We've had our stint in the horror genre here on Planet Virtua. We've talked about what to do and what not to do when it comes to the scary stuff in video games and it has been a nice ride as such. Well, here recently, I have found a group of friends that enjoy the horror games that you play online. Our first journey into the spooky stuff was Phasmaphobia, released in 2020. While it is titled with the word that means "Fear of Ghosts", there is a bit of a problem with that.
Phasmaphobia can be described as darkly toned. That's about it, honestly. It has a good dark tone with a haunted setting. Beyond that, it has little tiny experiences that differ here and there, but not a whole lot. You go and investigate scary haunted locations together, bringing in a few Ghostbuster type gadgets that give you indications of what kind of ghost you are dealing with. A lot of the time, it's mostly just breathing steam when the temperatures get cold and the lights being turned off. When all of the light sources turn off, you just go to the fuse box and turn it back on.
If you are lucky, you will see a specter of some sort. That occurrence is so rare, though, and I played through at least 20 whole rounds with only being able to take a picture of one ghost. The normal experience included the lights turning off, the doors suddenly closing and maybe something falling from a table. The ghost activity is so scarce, sometimes you'll just start yelling at the ghost through the speaker. You can insult them for hours and nothing will happen.
Then, you're dead. Oh yes, the ghost will kill you if they feel inclined and that will be the end of it. This can be privy to absolutely nothing and no one. You will just see hands come around your neck and then a little image before you're dead and talking to your friends as a ghost. I was the Kenny of the group and died the most times by far. Sometimes, I wouldn't even see anything outside of the lights turning off every so often. They didn't even think to add scary sound effects, it all just get so mundane. The worst experience out of everything was in the camp ground.
This is based on a money system and you need to pay for flashlights and other equipment. You NEED the flashlights and everyone will want one of their own. If not, you'll see black. You'll see a void of dark empty space and you'll run into things the whole time. In the camp ground, with the wide open area, add a truckload of lag on top of all of that, while not being able to decipher where you're going. It took me about six or seven minutes just to find my way back to the camp ground with the van to get out of that level because we were so sick of seeing camping tents and the game chugging to a TERRIBLE game-breaking framerate. If I am complaining about the framerate, something is horribly wrong.
Now, take all of the good things of Phasmaphobia, with the flashlights, scary tone and setting, lights turning off and occasional ghost sightings and turn it up to 11! That is Demonologist. This game has better graphics, more customizable characters and SCARY THINGS. You are another 2 - 4 players (with a singleplayer setting!) but this time, you actually have horrific events, scary sounds and actual tangible things to do.
In Demonogist, you can walk into a room, get a dimming flashlight while the ghost starts laughing and appearing in a wedding dress. This, on top of scary babies appearing all over a room and some haunting laughter coming from nowhere. This freaked all of us out and made us want to hide in the cabinet, which can only hide two people. In this version, there are still sudden deaths, but at least now you get to have some tension where you think you're going to see floating objects in a room, a TV turning on and off along with a fireplace turning on and off.
You feel the menaced by these ghosts, and some of them are more aggressive than others. These ghosts have actual characteristics that differ from one another that range further than simple cold temperatures and maybe more than just a flashing light on your ghost detector. Sometimes, they can be a child running across the hall and making you wet your pants. Not that that happened to me at any point. It was a friend... MOVING ON!
Demonologist isn't without its own faults, obviously. One major downfall it has is that the only map you can get to in the first level and it takes a long while to level up in this game. Even with that in mind, this game walks all over Phasmaphobia by a very long margin. There were so many more instances where you feel like you're in a haunted house with a very nefarious spirit trying to make you leave.
Another problem they both have is that the ghosts don't always differ all that much with how they give evidence to what they are. In both games, one of your objectives is to figure out what type of ghost you are dealing with. It's not always clear, but to Demonologist's credit, it's mostly hard in the beginning because you don't have a whole lot of items to decipher the puzzles.
Phasmaphobia had some good points here and there, but they were so few and far in between, it became a bit of a slog to get through a lot of the locations. With just one level starting out in Demonologist, it was already ten times the experience with all of the images and dread you feel from the haunting entities. It's a clear winner between the two, but by all means, try them both. Just remember to bring your flashlight and a full canteen of water.
