In August of 2014, a demo innocently appeared on the PlayStation Store. It had a spooky old tombstone with P.T. painted on it, sitting silently in a wooded area. Playing this demo would take players to a rather ordinary hallway, one that would lead to one of the most terrifying horror games ever made.
And now you can't get it any more.
Even just as a short demo, P.T. created a powerful atmosphere of terror, dragging the player into its ordinary environments and steadily filling them with dread. Through its steady erosion of reality, striking visuals, cryptic completion criteria, and the chilling ghost, Lisa, it creates a fear that can sicken in its intensity, leaving players begging for the ghost to just appear and end it all.
It was to show what Hideo Kojima, the man behind Metal Gear, could do with horror and the Silent Hill series. It was …
In August of 2014, a demo innocently appeared on the PlayStation Store. It had a spooky old tombstone with P.T. painted on it, sitting silently in a wooded area. Playing this demo would take players to a rather ordinary hallway, one that would lead to one of the most terrifying horror games ever made.
And now you can't get it any more.
Even just as a short demo, P.T. created a powerful atmosphere of terror, dragging the player into its ordinary environments and steadily filling them with dread. Through its steady erosion of reality, striking visuals, cryptic completion criteria, and the chilling ghost, Lisa, it creates a fear that can sicken in its intensity, leaving players begging for the ghost to just appear and end it all.
It was to show what Hideo Kojima, the man behind Metal Gear, could do with horror and the Silent Hill series. It was to set a new bar for horror. Then, not even a year later, it was gone, pulled from the store for nebulous reasons as relations between its creator and Konami broke down.
P.T.: A Video Game Ghost Story is an unofficial investigation into the strange history behind this lost horror game, how players came to solve its complex puzzles, and what makes it so effective at scaring its players. Featuring interviews with the first player to complete it, the Let's Players who broke its mysteries, P.T. speedrunners, video game historians, and Konami staff, it looks to shine a light on what made the experience so compelling, why we subject ourselves to these horrors, and what will happen as this fearful experience fades from memory to become its own real-world ghost story.
Most of this book is spent describing and analysing P.T. as an experience. The investigative part is limited to one short, though insightful chapter.
Honestly, that's fine. I didn't get to play P.T. before it was disappeared into Konami's IP vaults. So, this book is much more a work of preservation. Sure, I could fire up a playthrough of this game on YouTube right this instant. But so much is lost with just a video, doubly so for a horror game with the additional mental distance this switch in medium brings. This makes Joel Couture's description of his fears when playing and the tactility of the experience valuable.
