Aedan Macken - FAITH (the video game)

 The video game series FAITH: The Unholy Trilogy is a (in my opinion) fantastic and fun series that focuses on the question if it is ever truly possible to atone for past mistakes. The player character is John Ward, a catholic priest who has been plagued with nightmares and guilt after a failed exorcism the year before the game is set. The first game takes you through his second attempted exorcism of the same possessed girl, Amy Martin, the second a nightmare about the demon-worshipping cult that summoned the being that possessed her, and the third on putting an end to the cult's actions and stopping the "Profane Sabbath".

The game is styled to look like an old ATARI game designed, developed, and imagined all by one creator: AIRDORF. The eight-bit pixels still manage to be effectively scary! There are a few segments in the game with rotoscoped animations, but the limited color palette and robotic and often distorted text to speech audio adds an unsettling feel to the games. John Ward is a physically weak character and for all but one moment in the third game, he dies upon a single hit. This makes fighting back against the demons, thralls, possessed characters, and the ultimate demon at the end of the game difficult but very rewarding once completed. There is even an achievement called "Good Christian Boy" for players who play through all three games at once without dying a single time.

The demons in the game are interesting. The cult that is behind their presence shows off its different ways of gathering people and victims. Some people are drawn in by family members, others are suffering from difficult situations, and some are searching for forms of power. The cult mimics a lot of Christian behaviors from the titular "Unholy Trinity" that is a parallel of the father, son, and holy spirit, as John Ward has to fight the mother, the daughter, and the unholy spirit, to the leader of the cult's parting message being "Gary loves you" in reference to "Jesus loves you". There are also references to demonology in the head of the cult likely being a reference or connection to Astaroth, as he has the same crown wings and whose "job" is to serve as the antithesis to an angel that spreads the holy word in Christianity. 

To anyone interested in a new video game, I highly recommend FAITH! It's never too scary for people who aren't often horror players, but it provides enough spooks and lore to intrigue seasoned fans of the genre.