Pictured: A moment this off-kilter Bio Punk story turns into a Cosmic Horror Story, and hardly looks back.
The entire game tends to be pretty creepy, with unsettling sound design, low draw distance, and enemies that are as grotesque as they are dangerous. A few levels or areas stand out in particular though.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Miner's Miracle, one of the secret levels, starts out with an NPC telling you that something has gone terribly wrong and you should turn back. As you move forward, you see yourself through the eyes of someone watching you through a sniper rifle from the top of a cliff and find a man who tells you that "they" have kidnapped his wife, as well as everyone else in the area. Things do not improve from there.
- In one of the employee back rooms of Mall Madness, there's a long corridor. Nothing completely out of the ordinary until the floor breaks and you fall into a dark cave, surrounded by Zombies, undead beings with an eerie Slasher Smile permanently plastered on their face. What's worse? These things don't die. Unless you have a fully-powered ZKZ Transactional Rifle or a DNA Scrambler on hand, none of your weapons can put them down for any longer than ten seconds.
- Sigismund, your very first target. According to the briefing, he's been embezzling funds to invest in unproven biological currencies, which the briefing also reveals to be causing him to lose his mind, fly into random fits of rage and vomit blood all over the office. The main character discovers Sigismund to be horribly deformed, his body stretched and and hunched over with a gaping, bloody maw - all of while screaming and laughing maniacally about investing in biocurrencies and "becoming God."Sigismund: BIOGURRNGY!!! I AM MONEY... I AM GOD!
- Mark, the police chief you have to assassinate in Androgen Assault. According to the mission briefing, he's been taking experimental steroids that have been driving him insane, with his messages being increasingly incoherent and violent. When the main character shows up, he discovers that Mark has been horribly mutated into what looks like a bouncy castle made of bubbling flesh with a deformed head in the center, who attacks the main character by vomiting acid. Notably, as you approach his location, Mark's distorted laughing gets louder. It's even worse if you pay attention to his speech heard in the background:
- Plus, the background music
of the level is extremely unsettling, consisting of low rumbling noises mixed with discordant keyboard notes and occasional pounding beats. Makes traversing the whole level incredibly nerve-wracking.
- Plus, the background music
- The Darkworld level - pictured in the page image - deserves mention for being among one of the game's moodiest levels. The entire level is pitch black except for the mansion the target is located in which is dimly lit, as well as the skybox which includes a Faceless Eye looming over the level. Most of its inhabitants are also entirely pitch black except for their Glowing Eyes (with a creepy stretched glowing Slasher Smile to go for the civillians and the target). The icing in the cake is the approporiately creepy ambient music track that wouldn't sound too out of place in a Silent Hill game.
- Even trying to get to Darkworld is itself nightmarish: you find its warp in Paradise, in a series of catacombs found in the basement of the house you spawn next to. The problem? Entering basements in Paradise will cause a deep red and black filter to fill the screen and additionally makes the music cut out. This means you're trying to navigate the basement tunnels in near-total darkness, relative silence, and while being harassed by the first appearance of the Flower and Zombie enemies, the latter of which make the disgusting growling noise you hear throughout the tunnels.
- Admit it, some of you may have gotten particularly startled when you died for the first time and saw the "DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED" screen.
- While somewhat more subtle, the "POWER IN MISERY" screen (upon dying four times) features a ghoul-like figure with tiny, beady brown-eyes and a blank stare.
- While somewhat more subtle, the "POWER IN MISERY
