You Are What They Eat
HIGH The sewer level.
LOW Exploring a tripwire-filled room with terrible controls.
WTF Why put such a cute dog in such an ugly game?
Bursting onto modern consoles all the way from an imagined 1996 in which Sony was much cooler about what it put out on the Playstation, Cannibal Abduction is here to test players’ sanity, both in the sense of a truly upsetting storyline and their ability to cope with intentionally awful controls.
The game wastes no time setting up its premise – the player’s car has broken down on a rural highway, and a friendly passerby offers to tow and repair the vehicle. Naturally, the offer is too good to be true, and the player quickly finds themselves locked in a farmhouse with a sickle-handed maniac.
With a low-poly world and fixed camera angles, Cannibal Abduction perfectly captures the feel of retro horror chase games. Clock Tower created this pursuit-focused subgenre almost 30 years ago, and ever since then the core elements have remained the same — the player has to hide from an unstoppable killer while gathering items to escape from a claustrophobically-small location. CA captures those vibes perfectly and offers a grimy, hostile experience to anyone brave enough to load it up.
A great deal of care has gone into building Cannibal Abduction‘s map. The farmhouse has two main floors, as well as a basement and attic, so there are plenty of places to flee when the killer is in pursuit. Crucially, the main and second floors (where most play is set) are built as loops, and since the player is faster than the killer, once all of the doors have been unlocked, it’s a relatively simple matter to ditch the maniac by sprinting away until there’s enough distance to safely duck into a closet and wait until he gets bored and wanders away.
Well, I say “simple” but CA‘s controls and camera are specifically designed to ensure that running through the world is as awkward as possible. The player moves forward, backwards, and turns their way through the world using classic ‘tank’ controls. They’re woefully imprecise, of course – making slight adjustments in direction can quickly lead to a character spinning out, making them easy prey for the killer. The camera actually does a great job of helping the player in this respect, offering tons of super-wide angles that show off entire rooms. I was never confused about where I was able to go, the only issue was getting there.
While Cannibal Abduction‘s story is interesting enough – a mysterious force drove a rural family to cannibalism and worshiping strange gods – progressing through it can be something of a chore.
The relatively small map size ensures that players won’t ever get lost, but it also limits how many goals there are to accomplish. The developers try to stretch things out by sending players from the top of the house to the bottom over and back again, as well as severely limiting their inventory to ensure they’ll be forced back to the starting room as much as possible. Unfortunately, with saves being limited via the player’s ability to track down videocassettes, and the killer capable of putting the player down with just a few swipes of his sickle, having to redo long stretches will be the norm, rather than the exception. It’s baked into its oldschool DNA, of course, but that doesn’t make it less frustrating.
In addition to the main campaign, Cannibal Abduction includes a free bonus title called Night of the Scissors, which is basically a dry run for CA. It feels more primitive thanks to the map’s layout being needlessly confusing and the camera angles seemingly chosen to make navigating it as difficult as possible. Even worse, the game’s killer is ridiculously fast, and combined with the lack of loops to exploit, he’s nearly impossible to escape if he spots the player. However, the one thing that Scissors does have over Cannibal Abduction is a checkpoint system which updates the player’s progress after every objective is completed or item found. There are some extremely frustrating stretches here, but I never lost more than a couple of minutes of progress, which was a nice change after Cannibal Abduction.
Those who’ve read this far probably know better than to expect a fair or balanced gameplay. The philosophy underpinning this entire genre is that the player should share the misery that their avatar is suffering, and since they can’t trap players inside the game, they make things as difficult to engage with as possible. Cannibal Abduction is aimed at a very niche audience, but anyone with a passion for this kind of masochistic experience will find a great example of it here.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by selewi and published by Puppet Combo. It is currently available on PC,XBX/S,PS4/5, SW. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 3 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.
Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, but I’m not sure how? There’s swearing, severed limbs, naked mutilated corpses, and notes describing hideous torture. Like… what did they show the ESRB to get this rating? I’m actually baffled, because this is thoroughly an M game through and through, even if it supposedly only contains Violence, Language, and Blood.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game is not accessible. While all dialogue is subtitled and there is a visual static cue to let players know when the killer is close, a vital piece of information is delivered solely via beeps in static on a radio, and the game cannot be completed without it.
Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.
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