Busy Days

Whoa. Those days were pretty busy as the title says, obviously.

I managed to finish writing a short story for a local writing competition that’s due to August 31st. And now I have to draw a few things for some people. But what’s more important is that, last Sunday, my boyfriend and I played Slender. And two days ago, my brother and I finished playing Amnesia. It took us a few hours divided between an afternoon and a morning.

There had been several sites and discussions going on about which is better: Slender or Amnesia.

Well, I’ve played both. So I managed to take a side in this whole debate. A winning side, really.

Slender Game

I started, as I said, with Slender at first. Slender is – briefly – a game consisted of one level and one simple objective. Collect 8 pages scattered across the forest, but be careful, you should avoid Slender-man.

The 8 pages are always hidden in different places, you can never memorize the places of where they’d been hidden. It’s a 1st person POV game. Some say you’re a little kid, some say you’re a fat person, and others say you’re a woman. Whoever the protagonist you’re controlling is, you are only armed with a flashlight, nothing else. And to add more tension, the battery can die any minute, and of course, it’s nighttime. You start walking in the forest enclosed by fences and which has a few significant places like abandoned bathrooms, a tunnel, a truck, giant tankers, another single tanker, a trailer and a truck located beside each other, huge rocks, cross walls, a Silo, and of course trees scattered everywhere. You can turn the flashlight off whenever you want in order to conserve the battery, but it’s hard to do that when you can barely see anything. You can sprint but only for a certain amount of time before you get tired.

Slender Map (8 pages are the ones drawn on the left)

As you can see, in each page, there is a message regarding Slender-man, and after a certain period of time, in case the player fails to collect a page, or each time the player manages to collect a new page, Slender-man starts to appear more frequently and his aim to catch you becomes more urgent.

For those of you who don’t know, or have a very vague idea about Slender-man, he is a mythical creature that’s often described as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and has no features – only a blank face. According to the legend, his arms may be shortened or extended according to his preference. In addition to that, he has tall tentacles sticking out of his back. Slender-man is said to cause paranoia, insomnia, memory lose, and even coughing fits which are known by the name “slendersickness”. Similar to the myth and the game, Slender-man can teleport. That’s why, in the game, when you look behind you, you may see him watching you from afar, but when you look again, he would be gone. That’s when you should be afraid that he might just sneak up on you from anywhere.

According to what I read, On June 8th, 2009, Something Awful Forums (SA) launched a “Paranormal Pictures” photoshop contest. The idea of the contest was to take any ordinary photograph and add a paranormal element to it. Many people started adding ghosts, and other anomalies, etc. On June 10th, Victor Surge posted two black and white photographs in the thread showing  numerous children being watched/stalked by Slender-man in the background. From then on, what has been known about Slender-man is that he hunts down children.

In the game, Slender man looks like this:

Slenderman

The game starts as being scary and creepy, but eventually you get used to it. It actually becomes a bit boring because you can’t save or even pause the game. If you press Esc, all you can do after that is exit the whole game or restart. And then you have to start collecting the pages from 0.

*****

Now, for Amnesia,

Amnesia is a horror game in which the protagonist is called Daniel, a young man from London. At the beginning of the  game, Daniel wakes up in some kind of dark hall in Brennenburg castle, with no memories – he only remembers his own name. Going a little bit deeper into the game, the events kick off right after Daniel finds a note that he had written before to himself. Basically, the game is all about accomplishing several things on the way to reaching a Baron called Alexander. On his way, he encounters lots of monsters and puzzles, etc.

The lantern has a conserved amount of oil in it, but contrary to Slender, you can always refill it when you pick up oil bottles from around the castle, or even light the hallway’s candles and torches using tinderboxes that you also collect while playing.

The awesome thing is that you have to pay attention to your protagonist’s sanity. It goes from “crystal clear” to “slight headache”, and from there to “head pounding and hands shaking”, and when you get to the “…” phase, then you should really pay attention, because death follows this stage. Darkness also drains your sanity slowly, so you have to be aware when you hide in the shadows in attempt to escape the monsters.

I very much liked the idea of having two endings, the normal ending and the good ending, and you choose which one you want to go for depending on what you do. I can’t possibly explain this aspect of the game without giving out many spoilers and probably ruin the whole thing for those who still didn’t play it.

The great thing is that there is a section in the menu in this game called “custom stories”. If you click on it, you’ll find that it’s empty, only to be filled with zipped files that you can download from the Internet. It’s like little separate stories that you can play, and each has its own aims and missions, etc. It’s independent from the actual game, but they are very enjoyable in a scary way indeed.

There is also a sequel to this game, called Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, that’s going to be released sometime in 2013.

*****

Personally, I enjoyed playing Amnesia more than Slender. As I may have mentioned up, both are awesome games, but Slender gets boring eventually because it’s the same thing being repeated over and over again especially that there is no save button, which may frustrate the player eventually. Amnesia, on the other hand, is pretty cool because you actually solve puzzles. You have to think and know how to use the provided utensils, and all that.

Anyone who has played that game, feel free to share your opinions via comments.

[If I get no comments, I’ll just delete this last part about sharing thoughts so that I don’t come out as a stupid girl whom no one cares to listen to. *nervous laugh*]

~ by Núr on August 19, 2012.