I hate horror. Whether it’s a film, a game, or a book, I want no part of it. Creepy children, jumpscares, a slow, impending sense of dread. Ugh. It makes me shiver just imagining it. I can handle some films – The Shining is a classic, for instance, but perhaps only because I’ve now watched it so many times at the bequest of my partner that I know it inside and out. Saw, too. This may surprise you, but gore is fine. There’s nothing scary about Saw, it’s just gross. I was okay with Midsommar, and similar folk horror like The Wicker Man, but Hereditary is too much. I don’t even like The Woman in Black, mostly because it’s terrible, but also the fact it’s filled with unnecessary jumpscares. I even flinch at the jumpscares in The White Lotus! I sometimes feel like I’m a trampoline trapped in a man&r๊squo;s body, since I’m so bloody jumpy.
I’m better with books, although I’ve generally avoided anything that looks too horror-y. I love old Gothic stories, and I’m okay with Lovecraft, but games are the opposite. There’s something about the immersion of actually controlling a character, pushing a joystick and forcing them to walk straight into a situation that you know will f*** them up. I appreciate 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alien Isolation as a cracking game, and Alien is one of my all-time favourite films so I🎶 persevered through because of that, but I don’t think I actually enjoyed playing it. I was just too stressed that the Xenomorph would burst through a ceiling or vent at any♒ given moment that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
A couple of weeks ago, we at TheGamer were chatting about video games. We do that sometimes, being video games journalists. Many of my colleagues were expressing their excitement for the forthcoming Resident Evil 4 remake, and I must admit, it looks good. But I think I’ll be too scared to play it. This is supposedly a piece of gaming history, a game that did so many things first that it has borne b🍌asically every mechanic you take for granted in modern titles. I want a piece of that, I want to experience history, but I’m too scared.
After explai🌞ning the above, my colleagues agreed that the seminal horror title might be too much for my feeble little heart to handle. However, we agreed on a compromise: I should play Dead Space. It’s another classic horror game remade in 2023, but it’s probably less scary (they said) and it’s science f⛎iction, which is absolutely my bag. So I agreed. I would play Dead Space.
The nerves started getting to me as I watched the download bar creep up. That anxiety elevated to fear as the title screen lit up my moni𓂃tor and I realised what I was doing. I promised myself that I would never do this again afte🌳r Alien Isolation. Then, I was aboard the Ishimura, and everything was going to shit.
My colleagues were right, Dead Space isn’t particularly scary. I’ve only played through a few chapters so far, but the monsters are that Saw-style of gruesome. The jump scares aren’t too bad, either, despite creepy things smashing through walls and ceilings to get at me. I’ve figured out they’re the old crew, which is pretty grisly, but th𒈔ey’re not going to give me nightmares. What is going to give me nightmares, however, are the corridors.
I don’t mind the big combat arenas, the medic bays and areas of open, gravity-less space. This🗹 is where most of the attacks come, as poor Isaac has to fend off multiple monstrosities at once. It must be terrifying to﷽ be attacked by these once-human creatures from all angles, armed only with a plasma cutter and a stomping space boot because everything else is out of ammo. But for me, that pales in comparison to the route there.
I’ve only been attacked a couple of times in the corridors of the Ishimura, but the claustrophobic walkways terrify me. Jumpscares give me a fright, but th🦹e narrow passages ramp up the tension to unbearable levels. I know that there will be something terrible once I reach my destination, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The next attack has already been immortalised in the game’s code, and I just have to walk right in and face it.
I can acknowledge that this is great game design. The tense atmosphere Dead Space creates is palpable and the mood conveyed is terrifying. I get why people love this, too, but I hate it. I hate every mom♐ent of it. The problem is, Dead Space is good enough that I can’t stop playing. I want to get to the bottom of what happened to the Ishimura, I want to help anyone left alive onboard. I want to see what the game throws at me, and how it will twist the f***ed up enemies to new levels of depravity. I want to beat this game, and I&rsq💎uo;m determined to do so, but I’ll hate every minute.