Editorials
More Horror Games Should Make Combat Fun
Horror games have always had a damaged relationship with combat. For the longest time, developers would purposefully design weak characters who weren’t particularly capable of defending themselves. The reasoning was that it would heighten the suspense, and for a long time, it did. Silent Hill would be nigh unrecognizable if Harry had been able to clear those foggy streets of monsters with nothing but a crowbar and a radio, the latter of which I assume he’d use as a backup in case he broke his crowbar on the skull of a wandering Grey Child.
I’ll admit that sounds like a good time, but it doesn’t sound very scary.
Without a constant threat of a horrific death looming over you, many of the carefully constructed scary stuff falls apart. This is the difference between Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 6. Both games feature a number of weapons that are capable of dealing varying degrees of pain so we can use these weapons to rid entire cities of their undead problems.
My point is you should never have a rocket launcher in a horror game, unless you had to beat that game on the hardest difficulty with a limited number of lives. The foam finger from Dead Space 2 is only acceptable because you had to dive into hell to get it, then successfully climb out with it. In other words, you had to earn it.
When I play a horror game, I’m usually doing it for the adrenaline rush. I love the spooky atmosphere, the monsters and the gore, but the challenge these games offer is unique to the genre. It’s one of the things that makes playing classic survival horror games so rewarding, because you leave it feeling like you accomplished something. It’s like you passed a really geeky test where the reward is even more gaming.
It’s also fragile. That unsteady balance can be lost if I accrue enough weapons that I start to unconsciously assume the role of the hunter.
I could use Resident Evil as an example of how to do combat correctly, as well as how to get it so unbelievably wrong, and then how to fix that and get it right again, only to get it wrong one more time, then maybe get it right one last time, etc. This series has spent the last two decades hopping all over the damn place. The original plays entirely unlike its remake, which feels like a completely different game when compared to Resident Evil 4, and that game shows little resemblance to Revelations — I could go on.
Despite their stumbles, I’ve always admired Capcom’s willingness to introduce changes to Resident Evil in order to keep it from feeling like the rickety old horror franchise it actually is. They haven’t always been successful in that endeavor, but I can respect them for trying when so many developers have proven content with letting their games gradually wither away.
Modern horror games are under more pressure now than they ever have to find unique takes on combat. Dead Space introduced us to the concept of “strategic dismemberment” — a term I’ll never get sick of using — Condemned took getting up close and personal to a whole new level with its melee-based combat, and Alan Wake pitted us against enemies that used darkness itself as an impenetrable shield.
When it comes to the few horror games that have successfully elevated the situations that involve combat without sacrificing the scare factor, these are the titles that first come to mind.
Among them, Alan Wake stands out. The weapons Wake uses to vanquish evil are literal weapons of light: Flashlights, flares, bigger flashlights, light grenades — or wait, that was Blade II, wasn’t it? — and even the odd concert stadium that’s armed with potentially deadly pyrotechnics and absolutely no supervision. Guns still play a pivotal role in the combat, but they’ve been elevated by the scary stuff, which has been woven into the design of the game to make it more interesting.
Very few horror games have been genuinely frightening while at the same time offering a creative twist on the combat, and considerably fewer manage to accomplish this by cleverly forming a symbiotic relationship between the two seemingly disparate elements.
All of the above is my incredibly long-winded way of trying to explain why the folks at Remedy are worthy of our admiration, because they can leave this invisible box that limits so many of our imaginations. More than that, they can find strange and creative ideas outside this box, which they find inventive ways to bring over here so the rest of us can appreciate them. Thanks, Remedy.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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