Misdirection and variety are key techniques the game utilises to either unsettle the player or lull them into a false sense of security. No two “scares” ever follow the same beats or patterns. No two moments in this game are ever quite alike.
Visage horror 1920x1080 tv#
Whereas most horror video game titles maintain a certain distance from the player, relying on the insulation of the TV screen and their own contrived natures to dilute whatever traumas they might inflict, Visage does away with that, creating an experience so immersive, so immediate, it's almost impossible not to be drawn into its hideous embrace, to become mesmerised by the various species and styles of horror it incorporates. The experience of Visage has to be engaged with directly to be fully understood whilst you might get a passing echo of the same dread and hideous tension by watching a “Let's Play,” direct engagement with the game is unlike any other experience in horror. A horror video game experience that, despite being inspired by a pre-existing product, is unlike any other an exercise in dread, tension and disturbia that genuinely makes the player reluctant to play it.
Visage horror 1920x1080 Ps4#
One of the key reasons to own a PS4 at that time had been taken away, and a game that promised so much to horror fans now had no hope in Hell of ever being born.įast forward a few years, and we have several attempts to recreate the tensions and horrors of PT from the independent market, most of which vary in quality, but rarely reach that exquisite point of absolute and abject dread that defines the experience.Īnother independent project, unabashed in its inspiration and intentions, but arguably the most complete, coherent and competent of any, it's arguable that this game is more effective than anything Konami could have ever produced, being unhampered by the pressures and expectations of mainstream markets, corporate vicissitudes etc.
![visage horror 1920x1080 visage horror 1920x1080](https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/screenshots/42720/20201114043307_1.jpg)
The disappointment, the abjection, following that announcement, was palpable. Then, of course, it got cancelled (because, as the saying goes: “ Konami is Konami and Konami is shit” - Jim Sterling). People bought PS4 consoles on the promise of this game's release alone. In order to understand the incredible ambition -and phenomenal success- that Visage represents in horror video gaming, one needs to examine PT a little more closely: dropping with the force of an atom bomb early in the Playstation 4's life, the “trailer” (which is essentially a small, self-contained game in itself) garnered incredible audiences thanks to its proliferation amongst Twitch streamers and “let's players,” for whom the trailer presented perfect fodder, given the overt shrieks and whimpers of dread it inspired.Īs a marker of how horror video games might potentially evolve in the then-new console generation, it represented a quantum leap subtle, ambiguous, deeply melancholic, the trailer seems to suggest a wander through a mind broken by trauma and past misdeeds, resulting in an escalatingly bleak and surreal waking nightmare, where nothing is certain, everything -from the most banal household items to simple doorways- seethes with threat and there is genuinely no way of predicting what might be waiting around the next corner (or, as has been discovered in the years since, what lingers behind the player).Ĭonflated by the raw furore of the gaming public upon discovery that it served as a trailer for a new Silent Hill game -a franchise that is canonical, almost gospel-like, in the annals of video game horror-, excitement could not be higher.
Visage horror 1920x1080 full#
Originally inspired by PT, the “Playable Trailer” released by Konami as a means of presaging the now-cancelled Silent Hills, Visage takes the situation, mechanics, tropes and atmosphere of that -comparatively short- piece and extends them into a full narrative. Visage stands not only as an encapsulation of pervasive anxieties, paranoias and despairs, but also as one of THOSE works that comes along maybe a handful of times in any given lifetime that utterly redefines the zeitgeist that makes works of a similar vein look as though their creators are asleep at the wheel. Literature, TV series, YouTube projects and video games have all had a hand in maintaining whatever collective sanity we might assume, the latter proving particularly fruitful (interestingly, several games I have either encountered or revisited reflect said circumstances in a manner that might be regarded as uncanny, not least of which the seminal Bloodborne and Pathologic 2 ). If nothing else, current global circumstances have been an excellent imperative for discovering new media.