I’m a Stephen King reader, and as such, the title of this post echoes on my mind.
Stephen King is the Edgar Allan Poe of our times. He has done for the horror literature of the last decades what Hitchcock did in his time. His books bring fear into the heart of the reader not because they describe gore or destruction, but because they are powerful. Powerful enough so that each time you finish reading about someone you think they are right in what they do, no matter if they are the good guy, the bad guy, or the desperate element of the bunch. The stories play like life, moving little elements around in small cities as if it is nothing more than an elaborate city journal. And when things start happening, it seems all too real, all too possible for the reader to stay immune.
If you wish to know more, get one of his books. I recommend IT, Needful Things, The Stand, Lisey’s Story, or one of his short stories anthologies for the start. Do not start with the Dark Tower series, this is no Harry Potter. And now, back to the point:
Zombies
As we all know, when the word ‘zombies’ is uttered, two things come to mind. To the common human “George Romero” is whispered within the mind, to the boomercharged human geek “Left 4 Dead” is shouted within the skull. And after all, is it not true that every campaign feels like a Romero movie?
You’re can see where I’m heading; after all, they even go to horror flicks together.
In the few hours that I’ve been able to play Left 4 Dead seriously (yes, because I like to play zombie-survival horror games also as just a game) due to my college schedule, I’ve almost finished the No Mercy Campaign (didn’t finished because the #$%@ server kicked me), and played just some bits of the others.
Except for Blood Harvest.
I started this campaign around 8 PM (5 PM for most of you Americans I believe). I wanted to play seriously, and as such my room was dark, my headphones were on and regulated, my mouse was set to a millimeter/flick precision and I was as comfortable and tense as it was possible.
And was it a game…
First off, let me say that it wasn’t a good game because it was on expert or we were all leet’s or pro’s or whatever anyone wants to call us (certainly we were none of those things). It was a good game though, because we were playing. We were really playing, like it’s done rarely nowadays, we were talking, fighting, aiding, living the game truly as if we were there. The concept of roleplay did not apply because we were them. I was as much Louis as I was ‘Drexer’, and each time I got hit, I almost leaped backwards, as if I was one of those kids that while playing a driving game have the reflex to lean in the direction they had to turn.
And as such, as I played, the atmosphere settled in.
Sometimes I found myself shooting a zombie while thinking things like what he or she was wearing, or what they had been doing when being transformed. I began to see them as truly human beings gone mad, not as obstacles that we had to pass through, but whose destruction was even so, a little bit repugnant.
The Cornfield
And then, suddenly, we reached a plaque which indicated a military property, and I looked into the horizon. Over the cornfield.
And a shiver went through my body.
It was in this moment that I understood why this game worked, and why it worked like Stephen King does. I remembered the story of “Children of the Corn”; that although the movie copied the outline, it did not copy the feeling. I remembered how I had felt about these kids, those monsters; who I couldn’t really say they were wrong, but who were nonetheless monsters too. This was the horrible way the story got into you, as it turned one of the most primal targets of affection of the human being into a monster that you can’t just despise because it has no certain fault of what it does.
Just like those zombies.
I swear, that cornfield was the hardest part of the game for me. Not in difficulty, because I lost little life, but in mind. When I hit the machine int he middle, for an instance my heart skipped a beat as I thought ‘That’s it, it’s now; we’re done for’, before I searched for a passage. And when I got out of there, it seemed almost as if an hour had been wasted in there.
Sometimes zombies came through the corn, and their faces to me were all too human, too real, too Children of the Corn for me to be calm. We even suffered an attack of the horde, and when that happened, I felt a almost irresistible urge to simply log off.
We finished the game well, although we had to repeat the last stage due to a mix of bad luck and bad decisions(I had to decide between saving myself or dying trying to save my three teammates as they told me to run away, and in the end, the honor the game had grown on me, talked higher). But it didn’t matter. To me the game had left its mark, and its experience before, as it proved its worth, as it showed why it was good and why some games can still grab a concept and work it as far as a Final fantasy storyline.
Because it had atmosphere.
Because it had detail.
Because it had humanity.
Because it had:
The Children of the Corn
And it was glorious.
