Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Anna

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 182013
 

2012 saw the release of a psychological horror game called Anna. Trailers displayed a creepy abandoned sawmill and threatened the player with the fact that Anna knows what you are afraid of and will adjust the game accordingly, a system somewhat reminiscent of that used in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. However, when the game was released, it received dismal reviews.

At this point, it’s hard not to draw a parallel with another 2012 horror game, Amy. They were both horror games with similar titles that received generally negative reviews–and both were eventually updated in response to players’ complaints. But Anna went above and beyond fixing glitches and easing frustration, as Amy did. Instead of a patch, a massive update was released for free to everyone who already owned the game, and that was Anna: Extended Edition. This new version increased the game’s length, added a sanity system, updated puzzles to make them more intuitive and logical, provided a journal and other details to make the story more coherent, and expanded the game to include 8 possible endings. The resulting game received much better reviews.

I did not play the original game, as the Extended Edition was already out by the time I played it. Therefore, all of my comments apply to the Extended Edition.

The atmosphere is nice and creepy as you explore the abandoned sawmill and try to figure out why you were drawn there and what your connection to Anna is. The only thing that detracts from it is the music–while there are a few great pieces (with ominous chanting!), the main theme is a calm, soothing melody that really clashes with the horror. The story has been criticized for being vague, but I feel that it provides enough details to give you an idea of the truth, while still maintaining a supernatural air of mystery.

And there is some creepy stuff going on in that story…

There are even some nice little shout-outs, like an achievement called “Anna fhtagn.”

The gameplay is standard survival horror fare: you try to piece together the mystery while at the same time, you collect objects and solve puzzles in order to explore more of the sawmill. Since the area is under the influence of the supernatural, these are often more unusual than just finding keys or moving obstacles. Nevertheless, it’s the classic survival horror gameplay I want to see more of, so I loved it.

One additional gameplay element is the “intuition” system. When certain events happen or when you examine specific objects/areas, the protagonist gains a new insight into the truth. The resulting “intuitions” are listed on the inventory screen and can be combined with items or one another to create further intuitions. Finding all of the intuitions is required for the best ending.

There is one thing that really frustrated me about the game: I kept missing items. I like games that make items stand out, whether the item shines, the protagonist looks towards it, whatever. This game did not do that. If you find yourself stuck, your best bet is to very carefully comb over every inch of the sawmill, because it’s most likely that you missed something–be it an item or a book that will give you the clue you need to solve a puzzle.

NOPE!

Now, with 8 possible endings, one would expect that Anna: Extended Edition has an abundance of replay value. This is not exactly the case. Several of the endings can be achieved in a single playthrough, as long as you save before making the choice in question. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This handles a certain video game predicament in an interesting way (mild spoilers to follow): while many video games leave some gamers with questions like, “Why can’t James just leave the way he came?” and “Why is that dog outside enough to prevent Jill from leaving the mansion filled with zombies, Hunters, and worse horrors?” Anna will give you an epilogue and consider it an ending if at any point you throw your hands up and say, “Nope! I’m getting out of here!” and bolt through the nearest door to the outside. Even a “game over” gets such treatment.

Ah, the words have been said. “Game over”? Is there, then, combat? The answer is no. You don’t have a standard health bar. You get a game over if your sanity meter is entirely depleted. And this is where we reach one of the most interesting mechanics Anna employed. (The following section is in spoiler tags, because for the purest experience in Anna, you don’t want to know this. Understanding the system significantly reduces its impact.)

Click for spoilers
Throughout the game, random supernatural events occur around the sawmill. Knowing that they were linked to the sanity system, I initially made the mistake of assuming that this worked the same as the system in Amnesia. That is, I believed witnessing supernatural events would deplete my sanity, and I made haste to get away from them. However, that does not seem to be the case. The sanity mechanic goes back to the trailer’s claim that the game would play on your fears. As long as I calmly went about my business, I was usually fine. If I spun around and zipped across the room, my sanity decreased.
Unfortunately, while I love this idea in concept, it eventually became more of an annoyance. If a health system was used in conjunction with the sanity system, it might have had great potential and set up a horrific fight-or-flight choice, but as it is, it seems too easy to overcome once you understand it.

Anna: Extended Edition left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, I loved some of the things it did, but on the other hand, there were unnecessary frustrations that dampened my enthusiasm. Overall, I highly recommend it.

Buy Anna from Amazon
Buy Anna from Play-Asia
Buy Anna from Steam

Learning Fear from Amnesia: Justine

 Video games, Writing  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Jul 112013
 

A few years ago, I finally finished playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, which was the last PC game I owned at the time. After reading reviews and getting recommendations, I ordered three new video games to play on my PC. That was probably one of the best video game orders I ever made. I decided to take a chance on another Bioware RPG called Mass Effect, check out this puzzle game called Portal that people were raving about, and venture into the depths of a game many people were calling the scariest game of all time, Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

I love all three games, but today’s topic is Amnesia.

The time of that order was shortly after I had discovered the survival horror genre, and I was jumping at every opportunity to play more. With the glowing reviews and its Lovecraftian air, Amnesia was not an opportunity I could pass up, and I was not disappointed. Reviews are mixed–some people find the game to be boring and overhyped–but I loved it. Amnesia encouraged me to immerse myself in its world rather than view it as a game to beat, and I was more than happy to comply. Other than a few points where I got stuck on puzzles because I’m a moron–and one disappointing afternoon in which I decided to show my friends the scariest game ever made and promptly got stuck on a puzzle in a well-lit room with no monsters–I let myself sink into Daniel’s story as he regained his dark memories and traversed the sinister Brennenburg Castle. I could spend this entire post talking about how delightfully frightening Amnesia was.

But I’m not here to talk about that today–not about The Dark Descent. I’m here to talk about Justine, the free expansion for Amnesia released by Frictional Games as part of the widespread promotion for Portal 2.

Justine

Justine is short, a standalone side story with only the slightest of connections to the main game. It also terrifies me more than any other game I’ve ever played. I have not beaten it. I’ve tried several times, but I always die, and more often than not, I then need to take some time to calm down. Some day, perhaps I’ll finally beat it. I start it up from time to time, convinced that this is the time I’ll reach the end. Most recently, however, I launched Justine with a secondary motive: since one of my struggles as a writer is figuring out how to make my writing more frightening, what if I analyzed Justine to see just what about it frightens me so?

Since it’s a video game, there are obviously things that are not going to translate to writing. For example, it begins with a message to the player stating that “Death is final,” which is a more ominous way of saying that if you die, you’ll be starting over from the beginning. In fact, when you die, the entire game exits and returns you to your desktop. The fear of lost progress creates a sort of tension unique to video games, and it undoubtedly contributes to what I feel when I play Justine. It’s not just that the monster will kill me if he catches me, but that he’ll kill me and I’ll have to do it all over again and stack those boxes again and can’t I please make it to the end this time… Visual and audio effects are another thing that can’t be perfectly replicated in writing, but there is something to be learned from them.

While I’ll never be able to make my readers shudder at the howling, gasping sounds that Justine’s monsters make, the fear of the unknown is something that can be played with in all media. Amnesia: The Dark Descent seemed to understand that its monsters would be most frightening when players only had glimpses or hints of their presence, and Justine plays with that as well. Since you can only take a single hit before dying, you’ll want to hide. In doing so, you’ll probably never get a good view of the first monster; you’ll hear his passage as he searched for you, and you’ll see a jerky silhouette departing. The second monster is in a dark room, and once again, you’ll be edging around, trying to keep your distance. This, I believe, was a contributing factor to my horrified reaction when I first saw the third monster head-on. (My reaction, by the way, was along the lines of, “Water! It’s going to be an invisible water monster! I’ll just wait here until it–OHGODTHATISNOTAWATERMONSTERRUN!!!!”)

Hints and glimpses… these are things that work on the principle that the player/reader’s imagination is probably capable of things a whole lot worse than whatever we can come up with. If you show the audience something directly, that will be it, and they can react and adjust. If you just give them horrifying little pieces, their minds will probably fill in the gaps to make it personally terrifying…while also being capable of abstraction and weirdness that can be limited by graphics and words.

Both The Dark Descent and Justine also employ this in the form of audio flashbacks. Personally, I think gore can detract from horror, as too much of it takes the story into “gross-out” territory rather than “fear.” Audio flashbacks such as these have no visuals, so they just imply the gore… and once again, the imagination is horror’s best friend.

Hints and clues also paint the grim backstory for Justine, and Justine herself–talking to you through a series of phonographs–points to its origins as part of the Portal 2 promotion, as she comes across somewhat like GLaDOS, only with far more psychopathy and far less humor. The story underlines everything with the additional horror that it needs.

And what are some of the specific elements my analysis detected, things other than what I’ve already mentioned, the little things that caused the fear effect for me? Well…

  • Vulnerability
  • Urgency – the need to escape
  • Being lost
  • Being chased, or believing you are being chased
  • Being lost, while chased, as you’re urgently trying to escape… you get the idea
  • Uncertainty – is the monster still there, or has he left?
  • Being stalked
  • The tiny bits of décor that add to the overall atmosphere, as well as the trace memories of victims

I cannot beat Amnesia: Justine, but I do love it. We’ll come back to this topic someday.

RE: Revelations Demo Revisited

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 032012
 

Cover for Resident Evil RevelationsToday I was looking at my 3DS, and I saw the demo for Resident Evil: Revelations. As you know, Revelations was marketed as a return to the series roots, and if you’ve read my thoughts on the state of survival horror in the Resident Evil series, you know that Revelations was decidedly not survival horror. However, when I first played the demo, I was delighted with it! I was convinced that if the majority of the game played like that, I would be content. (Ironically, I felt the part of the game that the demo came from was actually stronger in the main game; the two didn’t play exactly the same.) So I decided to replay the demo and see what it had that the game itself lacked.

Starting the demo, I find myself controlling Jill. She is alone, having woken up in a strange room aboard the Queen Zenobia. Contacting her partner, they make a plan to meet up. From there I can investigate the room. There are several things to look at, with Jill silently commenting on the various objects I inspect. The room itself is beautiful, letting you study other things that can’t be interacted with–many of which spawned theories and speculation that in the end meant absolutely nothing.

The door leading to the hall is locked, controlled by panel to the side that is screwed shut. Fortunately, there is another door, leading to a new room to explore. Inspecting that area leads you to a tub that must be drained, with a screwdriver concealed inside. That triggers the first monster attack, as leaving the area puts you in contact with an Ooze that must be killed so that you can escape the room. If you play the way I do (badly) this uses a lot of bullets, of which you only have ten, but there are five more lying nearby.

So far, other than the forced battle, nothing has happened that points against it being survival horror. Now you have to solve a puzzle to open the door, an interesting little thing that makes use of the touchscreen. It’s not bad for a first puzzle–they didn’t tell me that virtually every puzzle in the game would be a variation on the exact same thing. Instead, this suggested unique ways to employ the touchscreen in RE puzzles.

Out in the hall, you find a room with a shotgun–a bit early to find a better weapon, but you only have two bullets for it–and your first green herb. Depending on how that Ooze battle went earlier, you may have to use it and be down to no green herbs again already. The same room also contains the chest that will be used to upgrade weapons, but you can’t use it in the demo. But better yet, the hallway contains two more doors! One is locked–an excellent sign for later exploration, and the other leads to the next area.

The next two rooms contain an easily avoidable enemy, a little ammo, an herb, and several things that look out of place–like they might be puzzle items later on. I believe one or two might have actually been files in the main game. None were puzzle items.

Next we find a hallway with one locked door–clearly different from the last one, as it requires a keycard–some ammo, and a jump scare. The Ooze can be avoided, if you want to go to the next room instead of fighting. This leads to a beautiful room with a few doors (four, to be precise: the one you came from, one locked door, and two up the stairs), a couple items, and the general feeling of a hub area akin to the main hall of Spencer’s mansion. One door leads to a room where you get the scanner, one of the game’s best features.

The ability to scan for items and handprints–and by items, I mean ammo and herbs; it’s not like the game has any puzzle items for you to find–increases the desire to explore, and scanning enemies will get you percentages towards a new herb. Unfortunately, backtracking with the scanner gets you nothing, unless you want to scan the Ooze you dodged.

Another enemy appears in the room once you have the scanner, although it’s still fairly easy to dodge. Using your scanner instead of hurrying ahead nets you some more items; you may be full on handgun ammo by now. The ammo limit could be taken one of two ways–either you’ll always have enough, so you don’t have to worry about stockpiling it, or it will purposely reduce your ability to fight. In my playthrough on Normal, it leaned towards the former. Here you also find a grenade.

In the next room, you find a regular Ooze that can be easily avoided, an exploding Ooze that always gets me, and another grenade (hidden, so you have to use the scanner). That is a strength that carries over to the game–using the scanner can help you find more items, but it makes you slow down and therefore puts you in more danger from enemies.

In the next hallway, there is a hidden item and a dangerous Ooze. By this point, I had accumulated enough shotgun ammo that I could take care of it, but not without taking damage myself. I then went to the elevator. The elevator reunites me with Parker, but my AI partner takes off without me to reach the bridge. In the next room, there are lockers to investigate and find some ammo in, but not much else. Finally making it to the bridge, we find a locked door and the plot point that ends the demo.

So in the end…what was it? The combat was fairly consistent with how Revelations actually was; I think it was mainly what even the start of Revelations did as well that got me–hinting at survival horror elements. The locked doors–suggesting greater exploration than what you ever got. The screwdriver and door puzzle–suggesting puzzles like in the games of old. Overall, the demo never lied about anything. It just presented things in such a way that if you were hoping the game would be classic survival horror, you could convince yourself that the elements were there.

The game took it even further, teasing the various keys that would be needed and having an item you couldn’t get without a medallion. The depressing thing is that it was all window dressing. Revelations never made the jump to survival horror, but it used superficial shout-outs to the classic games to pretend that’s what it was.

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