SILENT HILL : THE ROOM : LA FAMILIARITÉ COMME SOURCE DE L’HORREUR

Je viens de terminer ma première traversée du jeu Silent Hill : The Room (Xbox, 2004) et je suis frustré. Oui, frustré puisque depuis quelques temps déjà j’accumulais dans un recoin de ma pensée des notes concernant mon jeu vidéo d’horreur idéal, et The Room me vole plusieurs de ces idées (peut-on vraiment prétendre qu’il me les vole? J’ai simplement ignoré ce jeu pendant un trop grand nombre d’années avant d’y jouer!). Hors, ce fut un grand plaisir de voir ces idées réalisées, quelques-unes même poussées plus loin que je ne les avais déjà formulé dans mon esprit.

The 1.5 sequel

Economics regulate many aspects of our lives, and videogames are no exception. The more our consoles are getting closer to picture-perfect photo-realism, the higher the cost of producing a videogame. This is especially true when it comes to AAA titles, and although indie games can get away with simpler or more ‘artistic’ or abstract graphics, everyone has to at least meet the HD standards expected of today’s games.

But I do not want to rant about graphics today, that’ll have to wait for another time. In fact, my point is simply to underline a sad new reality in the videogame business: making a game is costly, very much so that games now come out unfinished, so they can turn in some profit. Any new game is kind of offered at first in a 0.9 version, left opened, with a lot of loose ends. That makes their inevitable sequels the real, full games. Instead of being a ‘2’ at the end of the title to signify the sequel, such games should have a ‘1.5’.