This article originally ran under a different banner/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
GATHER ROUND, MY FOLLOWERS!!! GATHER ROUND!!! We are finally getting into the thick of October, meaning the scary games are coming out of the woodwork. I will admit, I initially planned on reviewing Project Warlock instead of a horror game. It is a two-and-a-half-dimensional shooter faithful to the Doom and Wolfenstein games. While it is competent as a 90’s shooter and adds to the formula by adding RPG upgrades and spells, it is just not grabbing me right now. Please check it out on GOG if you long for an old-school shooter. While I continue to play Project Warlock, I can’t ignore my desire to have my heart beating so loud it sounds like it is in my ears. I need some scares. Infliction just came out, Steam whispered, knowing I would take the bait. A PT inspired horror game? Oh Steam, you know me too well.
Infliction opens like many standard horror games. You, Gary, come home to your big empty house in the attempt to find your wife’s airplane tickets. You slowly explore the ominous still house, picking up objects, spinning them around, and even triggering voiceovers from Gary’s wife, Sarah. During this opening, I couldn’t help but notice how much detail was put into objects like CD and video cassette tapes. My hopes begin to grow. Will my hunger for an eerie horror experience finally be sated?
After exploring the house and finding a code for the art room, the game finally kicks off. After picking up the plane tickets, the door slams shut and a video of your wife being stabbed by a masked figure plays. You race through the halls of the house, doors slamming all around you, as you head to the garage. You get into the car and drive out of the house with a bruised and beaten Sarah chasing after you. You look down to see a mask and knife in your car and blood on your hands. Suddenly, you crash the car into a tree.
You awaken, lying on your side. Eyes flickering open. Flashlight lying at your side. My first thought was, wait a minute, didn’t PT open like this? Nevermind, I thought, let’s focus on the task at hand: finding a way to vanquish the spirit. Funny, the objective is in a text box in the corner when you have voicing acting for Sarah, but that’s just me nitpicking. I explore the house, find more notebooks giving backstory, and finally finding a mirror that took me to a reflection of the house with an open door to the basement. I venture down to find the remains of a cult ritual including a book that completes my objective. I turn around to find Sarah blocking the way upstairs. Her silhouette blackened by the lighting. I was unable to get a good glance at her before she ducks into the shadows. Creepy, I thought, probably need to sneak by her, but before I could take a step towards the door, Sarah jumps me and snaps my neck. I assumed I messed up sneaking by her, but before I could formulate a new plan, I awoke in the same room as before with a new objective. Oh no, I said aloud as my jaw dropped to the floor, I am playing a PT clone.
For those who aren’t as enthusiastic about horror games as I am, let me tell you a little bit about PT. PT was a “playable teaser” for a new Silent Hill game, directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro with famed actor Norman Reedus doing voice acting and motion capture for what appeared to be the main character of the game. The playable teaser took place over a looping hallway, that slowly pieced the backstory of the main character’s descent into madness while solving puzzles along the way. Each time you enter the hallway, something would change. It could be something as subtle as the radio saying something strange or as different as the chandelier being replaced with a swinging refrigerator dripping blood.
With the internet collaborating together on the playable teaser’s secret, the game was finally cracked and the trailer confirming PT was a teaser for the new Silent Hill game. Unfortunately, due to a falling out between Kojima and the publisher Konami, the teaser was pulled from the PlayStation store, Silent Hill was canceled, Kojima was fired and Konami continued turning their licenses into glorified gambling machines known as Pachinko machines. The only way to experience PT now is to watch YouTube videos or get your hand on a PlayStation 4 that has the teaser on the hard drive.
Now I am sure your thinking: DOOMSAYER, SURELY YOU MUST BE HAPPY TO HAVE A CLONE WHEN YOU CAN’T GET THE REAL THING. Well, my followers, I can see why you would think that, but Infliction makes many mistakes that PT was able to avoid. For starters, as I mentioned before, Infliction will have Sarah kill you most of the time you complete an objective. This creates two issues for me. First, it makes it hard to tell if Sarah killing you is progressing to the next section of the game or killing you is suppose to signify a failure state. Whether you are failing or progressing, the screen will have blood texture along the side, making it impossible to tell if you’re doing what the game wanted. Sarah’s constant exposure while progressing and failing, feels like it is taking a page out of the Layers of Fear’s playbook which does it no favors. Layers of Fear also confused player by having the monster kill you while progressing through the story. Just like in Layers of Fear, the constant exposure to Sarah makes her less terrifying as the game goes on. Towards the end of the game, I was just rolling my eyes as Sarah screamed in my face with green goo oozing from her mouth. PT’s monster, Lisa, was much more effective because she lurked in the shadows and only attacked once or twice. More often than not, the player in PT would have to walk closer to Lisa, only for the light to go out and she disappeared. Much more effective at building tension than having Sarah constantly drool on you.
She is especially not scary after this one hallway, I deemed the hallway of hell. I have to get down to the end of the hallway, but Sarah is blocking my path. I have a camera that is used to solve puzzles and can harm Sarah. Unfortunately, taking her picture does cause her to vanish, but she will immediately respawn in one of the nearby rooms in the hallway. Numerous times, I took her picture only to have her walk out of a door next to me. She would immediately attack before I could get out the camera, leaving me staring at her face before getting kicked back to the start of the hallway. A game that seems to be slow-paced, since it lacks a sprint feature and camera that requires you to shake the photo for it to develop, seems ill-equipped for the famed monster chase scene similar to games like Outlast. While PT threw you into a never-ending hallway, it never killed you over and over again in such a sadistic manner.
I find it very ironic and a bit fitting that I played both Infliction and Project Warlock this week. Infliction wants so desperately to be PT, it even has a young baby boy who repeats a line similar to the famed “Dad was such a drag” line from PT. The only difference being they substitute drag with a drunk. Infliction constantly repeating “Dad was such a drunk” feels similar to a young brother trying to quote his cooler older brother. A “we can be PT too” attitude is thicker in the atmosphere they try to imitate and my Darksiders review should let you know what I think of clones. While Project Warlock does seem similar to Doom and Wolfenstein, it never feels like a genuine clone. It feels like it wants to be home in the ’90s. Ironically, after beating Infliction, I immediately booted up Project Warlock to play a few levels and frankly, had more fun with Project Warlock than I did Infliction. Keeping with the Zelda clone analogy, if Infliction is similar to Darksiders, then Project Warlock is similar to Dark Souls. Heavily inspired by older titles, but builds upon them, rather than try to wear the mask of those older titles. If you truly want nothing more than a quick PT fix, then sure Infliction can do a pretty good job, but if you want something a little more original, then give Project Warlock a try. You just might be surprised like I was.