After Action Reporter

Thanks to the Steam sale I’ve been playing The Ship again as friends pick up gifted copies. Playing again reminds me why I never played for a long the first time round: I am a great big scaredy-cat when it comes to certain types of gameplay! Am I alone?

Give me a gun and a hallway of aliens, zombies or dragons and I am just fine, but The Ship makes me terrified of going into cruise liner bathrooms least someone beat me to death with a pot or umbrella. I am not actually sure I can enjoy the game fully as I spend a lot of time finding high powered weaponry and then nervously blowing away anyone who gets in my personal space (which in The Ship is anywhere closer than 10m). I realized the other night that my favourite way to play is to sit in an armchair next to a security guard as this is not stressful. Walking around? Madness! A fur coat wearing, pool cue wielding maniac could be around any corner!

Don’t even get me started on proper horror games like Penumbra. I made it up to a wild dog (about 10 minutes in to the first game) and promptly never played again. Or how about Aliens vs Predator? I distinctly remember early in the Human campaign crawling trough some tunnel when a pipe drops that is shaped like a Alien’s head. I think I wet myself a little.

Sadly, I do love a good scary film or story. I guess there’s something about games with high personal threat and a low-power protagonist that just hits all the fight/flight centers in my brain.

Am I alone in this? Does anyone out there love game horror?

Some lucky people on the Qt3 forums played Artemis Bridge Simulator tonight, and fortunately for us, they live blogged their experiences on the Artemis thread there. It’s an amusing read and worth a look.