This last week has been pretty busy for me, being midterm season and all. I have so many assignments I’m supposed to be doing, I can barely ignore them all! Fortunately, there are plenty of scary video games to distract me.
Now, for those of you who don’t follow the horror game scene, all you need to know is in the last few months, two of the scariest games ever created were released. One of them is about walking down a long hallway, and the other is about sitting in a chair and watching a bunch of TV channels.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Vincent, those games both sound really boring! Are you a boring person? Have I spent the last semester reading a boring column written by a boring man? Oh God, what else in my life is boring without me realizing it? Am I boring, too?”
Well, fear not dear reader, because I am not boring, and neither are these games. In fact, I think these two games present perfect examples of the two ways that horror games can scare the player.
For example, let’s examine a creepy little PS4 exclusive called “P.T.” -- that’s the hallway game that I mentioned earlier. It’s a puzzle game that requires you to examine certain objects within a house in order to progress, all while being haunted by a dead old woman and a freaky baby. Each level is a little creepier than the last, and each puzzle is more difficult. But the thing that makes "P.T." really interesting is the fact that there is almost nothing that the player can do to impact the world around them. Enemies can’t be killed and traps can’t be avoided. All you do is walk around and look at stuff.
This creates a terrifying atmosphere of helplessness, to the point that it can sometimes become too frightening to continue. I personally had to stop for a few hours when I rounded a corner only to see a tall female silhouette standing at the end of the hallway, with no way to avoid her. It’s very unnerving to have no control over your fate. To know that no matter what you do, the ghost will always come after you, the lights will always flicker and the creepy baby will always cry.
"P.T." scares you by forcing you into an uncomfortable situation. It drops you into a terrifying place and tells you that nothing you do will ever make it less scary.
"Five Nights at Freddy’s" (FNAF) sends the exact opposite kind of message. That’s the TV game I mentioned way back at the beginning of this column. See, "FNAF" doesn’t start you in an uncomfortable place. It starts you in a safe one. You play as Mike Schmidt, a security guard at a local Chuck E. Cheese's rip-off. Unfortunately for you, the animatronic animals are trying to kill you. Luckily, you never have to leave the safety of your security office. Mike can lock the doors whenever he wants. Unfortunately, doing so wastes power, and when the power runs out, you die. If you don’t close the doors, you’ll die, and if you close them for too long, you’ll run out of power and die. It’s all about finding the rhythm and pattern to the enemies’ attacks, and then not blowing it. Unlike "P.T.," "FNAF" generates horror by giving the player complete control over his or her fate. If an animatronic bunny or duck jumps out and kills you it’s because you messed up. That creates a lot of tension and anxiety.
So what does it mean that these games scare us? Simple: We don’t like to be without control, but we don’t like the pressure of being in control either.
More from The Tufts Daily