Aside from being a dry reflection of tabloid reporting on women who commit crimes (bad woman!
sexy, bad woman!)
this is also the kind of incidental character-building you might expect in this perky, retro-styled survival horror.
It plays likeSilent Hillcharged with the hot pink body horror ofPorpentineinteractive fiction.
It’s all given that late-90s Resident Evil look with cameras both fixed and following.
She’s a real catch.
I’m not the first of us to crawl through the demo, of course.
She was not wrong.
It gets the feel of those old games spot on.
What’s more, it’s adept at survival horror’s old habit of understatement (aka.
the"doghouse"effect).
“She is well-dressed,” says the game.
“This display has a strong smell,” it says.
As if part of the game itself remains in denial.
You never find a pile of severed heads and bloodied torsos.
You find"nothing unusual here".
But I’ve focused on perhaps the wrong thing.
This is partly cosmetic; viscera-coated cages turn into simple vending machines as you pass by.
A huge rusty safe, under the lamplight of your third eye, becomes a pile of ordinary luggage.
It also has a practical effect.
Thorny obstructions in the grimey world are reduced to spindly stalks you might pass through freely.
So long as you remember that anything outside the aura cannot be struck.
