Alan wake – The future of horror games?

E3 2009 is over, I hope you enjoyed it? I thought it was certainly the best E3 in a long time, they got their action together. What did you think of E3 this year? The other big surprise from watching the Microsoft conference (other than “Splinter Cell: Conviction” which I spoke about in my last post) was “Alan Wake” which I thought was going to end up being another “Duke Nukem Forever” with it either being cancelled or finally released with out of date ideas and mechanics. If you haven’t seen any gameplay footage of “Alan Wake” check it out below, I have to say its looks great and the timing for its revelation or release date for Spring 2010 couldn’t be better with the recently disappointing yet promising horror game “Resident Evil 5” and the lack of horror games in development these days.



“Horror Survival” is one of my favourite sub genres within video games, being quite fond of the genre since the PlayStation days of the original “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” which were based around unforgiving and unique mechanics and design approaches. The whole item management element for an example, where you had to plan out what items you think you would need for journey to the next location trying to predict what enemies/scenarios you would encounter. This was interesting element/mechanic which allows the designers to control the player’s psychology to embrace a sense of uncertainly and fear making the player feel weak and vulnerable.

Most of the horror games these days lack this sense of horror or suspense with titles like “Dead Space” or “Resident Evil 5” focused towards more visceral approach towards gameplay and expressing of “horror” via gory shock value and panic whereas old horror games were far more psychological experiences. I don’t find these recent horror games that frightening, (more unnerving perhaps?) but why is that? I think it’s not just the obvious game direction of “never outgunned, but always outnumbered” but for the player’s purpose/reward for interacting with such experience is empowerment and that’s one of the issues with the approaches towards horror within video games medium is that horror isn’t meant to make you feel good. It’s meant to make you feel bleak, desperate, weak, etc for your character and hopefully at the end, the character survives the incident and you are relieved for this result but I wouldn’t say this is empowerment. This is debatable; I would like to know what you guys think of this? Is this still empowerment if the player goes through emotional hell for just the character’s safety/ survival?

Lately, I’ve been playing a PlayStation 3 game called “Siren: Blood Curse”, not sure if you have hear of it? If you like horror games, I recommend it, it’s very unique and most frightening and intense game I’ve played in a long time. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/siren-blood-curse-review .It’s another great PlayStation 3 exclusive that Sony fails to market which is great shame as it deserves more credit. Anyway “Siren” takes place on remote Japanese cursed island where you play as 8 different character's perspectives over the course of the story, cutting back and forth on the timeline and revealing alternatives viewpoints and plot twists, basically imagine “Lost” meets “Ring” or “The grudge” (any J-horror movie). What I find interesting and smart is how the creators play about with the player’s feelings/motives via playing with different characters as every character has own set of ablitlies/actions within the context of their situation and characteristics. For an example, you play as “Bella Monroe” who is a young girl stuck inside of hospital who is too young to defend herself from the shibito (which is what the enemies are called in this game which are basically zombies) so she can’t pick objects to use as weapons but she is small giving her a great ablility to hide in many places forcing the player to sneak past the shibito making the player feel weak, small and tense . You also play as her father “Sam Monroe” who is grouped with another character equiped with weapons found within the mines, shooting any shibito encountered which makes you so grateful and powerful for such simple primary function in most games which makes this very empowering. The game explores a diverse array of moods/situations which solves the issue with horror I spoke about earlier and also pacing of player emotion. If look at “Resident Evil 4” (I think RE4 is best 3rd person shooter ever) I thought forwards the end of the game, it wasn’t frightening as I was too empowered, I felt like god and I could take out Godzilla with a knife whereas “Silent hill 2” was too tense for me and wasn’t empowering enough to carry on playing.

This is where I wonder what path is “Alan Wake” is going to take; more psychological or more action style of gameplay with such personal characteristic narrative as being “Alan Wake”? Will the game be embracing empowerment as “Alan Wake” like “Resident Evil 4” batting the horror incident becoming more powerful as the game progresses or will be more personal journey of surviving such incident? One of my concerns for this game that it may end up being an action game with horror elements like “Dead Space”, I guess its too early to tell but I think this would be obvious option for “Remedy Entertainment” as empowerment is easier to place within action games rather horror games. I hope they have the ambition to try otherwise, like with “Siren: Blood Curse”, balance player empowerment with emotions of fear and suspense, maybe even empathy.

Jonesy