You know, I never used to get freaked out when I played survival horror video games. I stoically plowed my way through the Silent Hill series, cheerfully played the Fatal Frame games, and got cranky with the controls in the old Resident Evils. I was never jumpy. I never got creeped out. One of my favorite things to do was drag Nils over to my place and shriek with delight at how terrified he got when playing Silent Hill.


It was always a good day when I found out a new Silent Hill game had been released. I would call Nils, and our conversations would go something like this:

Me: HI!!!!!

Nils: Hey! What's up?

Me: GUESS WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nils: What?

Me: THERE'S A NEW SILENT HILL GAME! YOU HAVE TO COME OOOOOVERRRRRR!!!!!!!

Nils: Oh, dear lord...

Me: (maniacal laughing)

And yet, somehow the tables have turned.

Pat and I were playing Obscure last month. The two of us had just started the game, both of our characters had guns, and we were creeping through a basement. Suddenly a door exploded into a million pieces, revealing some kind of horrific monster. Pat immediately started mashing the "shoot" button, then stopped and gave me a look when he realized he wasn't accomplishing anything - he was looking at the pause screen. This happened because while his first instinct was to shoot the monster, apparently mine was to leap a mile into the air while jabbing my finger at the "pause" button.

The other night we were taking turns playing Resident Evil 4.

Pat: Stop running! Stop running! Turn around and shoot them! You have to stop running!!! (exasperated look as I press "pause") Becca, you can't just run away from everything!*

I still don't get creeped out. But my god am I jumpy! I'm not really sure how this happened, and I'm still not even remotely jumpy when I watch horror films, but for some reason these games startle the hell out of me now!

Clearly the only reasonable response to this unpleasant discovery about myself is to play as many survival horror games as I possibly can to retrieve my previous nerves of steel.


*My response to that being to give him my own exasperated look and snap, "It's just a game, Pat, quit being so cranky!" Because seriously, it's not the end of the world if I want to run away. And I was just trying to find a strategic position to shoot from, anyway....