Seven Deadly Sins of Gaming: FEAR

Oh shit. Here's an original idea, a new feature from TGAM looking at the seven deadly sins of gaming. For our other long running and not at all forgotten running features see practically every post we ever did. For the absolute originality of the Seven Deadly Sins theme just google "Gaming Seven Deadly Sins". 0 hits you'll find. 

So here's out brand new feature that will probably peter out. Peeter out? Pooter out? Petre out? trail off after this one. We're looking at fear. But we aren't just about new features, we're about features within features so before the word feature starts to look weird, here's the latest on the Seven Deadly Sins of Gaming: FEAR from out in game correspondent surveying the populace of Xenoblade Chronicles. What do they have to say about either new features or FEAR in games Alcamoth Citizen?

Oh shit me that is pretty fearsome. Fear in games comes in many forms. Survival horror is often said to be scary but as I'm sure we've mentioned before, sometimes the term is misappropriated. Remember Resident Evil, the series that started this blog all those years ago? Not scary. It isn't a scary game and we aren't just saying that because we are doubly hard fearless dudebro hipsters, it isn't scary. Well most of it isn't, the fear comes from fear of dying and having to play through the bits you've just done again. The fear doesn't transcend the screen to shit you up for months on end. Proper fear in games does that. It shits you up and gives you nightmares. Except you're grown up and not supposed to have nightmares. Here's the definitive scariest shit in games. 

1) Silent Hill. We could pick out moments but there are many in this series. Even the trailers for games we long ago busted still mess us up. Remember when we said we couldn't pick out moments: a stranger sings happy birthday to you down the phone (a bit that the second Silent Hill movie straight up nicked for the trailer), your radio starts to crackle, an air raid siren sounds, you find a file about paranormal behaviour in adolescent girls and then can never find it again in subsequent playthroughs. You look out your apartment window to see a figure across the road just pointing at you. Fairgrounds. Urgh. That's enough. We're starting to freak ourselves out just typing about it. I've been watching the Two Best Friends playthrough and Silent Hill Downpour, unfortunately, looks a bit pap. Shattered Memories on the other hand probably pips Silent Hill 4 for just making us shit ourselves constantly. And that's a game where you can't die unless you are in the otherworld. Even with the knowledge that you're safe as long as it isn't icy, exploring the town by torchlight is strictly for playing when you have a spotter and when it is light outside. And that#s when you can't be hurt, in the icy otherworld the screaming ice men and the fact that there's nothing you can do except run makes the hairs on our neck stand up. Enough now or we won't be able to sleep. 

2) Forbidden Siren. Fuck that. Seriously, fuck it. It should be laughable, Japanese people with cockney accents firing about. But it's the sight jacking that does us in. You can 'sight jack' to see through the eyes of nearby enemies. The first time you use it and you see the back of your characters head. We outright refuse to play it any more. It's creepy. 

3) Lakitu. Yeah, weren't expecting the old make-a-list-and-put-something-on-it-that-very-clearly-is-a-joke. We've bringing out the heavyweight techniques of video game journalism right here. Lakitu fucks us up. Not in Mario Kart or the other spin-offs but in the platforming Mario games. We've been trying to get all the star coins on NSMB Wii as well as playing through the older Mario Bros games and we've noticed a tensing of the sphincter whenever Lakitu turns up. I don't know where it stems from, probably from the hours we put into SMB and SMB3 back in the day but no doubt about it Lakitu is chaos in an otherwise ordered world. Most of the other enemies wander around in an orderly fashion but Lakitu messes it up floating around there chucking out spiny eggs at random. We've just learned they're called spiny eggs. He's easy to beat, wait until you can platform high enough and get him or just ignore him. It's best to ignore him. Still he gives us the jitters and makes us very subtly sigh every time he pops up. Panic forcing us to make countless stupid errors. Bastard.

4) Heavy Rain- The Taxidermist. We're quite rude about the PS3 in general but we (still) feel let down by the successor to the PS2. The DLC chapter the taxidermist however, was amazing. That room is straight from a nightmare we now have.

5) Eternal Darkness. Somewhat gimmicky but boy what an effective one. Eternal Darkness has three bars you want to keep topped up, Health, Magic and Sanity. Health and magic are obvious but once sanity started to wane a bunch of creepy effects would start to creep into your games. The ones that are often mentioned are where it would mimic the channel being change, or the TV being muted or pretending the game is a demo and you've timed out but we found the in game ones to be proper pant filling- your avatar would shrink, or head would randomly fall off or a fly would crawl around on the inside of the screen. Like we said, gimmicky but disconcerting enough to make sure the sanity meter was always topped up. 

That's it. Some might say Dead Space is fear inducing but it isn't. It's spooky flesh men jumping out of cupboards. True fear is the stuff that plays on your mind once the console is off and we've definitely had anxiety dreams about Lakitu, cockney Japs looking at us and a room with a giant head with crazy eyeballs in it. Oh god, we're going to need some coffee to stay up all night tonight.