When I first came to open Beyond Fear: Inside Action Horror Games, I thought of myself as someone not that bothered about action horror games as a genre. Look at my Steam or PlayStation collections and you will see mostly management, strategy and more tower defence than is probably healthy, but not a whole bunch of action horror. But then I started to read Beyond Fear by Nick Akerman, published by White Owl, which is an imprint of Pen and Sword Books, and realised I had more of a history with the genre than I realised.
Beyond Fear is split into eight main sections that cover different games. DOOM, Half-Life, BioShock, Dante’s Inferno, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Alien Isolation, Returnal and Resident Evil: Village. Some of these games might be ones that you love, some (looking at you Colonial Marines) might be games you have bounced off, but Beyond Fear might give you things to think about that haven’t crossed your mind before.
One of the most impressive things about Beyond Fear is that it is not a dry dissection of the genre. It is also not trying to sell you these games. Instead, Beyond Fear’s biggest strength comes from its author Nick Ackerman and his insider knowledge of the individuals that gave us these famous and infamous titles.
The very first line in the first piece from John Romero sets the entire tone of the book in my mind, the same way that the first line of the Iliad speaks of the fury of Achilles, Romero gives us “We wanted to shock the player”. Simple, yet profound, and it sets the tone for the entirety of the piece.
I am overly conscious of not wanting to tell you everything in the book because, at that point, why read it for yourself? Beyond Fear quotes a line from Half-Life that made me laugh “Good morning, and welcome to the Black Mesa transit system. This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Black Mesa Research Facility personnel. The time is 8:47am…”. I couldn’t help but laugh because Beyond Fear mentions that this was used in Half-Life to start the ramp up of the game’s legendary tension, and yet this very use and section of Beyond Fear does the same.
For me personally, the standout section was the one featuring Ken Levine of BioShock fame. That is a game that was obviously a homage to Half-Life from the second I picked up the crowbar in the first corridor of Rapture. No Gods or Kings, as the piece is titled, speaks very truthfully of the success and failures that can be in game design. It’s brutally honest and speaks well of the Beyond Fears quality.
Reading Beyond Fear made me wonder about how often players think about tiny audio cues, enemy behaviour, camera placement, lighting tricks and other environmental storytelling. I think about this kind of stuff a lot, but then I write about games, and my wondering about that kind of thing led me to do this. But I do wonder about how much most players think about this stuff. Beyond Fear is amazing because it shows you that even if you haven’t thought about these things, the game designers sure have.
Beyond Fear gives you all of that, it stretches into the minds of these creative masters and shows you the demons they fought with, and showed you on your monitors and TVs at home. Too many books about games vanish because they are little more than nostalgia compilations, but Beyond Fear is not that, it gives you the thinking that brought us these games, and if you are interested in them, or you yourself dream of making your own game, Beyond Fear is a great way to understand the thinking and opinions that gave us these wondrous, and often terrifying worlds.
You can find Beyond Fear: Inside Action Horror Games on the Pen & Sword website.
