The survival horror multiplayer has mastered publicity stunts, but it doesn’t make a lasting impression.
There are several things that nearly everyone agrees are annoying.
Processing fees, for example.
Drain flies that flit around your face before dive-bombing your beer can.
you might find yourself wondering at weak moments, when work feels particularly crushing.
“MrBeast doesn’t evenreallycure blindness.”
It’s a losing game.
In theory, Content Warning functions similarly to Steam-favourite survival horror multiplayer,Lethal Company.
In three-day cycles, you and up to three other aspiring SpookTubers must descend into a charcoal pit.
Your goal is to film something disturbing, go viral, and make money.
You’reLogan Paul, and your brain functions at quarter speed.
I kept encountering Whisker, for example, a teetering wraith with a whirring hand mixer for a head.
So Content Warning is effectively an online multiplayer-only game, a quality I initially found vexing as a woman.
Then I realised no one is taking it seriously, except, maybe, as a voiceover opportunity.
I was dazed, for a second, and wondered if I had been sucked into aTwitchstream.
Then I realised that he’d grabbed the camera and was speaking to it in selfie mode.
The absurdity of voice chat, despite my reservations, is the best part of Content Warning.
They appear to me like doltish football players worried that the ball is coated in Uranium.
Content Warning has no narrative or progression system beyond making money, which feels as hopeless as it sounds.
“OH MY GOD!”
my teammates later cried as I sacrificed myself for views, allowing a monster to maul me.
That’s the other thing I like about Content Warning - it’s actually a content creator role-playing game.
“Do something cool” I wanted to scream, “like throw yourself into the meat grinder!”
Content Warning cunningly encourages this Lord of the Flies debasement.
“We are never in the real presence of the object.
Between reality and its image, there is an impossible exchange.”
Content Warning accessibility options
Ability to adjust chromatic aberration and mouse sensitivity.
Control reassignment for major functions such as walking, sprinting, and jumping available.
Volume for both voice chat and SFX can be modified.
It requires you to give up your empathy, because you’d always figured that attention was more vital.
It’s a ridiculous human impulse, so Content Warning is a ridiculous game.
I can work with that, but here’s the problem: light always cuts through the dark.
Without its funny players, Content Warning is too insubstantial to make a lasting impression.
We’ve all internalised it by living, mostly, through screens.
A copy of Content Warning was provided for review by Landfall Publishing.
