I'll get you, Ben Croshaw

NOTE: The cutscenes in this game are VERY gory and bloody, so this game is not for the squeamish. Alternatively, you could read the walkthrough before you play the game, so you won't be surprised.

I can't begin to describe how little of the mood of the game this shows.

All things considered, I should probably have heeded that warning. I had known about the 5 days a stranger series (or, as it actually seems to be called, the Chzo Mythos) for a while, but when dr_dos mentioned that they had been created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation (who is very funny in a Marcus Brigstocke kind of way) it got my interest up enough to play it. And I have now been severely traumatized by an innocent-looking point and click adventure game.

The first in the series isn't too bad on the nerves. It's a bit tense at the same "ooh, this is a bit strange" level of most episodes of Doctor Who (i.e. those not written by Steven Moffat) but isn't likely to generate nightmares. You start off as a cat-burglar planning to loot an old mansion. Little does he know, however, that it's actually a DOOM HOUSE that is possessed by the ghost of what will later become known as John DeFoe - who takes the form of people when they touch an idol kept in the living room and gets them to kill others while wearing a welding mask and apron. And the warning on the download is slightly misplaced, as there are a couple of deaths, a body at the bottom of a swimming pool and a small amount of blood, but nothing like the wanton carnage that you're asked to prepare for.

This is a bit more like it.

Then I moved on to 7 Days A Skeptic. Unusually for a direct sequel, this game is set four hundred years after the original and on a spacecraft, which led me to believe that it would be entirely different from the first game. I was wrong. Shortly after the game begins, the crew recover John DeFoe's remains, which were shot into space shortly after the events of 5 Days A Stranger, and roughly the same thing starts happening to them. One of Yahtzee's favourite tactics, it seems, is to show your characters having nightmares. He's done this four times so far in the series, and the annoying thing is that I have not seen a single one of them coming.

The first part that really got me was just after the obligatory section where the hero is accused of the murders and locked up. In the middle of your protests, the possessed body of the captain wanders in behind your captor, breaks her neck and sets you free. Through some frantic clicking, you eventually force the monster into the cell where you were trapped and close it up. And then you wander off to warn the others. Except I went the wrong way, into the maintenance decks by mistake. Realizing my error, I turned around, opened the door and he appeared right in front of me. A scream and a shock cut to my character being strangled, and it was Game Over.

Once Whitney had peeled me off the ceiling, I somewhat foolishly decided that I would be able to continue, after looking up a guide to tell me exactly how to avoid things like that happening. But Yahtzee hits you with three things in a row. After the encounter with the possessed captain, the others decide that it's probably a good idea to escape, and go to sleep while the only available pod is refuelled. (Quite why an emergency escape pod needs a few hours to warm up is never really explained adequately.) In the morning, unsurprisingly, only two of the three remaining crew members turn up. Your character goes down to investigate the doctor's room, and finds what can only be described as a slaughterhouse, with a stitched-together torso abomination on the floor and spare limbs neatly arranged on the bunk bed. You would think that the similar scenes in Silent Hill would have been worse than this, but there's something about the clear pixelled artwork here that disturbs me immensely.

So after seeing that, you grab the key, run out of there as fast as possible, get back to the escape pod, open it up to discover that it is no longer there and are sucked out into space. I died here, and as my last save was before I went into the doctor's room, I decided I'd better stop. Then checked around the flat before going to bed in case anything was just around the corner with a machete.

However, I decided to face my fear and play it again on the way to work today. Passing all those scenes quickly, I got very near to the end, knew exactly what I had to do, approached the door to the captain's room, and the Welder burst out of it and stabbed me to death in much the same way as the captain had earlier. I'm not playing it again.