Let’s get a little personal again. I feel like I should tell you about the most recent time in which I was scared shitless. Unsurprisingly, it was while playing Amnesia: the Dark Descent. Yes, my life is boring enough that a scary video game is the scariest thing happening right now. I mean, dissertation existential drama is at a low right now, as it’s mostly carry on and write about slug people. So, yes, Amnesia.

OK, first I need to describe how this is going down. I haven’t finished this game, because I play it with my friend who’s only in town every few weeks. We hot-swap, taking over when it gets to be too much. We also wait until after dark and play with lamps. We’re not brave enough to play in the dark. So as I give you impressions and talk about it, I didn’t literally sit before the keyboard and play the entire thing, but it’s nearly as frightening watching as it is playing.

This is a counter-point of sorts to Thekittymeister’s Slender post, because she just laughs when she plays scary games. I, uh, I do not laugh. I freak the fuck out. I study horror fiction, and horror movies rarely do more than startle me with jump scares, but horror video games seem to be the perfect expression of the form sometimes. Even average or mediocre horror games can make me feel crawly and worried, because I am actively engaged in things. I’ve actually done a conference presentation on this – when you play a horror game, you are simultaneously the person in the audience, screaming “don’t go in there” and the protagonist, going into the room anyway.

So, first, what this game does as well as games like Silent Hill and, honestly, Bioshock (the other scariest game I’ve played) is that it presents you, the player, with obviously poor choices. There is no good choice at the beginning of Amnesia. I, in Daniel’s place, would try to find a fucking exit. There are windows everywhere on the first few floors. Break one and leave. But the game makes that impossible, thus characterizing Daniel, the protagonist, using the design: he doesn’t want to leave. I am playing some crazy motherfucker who hears pig demon snorts behind the walls and is OK with that. So, before any of the backstory begins to pour in through the wall-o-text diary entries, I know everything I need to know about Daniel. He does not appear to actually care about his own well being. He pants and breathes and freaks out a little as his sanity drops, but if I move him he moves. If I leave him in one place, he doesn’t start to babble or move around on his own (how freaky would a horror game be if its protagonist tried to get away if you left him or her alone for too long? You would be forcing the character forward. Damn. Wish I could program games now.). And shortly into the game there’s a note to Daniel from himself, which he doesn’t remember writing, exhorting him to kill Alexander if that name still makes him burn with rage. So basically we have a guy willing to go through hell and the most terrifying experiences I can imagine, to get revenge on some dude. Damn, right?

And then there are the terrible things. Jesus, this shit is pretty bad. There’s a joke going around right now that every Amnesia Let’s Play is some dude talking about how games don’t scare him, he walks down the first hallway, the door opens as the wind rushes through the drafty castle, and he NOPES the fuck out immediately. Well, that’s pretty damn bad, but then the spectres begin to appear.

They only seem to appear in the darkness, which is both sentient and hoping to kill Daniel or drive him insane. So hiding in the dark fucks me over, but shining a light into the darkness fucks me over as the misshapen devil’s spawn rushes me and batters me to death with its stiff, clumsy hands. Awesome…

I am not sure, at this early stage in the game, that I can fight things. My friend threw a rock at a guy once, but all that accomplished was telling said guy we were hiding in the corner.

There is something crazy about this game. It is excellent, so far. I think it exemplifies what games are, or at least can be, about.

Games are places, not activities. I think all good fiction creates a place in which things happen, fantasy or not. This is also why I believe literature tends toward fantasy, because it’s about building places for readers to enter, be the places “realistic” or not – they are still other places. Games do the same thing. Interacting with the things of the world – fighting a monster or in Amnesia’s case running screaming from it – make them more real through use and familiarity. The lamp in Amnesia is more real to me already than a Ferrari – I’ve never used a Ferrari or even been in one, but that lamp has kept me sane in the darkness of an oppressive night. I have fretted over how much oil it has, I have debated whether to use it in one dark passage or wait and see if I can get through the darkness. The items, people, and places of video games can become real to us more quickly than nearly any other fictional thing because we use them. We do not see them being used.

Amnesia is actually an excellent test case for what I’ve been saying for years, that people need to stop using film techniques to discuss games. Because games don’t work like films. In a film we have to care about the character and eventually, by extension, we’ll care about the item. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade I already know what the Holy Grail is, sure, but I don’t care about it. But when it tumbles down the chasm I feel bad, because I know what it means to Henry and Indy. It appears to be the salvation of their relationship. But we learn otherwise, and really already know that.

Games can work in reverse, though they can also make us care about characters. But in Amnesia I care about that fucking lamp because it’s mine, because it’s a useful helpmeet in a hurtful world that is literally and actively out to get me.

I think it’s significant that Amnesia is all about the item puzzles, like an old adventure game in a way. I am learning to care about all the shit lying around in the darkness, because they may be the only things to save me from the entire world. Amnesia is like Silent Hill in that respect: the entire world, or at least the local portion of it, is out to get me. I need all the help I can get.

If you think I grapple with the powers of terror in a pleasing way, you should go check out my blog. I actually talk about horror a lot over there.