by Gabriella Mancini, contributor
Imagine this: you enter a room to find two of your closest friends held captive by who you assume to be a serial killer. The serial killer announces that if you want to survive, you must choose one of your friends to sacrifice. Now if this was a horror movie, this story will already be predetermined. The viewers know which friend will end up dying and that will never change. But imagine if the control was in the viewer’s hands. If you had to save either yourself or your friends, who would you choose?
The scenario above is from the cutting-edge horror game “Until Dawn”, which came out this past August. In “Until Dawn”, there are 256 different endings based on which characters are alive at the end of the game. This is a game based on decisions, quick-time events and sacrifices, which puts all of the control in the hands of the player. This game is also one of the reasons why horror games have the potential to out-do horror movies.
Although the suspense and jump-scares in horror movies can really get your heart rate going, they lack one critical thing that horror games don’t: direct interaction with the story. By putting the player in control of the situation, horror games add an extra dimension and are able to pull the player out of reality and immerse them into the situation. This isn’t to say that horror movies can’t draw an audience in. The horror movie genre has recently been experimenting with the addition of 3D to provide more immersion, like in Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. But by giving you the chance to impact the story directly, video games can make the player feel a lot more immersed, and therefore more spooked.
Along with this power given to the player, horror games also typically have many different endings, both good and bad. With so many different endings, it’s hard to predict which one you’ll end up getting (unless you use a walkthrough, of course). Even if a horror game only has one ending, there are lots of twists and turns along the way to test your survival skills until the end.
Video game technology is rapidly advancing, and has been ever since they were invented. The graphics are exponentially getting better, and virtual-reality gaming isn’t far off in the future! Before you know it, games will be so realistic that it will be hard to tell if it’s a movie or a game. I feel that the future of horror games is an exciting one, especially with the addition of virtual-reality. Imagine if you could experience a horror game first-hand, from first-person view, wouldn’t that be spooky?
So to all of my horror fans out there, try to pick up a horror game this Halloween! If you haven’t played one before, I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how terrifying they can be.
