Last year around Halloween, I decided to challenge myself to start playing some survival horror games. I've been making a conscious effort to broaden the types of games I decide to play; although I love character platformers, action-adventure games, and first person shooters, I also realized that my pool of games was incredibly shallow compared to my friends, who found time to play every AAA mainstream release, plenty of double-to-triple-digit-hour-long RPGs, genres I hadn't even touched like real time strategy games, fighting games, literally any Nintendo game (you get the idea).
So, last year I played through Jill's campaign in Resident Evil Remake, did a full playthrough of Silent Hill 2 for the first time, and fell in LOVE with the first Fatal Frame.
Now, here I am one year and two months removed from that October, and I've yet to revisit these games or indulge in any other similar survival horror titles. That is, until Signalis became a blip on my radar. Something about its aesthetic, its pixel art, its rudimentary PS1-esque character models lacking any semblance of facial features, utterly captivated me.
I made a conscious effort to ignore any press for this game months before and after release because I knew I wanted to play it when I was ready and able to.
Now that I've played it... I'm once again reminded that I've barely scratched the surface of survival horror as a genre.
I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil. I thought some of the puzzles were obtuse but I enjoyed making progress and learning the level layout so much so that I could navigate from one corner of the map to another without even using the map.
Silent Hill 2 was dreary and dismal. A lo-fidelity nightmare world with a cursed atmosphere unlike any other game I've played before or since.
Fatal Frame made combat super fun without sacrificing the oppressive mood of its locations, although its repetition did become a bit much towards the end.
Signalis balances Resident Evil-style inventory management and enemy mechanics (Crimson Heads) with Silent Hill 2's enemy design and gradual, literal descent into nightmare territory.
It wears its mechanical and literary/intertextual influences on its sleeves. The vocabulary of survival horror should be familiar, even to fairly recent newcomers (yours truly), while its visual flair adds shades of 1995's Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The work also frequently references "The King in Yellow," which I always found exciting because, coincidentally, it was one of the only other books I set aside time to read this year.
Signalis is an ever-increasing-in-difficulty series of dungeons a la Silent Hill sans the in-between sections. In other words, all dungeons, all the time. My only complaint is that while the limited inventory system does provide some instances of picking-and-choosing, more often than not it's mainly inconvenient and does add a lot of backtracking. However, I do wonder if these environments would feel as real and be as memorable without the backtracking included?
It takes its time, offers some genuinely challenging puzzles, creates dread and panic when necessary, and nails the vibe of a sci-fi Silent Hill. While it doesn't capture the pure, unbelievably "cursed" energy of Silent Hill 2, and I would've liked some more rooms or moments that capitalized on the scares, the fact remains that Signalis remains a solid sci-fi survival horror title, and succeeds in spades.
So, last year I played through Jill's campaign in Resident Evil Remake, did a full playthrough of Silent Hill 2 for the first time, and fell in LOVE with the first Fatal Frame.
Now, here I am one year and two months removed from that October, and I've yet to revisit these games or indulge in any other similar survival horror titles. That is, until Signalis became a blip on my radar. Something about its aesthetic, its pixel art, its rudimentary PS1-esque character models lacking any semblance of facial features, utterly captivated me.
I made a conscious effort to ignore any press for this game months before and after release because I knew I wanted to play it when I was ready and able to.
Now that I've played it... I'm once again reminded that I've barely scratched the surface of survival horror as a genre.
I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil. I thought some of the puzzles were obtuse but I enjoyed making progress and learning the level layout so much so that I could navigate from one corner of the map to another without even using the map.
Silent Hill 2 was dreary and dismal. A lo-fidelity nightmare world with a cursed atmosphere unlike any other game I've played before or since.
Fatal Frame made combat super fun without sacrificing the oppressive mood of its locations, although its repetition did become a bit much towards the end.
Signalis balances Resident Evil-style inventory management and enemy mechanics (Crimson Heads) with Silent Hill 2's enemy design and gradual, literal descent into nightmare territory.
It wears its mechanical and literary/intertextual influences on its sleeves. The vocabulary of survival horror should be familiar, even to fairly recent newcomers (yours truly), while its visual flair adds shades of 1995's Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The work also frequently references "The King in Yellow," which I always found exciting because, coincidentally, it was one of the only other books I set aside time to read this year.
Signalis is an ever-increasing-in-difficulty series of dungeons a la Silent Hill sans the in-between sections. In other words, all dungeons, all the time. My only complaint is that while the limited inventory system does provide some instances of picking-and-choosing, more often than not it's mainly inconvenient and does add a lot of backtracking. However, I do wonder if these environments would feel as real and be as memorable without the backtracking included?
It takes its time, offers some genuinely challenging puzzles, creates dread and panic when necessary, and nails the vibe of a sci-fi Silent Hill. While it doesn't capture the pure, unbelievably "cursed" energy of Silent Hill 2, and I would've liked some more rooms or moments that capitalized on the scares, the fact remains that Signalis remains a solid sci-fi survival horror title, and succeeds in spades.