Had I played this as a kid, I would never have slept again.
And notes are important.
So, you walk.
You trudge through a forest one screen after another as you attempt to work out where to go.
And every so often, you hold up your cross to reveal another note.
But then, screech!
The effect is complete: now, you’re on edge.
Now you know the game has teeth.
This is Faith in a nutshell: stillness and nothing, then screech!
and something coming at you, and quick.
And it’s effective - more effective because there’s nothing else going on.
Why didn’t more games do this in the 80s (did they?
I might have been too young to know)?
I suspect the answer is partly because they couldn’t.
Faith, you see, is sneaky.
And they shake the player around a bit more.
One presentation works really well to reinforce the other.
Whether any of this is technically 8-bit, I don’t know.
You don’t expect a game to be able to do this, but it can.
That plus some tiresome traipsing around are my main drawbacks in the game.
But save points are usually close so you don’t have to redo much progress.
Soon, you’ll realise it’s all connected, the story and characters.
That’s Faith: smarter than it looks, deeper than it looks, scarier than it looks.
It’s a game that deliberately uses a little to achieve a lot, and disarms you.
