Until Dawn

In 2006, your correspondent got into an argument with a friend of a friend who claimed that video games were a better story-telling medium than movies. Your correspondent deemed this position audacious and preposterous, and argued against it as such. This was a no-brainer. Movies were made by directors and auteurs with aesthetic formations, with the goal of entertaining any given person who chose to watch could be entertained (whether that involved education, amusement or horror). Video games, by contrast, were less accessible, the domain of only the most manually adept, and rarely consisted of more than a series of rote tasks cobbled together by computer programmers. These comp sci types had, for the most part, cartoonish sensibilities and a limited pool of stereotypes around which they based their characters. Arty games like Ico were the rare exceptions. Nonetheless, my opponent, growing agitated now, kept citing Metal Gear Solid as evidence for the insurmountable literary merit of video games, claiming it was a "morality play." Your correspondent counter-cited the films of David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Orson Welles. Blue Velvet blows Metal Gear Solid out of the water—Frank Booth trumps Solid Snake on all axes. To this day, your correspondent still holds that he won the argument, hands down.

If one were to have this argument again in the present, however, the winner isn't so cut and dried. Now an overwhelming number of popular movies are based on comic books and video games, and so they draw from the cartoonish sensibilities and limited pool of character stereotypes that used to be the province of video games. But things have changed in the video game development world as well. In 2010, developer Quantic Dream gave us Heavy Rain, a gripping movie-styled crime-drama whodunit where the player steers several principal characters through major decisions and out of various tight spots. Plot-holes aside, Heavy Rain was a masterpiece. Quantic Dream followed up with several titles of comparable style and quality, most notably 2014’s Detroit, a game that moved this innovative gameplay genre toward a science-fiction narrative space. In between, Supermassive Games released Until Dawn, a ghoulish grab-bag of terror tropes that turned out to be better than most horror movies.

Horror movies don't usually do it for your correspondent. Don't get him wrong: you correspondent has seen hundreds of horror movies and considers himself an aficionado of the genre. However, aside from The Ring, horror movies don't give your correspondent the faintest bit of horripilation. Watching a horror movie, then, is usually an exercise in disappointment or, at best, an appreciation of well-done gore effects.

Until Dawn gripped your correspondent by the throat. That grip is icy, and fittingly so, as the story is based around a gathering of nubile teens in a castle-like cabin in the woods on a mountain somewhere in Canada. Time and again your correspondent's heart palpitated, his throat went dry, and his eyes popped out of his head. As he proceeded through all the familiar horror movie set-pieces, he had a physiological reaction as if encountering them all for the first time. In having to manually carry out via the controller do-or-die tasks for characters he had (for the most part) grown to care about, your correspondent was totally engrossed. If the horror movie is measured by its capacity for evoking reaction, Until Dawn's frisson goes on and on, and so in this way it succeeds. Indeed, Until Dawn has reinvigorated and reclaimed the horror genre. It does this in large part by making so much of the genre its own: to be sure, the game has what we might call an "Omni-horror" aesthetic, mashing up slashers, monster movies, and supernatural scare-fests all into one. The movie synthesizes Saw, Friday the 13th, The Ring and perhaps even the newest Blair Witch in commendable fashion. All the while, it is shaped by the gamer's own internal horror-scape, as therapy sessions interspersed throughout (and hosted by the incomparably creepy Peter Stormare) help determine all the little devilish details, such as what kind of mask the killer will wear, and what kind of fate will befall the various characters. There are dozens of conceivable plot-developments and endings based on the player's choices and competencies, and so Until Dawn delivers almost innumerable horror thrills.

Peter Stormare as the more-than-a-little-off psychiatrist

Until Dawn, then, pushes forward the concept not only of a video game, but also of a horror movie. The game moves past the passive observation of a movie by permitting participation. Film, however, is not the only medium it outperforms. Until Dawn eschews the repetitive task management of your average video game (especially a Dead Rising, for instance) in favor of an ever-advancing story. And in its active, hot-medium participation, Until Dawn also outshines horror novels, not just because of the variety of conclusions it’s organic narrative style permits, but also because the continual joystick work is a more engaging interstitial activity than reading the tangents that fill up most books (many of which are just padded novellas). All told, the type of participation that Until Dawn affords proves to be oh-so crucial for the horror genre. Just how many horror movies (and books) have left you indifferent to the plight of the characters? In Until Dawn you have to care about the characters, because you are the guiding force impelling them onward. If movie games have been a triumphantly innovative sub-genre within video gaming, then horror games, apotheosized by Until Dawn, are the sub-sub-genre triumph.

Until Dawn didn't relinquish your correspondent from its grasp until his surviving characters made it out of the cabin. In his initial play-through, only two of the eight principal characters survived. Herein lies your correspondent's only conceivable criticism of the game. The two survivors made for a less than satisfying ending. On the one hand, the goal of having more or all of the characters survive makes for some replay value. On the other hand, the second play-through probably won't have the unwitting frisson that came with the first. Perhaps more crucially, it bothers your correspondent more than a little that there is an "ideal" way to play through the game in which all the principal characters survive. The question is worth considering: is it really a "horror" game if no one dies?

Video games paled against movies ten or fifteen years ago, but, in the hindsight synonymous with 2020, we have to re-evaluate this position. Your correspondent won the argument in 2006, but he might not hold the same position now, at least in certain genres. Until Dawn was better than a horror movie could ever be. Moreover, it was better than watching a Marvel movie, which can often feel like watching someone play a video game. As such, Until Dawn embodies the limitless potential for games as story-telling and story-experiencing mediums, and suggests that video gaming is a medium that should drive movies, rather than being driven by them.

Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick

Ash Williams, the matchless main character of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, never lacked for what the Spanish call duende. The renowned schlock-trouper Bruce Campbell played him brash and loud and yet blunderous, imbuing the character with a charm and magnetism that proves inexhaustible through repeated screenings of the films.

Could this charisma transfer from the cinema to the home console? What would it be like to take control of Campbell’s bumbling, iron-jawed quipster and maneuver him through the over-the-top gore and pandemonium wreaked so wantonly by the Deadites? Would it make for that peak horror experience—that sublime feeling of appalling delight—which the French call frisson? The developer/publisher combo of Heavy Iron Studios and THQ apparently thought so, releasing Evil Dead: Hail to the King for PlayStation and Dreamcast in the year 2000. Set in and around the archetypal cabin from the first two movies, the game took the survival-horror approach, complete with pre-rendered backdrops as per Resident Evil, and it did not impress.

The venerable Bruce Campbell 

THQ, as indefatigable as Ash himself, took another crack at the Evil Dead license, with VIS Entertainment assuming development duties for this second attempt. Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, released in 2003, shifted from survival horror to hack-and-slash, a genre hypothetically better-suited for the series' carnage and comedic stylings. Things look and sound promising from the outset. We are greeted by Bruce Campbell's familiar bluster, its cadence somehow both smooth and nervy, overtop some sleek graphics to boot, at least in the cut-scenes. The in-game graphics, however, rely on thick, cartoony character models that seem more befitting of, say, Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home. The plot is not unforgivable, as it involves the infamous Necronomicon tape from the movies getting played on the airwaves of long-suffering Dearborn, Michigan, subsequently unleashing the dead upon the town. The enemy horde shambles around like zombies, however, giving said dead a vibe that is less Raimi and more Romero. The gamer may never get a good look at the enemy, however, as the camera is atrocious, swinging wildly about. You'll feel empowered, albeit briefly, by the fact you can fire your eponymous boomstick over your shoulder to get the dead slinking up behind you. Ash's chainsaw is also alluring, but once the enemies converge, you've got limited time and limited maneuvering. Maladroit though he may occasionally be, Ash could still wreak unequivocal havoc with the chainsaw in the movies, and we should expect nothing less, since the chainsaw is actually a part of his body. Be that as it may, the game has no sense of chainsaw, or what the Germans call kettensägen. You will die quickly, and you will die often. As such, A Fistful of Boomstick quickly becomes repetitive, restart after restart returning you to the same old waves of enemies, thereby establishing that the slapstick magnetism of Ash-cum-Campbell is indeed exhaustible, at least in terms of gaming.

All told, A Fistful of Boomstick is more than a little appalling, and not in a delightful way. Not even Ash's endless jests (including intermittent 4th wall-breakers) can save it. Nonetheless, those most dedicated to the series will still feel compelled to buy it and put it on their Halloween playlists, as they are, inexorably, what the English call neckbeards.

Friday the 13th: The Game

If you are like me, you spent the Saturday nights of your youth in your parents’ basement watching Friday the 13th movies, adoringly beholding Jason as he stalked sexually active teens, the kind of people who you could hear partying two houses down the block. To cancel the whoops and squalls of the partygoers, you would turn up the volume and whisper along with that disembodied voice of Jason’s mother as it alternated between heavily aspirated velar and nasal syllables that echoed chillingly in the surround-sound. You wanted to be at Crystal Lake, watching the carnage from afar, listening to the helpless screams of the beautiful people, because you knew that as long as you weren't having sex, you were safe. And when you went to sleep in your narrow little bed you dreamed, and in the dream you were in those woods and by that waterfront; sometimes you were even behind the hockey mask, stalking mightily towards a sex-sundered cabin.

Now, with Friday the 13th: The Game, you can take that dream vacation to Crystal Lake.* Depending on what personage the randomized character assignment offers you to at the onset of any given multiplayer death-match, you can be any of a number of fawn-eyed camp counselors ranging from lip-glossed jailbait to assertive jocks, or you can even become Jason Himself. Either way, you're finally invited to the party.

Of course, you're not really Jason, as the developers have elected for a third person view rather than the first person. This means you go behind the man-monster without going behind the mask, hulking and hoddering** after nubile teens to net-mind the confines of Camp Crystal Lake. In effect, you're more like Mrs. Voorhees, compelling Jason lovingly from beyond the grave. This is my only conceivable criticism of the game, and it's a minor one.

Some have condemned the randomized role assignment, stating that in a standard eight-player game one only has a 12.5% chance of drawing Jason, only a 12.5% chance of having any fun by way of a murderous rampage. This is immaterial. Let me remind the reader that there is no Jason Voorhees without the lascivious teens; the prey constitutes the predator, so even as a callipygian camp counselor you are playing, in your near-futile scrabble to escape Crystal Lake, a role equally as crucial as that of Jason in creating this cherished horror imaginary. It is the urge to make love that renders death essential. Play Friday the 13th in multiples of eight death-matches at a time and, over the long term, you'll eventually realize by the force of sheer statistics how it truly feels to personify the opposite of life.

If you are like me—and if you have read this far, you probably are—then even a 12.5% chance of being Jason is hope enough for a better Saturday night. In due time, the single-player will be released and it'll be Jason time, all the time. In a few short months, a dream—never a nightmare—will come true in full.

NOTES:

*Technically, Friday the 13th for the Nintendo Entertainment System also gave you the chance to take said dream vacation to Crystal Lake, but the game is not only primitive but also awful. Additionally, you can play as Jason in Mortal Kombat XL, but alas, your only potential victims are characters from the MK universe (and Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, compellingly enough).

**Thanks to Stephen Graham Jones for attesting this verb form. For all of you literate lovers of horror violence—and there are dozens of you—I'd recommend his novel The Last Final Girl, an uncompromisingly post-modern send-up of slasher films.

Clock Tower

In 1996, Human Entertainment released Clock Tower, a point-and-click horror adventure for the Sony PlayStation. While Capcom’s contemporaneous Resident Evil had cornered the market for zombie-movie gaming, Clock Tower aimed toward something of a hybrid between an Italian giallo film and a cheap slasher flick. While the game is slower-paced and more heavily dialogue-based Resident Evil, Clock Tower markedly surpasses Capcom's eventual classic when it comes to the most crucial element of horror cinematography—that is, atmosphere. The whodunit plot takes multiple characters through dank dungeons, spider-webbed libraries, and labyrinthine castle halls, settings which altogether apotheosize foreboding. Moreover, Clock Tower is well-written and well-voiced, at least relative to Resident Evil. This contributes to an immersiveness that produces legitimate chills, none greater than the experience of encountering the villain: a gaunt, cretinous hunchback wielding an exaggeratedly long pair of pruning shears as his trademark weapon.  He goes by the baroque sobriquet of Scissorman.

Scissorman: Worse than Weinstein

Scissorman inherits a ghastly horror legacy, as he represents a bloodcurdling copy of a copy. He was quite obviously inspired by Cropsey, nemesis in the 1981 slasher-cycle feature The Burning, a bandage-faced summer camp caretaker-cum-burn-victim out to avenge his first-degree misadventure by slaughtering camp-goers with gardening shears. While The Burning is a blatant carpetbagger clone of Friday the 13th, it actually outdoes that film as far as lakeside slashing goes, and though it failed at the box-office, it stands as one of the higher-end slice-em-up films. Its canoe scene is legendary in cult cinema circles—when Cropsey springs up, a silhouette of a ragged, carbuncular man with gaping shears raised above him, he reduces Jason Voorhees to a sluggish, silver-medal serial-killer. The Burning marks the feature film debut of George Costanza; or, if you prefer, Jason Alexander. The Burning is also notable for being among the first production credits for acclaimed Hollywood producer and recently-outed serial-groper Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein wrote the original story and thereby had a hand in conceiving the character of Cropsey. Given the violent sexual angst that seems to motivate most slasher villains, one can only imagine what nascent erotic compulsions Weinstein sublimated into Cropsey. Perhaps some of those dark inspirations filtered down to Scissorman. Could it be that when Scissorman chases us in Clock Tower, it is some faint, transmuted vestige of Harvey Weinstein's burning libido that impels the pursuit?

But we've drifted somewhat far afield here. Regardless of the psychic source of the spookiness it delivers, the Clock Tower experience is evidently one for which dedicated horror gamers are willing to shell out exorbitant sums of cash. Indeed, copies in decent condition will fetch over $100 on EBay, and with good cause. Like any good slasher baddie, the game's terror has proven unkillable. And if you can't afford the game, you should at least check out The Burning.

Mortal Kombat XL

The double-entendre evoked by the Roman numerals in the title of Mortal Kombat XL, while only minimally clever, nonetheless speaks volumes as to what the game actually offers. Here we have the most polished, most complete version of the tenth iteration of the legendary Mortal Kombat series, well-peopled with thirty-plus characters including newcomers like the pert, pony-tailed Cassie Cage, millennial daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, as well as the six-gun-slinging Roland of Gilead rip-off Erron Black.

Leatherface-hugger

It is, however, the all-inclusive downloadable content which not only makes XL truly worthy of the Mortal Kombat mantle, but also further burgeons the franchise's legacy. Out of the box, we are graced with four characters external to but totally amenable with the MK universe: these are the eponymous sci-fi super-beasts from Alien and Predator, as well as insuperable slasher-cycle icons Jason Voorhees and Leatherface. We have, of course, already witnessed Alien vs. Predator in a series of cinematic endeavors bearing that very title, though the peculiar species of manic, Manichean matchup that Mortal Kombat makes possible justifies a re-visitation of that particular battle. And while Jason and Leatherface have previously appeared in horrendous sprite-based releases for NES and Atari 2600, respectively, we had never until the release of XL seen them rendered in polygonal HD (at least until we got to be the hockey-masked maniac in 2017’s Friday the 13th: the Game), and we had certainly never seen them go one-on-one. Thus, XL facilitates a horror-movie dream match, Jason vs. Leatherface, a film you can play out over and over again across various backdrops from the Mortal Kombat mythscape. And how about Jason vs. Alien, Predator vs. Leatherface, or even Jason vs. Scorpion? The list of possibilities goes on and on. In essence, XL is the Mortal Kombat franchise fully realizing its own slasher, splatterpunk and even sci-fi sensibilities.

These were briefly explored earlier on in its 2011 precursor, which included a somewhat tepid representation of Freddy Krueger among its selectable characters. XL does far better justice to its sci-fi and horror guest stars, however. On account of its veritable shock-and-schlock, mashup-mandating Jason Takes Outworld aesthetic, then, Mortal Kombat XL will prove to be a collector's item, at least for horror and B-Movie fans.

Friday the 13th

By 1989, the sanguinary Friday the 13th series and its bloodthirsty antihero Jason Voorhees had thoroughly saturated the North American marketplace. The movies, aesthetically and conceptually lacking though they may have been, were ubiquitous in popular culture, with a sequel in release or in production every single year in the 1980s. There was also a TV series bearing the Friday name and font which managed to gain modest critical acclaim—in no small part due to the complete absence of Jason Voorhees from the show. Alice Cooper had even laid down a straining shock-rock record—“The Man Behind the Mask”—inspired by the goalie-masked goliath. Inevitably, given the Nintendo Entertainment system's embeddedness in the day-to-day lives of children of the mid-to-late eighties, video-gaming was another market Friday the 13th would encroach upon, the R-rated aesthetics of the movies notwithstanding.

Friday the 13th for the NES took the form of a side-scroller in which players control one of six Crystal Lake camp counselors. Traversing water, woods and cabins, all the while battling wolves, crows and zombies (all of which are apocryphal to the movies), the goal is to find and defeat Jason Voorhees not once, not twice, but thrice. In the meantime, the rampaging Jason is killing not only the counselors, but also the children—yes, children—vacationing at the camp. Jason's mother's head, which has now acquired the extra-canonical ability to fly, also makes an appearance as an adversary.

This discussion of Friday the 13th’s gameplay is moot, however, as the game is unplayable. Its controls are exceedingly frustrating, leading to death after death for the counselor under your control (and the children, to boot). Moreover, the camp's confines are mostly rendered in bright, primary colors and thus provide little in the way of chills. The programmers, of course, had very little to work with given the 8-bit NES format, but still, one gets the impression they didn't even attempt to approximate the Friday the 13th aesthetic. There is also, perhaps most disappointingly, no opportunity to play as Jason. This is not a huge loss, however, as Jason is, when you do find him, clad in what looks to be a purple track-suit of some sort—seemingly more like senior's active wear than the ragged waterlogged vestments we would expect of an undead serial killer who dwells at the bottom of a lake.

I wouldn't recommend this game to even the most diehard fans of the film series. Firstly, it received far too wide a release to have any value as a collector's item. Secondly, it evades the hallowed so-bad-it's-good status, which may apply to movies such as those in the series, but really doesn't work for video games. Even the recent Friday the 13th release for Xbox One and PS4, while far from perfect, is at least able to capture the general feel of the films. The NES game, by contrast, is an abomination. Collectors would be better off saving their cash for anything else related to the series. This reviewer would instead suggest perusing EBay for the two—that's right, not one, but two—novelizations of Friday the 13th Part 3. One is by Simon Hawke, the other by movie-adaptation legend Michael Avallone. Even if you despise Friday the 13th or the act of reading itself, you will still appreciate these novels far more than this game.