Speaking of hiding in the shadows, the absolute sadists at Frictional Games are one of the few exceptions to the struggle of video games to nail the "tell don't show" rule of horror films, whilst also providing some of the single most terrifying unkillable enemies in the history of the form. And everybody, rightly, hates them for it. The infamous Amnesia series of first-person puzzlers see you play as a succession of people in historical time periods suffering from, duh, memory loss. The gaps in your memory seem to be large enough to be filled by a bunch of nasty monsters whom you can't look at for too long without going insane, so avoiding them by hiding in the shadows is a primary element of the game's mechanics. But if you spend too long in the shadows, you'll start freaking out and getting paranoid that the monsters are about to jump out and kill you, which can also result in a game over. So periodically you have to return to the light...which lets enemies see you, and come running. And all you have is a lantern, so you better run from these deformed freaks, too.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
