The Gothtober 2021 event on my YouTube channel for the entirety of October of this year (it will definitely be a yearly streaming thing from now on) has done me good. As you may already know, I am really, really bad at horror games these days. I just couldn't stand them because they tend to be too scary for me. I used to be able to tolerate horror games. As a matter of fact, I remember playing the first Silent Hill alone, at night in my small apartment during my undergraduate years. I can still recall how thrilling the game was because it was very scary. Fear used to be an actual flavor, not an unwanted side effect.
Maybe one day I will feel comfortable enough to share the personal trauma that had lead to my inability to handle horror games but I can say that my commitment to Gothtober is certainly showing me a path to my salvation. I have completed two games so far: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Observation. Sure, the latter is a quite tame but RE7 is easily one of the scariest horror games I have ever played, thanks to its claustrophobic and realistic first person perspective, disturbing villains, and of course, real nasty jump scares. The game also never let up on the intensity of the horror and dread all the way to the very end. The fact that I actually finished this game is a miracle - after the first scary moment in a horror game, I would normally freeze up and then quit the game, promising to return someday but I know that forcing myself into a commitment is certainly the key to my success here. The experience has taught me a very valuable lesson however: that I am still capable of surviving through a horror game. It felt so good to beat RE7 even though for the most part, the thrill was still missing compared to the absolute, truly horrific shrills found within.
Jump scares are cheap and they are just horrible.
I know it's just a matter of time before I can normalize horror games again. This Gothtober event is an exercise for me to actually search for the very essence of fear and examine it closely... Not to exorcise it, but to embrace it as something that is sought after instead. I know it's easy for me to say that now but I know I wouldn't be thinking the same thing the next time I play a horror game and I find myself in a dark room with something lurking just around the corner. I am optimistic that I will be able to convince myself to keep moving forward when I find myself in that situation however. I mean, nothing could be worse than those Marguerite Baker jump scares in RE7, right?
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