The Princess is in another Castle

There Is one genre in this god damn world I cant actually play. Survival Horror. I clearly remember the day when I was like 11 years old, playing playstation with a friend. I suddenly inserted Resident Evil 1, as I thought it would be a cool zombie shooter.
After going through the dining-room, opening the door and seeing the first zombie, I never hit the “off” Button of a console that fast. I was scared. Im fascinated by the fear those games create, but I cant play one of those games for more than 10 minutes, even in the middle of a shining day. Im that much of a pussy.

Either way, yesterday I accidentally read about Clock-Tower for the SNES on Wikipedia. The story made me curious, so I went through dark-paths on the interwebs to look for this game.

You remember my 10 minute rule?

I closed my emulator after 10 minutes. It were exactly 10 minutes of playing.

Gameplay is easily explained. Move the Cursor around with your D-Pad, and interact with the enviroment via ABXY-Buttons.

So, instead of focusing on the gameplay,I’m going to focus on the enviroment. That is the main factor of making a game scary, right? There is no music most of the time, until you meet anything trying to harm you. The game itself is very dark, and the sound youll hear most is the sound of your footsteps.

Normally, when playing a Survival Horror, you expect 2 basic game elements. Trying to survive and feeling the horror. Any Survival Horror game I played gave me a Weapon to defend myself. I was able to defeat most of the evil creatures by shooting them, stabbing in their heart, basic stuff like that. But in Clock-Tower, you are defenseless. Thats right, the game gives you no possibility to fight. The main character is a defenseless 14 year old school girl. Youre constantly running away, trying to hide from the stalker, a nine year old boy with an oversized pair of scissors.  He will attack you if youre in a room for too long ( havent stopped time for that yet ), if you enter a room youre not supposed to enter, if you enter a room youre supposed to enter, if you go through a hallway, if you climb up some stairs. You never have the chance to rest.

The most exciting fact about this game is : its an SNES game. You dont need kick-ass graphics of special light rendering algorithms to strike fear in a heart. The knowledge of being defenseless, the quiet atmosphere, your own footsteps, everything makes this game thrilling. And best of all : its non linear, you have the chance of doing what you want to do. And it has about 6-7 endings, which makes this game replayable. I’ll try to beat it. Honestly, I will _try_ .

I know the feeling. But that’s what makes it interesting. And after a while you get used to the constant tension (a good game anticipates this and changes scare tactics after a while). As you get into the game dynamics, you start to see patterns and anticipate attacks. It was like that for me with Dead Space. The first chapter I played with a good friend of mine and it scared the big Jesus out of us. It took me a couple of hours of playing to get into the game’s flow, find my way around and all that.
But frankly, I have to say that a game in which you’re defenseless sounds intriguing but also stressful and like it could get stale quite easily…

PS:
The most exciting fact about this game is : its an SNES game. You dont need kick-ass graphics …
I was thinking the same thing. “SNES? Waaaiit a minute. Oh yes, I see…” ;) But that’s what I said in one of my earlier replies, good horror doesn’t need graphics (or graphic display of gore).

Comment by BW February 13, 2009 @ 10:01 am

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