The Doomguy of the early '90s is a purebred Byronic hero, with dissatisfaction and a sneer stapled to his otherwise tolerable, chiseled face. More importantly, the Doomguy is alone.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Total Chaos, solo developer Sam Prebble's total conversion Doom 2 mod from 2018 – which publishers Apogee Entertainment and Infogrames have recently released as a standalone survival horror experience. The occasional FPS turns heroes into helpless ghosts, and while I'm worried about the same thing happening to me, I'm also convinced Total Chaos is the only game worth playing this winter.
Sick feeling
Total Chaos makes me feel like I got the flu. Its apparently unnamed Coast Guard protagonist gets me woozy as he glides with Doomguy smugness through the nonlinear levels of the abandoned mining island Fort Oasis, bobbing as if he's permanently lost his balance on the ruined vessel he arrived in.
The fever comes when I meet Fort Oasis' only inhabitants – moaning, 0% body fat humanoids with no brains and, sometimes, no legs. It's all so perverse, with tormentingly sparse sound design assisted by legendary Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka. But Total Chaos is an important lesson for people like me, who dread nighttime in December – it's not the darkness that will hurt you, but your fear.
"Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless – A lump of death – a chaos of hard clay," the Romantic poet Lord Byron wrote about the apocalypse in an 1816 poem, no doubt anticipating the permanent gray of Fort Oasis. I guess I've been to this cracked, concrete hell before, according to the protagonist, and I find out the rest through scattered notes and an increasingly reproachful man on the radio. I thought I was here on business, to respond to a distress call from an offshore boat – but Total Chaos reveals a more complicated, metaphorical mission for my protagonist through unreliable narration that reminds me of Silent Hill 2.
Like that guilt-ridden game and psychological horror Amnesia: The Dark Descent – whose 2010 textures and bruised castle walls are definitely cousins to Fort Oasis's lo-fi slime – Total Chaos ultimately uses the supernatural to emphasize more mundane tragedies, like degrading mental health. I have known that feeling as well as my protagonist.
As if sensing this, he shrieks when he slams down a heavy attack from what must be his unhealthy gut – I've been feeding him too much monster meat from fallen enemies. This person is indeed a snowball, born to break.
Survival horror
In any case, I soon become paranoid that Total Chaos isn't a mental health allegory hidden under layers of Xbox 360 grime, after all – but that my protagonist is actually a baby disguised as a sad man. The game uses a demanding survival system, and only a few jabs from its various, scarred enemies make him bleed endlessly while shaving his health bar down into nothing.
I scramble for cloth bandages in my backpack inventory, which is starting to become so heavy with pickaxes and other breakable garbage, I'm moving through airless mine shafts more slowly. I'm also getting more sluggish because, despite the buzzing flies and likely pervasive black mold issue across Fort Oasis, Total Chaos' protagonist is ravenous. Scanning the hammer heads and glass shivs I've been holding onto like they're diamonds, I vow to tape together a few more weapons at the next crafting bench I find.
The food is more complicated. There's a range of goo to swallow – the monster meat I mentioned before, as well as rotting meat, meat cans, and salami sticks of dubious origin. There's rotting bread, good bread, dirty water. Vodka. Whiskey. But what satiates my stomach might harm my health. In any case, I take a chance on a shriveled apple, and it helps a bit. I suppose this is Oasis, not Eden; everything is upside down.
Breathing room
I reflect on this in the graveyard on Fort Oasis' surface, ruins and new trees under an infinitely stormy sky, surrounded by an angry ocean spitting waves and waves of salt. The water is white like death, white like winter.
The small cemetery is brutally beautiful, not in spite of the piles of brown trash and rusted metal that surround it, but because of those things. Flowers have decided to grow in that nightmare, a mishmash of man-made waste, and their lush purple petals give the crumbled headstones some dignity. Before I move on to face more mutated spiders, or ughhing skinny humanoids, or the wraiths I lazily throw bricks at – I know I have to appreciate it. Total Chaos is an onslaught of unsubtle sludge and bad thoughts, so its more quietly gothic elements require contemplation.
"Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?" Heathcliff says in Wuthering Heights. I'd respond, "No, I would not." But Total Chaos makes me think that, sometimes, you have no choice.
Total Chaos is out now on PC, Xbox Series X, and PS5. For more highlights this year, head on over to our Indie Spotlight series.
