Platform: Playstation 2

Genre: Adventure

Publisher: Crave

Developer: Irrational Games

ETA: March 2002

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The Lost

The developer Irrational Games is telling you to go to Hell! Are you gonna just sit there and take that? No? Then pick up your controller and fight back! But you’ll have to wait until March 2002 to strike because that’s when “The Lost” for PS2 (made by the same lunatics who brought you “System Shock 2”) will be bringing Hell right into your living room.

It would be painless to write this game off as another horror carbon copied title capitalizing off of “Resident Evil’s” wake of goriness at the first glance but the level of attention Irrational is putting into not being cliché helps reverse this idea. Of course, they’ve chosen the most cliché of disturbing places (Hell) and thrown hordes of the most cliché evil minions at you (undead demonic fiends) but optimistically that’s where the clichés end. Using the most popular Dante’s Inferno construction of Hell, the developers have designed its particulars with modern locales, objects and themes instead of the typical renaissance styled appearance. “I personally believe that fear is stronger when one has a point of reference. Alien, foreign worlds can be evocative, but imagine yourself locked in an abandoned, desecrated asylum at night with wolves prowling the corridors” says lead designer Ian Vogel.

“The Lost” clearly plans to draw the mature crowd not simply through graphic violence and horror but through it’s solemn, unsmiling nature. The enemies look cruel in a hellish sort of way. Not cute, not comical but beastly, callous and unforgiving. Along with this the story is grim in a realistic, familiar sense. Amanda, our heroine, is a dejected single mother slinging hash in a slop house and grinding her way through school only to have her gloomy path blocked by the death of her daughter Beatrice in a car accident. Depressed beyond control she becomes suicidal before she’s encountered by a mysterious creature (Virgil?) that offers her a chance to rescue the child that's been damned to Hell.

While in Hell, Amanda’s latent violent impulses are incarnated in four selectable characters. She can assume the role of Shadow, Light, Corruption and Instinct. Each has it’s own strengths and weaknesses that are best used in certain situations. Shadow can use a climbing technique, become invisible and sneak attack unsuspecting enemies. Light casts defensive and healing spells, Corruption uses devastating magical effects and Instinct is the warrior type. The Amanda character becomes buried underneath these more helpful, vicious manifestations. Like the little Mario from the Super Mario 

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series, she appears when the players are weakened by attack. Whenever you kill enemies they leave behind pieces of mana that Amanda uses for spells and transformation.

Irrational is implementing a skeletal based facial animation system for all of the games characters which they claim will make “Shenmue’s” face models “look like hand puppets”. A lofty claim indeed. I’m forced to wonder whether or not facial models even need to get any better. From the looks of it, the character builds and environment design are coming along nicely though. At this stage in development it’s hard to comment on the frame rates, animation and graphics but they seem to be working out well.

The levels should be expansive, incorporating elements of many different styles of gaming. Style-wise it seems to be pretty similar to the platform/action/horror hybrid “Shadowman” with twisted, darkly sordid 3D environments but the developers have attached the label RPG to the blend. I haven’t seen adequate justification but I guess they’re referring to the leveling up and character stat. advancement. Players can allocate experience points to any of the alter ego’s at will making it possible to concentrate on one and neglect another depending on what abilities you wish to strengthen.

The game will progress along each level of Hell providing new environments based on that levels characteristic sin. There will be violent battlefields, insane asylums, concentration camps and whatever other perverse ideas for locales the developers can beat out of the abused children in the corners of their minds. In the tradition of games like “Silent Hill”, “The Lost” seems to focus more on psychological terror than bloody action yet there will be 70+ weapons, spells and various abilities to combat the disgusting creatures like three headed dogs, blood splashed brides, hulking demons and cloaked humanoids.

This Irrational conception of Hell has got my spell finger itching. Since I first played the Dreamcast version of “Shadowman” I learned how interesting psychological horror could be in an action/platform format and I’m expecting the same, yet more refined enjoyment from “The Lost”. The early screens don’t appear to offer a revolution in gaming but I’m most excited about the commitment and grand theory of the developer. They seem to treat the game like their growing child each making it better with their own personal touches. Hopefully their ideas come to fruition and we have a horrific way of occupying time come this Spring.

Until then…I’ll see you in Hell.

- Doug Flowe