Welcome back, my vengeance-seeking boys and ghouls. Halloween may be over, but the air is still chilled. The leaves still crunch underfoot. We’ve still got games to write about. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be looking at a trilogy of video games which take place in the cinematic universe revealed in The Blair Witch Project. Three different games developed by three different studios exploring three different aspects of the Blair Witch mythos, all using the engine developed by Terminal Reality for their cult hit Nocturne? This is going to be the best three weeks of my life where I party like it’s 1999 all over again! Or it’ll end with my editor wuss-slapping me in the face because “real gamers don’t bawl like that when told to play a shitty game, Michael.” I’m going to regret this, aren’t I…?

Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr (Terminal Reality, 2000)

Title screen

According to local history, Rustin Parr was a reclusive but friendly man who built a house in the woods near the town of Burkittsville, Maryland. He came to town periodically, mostly to pick up supplies and visit his relatives, but after the death of his aunt, his uncle moved to Baltimore and Parr found fewer and fewer reasons to visit the town. That changed in the winter of 1940 when he began hearing the voice of a old woman. At first it was only in his sleep, and he attributed it to strange dreams. Later he started hearing her while awake, but could never find the source of the voice. As the months went by, Parr felt his senses dulling. He became susceptible to suggestion, and the old woman suggested the unthinkable: enter Burkittsville and abduct the first child he saw. Parr obeyed.

In fact he obeyed seven subsequent times, kidnapping a total of eight children. He took them to the basement and made one stand in the corner facing the wall while he murdered the other. He killed seven children in this way, sparing the life of the eighth for an unknown reason, then wandered into Burkittsville, where he announced he was finally finished. When police raided his home, they found his eighth victim standing dazed on the porch, and seven disemboweled and ritualistically tortured little corpses in his cellar. Rustin Parr never denied killing the children, and in 1941 he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang for his crimes. But who was the mysterious old woman who spoke to Parr? Why would she tell him to abduct eight children, but kill only seven? And more to the point, what was to stop her from telling someone else to do the same thing? Enter The Spookhouse.

“Ah, research!”

The Spookhouse (also known as ‘The Domestic Super-Natural Defense and Research League’) is the early twentieth century version of The X-Files, a top secret government organization put together by Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 to study, catalog and, if necessary, wage war against supernatural and paranormal entities. Naturally reports of a witch who can dominate the will of others and force them to commit murder attracts their attention, and they dispatch two of their top agents to investigate. One is The Stranger, a man with no name and no past, who feels most at home on the front lines of the fight against vampires, werewolves, demons and the like, and whose skill with firearms itself borders on the preternatural. The other is Elspeth “Doc” Holliday, head of Spookhouse’s science and research division, who prefers to study the creatures hunted by the other members and devise new means of defending the group against them. Holliday is also one of the friendlier faces of Spookhouse, often sent into the field when more subtle and nuanced interaction would provide better results than a display of sheer and overwhelming force. So, as the Pet Shop Boys said, “You’ve got the brawn, I’ve got the brains, let’s kill lots of witches!”

(note to self: double-check lyrics prior to posting).

In Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr, you take the role of “Doc” Holliday, and while previous experience with Nocturne is a plus, Rustin Parr stands alone and requires no knowledge of the events or characters from the prior game in order to understand. Holliday is trained to defend herself (in fact, the opening scene of the game is a training exercise designed to get the player used to the game’s controls and combat system) but since she’s used to working in the lab, does not possess The Stranger’s considerable stamina or fighting skills, making combat something of a last resort. On the other hand, she’s also got a variety of useful gadgets at her disposal to assist in the investigation, including a set of night vision goggles, a flashlight, and a doctor’s bag for stitching up any wounds or injuries she might incur during the investigation. And while there are areas of the game where Holliday can die by falling into places she can’t climb out of, there aren’t any jumping puzzles like there were in Nocturne which nicely side-steps that game’s “save/die/curse loudly/reload” moments. The game also implements a quick-turn function, something sorely lacking in its predecessor, which is a welcome addition to the control scheme. She’s also packing balls of steel for wandering around in the dark woods while hunting for ghosts, something I wouldn’t do even with a gun pointed at my head, but that’s why I write about video games and don’t trawl through cemeteries at one o’clock in the morning.

“Is someone there?”

Doc’s mission to Burkittsville takes place over the course of four days, beginning the evening of July 21st, 1941, which are broken into two distinct segments. During the first part of the day, Holliday will explore the town, talk to the residents, solve some puzzles, and gather supplies under the pretense of searching for a niece who went missing several months ago, and a suspicion that Rustin Parr may have had something to do with it. The second segment sees Holliday gather up her gear and enter the forest in search of further clues, where she will investigate some of the locations shown in the film, including both Parr’s house and the infamous Coffin Rock. While she’s relatively safe in town, despite the Sheriff who wants nothing to do with the newcomer, Holliday must be on her toes when she goes into the woods because, as anyone who’s seen the film knows, all bets are off once the trees close in around you.

Anybody home?

If four days doesn’t sound like the trappings for a long game, that’s because it isn’t. Even with combat and puzzle difficulty both set to Hard, it should take no longer than six to eight hours for a novice to complete. Players familiar with the story and controls can cut this estimate in half, but don’t hold this against it. Rustin Parr is still a bloody terrifying experience, high on atmosphere and lower on combat than Nocturne, with plenty of creeps and scares to shock even jaded horror enthusiasts. Navigating the woods isn’t as easy as it sounds, and much like the film makers from the movie, you’ll find yourself wondering if those snapping twigs or clattering rocks are ambient noise or some hellhound lurking just out of sight, ready to lunge for your throat.

Like this.

Holliday encounters far more enemies in the course of her investigation than Josh, Heather and Mike did on their camping trip/documentary gone awry, and different encounters call for different equipment. Your standard pistol or rifle is good enough to deal with demonic dogs and animated stick figures, but when the non-corporeal apparitions show up, you need a different tactic. Bullets fly right through ghosts, but Doc’s Charged Radiance Emitter (amusingly nicknamed ‘the Sun of God’ by Holliday) fires concentrated bursts of light capable of charbroiling pretty much anything not of the physical realm. And when good old fashioned gunplay won’t work, the judicious application of dynamite, wooden stakes, or other ephemera can often get things done. Switching weapons takes some getting used to, but once it becomes second nature you’ll be a death-dealing assassin of the paranormal without equal.

Excuses, excuses…

Rustin Parr‘s not all sunshine and unicorns though. Much like Nocturne itself, there are an abundance of glitches that range from amusing (characters climbing up on the furniture instead of sitting down on it during cut-scenes, or twirling around like ballerinas as their AI struggles to work out the proper path routines) to downright annoying (player and NPCs alike getting hung up on the scenery). And while the voice acting is excellent, the lip syncing is ’70s martial arts film’ levels of comedy, with no effort made to match mouth movement to sounds or even close the mouths during pauses in the dialog.

That said, there are dozens of little touches that add a sense of immersion to the game. Signs and swings sway in the breeze. Lights can be turned on and off, a radio in Holliday’s room plays period-style music if you turn it on, and Holliday herself has plenty to say as she explores her surroundings. Objects and people she can interact with are helpfully highlighted when she approaches them, which is nice for quickly determining what can be picked up or manipulated from simple set decoration and non-essential characters. Burkittsville itself has plenty to explore, including a school house, historical society, newspaper office, diner, town hall, and a graveyard. It feels lived in, right down to the faded paint peeling on the sides of the buildings.

Electricity: notoriously unreliable in 1941.

Nocturne was the Crysis of its day, straining all but the highest of high-end gaming rigs, and most players were forced to play on lower settings. Today’s PCs are more than capable of handling Nocturne maxed out, and it’s here the game truly shines: enemy corpses that stick around without decaying, real-time shadows and light-sourcing, excellent particle and transparency effects, and a cloth engine that allows clothing to twist and deform around models instead of remaining static (although this does give the impression there’s a giant fan set up just off camera from time to time). Combine with great voice acting from everyone, but especially Lynn Mathis as Stranger, and Candace Evans as Holliday, an incredible atmosphere of equal parts beauty and menace, sound design to set your nerves on edge, and the chance to re-visit several famous landmarks from the film, and Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr becomes an incredibly worthwhile purchase for horror fans in general, and Nocturne in particular; it’s also cheap as hell today, with copies usually available for under $5, so even if it’s not your cup of tea you’ve gambled nothing but a trip to Taco Bell on it. Speaking of food, watch for an amusing Twin Peaks reference the first time you enter Gretchen’s Diner. And make sure you come back next week when we look at Blair Witch Volume 2: Coffin Rock, you hear?

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)