THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN: THIRTEEN TERRIFYING VIDEO GAME MOMENTS

​It's that time of the year once again. Fans of the original Thirteen for Halloween might have noticed a peculiar absence of the series last year. For that, you have my deepest apologies: life et al conspired to distract me from this most essential and significant of tasks, but, rest assured, its resurrection shall be fittingly epic and distressing.
 
So, to this year's subject: we're going to be taking a look at those isolated moments within video games that have, in the internet age, become nigh legendary for their ability to unsettle, distress and disturb. Just as mainstream culture is saturated with imagery from horror cinema and literature that are so familiar, even people who have never read the books or seen the films are aware of them to some degree (largely thaks to the frequency with which they are referenced or parodied), so too have certain moments in video games become enshrined within the ever-swelling, shifting chaos of our digital collective consciousness.
 
On the other hand, some are far more personal, more intimate: moments that elicit a less definable degree of reaction, that were perhaps never intended to be distressing at all, yet that manage to be so owing to the crudity of their rendering, some happy accident in design or implementation.
 
For the first entry in this series, let's take a look at one we're likely all familiar with, and is peculiarly resonant right now, given that the game's reimagining is due to be released some time in 2019: 

Resident Evil 2: The Introduction of The Licker 

 
You all know this moment. At least, those of you that were old enough to experience the transition from 2D, 16-bit home consoles to the gloriously experimental days of early 3D and 32-bit do:
 
Resident Evil 2 is chock full of distressing, gory, shocking and hideous moments (as well as more B-movie, bleak horror-comedy and pastiche than you can shake a severed limb at), but one of the earliest that genuinely unsettled players occurs very early in the game:
 
Having escaped the zombie-infested desolation of Racoon City's streets and suburbs, the player finds themselves barricaded in the local police station, an incongruously gothic structure that distressingly echoes the design and décor of the original game's Arklay Manor. 
 
Whilst the route by which we come to it is different depending on the character in play (Clare Redfield or Leon Kennedy), the player will eventually find themselves in an eerily quiet, claustrophobic corridor with a darkened window at one end.
 
There are no cut scenes at this point, no orchestra stings or signifying music: the game just lets the player progress down the corridor as and how they wish.
 
Then you see it:
 
Too quick to know quite what it is: something moving past the window, crawling over it like an immense spider, but whose flayed, red form contrasts wildly with the comparatively sterile, colourless environment.
 
It comes and goes so quickly, the player is left in some confusion as to whether they saw anything at all, and precisely what it was, even if they trust the testimony of their eyes.
 
This is an example of the quiet, suggestive horror the otherwise B-movie, “big scare” laden series consists of does occasionally boast: the fact that the player now knows there's something outside the building, something beyond the zombies that might be numerous but currently can't get in, something with the capacity to scale the outer walls of the police station and that moves in a distressing, arachnid fashion, is uniquely distressing. From that moment on, the player is on tenterhooks, waiting for the inevitable encounter.
 
But the game is too clever to throw it at you immediately, to have a window smash and the beast hurl itself through.
 
Oh no: the game lets you progress in relative safety and silence for a while, building up the verisimilitude of the police station with tiled corridors, notice-board tacked walls, briefing rooms and supply closets, until you come to a corridor that turns sharpely right at the end, again, the silence, the lack of music, presaging something, though the player doesn't yet know what.
 
Progressing down the corridor (cautiously, if you're a horror fan, because you're wise to the beats and rhythms of horror fiction), the only sound occurs in the form of an ominous, sticky, drip-drip-drip. 

That's the point at which you know. You know the creature is inside the building, you know it's close, and that it's just a matter of waiting for the game to reveal it to you.
 
That reveal comes when you turn into the adjacent corridor: the game shifts to a cut scene, the player character bending down to examine a puddle of blood dripping onto the floor.
 
Then, a tormented, breathless hiss.
 
Cut to an FMV sequence, in which the character looks up to find the creature splayed out across the ceiling:
 
A far cry from the zombies they've thus far encountered, this thing looks more like a reject from a Hellraiser project: an almost boneless, lizard-like entity, limbs splayed out, bony talons grappling onto pipes and beams, the creature looks tormented, its skinless body a bundle of raw nerves and muscle, its exposed spine undulating. From its head erupts a mass of brain matter, too vast for its skull to contain. From its lipless, toothy mouth emerges an obscenely long, reptilian tongue.
 
Cut back to the game engine in which the creature that fans would come to know as The Licker drops down directly in front of the character, writhing low against the floor, hissing and chittering.
 
Whilst not fantastically dangerous, the Licker, like many of the monsters and encounters in the game, is designed to make the player panic, to have them flail around wildly, wasting ammunition, trying to retreat whilst the licker assaults them with its tongue and claws.
 
Given its framing, this was hardly an uncommon occurrence, back in the day, before the moment became crystallised in video game horror lore as one of the most effective “creature reveals” in Survival Horror's history.
 
I certainly recall firing wildly with my shotgun when the thing first dropped from the ceiling, attempting to retreat as the thing lashed at my back and ankles, before it leapt and severed my head from my shoulders (one of several uniquely unpleasant death animations that can occur as a result of murder-by-Licker).
 
Later on, the game introduces evolutions of the creature that have congealed, black skin, more swollen brains and fused, crab-like claws. Whilst more dangerous, these entities aren't anywhere near as horrifying as this skinless, pupating specimen, the subtle introduction to which has ensured its place amongst horror video gaming's most distressing moments.
 
Concerning the Resi 2 remake, some fleeting video footage of this very sequence has recently been released. Whilst the Licker looks absolutely amazing rendered in PS4 graphics, in order for it to be as effective, the framing and build up of the creature is going to have to be as witty, as subtle, as quiet, but also somewhat removed from what we know in order for it to work. 

​ 
It's a monumental task that the developers have set for themselves: to create a game that simultaneously references the original enough to make it resonate with that inspiration but also sufficiently removed that the horror isn't too familiar.
 
Time will tell whether or not they succeed, and if we'll be here the same time next year, discussing the same sequence in updated form.