Gaming’s House of Halloween Horror: Lone Survivor

Even the least observant Egoreaders have probably noticed that it's October by now (it's been a week, after all, you must have sobered up for a minute or two in all that time). It's a month named after the Latin word for eight, it being the eighth month in the original Roman calendar. But those mad bastards with their manly toga-dresses and relentless 24 hour food and sex orgies are all dead, so will probably excuse us for moving October to the tenth position.

Today, October is known by many as the month of Jack-o-lanterns, trick or treating and general bowel-loosening, nut-numbing terror. It's the month for sending our offspring to strangers' homes to demand candy, behavior it might be wise to discourage during the rest of the year. Most importantly, though, October is a time to revisit all manner of horror-themed video games. But which are good --or shit-tacular-- enough to warrant a place in Gaming'sHouse of Halloween Horror? Buckle up, flex your reading muscle, and you'll find out.

The first video game we're thrusting into your eager eyeballs is Lone Survivor, an indie survival horror romp from Jasper Byrne and Superflat Games. This budget release hit PC last year, before being resurrected late last month for PS3 and Vita as Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut.

The first thing you'll notice from these less-than-sexy screenshots is the minimalist art style. It's deeply, deeply retro, which complements the stubbornly dated (yet effective) survival horror mechanics. It looks and feels a little like playing the original Resident Evil through a pocket calculator from 1976. We imagine.

But to business. Lone Survivor is the harrowing tale of player character ‘Anonymous Dude In Surgical Mask.' In the game, he is referred to only as ‘You,' and is besieged in his apartment block by an array of lumpen flesh-beasts from the depths of the devil's ass. The unknown epidemic that transformed everybody else into these things occurred some time before the events of the game, and we don't know how long ‘You' has been shuffling about these dark corridors. All we know is, he's making one last balls-out attempt to make sense of this nightmare, or get eaten in the face trying.

The control system is as simple as you'd expect from such a retro throwback. You (that's 'You,' not you. Although 'You' does also mean you in this instance. If you follow us) can walk from left to right --or indeed, right to left-- across the environments, open doors and fire a craptastic pistol.

We're underselling Lone Survivor somewhat. There's a lot of old style inventory-flailing to be done, and backtracking to your safehouse to sleep can be wearisome. But even so, this is an enigmatic and quite haunting experience. Our protagonist will hallucinate (resulting in some Dead Space-esque scenes), meet odd ghostly NPCs who may or may not be figments of his imagination, and unnerve us with the contents of his own journal. It's quite a short game, but one in which your own actions will transform your passage through. It's ripe for replays.

You can opt to stockpile various types of food and be ‘healthy,' or go for the quick fix by surviving on mysterious colored pills. As you can surely imagine, this will do little for your mental state, and will result in all kinds of bizarre and fascinating cutscenes and visions. You can also be as trigger happy (scarce ammo supplies permitting) or otherwise as you wish. The hell-things you encounter can be distracted by dropping a tasty piece of rotten meat, allowing you to sneak past in carefully-placed shadowy alcoves while it feasts. Being conservative in this way will surely help.

Such decisions will result in one of the game's alternative endings, with a little scene at the end demonstrating how your actions throughout influenced the outcome.

All in all, Lone Survivor is oddly compelling, and really quite creepy. An intro screen suggesting you insert headphones and even disable the merry little ‘ping' of trophy notifications shows how serious the game is about producing that atmosphere, and it does a fine job.

Source of images: everyeye.