion
Speaker 1: on a story that had been written by Harlan Nelson
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, and it shares the same title
Speaker 1: as that story, I have no Mouth and I must
Speaker 1: scream now. In this story, the antagonist is not a
Speaker 1: vengeful spirit, it's not a demon. It's a malicious artificial
Speaker 1: intelligent construct. The game features five characters, each of whom
Speaker 1: has a narrative within the game, and players are free
Speaker 1: to make ethical or unethical choices as they play, and
Speaker 1: making more ethical choices increases the odds that you'll be
Speaker 1: able to defeat the AI at the end. But if
Speaker 1: you want to be a total jerk face, you totally
Speaker 1: can be. And also not all the choices are obvious
Speaker 1: some of them are more dilemmas, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the scenarios that the player faces are beyond grim. That's
Speaker 1: really heavy, dark stuff, and it puts the player in
Speaker 1: a position to deal with tough subject matter, which is
Speaker 1: putting it lightly so before warned if you want to
Speaker 1: try that game out. In we got the first of
Speaker 1: the Resident Evil games, which was originally called bio Hazard Um,
Speaker 1: which would come back later in the series. It was
Speaker 1: originally developed for the Sony PlayStation. Resident Evil grew out
Speaker 1: of one of the earlier games that I mentioned, Sweet Home,
Speaker 1: the one that was a Japanese exclusive, and it follows
Speaker 1: a special Task Force officer. The player could have their
Speaker 1: choice of either playing Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. The officer,
Speaker 1: whichever one they choose, is attempting to track down members
Speaker 1: of an earlier investigation team while also fighting off monsters
Speaker 1: you know, like zombies and stuff. The gameplay is a
Speaker 1: third person perspective game with a static camera angle. The
Speaker 1: camera angle would change as you would move from scene
Speaker 1: to scene, so it might be you know, kind of
Speaker 1: up and to the side in one room and you
Speaker 1: move to another room and suddenly the orientation of the
Speaker 1: cameras totally different, which also changes the way your character controls.
Speaker 1: It made controlling the character a little clunky. They're also
Speaker 1: limited resources in the game, so managing those resources like
Speaker 1: ammunition and healing items becomes an important part of the
Speaker 1: player's strategy, and there are puzzles to solve as the
Speaker 1: game progresses. And while Alone in the Dark would introduce
Speaker 1: the elements of survival horror back in, I think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that Resident Evil was the game that
Speaker 1: defined the characteristics of survival horror in nineteen. Resident Evil
Speaker 1: would spawn numerous sequels. By the time you get to
Speaker 1: Resident Evil four, which is, you know, actually the sixth
Speaker 1: game in the series, I think I might even be
Speaker 1: missing one or two. There are a lot of games
Speaker 1: in the Resident Evil series, not all of them have
Speaker 1: numbers on them. But by that time, the games were
Speaker 1: becoming a little more action oriented and the game's sold well,
Speaker 1: but the critical reaction was mixed, with a lot of
Speaker 1: critics saying the games that kind of abandoned suspense and
Speaker 1: fear in favor of shoot him up action gameplay elements.
Speaker 1: So by the time we get to two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: five years after Resident Evil six, had come out, we
Speaker 1: got Resident Evil seven, and boy howdy did they jump
Speaker 1: back into the horror elements of the series for that one.
Speaker 1: The game is scaled down, it's it's in a again
Speaker 1: kind of like in a big house environment. For the
Speaker 1: most part, it's played from a first person perspective, which
Speaker 1: was very different from earlier Resident Evil games, and it
Speaker 1: is incredibly horrific. Only is there some really brutal graphic
Speaker 1: violence in that game. The threat to your character survival
Speaker 1: is one that persists throughout the gameplay, and it drives
Speaker 1: the action of the game, and it creates that sense
Speaker 1: of tension and suspense and fear that makes it such
Speaker 1: a an intense experience. In the game, you play as
Speaker 1: Ethan Winters and he's looking for his wife in a big, old,
Speaker 1: creepy house, because of course that's what happens. But I
Speaker 1: don't mean to reduce this down to well worn horror tropes.
Speaker 1: The game is largely effective and for those who played
Speaker 1: it with the PS four VR headset, it could get
Speaker 1: really scary, throwing you into the action. Resideval isn't the
Speaker 1: only franchise to have had a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: horror genre of games, however, the Konami series. Silent Hill,
Speaker 1: which launched in is another really important one. Like Residenteval,
Speaker 1: Silent Hill uses a third person perspe active. The game
Speaker 1: also made clever use of fog effects to limit visibility,
Speaker 1: not just to create an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere, but also
Speaker 1: to compensate for the relatively limited processing power of consoles
Speaker 1: at the time. They couldn't render graphics out as far
Speaker 1: as the eye could see, so using fog meant you
Speaker 1: couldn't see all the stuff around you, so your view
Speaker 1: was limited, and that made it easier for the consoles
Speaker 1: to process all those graphics. In the game, players control
Speaker 1: a character called Harry Mason as he tries to find
Speaker 1: his daughter who is lost in a town called Silent Hill.
Speaker 1: That town also inconveniently has a whole bunch of monsters
Speaker 1: in it to make things more intense. Harry isn't exactly
Speaker 1: an athlete, so sprinting wears him out pretty quickly. He's
Speaker 1: not an expert with weapons, so he's not a very
Speaker 1: good fighter. The lore of this game series gets pretty bonkers.
Speaker 1: It's actually really challenging to explain. But like Resident Eval,
Speaker 1: the Silent Hill series would cement certain tropes within the
Speaker 1: survival horror genre. The game features numerous sequels and one
Speaker 1: very special entry that will get to towards the end
Speaker 1: of this episode. That's just a teaser for what's to come.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, we have some other
Speaker 1: important games to talk about. One of those was Eternal
Speaker 1: Darkness Sanity's Requiem, which came out back in two thousand
Speaker 1: two for the Nintendo GameCube and was developed by a
Speaker 1: company called Silicon Nights. Now. When it comes to the
Speaker 1: Nintendo consoles in general, the GameCube tends to fall into
Speaker 1: a category along with the we you as a system
Speaker 1: that doesn't get a whole lot of love, but this
Speaker 1: particular title was one that definitely got a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: largely for its creative manipulation of the player and the
Speaker 1: variation between different playthroughs of the game. Eternal Darkness is
Speaker 1: a horror game that has multiple potential endings based on
Speaker 1: your choices, and if you complete the game whichever ending
Speaker 1: you pursue, you know through your choices that one becomes
Speaker 1: unavailable to you in future playthroughs unless you finish all
Speaker 1: the other potential endings of the game, so it forces
Speaker 1: you to try different stuff. I don't think I had
Speaker 1: seen a game that had a similar ambition before Eternal Darkness.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are others out there, but I don't
Speaker 1: know about them. As for gameplay, it's another third person
Speaker 1: perspective horror themed puzzle game, but the player doesn't control
Speaker 1: just a single protagonist. There's actually twelve characters that the
Speaker 1: player will control at different points within the game, and
Speaker 1: characters are in different locations and also different moments in history,
Speaker 1: So you jump around from character to character as you
Speaker 1: complete chapters in this game, and thus you go from
Speaker 1: location to location and time period to time period depending
Speaker 1: on who you're playing, and each character has their own
Speaker 1: individual narrative finish. On top of all of this, you've
Speaker 1: got the sanity meter, something that would end up being
Speaker 1: a big thing in games to come. So as your
Speaker 1: character encounters spooky stuff in the game, the sanity meter
Speaker 1: starts to go down, and as it does so odd
Speaker 1: things start to happen within the game. And Eternal Darkness
Speaker 1: wouldn't just have weird things happen to your character. Some
Speaker 1: of that weird stuff got really met up. For example,
Speaker 1: you might be playing the game and suddenly, as your
Speaker 1: sanity dips. You see an indicator on your TV screen
Speaker 1: that says the volume on your television is being turned down.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, it wasn't really going down at all.
Speaker 1: The game was just creating a graphic that makes it
Speaker 1: look like the volume is going down. So it would
Speaker 1: be one of those things were like, why is that happening?
Speaker 1: What's what's affecting the television? If you were to turn
Speaker 1: the volume up on your TV, it would boost the
Speaker 1: volume up to a much louder level so that when
Speaker 1: the audio of the game comes back in full four
Speaker 1: or so, it would be extra loud. Or maybe the
Speaker 1: game would suddenly boot you into the menu at a
Speaker 1: critical moment, or cause your controls to reverse so now
Speaker 1: left is right and right is left, or it would
Speaker 1: block your vision just as an enemy was closing in
Speaker 1: on you, or make everything upside down in the room.
Speaker 1: So playing the game in the dark was quite the experience,
Speaker 1: as you would have moments wondering if you had imagined
Speaker 1: something weird in the game or if it was really
Speaker 1: happening and the game was messing with you. On top
Speaker 1: of all that, the game featured forces that were kind
Speaker 1: of love crafty and in nature HP Lovecraft's work, which
Speaker 1: is fitting because many of lovecraft stories revolve around characters
Speaker 1: losing their sanity when they're confronted by otherworldly horrors. This
Speaker 1: is one of those games that I played back when
Speaker 1: I had a GameCube, though I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: actually finished the game. It was a little too sprawling,
Speaker 1: and the multiple storylines made it a little challenging to
Speaker 1: follow what was going on with the lot, and also
Speaker 1: I wasn't really good at it. Controlling characters from a
Speaker 1: third person perspective with cameras that are not fully controllable
Speaker 1: is challenging to me. But I definitely appreciated how this
Speaker 1: game was thinking outside the box and even outside the
Speaker 1: console in an effort to make gamers uneasy as they
Speaker 1: played the game. The game got overwhelmingly positive critical reception,
Speaker 1: and it frequently makes the list of best scary games
Speaker 1: even today. And this was a game that came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. Now. Originally the team had planned
Speaker 1: on making a sequel, but various setbacks derailed that until
Speaker 1: in the Silicon Nights development company filed for bankruptcy. Some
Speaker 1: of the company members would go on to create a
Speaker 1: new company called Precursor Games. They continued the effort to
Speaker 1: try and bring an Eternal Darkness sequel out, including a
Speaker 1: couple of failed crowdfunding campaigns. The first of those campaigns
Speaker 1: was cut short for some truly awful dark reasons. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into it here because the story
Speaker 1: is out there online if you really want to learn more.
Speaker 1: But it's it's terrible. It's a horrible story, and real
Speaker 1: world horror isn't fun the way video game horror is,
Speaker 1: so I'm leaving it alone. But the long and short
Speaker 1: of it is that to date, there has been no
Speaker 1: sequel to Eternal Darkness. We'll have to hold out hope.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll chat about some other notable games,
Speaker 1: including a recent one that I really dig But first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. The mid two thousands saw
Speaker 1: more of an emphasis on action horror and first person
Speaker 1: shooters and the more atmospheric psychological stuff that I would
Speaker 1: like to talk about now. There worth a couple of exceptions,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the focus was really on twitch
Speaker 1: skills and jump scares. You know, just not my bag man.
Speaker 1: One exception to this was a game called Call of
Speaker 1: Cathulu dar Corners of the Earth. While Eternal Darkness was
Speaker 1: inspired by Lovecraftian weird fiction. Call of Cathul Whu is
Speaker 1: a direct reference to Lovecraft's work. Cathul Who is a
Speaker 1: Lovecraftian creation. The game is a first person shooter stealth
Speaker 1: horror game. Like survival horror games, resources are few and
Speaker 1: far between, and in many cases the player would find
Speaker 1: out that trying to avoid a confrontation and hide is
Speaker 1: a much better option than going in guns blazing. Like
Speaker 1: Eternal Darkness, encountering supernatural creatures and witnessing supernatural events decreases
Speaker 1: the player character's sanity, which leads to the game producing
Speaker 1: weird sounds and graphics or changing the controls slightly, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty disconcerting thing to experience. On top of that,
Speaker 1: this game is grim y'all, but a pretty effective horror experience.
Speaker 1: And this game came out for the Xbox in two
Speaker 1: thousand five and for Windows the following year. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to skip ahead a few years. For the next
Speaker 1: push forward, I want to talk about the game Amnesia
Speaker 1: The Dark Descent. Console gamers might think of this as
Speaker 1: a game that debuted in that would be for the
Speaker 1: PS four fans, or maybe even eighteen for people who
Speaker 1: played on Xbox One, but the game originally came out
Speaker 1: way back in twenty ten for Windows. In this game,
Speaker 1: you play as a character who has you know, amnesia.
Speaker 1: He remembers his name. It happens to be Daniel, but
Speaker 1: dang if he can't remember, why the heck He's in
Speaker 1: the middle of a spooky old castle that's filled with monsters.
Speaker 1: Daniel is also scared of the dark, so of course
Speaker 1: the castle is mostly in the dark, and so being
Speaker 1: in the dark affects Daniel's sanity, tapping back into that
Speaker 1: mechanic we saw with Eternal Darkness and Call of Cthulhu.
Speaker 1: As a result, the game starts messing with you as
Speaker 1: you're Santa the Dips. Daniel also isn't a fighter, so
Speaker 1: your options fall into evade or avoid enemies, so it
Speaker 1: really turns us into a stealth horror game with the
Speaker 1: added complication that you can't be in the dark too
Speaker 1: long or you start to lose your sanity. The need
Speaker 1: to be stealthy forces players to really rely on what
Speaker 1: they can see and hear within the games, so they
Speaker 1: have to really start to pay attention to what's going on,
Speaker 1: and the graphics and the sound design both leverage this
Speaker 1: to create an immersive, unsettling experience, and it makes Amnesia
Speaker 1: and early example of a subgenre of horror games that
Speaker 1: become really popular over the following years. This sort of
Speaker 1: psychological horror that that really affects the player. Other games
Speaker 1: that would follow a similar path would include Soma, Outlast,
Speaker 1: Layers of Fear, Visage, and tons more. One game experience
Speaker 1: that that kind of follows that path is the Silent
Speaker 1: Hill tie end that I mentioned earlier that I kind
Speaker 1: of teased, and I'm of course talking about PT, which
Speaker 1: stands for Playable Teaser. This wasn't really a fully fledged game,
Speaker 1: so much as a hint at the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that gamers were supposed to expect in what ended up
Speaker 1: being an unfinished and unreleased game in the Silent Hills series.
Speaker 1: This one was to be called Silent Hills, and the
Speaker 1: game was a collaboration between game developer Hideo Kajima and
Speaker 1: his production company Kajima Productions and U, and also the
Speaker 1: film director Guillermo del Toro. This was released back in
Speaker 1: August two thousand four team for the PlayStation four. Now,
Speaker 1: the story around the game is arguably just as fascinating
Speaker 1: as the game experiences itself. So first let's talk about
Speaker 1: the game. PT is played from a first person perspective,
Speaker 1: and as the game starts, the player character awake, ends
Speaker 1: on a concrete floor in a bar room, and the
Speaker 1: only thing in the room is a single door leading out,
Speaker 1: and when you open that door, you see a hallway
Speaker 1: that has a ninety degree turn at the right at
Speaker 1: the very end of the hallway, the hall continues past
Speaker 1: a door on the right, which is closed at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and then a little further on you have a foyer
Speaker 1: where you've got the front door of the home on
Speaker 1: your left side. You can also have a view up
Speaker 1: to the upper level of the house, but you can't
Speaker 1: get to it, and then there's another door at the
Speaker 1: end of the hallway down a couple of steps. So
Speaker 1: going through the door at the end puts you right
Speaker 1: back at the beginning of the hallway, revealing that the
Speaker 1: player is caught in some sort of space time loop.
Speaker 1: But things change as you go through the loop and
Speaker 1: interact with stuff. Sometimes the door on that right side,
Speaker 1: which had been closed on that first run through, will
Speaker 1: be slightly open. Sometimes you'll see writing on the walls.
Speaker 1: Sometimes other creepy stuff happens, and so on. As you
Speaker 1: walk through this hall, various spooky things happen. A radio
Speaker 1: plays a news report about a grizzly series of murders
Speaker 1: that you can't help but worry that you are involved
Speaker 1: with somehow. You will hear the sounds of a baby
Speaker 1: crying from the bathroom that's that door on the right
Speaker 1: that was closed at the beginning. You might hear sounds
Speaker 1: of a woman's sobbing. You better hope you don't see her.
Speaker 1: You might see some pretty disturbing stuff as you walk
Speaker 1: through the hallways. It's really a challenging and mysterious experience,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to put things together. You don't have
Speaker 1: the full picture, so it's really really complex. If you
Speaker 1: are successful in completing the sequences, you eventually arrive at
Speaker 1: a screen that reveals that the game is actually a
Speaker 1: playable teaser for Silent Hills, and the puzzles were tricky
Speaker 1: enough that people weren't entirely sure what it was that
Speaker 1: triggered that end the screen. So if this is the
Speaker 1: first you've heard about PET, I recommend checking out video
Speaker 1: is on YouTube of the game. The walkthroughs are really interesting,
Speaker 1: particularly for those that have gamers who captured their own
Speaker 1: reactions via webcam. Those reactions are priceless. But what if
Speaker 1: you wanted to play the game yourself. Well, that's where
Speaker 1: things get a little tricky. Remember when I said the
Speaker 1: Silent Hill game was unfinished and unreleased. Well, Konami, the
Speaker 1: company that published PT in the Silent Hill series, made
Speaker 1: the decision to cancel the game and subsequently removed PT
Speaker 1: from the PlayStation Network in the spring of t which
Speaker 1: means that if you had not installed the game to
Speaker 1: your PS four before that point, you were out of luck.
Speaker 1: There's a whole story about Konami in general and the
Speaker 1: falling out between Konami and Hideo Kajima, but that's gonna
Speaker 1: have to wait for its own episode because it gets
Speaker 1: crazy dramatic. The removal of PT lead to a lot
Speaker 1: of fans hurling criticisms, which is a polite weight to
Speaker 1: put it towards Konami. Some people attempted to make cash
Speaker 1: off the whole thing by offering up PlayStation four consoles
Speaker 1: that still had PT installed on them and tried to
Speaker 1: make it available to the highest bidder. A few enterprising
Speaker 1: developers tried to recreate the experience in various engines, though
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, most of those have since gone away,
Speaker 1: possibly due to Konami threatening legal action because the company
Speaker 1: still owns the intellectual property of the game series. And
Speaker 1: that is a huge shame because if you take a
Speaker 1: look at lists of the best horror video or computer games,
Speaker 1: PT constantly ranks really high on those lists, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: number one. It was able to tap into something primal
Speaker 1: in the minds of gamers, and the repetitive gameplay actually
Speaker 1: would crank up the tension and anxiety as you were
Speaker 1: actively looking for things that might have changed since your
Speaker 1: last loop, and Lisa the Ghost could be a real terror.
Speaker 1: Her attacks on the player were the jumpiest of jump scares.
Speaker 1: But I would argue it was the tone and presentation
Speaker 1: of the game that really makes it special. Oh and
Speaker 1: when one other thing I'll say about PT, it's a
Speaker 1: fairly short gaming experience. It is a teaser after all. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if you can't figure out the puzzles, it'll take you
Speaker 1: a while to get through the experience, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: designed to be some sort of epic game, and I
Speaker 1: think that's part of what made it so special. Now,
Speaker 1: This might be just a bit of commentary from yours truly,
Speaker 1: but I find that some of the really big games
Speaker 1: that are out there start to show signs of padding
Speaker 1: after a while. The truly huge, big open world games
Speaker 1: that I love, like the Red Dead Redemption series or Skyrim,
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue that they don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of fat that could be trimmed away to make a
Speaker 1: more streamlined and arguably effective experience. Not that these games
Speaker 1: are bad. I love these games, but they're so big
Speaker 1: that I mean, it's for me to even complete them.
Speaker 1: There's it, just it gets overwhelming. More is not always
Speaker 1: better anyway, Long Live pt Now. There are so many
Speaker 1: games I wasn't able to get to in this episode,
Speaker 1: games that tap into that that that reptile part of
Speaker 1: our brains and triggers that fear response. I didn't get
Speaker 1: to chat about games like Five Nights and Freddy's, which
Speaker 1: forces you to try and pay attention to more things
Speaker 1: than you can possibly manage it a single time, and
Speaker 1: then ends up punishing you with jump scares. Now, the
Speaker 1: jump scares themselves are just these quick bursts of being startled,
Speaker 1: but the games are actually really good at cranking up
Speaker 1: tension as you're trying your best to maintain multiple systems
Speaker 1: at once. There are also multiplayer games, including asynchronous games
Speaker 1: like Dead by Daylight, in which one player takes on
Speaker 1: the role of essentially like an unstoppable monster or a killer,
Speaker 1: including a few that are drawn from pop culture sources
Speaker 1: like John Carr, Printers Halloween, and then the other players
Speaker 1: are playing normal people who are just trying to escape
Speaker 1: an environment with their lives intact. There's a similar game
Speaker 1: that is more specific to the Friday than their Teeth
Speaker 1: series that does this, with one player taking on the
Speaker 1: role of Jason Vorhees and the others being the various
Speaker 1: camp counselors trying to escape Crystal Lake. There are also
Speaker 1: some multiplayer co op games that fall into the horror genre.
Speaker 1: One recent one is Phasmaphobia, which is an early access
Speaker 1: at the Moment, and in that game, players take on
Speaker 1: the role of ghost hunters, who, using their equipment, must
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of ghost or spirit is haunting
Speaker 1: a particular location, so players have to wander around and
Speaker 1: gather evidence in order to narrow down the list of
Speaker 1: possible ghosts it could be, while also gathering additional evidence
Speaker 1: and completing additional tasks. If they do so successfully, they're
Speaker 1: rewarded with money, which they can then spend on additional
Speaker 1: pieces of equipment, which will make future ghost hunting expeditions
Speaker 1: more effective. They can communicate with each other in game
Speaker 1: with proximity chat, meaning you can hear people who are
Speaker 1: close to you. You can also use a radio chat
Speaker 1: so you can speak even across the map, and that
Speaker 1: also allows players to interact with the ghosts in the game.
Speaker 1: You can go to a ghost into action or communicate
Speaker 1: to them through stuff like spirit boxes or Luigi boards.
Speaker 1: It's a really cool idea, and the sound design of
Speaker 1: the game is great. It creates a really creepy experience.
Speaker 1: I actually think that the game is scariest when you
Speaker 1: can't see the ghost at all. You just hear something
Speaker 1: and you can tell it's getting closer. The ghost design,
Speaker 1: the actual graphic design, those are really creepy too, but
Speaker 1: just hearing it and not knowing where it is is
Speaker 1: way scarier for me. Now. As for a ghost hunting
Speaker 1: out here in the real world, I feel very differently
Speaker 1: about that. I think in a video game, ghost hunting
Speaker 1: is a really cool, fun concept, but out here, well,
Speaker 1: Friday's classic episode will go into more detail about how
Speaker 1: I feel about ghost hunting I r L, so make
Speaker 1: sure you check that out on Friday. Also, if you
Speaker 1: have a favorite horror game, whether it's a big title
Speaker 1: or an independent one, something that you think is particularly
Speaker 1: scary or effective, give me a shout on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is text Stuff h s W.
Speaker 1: If you just want to shout at me, my handle
Speaker 1: is at John Strickland and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.