The Creepiest Place Ever
Setting is important to a survival horror game, and Friday the 13th is no exception. They could have gone to someplace scary like an evil forest or a zombie-infested mansion, but instead they took us the creepiest place of all - summer camp. Worst of all, it's not even a very good summer camp. I mean, there's no lake, there are only three covered buildings (a church, a barn and a cabin) and everything has this death gray look to it. But what am I doing describing it? Why don't you just scroll down and check out the entire map for yourself ...
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So there you have it, the entire world of Friday the 13th. It's easy to be scared in a big haunted mansion or in some big spooky village, but it's not so easy to be scared senseless in the middle of a summer camp. But that's exactly what Friday the 13th managed to do, which is why I
consider it to be the first real survival horror game. So let's stop talking about Crystal Lake in the abstract, it's time to go into detail about why this summer camp is the first genuinely scary video game location.
Welcome to Crystal Lake, the only summer camp named after a lake that isn't really there. As you can tell from the picture above Crystal Lake is mostly made up of creepy forests and randomly placed fences. When the teenagers aren't busy shooting arrows in the archery pavilion (literally the ONLY activity this summer camp provides), they can pick up hay, cut down trees and hang out at the summer camp's official graveyard. That's right; Crystal Lake has its own graveyard ... with real tombstones and everything. I don't know about you, but I've
found from personal experience that it's just safer to hang out at summer camps that don't have a lot of tombstones. Then again, I suppose the graveyard-less summer camps are the ones that are always full of people and cost too much.
When you're not spending all your time hanging out at the local cemetery, you can also go check out the three buildings on the Crystal Lake campus. There's the church, which is large and spooky. There's the barn, which is the place that all of the horny teenagers go to get together ... or, at least it would be if this was a Harlequin novel. But we've actually left the
See, scary interior design, too!
spookiest place of them all for last. That's right; the scariest part of this game has nothing to do with the creepy cemetery or farming equipment. Instead it it's that devilish red brick house in the lower right corner.
Take a good long look at that house and tell me what you see. How many rooms would you say is in that tiny little red cabin? Two, maybe three at the most? Well, you would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Would you believe that this little cabin has more rooms than the barn? Okay, that's a bad example, most barns only have one or two large rooms. But how about the church, would you believe that this little cabin is bigger than the church? Okay, maybe that's not the best example either. Well, for what it's worth this house has nine rooms. That's right, nine large rooms. Apparently the interior designers were scary good at getting the most out of the little space they had. This house just keeps going and going, even when it's clear that there is no more space for extra rooms. I just don't get it, how could they possibly get so much out of that one little cabin? If that's not the scariest part of Crystal Lake then I don't know what is.
Have a Scary Villain
Resident Evil had zombies, Silent Hill had big-breasted bondage babes and The Rule of Rose had school age kids wearing weird animal masks. It's
important to have a freaky villain in your survival horror game. What's more, it's important to have somebody that you actually fear. Even after all the sequels I'm still not that scared of Resident Evil zombies, but put me in a room with a bunch of kids in bunny masks and I may end up taking my own life before they can do me any harm.
Friday the 13th gives you the ultimate bad guy: a middle aged woman with a vision-reducing hockey mask on. Actually, that's not the bad guy in this game ... instead it's that white dude wearing all black. When I first ran into him I wasn't sure if that was Jason or the Fonz from Happy Days. Or maybe it's every Emo kid you know. He struts around like he controls this summer camp, yet he's wearing the tackiest outfit he had in his closet. The truth is, I didn't even know it was Jason until he walked over to me and started hitting me with what looked like a giant shovel. At least I hope that was a shovel.
Conclusion
Given its age, Friday the 13th is a surprisingly solid survival horror game. Most of the genres cliches are present in this game, such as the use of audio to add to the atmosphere, the sense of isolation, and the larger than life bad guy that will stop at nothing to make sure you fail. It may not grab you the way that Resident Evil or Silent Hill does, but there's no doubt that this is an incredibly creepy game full of surprises. Screw Haunted House on the Atari 2600, on this Friday the 13th you deserve to go back and look at the real godfather of survival horror - Friday the 13th!
