Tag: psychology

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.

Found Phone Games – Tech NO logy

As of writing this article, I am nearing my final month at university. By the time this lockdown is lifted, I will have completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science. A terrifying concept, I know. Though after three years of study and a metric ton of coursework assignments, I still get asked the same few questions. If I had a pound for every time, I was asked one of the following questions, I would not have needed a student loan to fund my degree. What are these questions? Well:

  1. Can you set up my printer/fix my laptop/other tech support tasks (I could but I do not want to)
  2. Will computers and robots take over the world? (Only if we are stupid)
  3. Are you a hacker? Can you hack into *insert government agency here*? (No, that is illegal)
  4. Could you break into my devices and steal all my personal data? (Again, no, that is illegal)

It is this fourth question that I would like to linger on today. Growing up with technology, I have heard every story under the sun about how my online friends are a bunch of 55-year-old men hiding in bushes to spy on me. There are various TV shows dedicated to catfishing incidents and online dating horror stories, designed to act as a warning against sharing your personal information with strangers over the Internet.

Over the last couple of years, video games have started to imitate this trend. This is mostly done through games like Orwell (based on the 1984 novel) which make use of the “Big Brother” concept and found-phone games like Simulacra and Sara is Missing.

Now these games take a few liberties when it comes to what kind of information you can access on someone’s phone but ignoring those and the supernatural entities, a lot of the gameplay is accurate. Illegal, but accurate. The Computer Misuse Act (1990) forbids the unauthorised access of any individual to another’s devices that may contain personal data e.g. cell phones, laptops, secure workstations etc.

However, all that data on their social media posts, on their public blogs? That is open to the public. In the intelligence community, the investigation of this public information is known as Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). Many of us have an incredibly strong presence online, I know I do.

For example, if you went on my personal Twitter (@CaitlinRC), and read through my tweets, you would know that I am at university in Cardiff, studying computer science. You could learn my birthday, figure out my age, find pictures of me at conventions with friends, and so on. This is all public information.

It is a scary concept is not it? There are hundreds of databases that can be accessed by the public, with personal data. For example, take a car you walk past. If you know the licence plate, you can search the DVLA’s database and find the make/colour of the car. Sites like the way back machine allow you to view what a site looked like at a specific point in time, including any information that was deleted later.

These sources of information have been crucial in solving missing person cases. Heck, I have taken part in some OSINT competitions and although the investigations are confidential, it’s a nice thought that maybe some of the information that I found, could help reunite a family or bring closure to those who need it. Found phone games try to capture that feeling. It is like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces begin to fit, events form a coherent timeline and you get that sense of satisfaction as it all comes together (insert Kronk meme).

Studying the contents of someone’s phone is a surprisingly efficient way to understand the owner themselves. To some, it is just a “tool” or a “screen”, but to a lot of us it is a lifeline. For those stuck in bad situations, their phone can be an escape route. I have several games on my phone that I use to calm myself down when I am feeling anxious. My phone is how I talk to my family, my friends, especially in times like these. I feel connected. I feel in control.

Excusing my obvious nerdiness for all thing’s computer science, how we choose to communicate with those we care about, is so important. No text conversation is the same. No relationship is the same. No battle with mental health is the same.

And that is okay.

Remember that.

CaitlinRC