#gameological

Great write-up from Alexander Chatziioannou for Gameological about Project Firestart, one of the first games to try the survival-horror format.

Most of Junkie XL’s original soundtrack for SSX Blur is full of high-adrenaline excitement and rousing beats. Makes sense, what with the game being a bright and colorful spin on the thrill-seeking sport of snowboarding. “Snow Park NZ” is different, though. Sure, there’s a beat, but it’s a slow burn, building one slim layer at a time, piling up like snowbanks on the hillside. Wave after wave of synthesized energy wash over the speakers as the pulsating core of the melody ping-pongs back-and-forth. It’s comforting in its coldness, and it hides the more aggressive beats as they begin to trickle in behind the walls of soft safe powder. This is a song about becoming comfortable with the cold, finding your place in it and rising above the frost. When the light finally shines, it reflects off the snow more brightly than the summer sun. The song glows the same way winter glows, by rising above, slowly.

“There are positives here that bely the game’s bottom-of-the-barrel notoriety. Friday The 13th is horror, and horror games, as they’ve developed since 1989, are largely about managing resources. Early entries in the Resident Evil series made great use out of clunky “tank” controls and limited access to save points and bullets, and while Friday The 13th doesn’t have that level of intention, the hostility toward the player kicks in immediately, setting a tone that’s fit for the genre. Working against the clock and fighting an overpowered foe under rules that aren’t immediately clear is entirely fitting. A good game based on the Friday The 13th series should have a feeling of hopelessness running through it. If Jason were easy to beat, he wouldn’t be scary.”

“And that’s where the driving tension of Downwell comes from. After enough attempts, you’ll start to learn about the enemies and traps that fill each of the game’s themed areas, but the well’s hazards are laid out randomly at the start of each run, so there’s no way of knowing exactly what lies ahead as you plunge into the darkness. Firing your boots and controlling your descent to the point where you can actually plan a route on the fly is the key to survival, but it’s all too easy to find yourself out of ammo and plummeting into the unknown. You could always try to land and cash out your combo, but as dangerous as it is to zoom past solid ground and potentially toward ruin, the allure of seeing that little combo tally above your head tick up even higher is often powerful enough to assuage such fears.”

Words and illustrations by Nick Wanserski

More at avclub.com