Line #41 VideoGame/YouAreEmpty


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/you_are_empty_cover_4.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:200:[[WebVideo/{{Civvie11}} It's jank o'clock]].]]
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4	''You Are Empty'' is a [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] FirstPersonShooter set in 1955 in an [[AlternateHistory alternate history]] Soviet Union where UsefulNotes/JosephStalin is still ruler. The game was released in 2006 in Russian and in 2007 in English by Creator/{{Atari}}.
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6	The protagonist is a soldier who guards some sort of factory. When his shift ends, he gets hit by a truck and wakes up in a hospital full of homicidal and horribly-deformed nurses and patients. The protagonist leaves and then must wander through a moody soviet countryside and then city, fighting mutated and insane people and animals in order to figure out what happened. AtomPunk SovietSuperscience seems to be to blame...
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9	!!''You Are Empty'' provides examples of:
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11	* AbandonedHospitalAwakening: The gameplay begins with you awakening in an abandoned hospital, where there are zombie nurses with syringes and bandaged patients with broken sticks trying to kill you.
12	* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable: The voice acting is as weird as you'd expect from a game where none of the writers or actors speak English as their first language.
13	* AfterTheEnd: Soviet (and probably global) society has seemingly collapsed, [[spoiler: despite everyone being [[MindManipulation mind-controlled]] by a [[WideEyedIdealist scientist with utopian ambitions]]]], as everyone except a few people have all become horribly mutated and/or insane. It is somewhat ambiguous how well governments and other higher authorities function, as the man in the cooperative farm tells you to go to the City Council, where you meet an official who is seemingly in complete control of the soldiers around him.
14	* AirborneMook: The electricians. Basically, they are zombies with helicopter-like blades on their back that fly, dive down and attack you with their arc welder.
15	* AlternateHistory: Stalin is still alive and ruling in 1955. Aside from that, history appears to be unchanged-besides all of the AtomPunk mutants running around, of course.
16	* AmbiguouslyHuman: It's unclear whether or not the paratroopers are unmutated humans, given that they don't display any obvious mutations and seem to be following the orders of the official, who's confirmed human. At the same time, their battle cries are high-pitched animalistic shrieks, though they may simply be ''really'' stressed, given the situation.
17	* {{Angrish}}: The old man speaks in this, while other enemies only grumble or make pig-noises.
18	* AnimalEyes: The relatively normal-looking peasant woman has reptilian eyes.
19	* AnimalisticAbomination: Half-mechanical dogs, enormous chickens and a green, fat, bloated man running on all fours and spitting toxic bile, as well as an electrified man with his limbs bent in an arachnoid position are a few of the mutants you encounter.
20	* ApocalypseHow: Class 2. Only a very small number of people have escaped the insanity infecting the population.
21	* ApocalypticLog: In the kolkhoz level, along the way you'd see written notes from the former owners indicating that the chickens were growing strangely quickly, and that something was wrong with them. Sure enough, near the end of the level, you have to fight van-sized chickens.
22	* ArtImitatesArt: The cover art copies Dmitry Moor's famous Red Army recruitment poster, except the soldier's face and hands are skeletonized.
23	* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Lenin Komsomol Hens, ordinary chickens transformed by SovietSuperscience into vicious giants.
24	* BattleaxeNurse: The nurse enemy attacks you with kicks, scratches, and syringes, and she abuses the patients as well.
25	* BodyHorror: The mental patients have one of their legs '''stripped down to a bloody bone''' with only a metal, cage-like brace keeping them upright.
26	* BookEnds: [[spoiler: The last cutscene is the same as the first, only a bit faster, up to a certain point where our protagonist shoots the scientist responsible for the device that ruined the world and then gets pummeled to death by other soldiers.]]
27	* BrainwashedAndCrazy: Seemingly everyone besides the protagonist and four other people.
28	* ButThouMust: [[spoiler: The final level is set up as a TwoRoadsAheadOfYou type of scenario, with the protagonist being given the choice by the scientist of either replacing him in being supreme ruler of the world or going back in time and SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. The player can only make the second choice, however.]]
29	* CastFullOfCrazy: Besides the protagonist and four other [=NPCs=], everyone is insane or horribly mutated (or both).
30	* UsefulNotes/ColdWar: The game takes place during the Cold War in an alternate universe where Stalin still reigns in 1955 and the Soviets have managed to create a tower that can radically alter human behaviour and genome. It is implied that this effect extends to the entire globe.
31	* CommieLand: Propaganda posters are placed everywhere, even in the rural towns. "Totalitarianism alley" is an apt summary of this game's portrayal of the USSR.
32	* CommissarCap: Strangely uncommon; only appears in cutscenes.
33	* {{Cutscene}}: Only a few throughout the game. They are in black and white and show the evolution of a scientist from childhood up to the completion of a massive scientific project [[spoiler: to create the new, better, Soviet man. It doesn't end well.]]
34	* DireBeast: The gigantic hens in the kolkhoz level have shades of this.
35	* DirtyCommunists: The game has, unsurprisingly, a very negative view of Communism (especially Stalinism) and its [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans utopianism]]. The scientist who wished to control human behaviour and the various hostile Red Army soldiers you encounter are not portrayed sympathetically.
36	* DrivenToSuicide: The official[[note]]Who is likely Lavrentiy Beria, [[TheDragon Deputy Premier]] in the City Council to UsefulNotes/JosephStalin[[/note]] building shoots himself with a pistol, having determined that there is no hope for things to get better, not before helpfully giving you a roll of film that explains everything to play at the cinema.
37	* EmptyEyes: The rivet worker enemies seemingly have no pupils.
38	* EvilMinions: The City Council official's paratroopers who guard him.
39	* EvilOldFolks: The old man enemy grumbles and shoots you with his sawn-off.
40	* EvilTowerOfOminousness: [[spoiler: The reason for all the mutations and insanity is a large, red star-tipped tower built to harness the scientist's MindManipulation powers and create the new Soviet man. It looms ominously as you approach it in the final level.]]
41	* FanDisservice: The game starts you off fighting nurses. Sexy nurses with long legs, miniskirts, and cleavage. Never you mind their [[http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/games/2008/bargain-bin-volume1/Empty-01-large.jpg slightly damaged faces]]...
42	* FliesEqualsEvil: The scientist liked to telepathically control flies, as an indication of his powers and intentions, and they appear very often in his cutscenes.
43	* GagPenis: The (seemingly) sane male ballet-dancer you meet in the theatre has a rather impressive bulge.
44	* GasChamber: An empty room with a chair in the City Council building is one. It is used by the official there to knock you out, after which he calls you into his office.
45	* GasMaskMooks: The liquidators, armed with pistols, who make squealing noises.
46	* GlowingEyelightsOfUndeath: The (oddly infrequent) hammer-wielding worker enemy has glowing yellow eyes with no pupils and a grey, corpse-like appearance. It is unclear if they are truly undead or just near death.
47	* HammerAndSickle: While the symbol is common in the tons of propaganda posters you see through-out the game, they can also be found in the symmetrical enemies the peasant woman and the hammer worker. The peasant woman wields a sickle, is slow, and is found in the cooperative farm, while the hammer worker wields a hammer, charges you, and is found near industrial machinery.
48	* HearingVoices: In the theatre level, whispers and odd giggles can be heard.
49	* HeroicMime: Our hero never speaks, even when confronted with sane [=NPCs=].
50	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler: After shooting the scientist and preventing the end of the world, all of the soldiers around the protagonist (unsurprisingly, given that Stalin was next to the scientist) beat him to death.]]
51	* HistoricalDomainCrossover: The Red Army soldiers with skull faces are anachronistic to the game's setting, being Revolution than [=WW2=]-era, as opposed to the rest of the army-men you encounter.
52	* HongKongDub: The English dub is atrocious. All of the five humans you see speaking are seemingly voiced by the same man with a British accent, and the mouth movements do not match the dubbing. The man in the kolkhoz is particularly noticeable in this.
53	* HumanoidAbomination: The insane and mutated enemies you see run the gamut from normal-looking but apparently always choking men (the paratroopers), to buffer (most workers) or cadaver-like (peasant woman) humans with odd eyes, to men with rusting contraptions stapled to their bodies (electricians, patients), to almost zombies (nurses, hammer workers, Red Army soldiers), to more ogres than men.
54	* HyperspaceArsenal: Over ten weapons and tons of ammo do not slow our hero down one bit.
55	* LockAndKeyPuzzle: Common. A note will tell you where to find the key to unlock the gate, so you do.
56	* MadDoctor: Mad Nurses, who have taken the responsabilities of doctors, mistreating their patients.
57	* MindControlConspiracy: [[spoiler: Not a conspiracy, as that is what really happened. A brilliant but weak kid with mind control powers grew up into a brilliant scientist. Seeing a man die in a fight, he became determined to create a better man with his powers, and so persuaded Joseph Stalin to help him build a tower to which the scientist was connected, which mind controlled everyone in the world to be "better". He believes he succeeded.]]
58	* MindManipulation: The scientist. He can control both animals and humans (his eyes shake violently when he does so), even managing to make Joseph Stalin fund his plans.
59	* MisplacedAccent: Every NPC in the English dub speaks with a British accent.
60	* MissingReflection: A bug. Pools of water do not show our protagonist.
61	* MolotovCocktail: They even have Vyacheslav Molotov's face on their label.
62	* MonstrousHumanoid: An electrified man with broken limbs resembling a spider and a bloated, fat, green, toxic vomit-spewing man that acts like a dog are the worst examples of the mutations people had to endure.
63	* {{Mooks}}: The rivet worker enemies occasionally come in groups. The paratroopers are the best example, guarding the City Council building and the tower at the end.
64	* {{Mutants}}: All of the enemies. Some have remained human but went insane, others have become more animalistic abominations.
65	* NailEm: The nailgun weapon, held by the rivet worker enemies and by the player.
66	* NaughtyNurseOutfit: All of the nurses have absurdly low-cut medical scrubs.
67	* NoGearLevel: After being gased by the official in the City Council building, all your weapons are taken away. You must slowly get them back, starting with the pistol the official shot himself with.
68	* NonPlayerCharacter: There are only four [=NPCs=] in the game: the man from the kolkhoz, the City Council building official, the male ballet dancer from the theatre, and [[spoiler: the scientist hooked to the tower]].
69	* NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom: The game is the epitome of this trope. Whenever it seems like you might have more than one choice (two paths, two corridors, two doors...) expect one of them to be blocked by collapsed walls and ceilings, fences, gates, locked doors and... [[InsurmountableWaistHighFence furniture]].
70	* OneManArmy: The protagonist fights his way through dozens of murderous horrors entirely on his own. Made even more impressive due to the fact that he does so after waking up from a coma caused by a truck hitting him.
71	* RaygunGothic: Occasionally appears with the electric weapon and enemy and the final level. Otherwise, the game's setting is firmly grounded in reality.
72	* RodentsOfUnusualSize: Large rats often appear in undeground areas.
73	* SawedOffShotgun: The sawn-off is damn useful - for the first enemy or two. Then, the slow reload causes everybody who hasn't croaked from the first two shots to demonstrate their extreme displeasure about the player's presence by severely increasing the amount of lead in his bloodstream. The game, however, has no other shotguns, so most players prefer to use the more universal machine gun or nailgun.
74	* SecondaryFire: A few weapons have one, like the one- or two-shot sawn-off.
75	* SecretTest: [[spoiler: The scientist is happy that he has created the new Soviet man; namely, the protagonist. Being perfect, he is left to choose the fate of humanity himself.]]
76	* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: [[spoiler: The ending involves going back to the past and killing the scientist who plans to build the mind-controlling tower. The hero dies, but history goes on as normal.]]
77	* ShockAndAwe: The late-game spider-like enemy and an electric weapon.
78	* SkullForAHead: The Red Army soldiers have one, appearing on the cover. They are still susceptible to headshots.
79	* SoleSurvivor: Only five people in total, including the protagonist, remained alive and sane after [[spoiler: the tower was activated. Becomes literal after the kolkhoz man and ballet dancer die and the official commits suicide.]]
80	* SovietSuperscience: This is a Soviet-style AtomPunk story about a psi-emitter designed to create a "New Soviet Man", but it has GoneHorriblyWrong, creating insane zombies and killer Pavlov's Dogs.
81	* SplashOfColor: The cutscenes are in black and white, with the exception of red blood.
82	* {{Telepathy}}: The scientist's power, extending from flies to Stalin himself, [[spoiler: harnessed for the tower]].
83	* UniqueEnemy: All firemen wield axes except a single one in the theatre who has a flamethrower.
84	* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: [[spoiler: The game ''heavily'' criticizes Societ utopianism, embodied in the mind-controlling scientist. The last level is even unsubtly called "Utopia".]]
85	* WasOnceAMan: All of the mutants, especially the vomiting dog-like one and the electrical spider-thing.
86	* WideEyedIdealist: The scientist who, after seeing a man getting beaten to death, decided to create the new Soviet man and a utopia on Earth. It did not work.
87	* WhoForgotTheLights: The game goes above and beyond the call of duty by having no lighting effects to speak of. All lighting exists within the textures.
88	* WrenchWhack: The first weapon you pick up is a wrench.
89	* ZombiePukeAttack: The dog-like bloated enemy pukes heavily-damaging green bile.

Context VideoGame / YouAreEmpty