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GAMES a disclaimer had to be placed on the front cover. It also took from Peter Jackson’s Braindead, which saw a zombie baby in a blender, a priest “kicking arse for the Lord” and zombies cut up by a lawnmower. It is essentially a large scale version of the Super NES game Zombies Ate My Neighbours, and is compulsive fun especially with a custom soundtrack of early 90s R&B. Third, and most importantly gore is a sign of the worth in engaging with the repulsive, and the dismantling of the recognisable. Horror games can do more than provoke the mortality problem, or force the player through a roller coaster of scares. The question “Am I capable of this evil?” is a worthwhile one. Bioshock is perhaps the greatest example of horror in video games that does more than appeal to the exploitation/survival horror crowd. Rapture is the most compelling story world of any video game, and the scares that come echo back to the genetic, fated terror of H.P. Lovecraft’s weirdest tales. If one good thing has come from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it is that it allowed Bioshock to exist. Bioshock offers its twisted vision of objectivist society with incredible style. It is graphically violent and intensely frightening. In making the player choose – or seem to choose – how they impact this fallen world, the emotional payoff whether positive or negative is earned. The player is a part of the world, and when they find they have inflicted needless cruelty on it,
“OUR ULTIMATE INSIGNIFICANCE NATURALLY LEADS TO HORROR AS COMEDY”
and disturbing also seem enchanting is reflected in the best horror games. In At The Mouth of Madness, Carpenter sent Sam Neill into Lovecraft’s world of malevolent old gods. He knew he should not go, but he did anyway because it was in his nature. Video games direct us in the same way. They offer vast worlds and lucid dreams, and like Sam Neill we cannot refuse. When we think of our hatred, our capacity to destroy, and our mortality, we naturally veer towards horror. Second, there is undeniable catharsis for the individual in victimless taboo breaking. That so many important thoughts, memories and actions can be reduced to flesh and organs is a funny thought. Our ultimate insignificance naturally leads to horror as comedy. Suda 51 made his name with games like Killer 7, Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw. He can be compared with Takashi Miike (Gozu) and Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), in how he has melded the absurd, the despicable and the comedic. One will find severe perversion and unusual violence, but also superior game design and individual character. Dead Rising is just as amusing but not quite as deviant. It was so obviously influenced by Dawn of the Dead that
it is clear Bioshock’s best qualities are unique to the medium. On the grimy end of things Rockstar’s Manhunt 1 and 2 expressed both the successes of the torture sub-genre, as well as its unfortunate excesses. The first game is a brilliant exploration of the moral culpability of the player. If the original is a thoughtful, intelligent experience in the style of Audition or Save the Green Planet! the second is any Saw sequel: aimlessly nasty and fairly boring. The censorship of Manhunt 2 in Ireland remains pitiful. It is a shameful echo of past arbitrary instances of state censorship. The same fear that Brief Encounter would lead to divorce and that The Exorcist would make people take the Catholic Church seriously, led to Manhant 2’s censorship. “They may experience it in the wrong way!” gets more traction with video games because it is mistaken as the exclusive area of children. Insight of the outsider problem, of human nature is sadly lost, along with trash like Manhunt 2, in a muddle of weird paternalism. Torture and sadism were featured just as disturbingly in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and he’s not exactly a diminutive literary talent … There is more to horror in video games than party yucks. The best offer transformation. Gore is a way to get there. You will end up numb and full of terror. You will jar your brain out of its lazy comfort. You will know you are alive. For now.
“Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?” --- Edgar Allan Poe 20TH NOVEMBER 2012 // 9