Rois Athyrrei
Elesa's #1 Fan
Feels good to be doing this again <3.
For this lil edition I'm gunna go into the present. We all know viral and indie games are becoming the 'in' thing within the realm of gaming. Fact is it's not long before another young mind creates a video game randomly and ends up mega famous online for it. I'm taking a little look at one which is recent as heck and is majorly gaining popularity.
SLENDER follows from the Slenderman Mythos, taking a leaf from MarbleHornets and TribeTwelve in it's depiction. The game's objective is deceivingly simple, You're in the woods with nothing but a torch and you have to find 8 pages before the Slenderman catches you. Now, to quote Yahtzee;
"There are 3 kinds of Horror games, the first kind is where your in a dark room and a man in a mask jumps out of a closet going 'A bloogie Woogie Woo', that's your Doom 3. The second is when you're in a dark room looking at a closet and you know the man in the mask is right behind you and you don't want to turn around and look at him in fear he'll shove his cock in your eye, that's your Silent Hill 2. The third is when you're in a brightly lit room and the man in the mask slowly walks up to you plucking a violin before slapping you in the face with a T-bone steak, that's your Dead Space. Y'see the second ones the best since the game is not doing much and it's your imagination doing all the work"
Basically, Slenderman falls into category 2. You don't get to see the slender **** until you're into the game a bit and mostly comfortable and in a false sense of security, it also has a nice feature of showing that when he is close the camera your character is holding gains static and he will be stood watching. But you soon find he loves to hide behind a corner and not let your camera pick up on that fact, Trust me it was a definite help and I will be playing the game as a constipation aide.
The game however falls down in it's graphics department, if it's not the fact it was done without proper optimization when they made it in 3DS max which can cause major lag even on the lowest settings on older systems it also makes the Slenderman less... scary when you get up close, it just looks a bit Cut and Paste. But the sheer fact if you are close enough to do this you're likely to have your head ripped off and used as a tea cozy is a good way of the game hiding that fact. Plus the fact the game is really short does reflect it's viral and no-budget background. But, for a no-budget game it sure does scare you like **** better than the cash cow mainstream 'horror' games.
