Genuinely Lovecraftian games
So many games crib from Lovecraft, but few actually follow through and deliver. Here´s my list of games that I genuinely feel "get it".
List items
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A shockingly good game that absolutely delivers on its premise. A killer adaption of A Shadow out of Time and Shadow over Innsmouth.
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A wonderful game, offering a genuinely unsettling atmosphere of a small town gone rotten on the inside, and a sense of impending unknowable doom. It also shows remarkable restraint: There is precious little spectacle, and the horror is alluded to more than shown.
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This game is criminally lost on the Gamecube, and if it wasn´t for Nintendo having a share in its development, I´d be hoping for a wider rerelease. With an epic, generation spanning story told in retrospect through study of an unholy tome bound in skin and bone, culminating in a battle to prevent an ancient god from returning to wreak havoc on mankind, few games are this out and out Lovecraftian without directly naming their inspiration. The very definition of the LovecraftIAN game.
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If you ever wanted to take the war to the Deep Ones, here´s your anti-deep-one-warfare simulator. Blisteringly hard and nail bitingly tense, Terror from the Deep, while not as good as the original, nonetheless scratches the same itch, and offers a wonderfully Lovecraftian atmosphere of the ageless unknown beneath the waves.
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Quake is a simple game on the surface, yet it gives you a progressively darker journey from a mundane world into a fantastic, cyclopean one where the rules of man matter less and less, culminating in a confrontation with a genuine Lovecraft pantheon member. That it comes with a superb industrial horror soundtrack doesn´t hurt.
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The best AitD in my opinion, the experience of the endless unknowable beyond intruding on mundane now, and a protagonist as much a prisoner of his predestined purpose, the key of AitD is the sensation that what is happening is beyond the scope of the protagonist to even comprehend, yet he knows he must persevere to prevent it. A delicious journey.
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Amnesia is a stunning game, but its Lovecraftian elements are tied more closely to its narrative style than its actual content. The feeling of helplessness and also the confrontation with one´s forgotten misdeeds are strongly Lovecraftian elements, like torn out of the pages of the Shadow out of Time. A key element, for me, is that some things aren´t to be understood, and very little of Amnesia´s story devices are ever fully understood. The supernatural elements simply are, and the protagonist´s real impetus is simply revenge. It´s glorious and terrifying.
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I didn´t expect this game to be as Lovecraftian as it is, but it turns into an all out tribute by the fourth quarter. Lovecraftian gothic horror regularly toes the line with noir anyway, and scraping away the layers of this sordid noir story to discover a supernatural core of ancient god-summoning cults makes all too much sense. A deliciously darkly funny tale,
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Marathon Infinity is an all out trip, as you travel between different times and different possible futures and pasts in a cross-dimensional quest to stop an ancient cosmic evil -that may or may not exist- from awakening inside a sun and consuming the universe. A chaotic and bewildering yet constantly exciting journey that keeps you guessing and keeps you thinking.
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Dead Space uses one of my favorite Lovecraftian plot devices; The alien artifact. The slow reveal of what caused the whole mess, yet always concealing its true nature and purpose makes this game a wonderful encounter with something completely alien. From beginning to end, the nature of the Marker is hidden, and while many characters have theories, none seem to actually grasp what it is for, and what it is actually doing to people. As I was playing I was always reminded of the shining trapezohedron; Showing heaven and worlds beyond, but coming with a terrible connection to those entities outside. A superb experience.
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A sharp "adaption" of The Call of Cthulhu, which cleverly underplays the supernatural aspects in favor of portraying a wonderfully sinister cult. A great adventure game, with wonderful atmosphere.
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