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by Jeff Strand October 25, 2002

The Seriously Whacked Point of View "Horror Movie Adventure Games That We Desperately Need" by Jeff Strand

Since Halloween is almost upon us, I thought this was an appropriate time to discuss the variety of horror-related gaming choices out there. Now, when I say "horror," I'm not talking about blood-and-guts stuff like Doom; I'm talking about blood-and-guts stuff like Quake. Or maybe Leisure Suit Larry 7, which has some images of Larry that will haunt me until my dying day.

It's tough to pick the best horror game ever made. There are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration, including...oh, no, wait, the best horror game ever made is Sanitarium. Sanitarium rocks. In fact, I wish I were playing Sanitarium instead of writing this column. Anyway, that takes care of that discussion, so let's move on.

Do you know what we need? We need an adventure game based on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not some stupid game where you're running around chainsawing people into pixels, but an actual adventure game where you're stuck in that freaky house with the bone furniture and the chickens hanging in cages and must find a way to put a stop to the wicked family's barbecue barbarism once and for all!

And why don't we have a Dawn of the Dead adventure game? C'mon, you've got an entire mall full of locations...inventory items galore! The zombies move slowly, so we wouldn't have to discriminate against players with old computer systems. Sure, the game designers would have to barricade the doors to keep out the bozos in upper management who were insisting that they throw in some zombie-shootin' arcade sequences, but it would be a huge hit.

What about The Blob? You'd buy an adventure game based on The Blob, wouldn't you? Heck yeah you would. You'd the first person in line. Don't try to act like you wouldn't.

I don't know about a game based on The Exorcist. One time I set up my computer so that when you exited Windows, it played those scary demon voices that they recorded in the movie when Regan spoke backwards, and my wife decided to be helpful and shut down my computer because a storm was coming, and...uh, let's just say that I don't have any more Exorcist .wav files on my machine.

But why isn't there an adventure game based on May? May is the best movie I've seen all year. It hasn't even been officially released yet, but I saw it at a film festival while the rest of the nation was watching Scooby Doo. (I realize that somebody who is proposing an adventure game based on The Blob should not be mocking the tastes of others, but c'mon, Scooby Doo? Pretty soon we'll have a live-action Schoolhouse Rocks movie with a computer-generated bill.)

Actually, May would make a lousy adventure game, now that I think of it, but it's still one of the best horror films and dark comedies I've ever seen. It's sort of like this column in movie form. [Note to the filmmakers who worked long and hard on the motion picture "May" and deserve far better than to have some smart-ass humor columnist ruin their chances for commercial success by spreading lawsuit-worthy rumors like "It's sort of like this column in movie form": I was only kidding.]

Here's how much I liked May. You know how normally around this time in my column I'll shamelessly promote one of my novels in such a way that it sounds like I'm making a big joke out of it but inside I'm secretly thinking "If they don't buy my book I'll know they don't love me and I'll just sit in a corner and softly weep"? This time I'm going to direct you to the May website instead:

http://www.golittlerecords.com/mayover.html

Though I already said that May probably wouldn't successfully make the transition from really sick movie to really sick adventure game, what if they did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, and an important inventory item was a DVD edition of May? It could be instrumental in Leatherface's defeat! You could...you know, throw it at him or something.

Okay, maybe not. But what about an adventure game based on Basket Case, the movie where the guy carries his deformed twin brother around in a large basket? If he's going to be carrying around this basket anyway, he might as well put some inventory items in there and solve some puzzles, right? Or The Pit, where this kid has a teddy bear that talks to him, but whenever it does he turns its face away from the camera so that we the audience can't tell that the teddy bear isn't moving its lips, but in one horrifying moment that chills me to the very marrow of my bones, it moves its head all by itself! I'm not sure exactly how that would transition to an adventure game, but it's certainly worth taking into consideration.

Well, I could go on and on, but the official memo given to me by Just Adventure management has requested that I not. I'd like to wish everybody a happy and safe Halloween season, and if you're of the appropriate trick-or-treating age, stick candy corn on your teeth like vampire fangs for me, okay?

You can visit Jeff Strand's Seriously Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com/.