Scrambling up a narrow stairway, I momentarily pause for breath only to hear a blood-curdling groan a few paces behind me. I daren't look back. A hand, or at least what I think is a hand, grabs at the bottom of my trouserleg. Usually, this would be the point where I press pause, make myself a cup of tea, and wait for my heart rate to slow back down before re-entering the world of video games.
But this isn't a game. This is a piece called "… and darkness descended", the latest project from immersive theatre pioneers Punchdrunk. Collaborating with PlayStation for the upcoming release of Resistance 3, Sony's flagship sci-fi horror series, the company has created a terrifying and brilliantly authentic-feeling world beneath the railway arches at Waterloo station. Enter at your peril.
You take the role of one of the few remaining survivors of an apocalyptic event. Newspapers litter one of the early rooms and seem to hint at nuclear war, but the context is immaterial. From the moment the door closes behind you and you start to navigate the first dank corridor, torch in hand, you are as much part of the experience as witnessing it.
The use of smell (horrible throughout but different in each area) and team-based activities to find clues and explore rooms lifts the project far beyond your generic, London Dungeon-esque horror attraction. The foreboding atmosphere is simply impossible to resist: the strange, metallic groaning noises that soundtrack your journey, the use of light and shadows to suggest movement in the corner of your eye at every turn. Even the most cynical member of our group was playing along within a quarter of an hour.
Try as I did to maintain a critical distance, by the end I was drenched in a cold sweat and my heart was beating like a jackhammer.
Carl Christopher-Ansari, head of sponsorship for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, said that Punchdrunk had been on the company's radar for some time, but finding the right game to launch a collaborative project had been a problem. Resistance 3, a post-apocalyptic zombie shooter (with a seemingly huge marketing budget to boot) was the perfect fit, and Christopher-Ansari was keen to stress the effort made to recreate the "emotions" of the game in the production.
Which raises an interesting point – doesn't a real-life horror experience only highlight the limitations of video games as a medium? After all, ultimately you're still just sat there looking at your television set. Having been elbowed out of the way by fellow journalists running for their lives, I'd have to say a game has never quite manipulated my emotions to this extent. For all that they're getting better at it, video games can't compete with these sorts of tangible attractions just yet. Though they do at least have a pause button.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/sep/02/punchdrunk-try-terrified
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