Top 50 Favorites: #44 (Enhanced Edition)
Careful, confident horror about the incomprehensible and the lengths your mind will go to fill in the gaps. Far from perfect, even at its strongest still feels like a low-carb Silent Hill 2 - but I just can't help but admire how bold horror games were around this time. Stuff like this, Cry of Fear, Slender: The Arrival, hell even the first Five Nights at Freddy's were majorly innovating for a good solid 3 or 4 years straight - it's easy to laugh at now but there's something to be said about the effective simplicity of creating a horror video game for practically the express purpose of holding a place in the collective conscience simply for scaring your favorite YouTuber. I was never that into "Let's Plays" but there's an almost warm comfortability of a horror game that takes itself seriously but not too seriously (unlike, say, The Last of Us); one that is interested in crafting a good, tight, accessible lore without wanting to spin it into a disparate web of pointlessly convoluted bullshit for the sake of seeming deep on internet comment sections (Hello Neighbor and most of the FNaF sequels); and one that sets out to create good scares and a memorable atmosphere over being a cynical flash-in-the-pan meme to sell merch (Poppy's Playtime, Baldi's Basics). It's crazy to look back on how this era really future-proofed itself by doing what everyone at the time swore would make them dated - wills itself to life by going back to basics and asking how they can be done really, really well. Is way more concerned with leaving its own self-assured stamp instead of worrying about sterilizing itself so it won't have a single blemish and it's all the better for it. Filled with character.
Careful, confident horror about the incomprehensible and the lengths your mind will go to fill in the gaps. Far from perfect, even at its strongest still feels like a low-carb Silent Hill 2 - but I just can't help but admire how bold horror games were around this time. Stuff like this, Cry of Fear, Slender: The Arrival, hell even the first Five Nights at Freddy's were majorly innovating for a good solid 3 or 4 years straight - it's easy to laugh at now but there's something to be said about the effective simplicity of creating a horror video game for practically the express purpose of holding a place in the collective conscience simply for scaring your favorite YouTuber. I was never that into "Let's Plays" but there's an almost warm comfortability of a horror game that takes itself seriously but not too seriously (unlike, say, The Last of Us); one that is interested in crafting a good, tight, accessible lore without wanting to spin it into a disparate web of pointlessly convoluted bullshit for the sake of seeming deep on internet comment sections (Hello Neighbor and most of the FNaF sequels); and one that sets out to create good scares and a memorable atmosphere over being a cynical flash-in-the-pan meme to sell merch (Poppy's Playtime, Baldi's Basics). It's crazy to look back on how this era really future-proofed itself by doing what everyone at the time swore would make them dated - wills itself to life by going back to basics and asking how they can be done really, really well. Is way more concerned with leaving its own self-assured stamp instead of worrying about sterilizing itself so it won't have a single blemish and it's all the better for it. Filled with character.