For horror movie fans of the 1990s, Wes Craven's Scream breathed life back into the slasher genre thanks to its case of snarky characters who frequently commented on the plot devices of horror flicks even as the iconic "Ghostface" serial killer murdered them one by one. With Scream 5 currently in production, now's a good time to look back at the lesser-known video game adaptations of Scream and see how well they capture the post-modern, meta-fictional approach of this franchise.
Alongside other 1990s media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first three Scream movies frequently parodied the tropes too often seen in slasher flicks – morally pure Final Girls surviving to the end, for instance, while teenagers who have sex, do drugs, and split up die a gruesome death. Characters in the Scream movies, particularly protagonist Sidney Prescott, would try to survive the movies by consciously averting these tropes, while the secret culprits behind the Ghostfac" mask were often inspired to kill out of a twisted admiration for the power and "respect" slasher movie villains get.
After the underwhelming box office returns of Scream 4 in 2011 (which itself parodied the tendency of Hollywood to churn out modernized remakes of horror movie classics) the Scream franchise went on hiatus for around nine years until the recent announcement of Scream 5. During this span, there was a spin-off series on MTV, a different spin-off series on VH1, and two noteworthy video game adaptations.
The Scream 4 Mobile Game (2011)
Released as marketing for Scream 4 on the Android and iOS systems, Scre4m was a mobile 'swipe and cut' game in the style of Fruit Ninja, as reported by Gayming. Players took on the role of the Ghostface killer, chasing down various teenage murder victims while trying to evade the police. The game reportedly had a strong arcade feel, in which the goal was to build up a high score rather than to pursue a story arc to the end. Scre4m has long since been removed from both the App Store and Google Play, but the visage of Ghostface wound up appearing in another, more successful horror game later on.
The Ghostface DLC from Dead by Daylight
The multiplayer survival horror game Dead By Daylight, released in 2016, is essentially a slasher movie simulator, with many players taking on the role of survivors trying to escape while a single player plays the part of a Killer trying to hunt them down. A number of DLCs over the years have introduced new types of Killers to the Dead By Daylight Killer roster, some of them directly taken from slasher movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The Ghostface Killer DLC, released on June 18th, 2019, adds a technically-original Killer who just happens to wear the same cheap Halloween ghost mask as the killers from the Scream movies. Copyright evasion aside, the mundane, non-supernatural methods this Ghostface uses to stalk killers, combined with the way he takes selfies with his victims, is a blatant reference to the narcissistic, self-aggrandizing nature that many of the slashers from the Scream movies share.
What A Full-Fledged Scream Video Game Could Be Like
If Scream 5 becomes a critical and commercial success, a fully-developed video game might soon follow in its wake. If this was done properly, it could be a fantastic adaptation, especially if it embraces the ideas and themes which made the Scream franchise so popular in the first place, such as making fun of their own past iterations.
AÂ Scream 5Â horror game that parodies and lampshades the tropes of the Survival Horror genre, much like the original Scream movies riffed on the cliches common to the slasher movie genre, would be incredibly entertaining. The Survival Horror genre has its own brand of stereotypes attached to it:Â limited inventory space, scarce ammunition, Quick Time Events, safe rooms, unskippable cutscenes, bad camera angles, and more cliches which are ripe for parody. A well-made Scream video game could poke fun at the excesses of games like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, or Amnesia: The Dark Descent while still being genuinely scary in its own right... just like the original Scream movies were.
Source: Gayming