Warframe though, is a game about robot ninjas with demigod-like powers, killing aliens and crafting an armoury of the wildest space guns you’ve ever seen.

They might be tangling with a menagerie of the nastiest beasts to feature in my bouts with sleep paralysis, but they do have an arsenal of weaponry to fight back (as well as a concerning amount of blood to ingest. Or perhaps you’re willing to compromise a little, maybe with some protagonists who have a bit more of a chance of defeating what they’re going up against, like the heroes of Darkest Dungeonor Bloodborne. You’d probably find yourself imagining something more like Amnesiaor Call of Cthulhu – vulnerable protagonists at the mercy of vast, incomprehensible forces have been a staple of the genre ever since its earliest days in literature. It has its fair share of creepy villains and even a few octopus-like tentacle monsters, but as cosmic as the space setting is, a third-person looter shooter doesn’t fit the traditional bill for the cosmic horror genre. You play as a robot space ninja.įrameborder='0' allow='accelerometer autoplay clipboard-write encrypted-media gyroscope picture-in-picture web-share' allowfullscreen>Īt first glance, I’ll admit Warframe doesn’t exactly scream ‘horror’. The one with a secret Flappy Birdmini-game. You know, the multiplayer looter shooter. Every protagonist, that is, except for that of my favourite video game to present cosmic horror, my undisputed pick for the most faithful representation of the fundamental tenets of the genre. I don’t think octopi will mind the use of their likeness though, because it feels like every protagonist in the cosmic horror genre is a puny human weakling, woefully inadequate and a pushover in contrast to their opposition the aforementioned eldritch examples of cephalopod might.

They’re disturbingly intelligent and have an uncanny knack for problem-solving, so is it really that improbable that they might have discovered our obsession with styling eldritch monstrosities after their be-tentacled majesty? Frankly, it seems a little rude that when faced with the task of detailing a manifestation of incomprehensible terror, we always turn to deep-sea aquatic life for inspiration (though I suppose that’s just another point in the long list of reasons why H.P.

Sometimes I wonder if octopi know they hold the starring role in basically every cosmic horror video game ever made.

Darkest dungeon character analysis