So I’m sidling my way through a series of rusted, steam-spewing pipes when I come to a little hole in the wall. If I stand still I can peer through and see the dangling remains of what I assume was a human being, a huge, blood-stained mechanical behemoth and a flickering clock on the wall reading 00:00.
Feeling a little disturbed, I press on and squeeze out of the pipes into absolute darkness. There’s a steady little bleep as the shotgun-collar around my neck lets me know that somewhere in the impenetrable void ahead there’s an enemy I can’t see waiting to bludgeon me to death with a household object. Fumbling for my lighter, I manage to bathe a two-foot circle around me in warm, flickering light, just as said maniac bursts out of the shadows and clubs me over the head with a table lamp.
Of course I’m playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn.
Only joking, I’m actually playing Saw: The Video Game, a shining example of a bad game made playable because of it’s atmosphere, and while it’s quite frankly broken in parts I can’t help but enjoy it thanks to moments like the one described above. Yes, a good game can be let down by a lack of atmosphere, but it’s worth remembering that games with a lot of flaws can be forgiven for a number of them if the player is presented with a world that really draws them in.
There’s a scene in Kane & Lynch: Dead Men set in a crowded Tokyo nightclub that has the hapless duo extracting the unconscious daughter of a Japanese crime lord. It’s packed wall-to-wall with people, the music is loud enough to be disorienting and the strobe lighting makes it tough to see whether you’re shooting at a guard or a civilian. The scene overall is a tense, frenetic maelstrom that left me feeling drained and exhilarated in equal measures, which almost made up for everything else about the game being spectacularly bad.
