In a brief new teaser for the spooky sci-fi indie Stasis, we get to watch its lead character, John, kill himself by ventilating his abdomen with a shard of glass, Seppuku style. I’ve spent enough time with early prototypes of the game to appreciate the value of such a feature, which injects some guilt into the all-too-familiar act of giving up.
Knowing I have this option for when I need it may motivate me to keep John alive, in spite of my morbid desire to see all of the death animations. I can, and do, blame games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space for making death an awesome thing to behold. When you’ve seen Leon take a chainsaw to the neck or watched as a helpless Isaac gets zombiefied by a creature that more or less resembles the creepy head spider form of The Thing, you begin to develop a taste for it.
I should probably be worried about the celebratory relationship that horror games have with death — and non-horror too, as explored by the likes of Dark Souls and Gears of War — or how frighteningly appealing that kind of thing is to me.
I’ll put a pin in that for now, because I’m too distracted by how cool it’d be if Dead Space let me reenact that glorious impalement death from Jason X, with a Marker in the place of a man-sized floor screw. That scene wasn’t as memorable as the one where Jason transformed two topless holograms into bludgeoning tools, but I can’t picture a situation in which a Necromorph could keep Isaac inside a sleeping bag long enough to do much with him.
Stasis releases later this year on PC. You can pre-order the game on its official website.
