Tag: psychological

PREY – This Article Is A Mimic:

In the eternal time-vortex that is the COVID-19 lockdown and pandemic, I realised that I had never finished my playthrough of the game PREY. Considering I’d had a tonne of ideas for articles about the spooky space adventure, I decided it was time to remedy that. However, when loading up my save, I realised that I had left my Morgan Yu in a corridor with a Nightmare and no real way out. So, like any normal person, I decided to watch an in-depth lets-play and scream quietly into my pillow at every jumpscare. I’ll go back and officially finish the game myself one day, maybe as a Halloween stream if that is something that you’d be interested in.

One of the main features of PREY is the enemy type called the Mimic. As its name suggests, it mimics objects in its surroundings and blends in, until you get too close, at which point it tries to eat your face. Personally, my coffee cup becoming sentient and trying to consume the flesh from my bones is on my list of “Things I Never Want to Happen to Me Ever on The Face of The Planet”. Then again, that list isn’t particularly long (yet). Mimic’s can take on the form of nearly any object, forcing you to constantly scan your surroundings for anything that is out of place. That additional coffee cup? Mimic. That oddly angled chair? Mimic. That person trying to kill you? Not a mimic, just a jerk.

…I love my coffee but am not a fan of getting my face consumed.

You are Morgan Yu, a tester of devices known as “Neuromods”, which allow the user to gain new abilities and skills instantly, though it does involve inserting a needle into your eye which is scarier than most of the game’s monsters.  These abilities fall under two categories – Human, such as improved medicine, attack power and hacking ability, or Alien – which gives you access to the Typhon’s abilities like telekinesis, morphing and telepathy. This wide skillset allows the player to choose how they wish to approach each scenario they face, be it with stealth or an overpowered shotgun. My default approach is to try and be as stealthy as possible, then get discovered and panic until the enemies are all dead or I am dead.

Despite the outer-space surroundings and endless swarm of jerks, mimics, and phantoms, it is the atmosphere that makes PREY such a fascinating game. From the moment you start it up, you are consistently shown not to believe your eyes. Your apartment is a simulated environment, that you have been living in for three years, following the same daily routine (a la Groundhog Day). Three years of your memories have been wiped out from the use of Neuromods, and the entirety of Talos One has been overrun with the Typhoon menace. Every shadow seems to contain another monstrosity and you can’t trust what you see or hear.

You’ve heard of tall, dark and handsome. Welcome to massive, horrifying and demonic.

This look into what it’s like to not trust your own senses, gives us all a slightly glimpse into what people with Psychosis deal with every single day. Every individual’s experience with the mental illness is different but there are three main symptoms associated with a psychotic episode:

  1. Hallucinations
  2. Delusions
  3. Confused and Disturbed Thoughts

The mimic’s ability to imitate the world around you, forces you to distrust everyone and everything in sight. Your senses are heightened, every shadow is an enemy lying in wait and every unexplored corridor seems too dangerous to risk exploring. You are surrounded by death and chaos, followed by long stretches of eerie silence where every clang of metal or hiss of air causes you to jump ten feet in the air out of panic. It’s a remarkable combination of panic, distrust, and paranoia, lumped in with a healthy dose of genuine fear.

Nope, nope, nope, nope nope, nope nope NOPE

When the Nightmare shows up for the first time after entering the Arboretum, you catch a glimpse of your greatest threat yet. Sure, the mimics and phantoms all want to kill you, but their existence doesn’t revolve around it. The Nightmare, however, only has one sole purpose in life – to hunt you down and tear you limb from limb. It really should get a better hobby, I’m just saying. Try fishing or something.

These things are fast, strong, and capable of swiping your head off with one hit. No matter how powered up you are, these things are more than able to take you out. Those Neuromods I mentioned earlier? Yeah, the more of the “Alien” ones that you use, the more the Nightmare will show up. It’s not worth fighting these guys. It’s a waste of ammo for a one-time reward, with a high mortality rate.

GET BACK SATAN

Encountering your first nightmare, you’d probably assume that it’s just a set-piece and that the abomination will probably turn up as a boss fight near the end of the game. A logical assumption but an incorrect one. These things will stalk you across Talos One, destroying everything and everyone that is in their way. To quote the in-game description – “If all else fails, run.”

Another aspect of PREY that I absolutely MUST mention, is it’s ending. The grand finale of the game has you facing down an enormous Typhon called an Apex, which is threatening to consume the entirety of Talos One. You have the choice of trying to escape, neutralising the Typhon, or setting off the station’s self-destruct sequence and sacrificing yourself. Your actions earlier on in the game, will dictate whether you survive your stay on Talos One.

…Please don’t eat me

Throughout the game, when you encounter other humans, you don’t have to kill them. You are provided with plenty of non-lethal options to deal with your non-supernatural foes. After all, everyone on Talos One is also fighting back against the Typhons. They just don’t want their coffee cup to eat them, is that too much to ask? Each person you spare or kill, whether you choose to free or rescue those in danger, as well as the ending you choose – will be laid out in front of you in a post-credit scene.

The whole game was an experiment. Morgan Yu, your player character, is a captured Typhon entity with Morgan’s memories implanted into it. Every part of the storyline that you played through, was a memory and a test to see whether Typhon’s were capable of developing empathy and human emotions. Dependent on your choices throughout the game, the experiment is either deemed a success or a failure. If you fail, then you die.

Is anyone else getting a James Bond villain from Alex?

However, if you succeed, then Alex (Morgan’s brother) reveals something to you. The Typhons have already invaded Earth. The efforts you went through to contain the Typhon threat, were for nothing. However, by showing that you as a Typhon can develop empathy and emotions, proves that peace could be brokered between the remaining members of humanity and the invading Typhons. It is up to you to choose whether you want to be that bridge between the groups as a hybrid of the two.

We all know that I love games that have consequences for your actions. It forces you to care a bit more about the world you are exploring and the character’s you interact with. That fear and paranoia that you experience throughout the game becomes tenfold when you realise that your anxious trigger finger could be the end of a genuinely good person’s life.

Anyways, apologies that this article took so bloody long! I made it a bit longer to make up for the delay, so hopefully it was all that you were hoping for. If you have other games that you’d like to see my take on (eventually), leave them in the comments or message me on Twitter (@OurMindGames).

CaitlinRC.

The Blackout Club – What Is It You Think You See:

We have always feared the dark. Even now, as adults, we still flinch at the shadows. It’s not the fear of the darkness or the blackness, it’s what lurks within it. When we know what we are afraid of, when we can examine it from all sides and judge it accordingly, we can begin to combat that fear. We are afraid of the unknown. A lot of horror games focus on this concept, by having creatures lurk in the shadows or force you to fumble along a corridor towards a monster, that you can’t see until you’re pressed up against it. In our fear, we appreciate every second of light and visibility that we can get, clinging to the hope that our flashlight batteries will last just a few seconds longer. Not that our fervent praying impacts it, but we can believe that it does.

What a lot of horror games don’t do, is force you to cut off one of those senses. During a tense moment, we are on alert, our senses working overtime to take in every minute bit of information that they can, no matter how pointless or odd it may seem. So, when The Blackout Club instructed me to close my eyes, my first thought was “There is no way on this planet that I am going to do that.” Obviously, curiosity got the better of me and I did as I was told, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this article! The point of closing your eyes is so you can see “The Shape”. Invisible to the naked eye, it prowls its way around the levels, seeking out the player characters to force them to do it’s bidding.

The Blackout Club is a multiplayer horror game that follows a group of teenagers living in the town of Redacre, who have banded together to investigate the strange events occurring in their hometown. The kids have been experiencing blackouts, where they wake up in strange locations that they don’t remember going to (like students who drink too much). The various adults in the town have started to sleepwalk and during the game’s prologue, one of the club’s members, Bells, is kidnapped. This spurs the club to start collecting evidence and build an understanding of what on earth is happening beneath their feet.

The Maze is not for the fainthearted.

Ignoring the frustrating amount of grinding you need to do in order to level up, I honestly love this game. It can keep you on edge throughout the missions you complete, using the sins system. During a mission, a kid may break into a house or knock out an enemy. Although necessary, if discovered, these sins will be reported. If your group of teens is too sinful, then The Shape comes into play. It targets the most sinful player and is relentless in its pursuit. Every time you close your eyes to see where it is, it’s that much closer to you. If caught by the Shape, you lose control of your mind. Powerless to do anything, you are forced to watch as your character wanders around the map, hoping that one of your friends can manage to save you. If you get caught too many times, the Shape no longer wants you to be one of them. Instead of controlling you, you are slaughtered.

Taking a lead from the Outlast games, you don’t get a gun or the ability to kill your pursuers. Sure, you have a few non-lethal weapons that you can use to distract or temporarily take an enemy out of the equation, but you cannot kill. These people wandering around and trying to get you? They’re your neighbours, your community, even your parents or your best friends. These people, although not in control of their own minds, aren’t entirely innocent either. Beneath the town is a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, called “The Maze”. It seems endless, growing and adding new locations as you explore it. Entering this place is not something a player should do lightly as you are not alone in there. During the game’s prologue, you get a glimpse of the cult like activities happening beneath your town and how outnumbered your group of teens truly is.

One optional element of the game that really intrigues me is the addition of Stalkers. The Stalker is a former member of The Blackout Club, who has betrayed the cause and is now working for the Voices – the god like entities that whisper to the residents of the town during their blackouts. The Voices promised that the Stalker’s family would be safe if they assisted with reporting the Blackout Club’s sins to the Shape. As a regular player, you are not told whether there is a Stalker amongst you. Unless you directly encounter them or they record you committing sins, you may never know exactly where they are. Traitors in game’s storylines can be a bit… dramatic in their motivations but in this case, I get it. Sure, maybe reading this you question what kind of person would betray their friends to an entity that is clearly causing harm to their town? However, I ask you this – how far would you go to protect those you love? I know for a fact; I’d go damn far.

You can’t run forever.

There is something about the Blackout Club that I want to highlight from a mental health perspective. It’s called the Enhanced Horror system. If you’d like to experience this for yourself, then go try it out and then come back to read this bit, as I’m going to go into detail about it.

Everyone ready? Let’s chat.

The Enhanced Horror system is an opt-in feature within the game that allows the game to listen to and record the player’s voices as they play. If you are lucky, or unlucky depending on how you look at things, someone will be listening. The Voices will respond to you. A voice that is not your friends will respond to your questions, give cryptic statements and encourage you to do their bidding – anything from being selfless, to taunting enemies. These Voices may reward you with story information or gameplay items in return for your services, with the interaction being shared with the greater community – so you can all try to decipher exactly what is going on within the town of Redacre. Whether this voice is actually real or just a creation of your mind, who can tell? Those with psychosis can attest to this, it seems real. That’s the problem.

How you choose to engage with this is up to you, but I think the more curious amongst you will be keen to collect as much information as possible. After all, how often do you get to talk to a deity like creature and have it respond? Anyways, I think The Blackout Club is a game that people should check out, especially if you aren’t great with solo horror! Why not terrify your friends at the same time, so you can all suffer together!

Don’t look back. If we look back we are lost.

So, I am at EGX this week (Wednesday to Sunday) meeting with various lovely developers about their games, so there will be a lot of content coming out over the next few weeks. If you’d like to keep up to date with all I’m doing at EGX, then go follow my Twitter – https://twitter.com/OurMindGames . I’ll be posting updates and pictures from the show as much as I can! Remember to follow, like and comment on the site.

Also, I just wanted to say this on here as well. As of a few days ago, we hit over 1,000 views on the site. We also hit our six-month anniversary. I am beyond humbled and amazed at the kindness of all of you, my marvellous readers. Your comments, suggestions and feedback on everything I do is why I keep writing and exploring these sometimes-heavy topics with you. Here’s to even more milestones.

Thanks,

CaitlinRC.