Top Steam Horror Games ON SALE NOW – PC Buyer’s Guide
Lone Survivor
Developed by Superflat Games
Produced by Curve Studios
Rated T for Teen
Lone Survivor is a zeitgeist nightmare. A survival horror crafting game with a hunger system, psychological narrative, and pixel graphics is something everyone that is up their own ass thinks they are good enough to finally get right. Even Keiichiro Toyama knew his limits, and he made Silent Hill. I reviewed this game before for a previous independent attempt at video game journalism, so let me break from my normal pattern of over-exposition and get right into why Lone Survivor is an overrated piece of trash.
Above all the gripes I have about the story or the gameplay or it being up its own ass, the biggest problem with Lone Survivor is that it is impossible to look at. I’m not saying the graphics are BAD, no one can say that about a pixel game now days without nerd girls the world over refusing to ever show them their deviant art/touch their cocks again. What I am saying is that the game was physically painful for me to look at. Like seriously, right now, look up a gameplay video, and try to tell me that the pixel coloration and text formatting does not send needles into your eyes. I don’t really give a shit how good a game is, if I physically cannot look at it without feeling pain, you have done a bad job. I do not care if it was part of the “artistic expression.” If an artist rapes me or punches me in the face to make an artistic point, they are a sociopath and their art is terrible (relevant link http://www.artlurker.com/2009/09/the-rape-tunnel-by-sheila-zareno/).
As for the gameplay, there’s not much to say about it. Its standard horror fare. You shoot things when you have ammo, avoid them when you don’t. Use lures to get enemies to move, and you find keys that open doors that have keys in them that open other doors. You come across a series of moral choices, that to the game’s credit are less moral choices than emergent gameplay decisions. Adopt a cat, help out a stranger, etc. Things are never given to you directly as bad or good, so kudos.
Except eating too much raw meat gives you a bad ending. The fuck is that bullshit? I get that uncooked meat feeds into your “primal and savage nature,” but isn’t this game supposed to take place during an apocalypse, real or imaginary? I’m sorry, but if you are going to get all high and mighty over me for eating raw cat ribs during the literal end of the world, you need to check your privilege.
There are a number of lugubrious gameplay barriers as well that don’t serve a meaningful purpose. If you want to open a can, you have to bring an opener back to your apartment. If you want to cook food, you have to get fuel for your stove. If you want to boil water, you have to go get water and a pot plus the fuel. Yes, I get it is realistic, but this isn’t Minecraft. I can’t just run off carefree into the environment, initially saddled with a goal, but inevitably overwhelmed by the need to explore and adventure. This is a game where if you don’t eat every 6 minutes, the wasting virus you have contracted gives your character the grumblies. Finding the materials to actually play the game to its full effect is a chore. I don’t mind games that make me collect things to upgrade my base, but to have to do so much scavenging for basic function is annoying.
As for the game’s much touted story, it feels like a Dan Brown novel written by a Silent Hill fanfiction author. If you could not figure out from the first 5 second that the entire world was a manifestation of the “nameless man’s” (protagonist) guilt, then this is the first work of human narrative fiction you have ever encountered. If you could not figure out that the man with a box on his head was a representation of yourself within the first 5 seconds, then you dropped your Cheetos during the opening cinematic and were too busy diving to the floor to scoop them up with your mouth to pay attention. If you think this plot is deep, then you are the problem with horror games, and why every “new” indie idea is just a rehash of Silent Hill 2
Let me give you a good example of why this game is a tainted mess. Here is the top rated review on steam “Never in my life, has a game siphoned my very core of hope and purity, yet given me so much to live for. This game is a must for horror fans, this game is purely amazing and has so many strong suites it’s amazing. I would play this more if my sanity wasn’t being drained every second by it’s impending horror.” (courtesy of CryX4) Wow CryX4, the game is so amazing that it is amazing? It gives you something to live for? It drains your sanity every second? No. No it does not. It is a video game. But this is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that horror fans have to put up with. Sure, I might make a joke about how a movie or game made me slice open a part of my body and remove it out of shame, but no one thinks that’s serious. I can imagine this person writing this review with a swelling in their heart, imagining themselves as the tortured game designer/protagonist, extolling the virtues of a project he has come to consider his child.
The whole project reeks of something the developer was too close to to look at objectively, and something everyone else too wishes was their baby to criticize. The game hurts your eyes, throws pointless moral binaries in your face, and makes you strain to accomplish the simplest tasks. If this were a mainstream title and didn’t ride its indie cred, it would be a totally forgotten mess that was lambasted as having too many ideas that were too poorly executed. Despite being released 2 years ago, it still demands 15 of your hard earned dollars, 7 and a half during its current sale. If you really feel like wasting your money on an overly self-important burden of a game, be my guest, but I honestly don’t understand why you wouldn’t just play Silent Hill 2 instead, which was not garbage and exactly what this game wanted to be.
2 out of 5
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
