The Horror Genre in VR

Hello VR seekers,

VR seems to especially fire the imagination in some areas. To be frank, porn is one of them. No great surprise there I guess but this isn't something I'll be writing about at any time.

I mention porn, only because in the film world, I use that word with another entire movie genre, the horror movie!

Talking About Horror

The Thing - one of the all-time classics

I'm not a big fan of horror movies because I feel most movies are really horror porn. What I do mean? Well, I mean the plot is thin, the story is generally unbelievable and you get entire movies which are totally derived and only exist as a platform to try and scare or gross you out.

That's not to say there aren't good horror movies out there, but for me it is mainly restricted to some classics: Films like Alien and The Thing, these are movies that are really good in their own right and they just happen to scare or horrify as well. There are other movies I like as well, such as some of the old Hammer Horror movies, but they are so old that, from a point of view of causing scares, they are lame by today's standards. You don't watch the really old films any more because you want to be scared.

I find Nightmare on Elm Street is okay, but here we are already slipping back to the horror porn genre, with the likes of Hellraiser and Friday the 13th. The original Poltergeist is okay but it is an anomaly for me, there is something unique about that movie that turned it into the cult classic it is.

Why am I telling you all this? I want to give you the context for how I feel about horror in general because it's really important to understand where I am coming from when it comes to horror in VR.

Horror in VR

I must admit, I haven't tried a great deal, in particular I am still restricting myself to the free samples out there, but I do have an ambition to buy Resident Evil 7 VR when it hopefully comes to the PC in 2018 and that ambition is boosted by my experiences so far.. and that is coming from someone who is not a big fan of horror in general. You can probably start to sense where the rest of this blog post is going.....

So I tried the following 2 very short horror games, both available on Steam.

• The Abbot's Book
• The Bellows

The monk in The Abbot's Book

The Abbot's Book professes to be a snippet of a much larger 8 episode game, with a snippet of the 7th episode forming the demo. That's great, but there's precious little information about when the full game (or even episode 1) is going to come out, but that doesn't matter. The setting for the game is the role of an Italian aristocrat who owns an estate associated with a myth about an old evil God. In the demo you play said aristocrat as he is about to go down into catacombs that run under his estate, bringing with you some local monk who apparently believes none of it.

The Bellows doesn't really explain much about the setting. You wake up in a dark room and start off by looking out a window, which immediately gives you the impression you are in some kind of large building like a mansion. Then as you start creeping through the place you realise you are in what looks like an old asylum.

To be honest, the settings don't really make difference to my review. There are a lot of parallels between both games. Similarities are as follows.

• You are defenseless
• You are limited to moving around quite slowly
• Both games are very moodily lit with infrequent light sources and lots of dark corners

What are the differences?

• The Abbot's Book is a bit more sophisticated than The Bellows in that you have another character following you around, the monk. This character forms a typical mechanic in movies, which is the unbeliever or the innocent or ignorant party. He basically allows another person to explain to him what is going on, which of course fills in the viewer at the same time.
• The other cool addition to Abbot's Book is that it is actually your character that fills in the monk, you hear yourself talking to the monk, explaining things to him, and the game gives you the chance to tailor your replies with some simple options.
• Another difference between the 2 games is that The Abbot's Book relies on a slow-operating blink system for movement (i.e. teleportation) and The Bellows gives you free direct (and slow) movement.

So Where is This Going?

Fancy having a face-off with this fellow do you?

The 2 final similarities between the 2 games sum up my feelings on the Horror genre in VR.

Firstly, both of these games are filled with very old school tried cliches of horror. Things flying around on their own, dark corners with hints of movement, images appearing and then suddenly disappearing, things suddenly moving next to you with sudden sound effects designed to make you jump. Really, if you watching a movie rather than playing in VR, you'd be thinking this is tired old crap and turning it off.

So the second similarity, the VR experience turns the tired old cliches on the head, because you are actually there! Some of the mechanics are still quite tame, flying furniture gets old really quickly, but the slow moving around, the dark corners everywhere, the really odd sounds you hear behind you... These tired old cliches take new life in VR.....

Because you are right there in it all. There's no hiding behind the couch here, there's no respite from the suspense, that dark corner or room you can see, or rather can't see anything in? Yeah, you've got to walk into that. It's quiet different having a pitch black view on a TV then having pitch black all around you, whilst you are waiting for what happens next.

The biggest, BIGGEST frights I got, were the ones where you are being approached by a malevolent character. In one experience, there is a character you see throughout the game doing really horrible stuff, this character keeps appearing again and again, and at one stage he comes for you. You are there paralysed in fright whilst he moves purposely towards you. That one is quite the hair raiser. In the absolute biggest frightener however, there is a moment when this human-like figure with a mutant face jumps out from nowhere and right in your face, so you turn away and HE IS STILL RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU, YOU STEP AND LEAN BACK, REELING AWAY BUT HE IS STILL RIGHT THERE. Then he disappears and you breathe a massive sigh of relief. As someone who doesn't scare that easily, I have to say this one really got my heart racing.

Horror Movies and Horror VR - Not the Same!

So this is why the film review at the start was so important. When it comes to horror in the movies, a lot of it is plot-thin tired old cliches. In VR, however, none of that matters. It doesn't matter if you think you know what happens next, because it is you in this place, not some movie character on a screen.

I'm a VR horror believer. This is why I'm keen to try Resident Evil 7. This is why I'm now going to be looking at other horror VR experiences! If you have a VR headset and you haven't tried out these games yet, you need to do so or you are missing out.

Maybe don't try them if you have a heart condition though.