what horror really is | The Thing You Can't Defeat
34it takes many forms after all
Ending thoughts bgm: Yasuyuki Suzuki - Solitude
SOCIALS
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REVIEW (please avoid this until after the video kthxbai)
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Games as an art form can take people many different places in the form of escapism. Even on built fictional foundations, much can be derived from these experiences through their appropriate impacts and how relatable they can be. The Thing You Can't Defeat shines a spotlight on this on quite a powerful manner as it touches upon the mortality of the mind, a very real concern for humanity.
Story and gameplay revolve around vanilla Ultimate Doom, a retro run-and-gun FPS where in the classic story, an Earth marine is pinned against Hell's forces that has invaded a Mars' base of operations. The Marine must traverse around multiple levels fighting many different abominations utilizing a variety of weaponry. However in this .wad, things take a drastic turn as over time, the perception of reality becomes a jumbled mess where the senses of Doomguy fail him due to his mind's passive degeneration.
Dementia is not a reliably concrete thing to manifest in a physical way but TTYCD takes advantage of grim and depressing themes to showcase how insidious the effects can be. Initially, environments seem a bit "off" with missing/anomalous textures but it soon increases in severity as layouts become completely dull or misplaced, pathways become disjointed, levels become almost devoid of enemies, etc. Lighting becoming warped and the use of ambience becoming unsettling noise adds to the experience of everything becoming an incoherent destruction of the senses.
I often play games that I can lose myself in and not want to think too hard about notions introduced through my interactions with them. Many games touch upon death or mortality or things often devoid of common sense which is due to creative liberties being taken, enticing horror themes for entertainment purposes. Even with this .wad, I could just summarize it as a wacky, reality bending version of Doom but in relation to what it approaches with dementia, it's hard to ignore the intricacies. The visual and auditory design emulating the destruction of the mind works pretty well in this .wad and considering the focus on a notorious aspect of life being addressed in this game, I can't help but treat it as important. Death is a constant that will always be inevitable but the susceptibility of losing yourself along the way is an even more sinister fate to suffer.
Regardless of what a game goes for, there is always something to take away from through respective engagements with what they have to offer. Life is full of depth and anyone willing to appreciate analysis can always extrapolate facets from all sorts of mediums and video games are no exception. For something like The Thing You Can't Defeat, it does an excellent job of reminding people to take care of themselves. Don't take your one life for granted.