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NIGHTMARISH VIDEO GAMES

While video games have trouble conveying some emotional states, they are often good at evoking fear, shock and the other prerequisites for horror video games. There have been plenty of haunted games over the years, from the early, text-only "The Lurking Horror" (1987) to the pioneering first-person shooter "Doom" (1993), which pitted the nameless marine protagonist against an unending stream of demons. But horror games truly came into their own with the creation of the "survival horror" sub-genre, so named because it pits ill-equipped characters against long odds, facing horrific enemies bent on their destruction. Most gamers' first experienced this genre with the "Resident Evil" series.

Scares in the "Resident Evil" games have always been more visceral than psychological. The seminal moment in the first game comes when an undead dog jumps through a window and attacks the player. Standard gampeplay pits players against hordes of slow-moving but ravenous zombies, canines and other assorted shambling monstrosities.

The real tension does not necessarily come from the need to dispatch enemies. Rather, it comes from the horrifying urgency of battling haunting demons with only a limited reserve of bullets or options. Survival horror games tend to place strict limits on essentials, such as ammunition and healing potions. Players are no longer unstoppable killing machines facing an unending wave of enemies. Rather, every shotgun shell is precious. A slip of the trigger finger could mean ending up as part of a balanced, brain-based breakfast.

"Resident Evil" is most powerful under optimal conditions: late at night, in the dark, alone. It takes the thrill of watching a horror film, but puts you (or your avatar) in danger. Watching yet another co-ed fall to Jason Voorhees' insatiable machete is one thing. But watching your own character get ripped apart by zombies you couldn't destroy fast enough is quite another.

In recent years, other games have delved into the more psychological aspects of horror. The "Silent Hill" games, for example, are even more severe in handicapping the defences of players. In "Silent Hill 2" (pictured, top), for example, players control a character who is almost comically bad at fighting off his enemies as he wanders foggy, oppressive streets in search of his dead wife (who may still be alive).

The game's stock-in-trades are powerlessness and fear: players are equipped with a walkie-talkie that emits static when monsters are nearby; the signal has the perverse effect of sending players scampering from conflict, rather than seeking it out, as in other games. If playing "Resident Evil" is like watching a slasher film, "Silent Hill" is more akin to the pensively chilling effect of Kubrick's "The Shining".

Another interesting twist on the survival horror formula is the "Condemned" series (pictured, right). Played from the first-person perspective (ie, without an avatar; you are walking through the dank rooms yourself), the game features visceral hand-to-hand combat with startlingly realistic, albeit insanely violent humans (and then, eventually, with your standard evil monsters). A typical scene has the character investigating an abandoned bowling alley, only to find himself blindsided by a thrown pin and set upon by a screaming, cursing aggressor.

Here, again, ammunition is hard to come by, so players can instead grab any weapon at hand (eg, a locker door, the antlers from a hunting trophy, etc) and use it to bludgeon attackers into submission. These games can be so engrossing--their dreary, oppressive worlds so overwhelming--that it's hard to describe the experience of playing them as "fun". A better word might be "immersive" or "highly memorable".

A small number of games have set their sights on the more literary traditions of the horror genre, and some have even been artistic (if not commercial) successes. Silicon Knights, the developers of the controversial recent game "Too Human" (which we covered in a previous column), also designed a fascinating horror game called "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem". Most games feature on-screen meters that calculate the health and ammunition supply of a character; this game's innovation was to include a "sanity meter". As characters encountered inexplicable, irrational horrors in their travels, they would become increasingly unhinged, and their sanity meter would slowly drop. As it fell, players would suddenly find themselves hearing ghostly voices, seeing horrific scenes. A character might enter a room to find herself dead in the bathtub, or the walls might begin dripping blood. The entire world might suddenly turn upside-down.

These incidents were interesting enough, but what made the insanity effects so memorable was the way they seemed to reach outside the boundaries of gameplay. Sometimes, the effect would result in a "controller disconnect" error appearing on the screen; some buttons on the controller might cease to work. Most famously, the game would occasionally display the legendary Windows "Blue Screen of Death", as if the game system itself had crashed. These effects, though brief, were indistinguishable from their real-world analogues. Of course, none of these effects were particularly "scary", per se. Rather, they added to the rather creepy feeling that the eerie events of the game were affecting the real world.

If you've got a taste for a good scare, treat yourself to some of these classic horror games. They make scary movies seem pretty tame by comparison.

Picture credit: "Silent Hill 2" (Sony) and "Condemned" (Sega)

(Brett McCallon is a writer based in New Orleans. His last gaming column was "Why do videogames have such a bad reputation?")