Month: October 2012

Eric Swain Critical Responses

October ’12 Round Table Entry – Thinking on Horror

It’s the end of the month and that means it’s time for BoRT. Being October, this month’s topic suitably fits the season, Fear and Loathing in Game Spaces: “Since their inception, games have explored that most primal of human emotions: fear. Whether it’s shambling zombies, ghosts, relentless killers or arachnophobia, we’ve never been short of scares. Some can’t stand horror games, while others thrive on them. Are games uniquely suited to instil fear in the player, beyond a film or a Stephen King novel? | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Dead Space’: The Frightening, the Dauntless and the Meh

My weekly post on PopMatters is up. This week in horror month I wrote on Dead Space. It went up a day late, because I posted it in the back end a little later than usual and it was missed until late afternoon. And it was late because I was actually still playing Dead Space early on Tuesday morning. Friends on the weekend and the Monday Presidential Debate cut into my play time. Pretty much everything I have to say on the game is in that post. There really isn’t anything extra. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Horror is Knowledge: The Presentation of Fear in ‘Call of Cthulhu’

I’ve moved on the Lovecraft this week. Few horror games get you right off the bat. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth manages to do just that. I play these games on the lookout for something to talk about. Thankfully I only booted the game up for about a minute when the Warning symbol gave me the perfect jumping off point. I knew the game would screw with me with the visual and audio because that is what Lovecraft inspired video games do. I didn’t expect for the game to warn me about it ahead of time. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Haunting of ‘Dear Esther’

I finally get around to writing about Dear Esther, one game in a long list of my to write about backlog. It is a little difficult talking about a game so late that so many others have already discussed. But few seem to have written about the content of the game rather than if it is a video game or not. I figured I would write about it for October, because it is a ghost story. However, in trying to parse through the game’s meaning I felt stuck on what to say about it. So, I went and played it again. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Fear is Gone: Reconsidering the ‘Left 4 Dead’ Series

It’s October and so begins a month talking about horror games.  It seems only fitting. First up are the Left 4 Dead series. Always one to be oh so punctual, I was looking over the list of horror games or at least games with tangentially connected horror elements and for some reason couldn’t find an angle to write about any of them. I have three or four false starts hanging around in word documents. But in thinking about Left 4 Dead I reminisced on my changing attitude to the game over time. | more