Total Chaos Review

Total Success

As someone terminally addicted to horror media, I’m almost immune to being scared. I can’t remember the last horror movie that nudged my pulse north of resting, and as for horror novels, usually the most terrifying thing about them is the awful prose (another genre ravaged by that unholy commercial juggernaut, Booktok). But horror videogames? Reader, they wreck me.

I’m not sure what is, exactly – maybe it’s the agency of being responsible for the imaginary people on screen living or dying, often horribly. Maybe it’s the fact that the horror genre, more than any other, derives huge benefits from increases in graphical power, with each successive year bringing hair-raising improvements to Gore and Grue-rendering tech, turning every new GPU into a technonomicon capable of summoning horrors we couldn’t have dreamed of a few years ago. Or maybe I’m just not brave? Even middling horror titles can spook me — and Total Chaos is much more than a middling horror.

I had never heard of Total Chaos until the opportunity to review it arose. I didn’t know it was a horror game – preliminary research indicated it to be a reimagining/expansion of a total conversion mod for DOOM II, my favorite game of all time. I also learned it was helmed by Trigger Happy Interactive, the devs behind Turbo Overkill — an experience that rises above the glut of modern boomer shooters with sublime movement, maniacally creative weaponry, and a cool, un-cringey modern-retro aesthetic. Given this pedigree, I thought I would be getting a dark actioner where the horror iconography doesn’t scare, so much as create a suitably dramatic setting for grim combat conquest.

There’s action aplenty in Total Chaos, and a hearty helping of mechanical finesse, but it is first and foremost interested in instilling deep dread in the player – and, in this, it is uncommonly successful. I am crawling through it, simultaneously dreading it, but absolutely drawn to it. Total Chaos has kept me more or less locked at a crossroads between terror, curiosity, and aesthetic admiration.

Courtesy of a standard issue foreboding intro sequence, players are plopped onto rain-whipped docks of Fort Oasis, a rusticated, dilapidated, and obviously profoundly haunted island town. More Universal Player Immersion staples soon make their appearance — ominous writing on the walls, mysterious logs, foreboding décor… all of it serviceable, but it’s the overwhelming, nigh-physical presence of Fort Oasis itself that does the heavy lifting. Or maybe I should say “heavy sitting,” because this is a place that that crushes the player with the weight of its claustrophobic, impacted malignancy.

Dream logic is underused in horror, but Trigger Happy Interactive has tapped into it fiercely here. Fort Oasis just feels bad even when nothing bad is happening, in the same way that an innocuous hallway in a nightmare can unsettle by its mere presence. Wending through Fort Oasis’s corrupted stone bowels, stepping over its lumpen graves encrusted with ritual candles, stumbling over sodden rock faces or tripping through that venerable and well-loved horror trope, the ‘meat hallway,’ there is always a sense of personal malice. Fort Oasis hates the player.

Eight or nine hours in, I can’t say I know exactly what’s going on, plotwise. And to be honest, I can’t say that I care – and that’s not the fault of Total Chaos’s writing. The script seems competent, maybe even better than that, but I play horror games the way I listen to songs — it’s not so much what the lyrics are actually about, so much as how they make me feel. And Total Chaos makes me feel gloriously bad. I was not, and am not, addicted to the mechanics or gameplay of Total Chaos, but the atmosphere and the weight of its terrifying unknowns pushes me forward.

Getting a bit more specific, the protagonist, Mr. Oasis, is not as helpless as the average survival horror star. In fact, in a genre known for low power-level waifs and cackhanded milquetoasts, he’s a badass.

Combat is a mix of melee and gunplay, but favors the former. John Oasis has a light swing, a heavy swing, a (sigh) parry, and the ability to throw junk to stun his enemies, setting them up for powerful follow-up strikes. Thanks to solid animation, responsive controls, and excellent sound design, it’s convincing, compelling brawling. On top of being really goddamn scary, Total Chaos is a welcome addition to the underfed “melee FPS” genre, which has been looking for a new champion since Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Underpinning all the combat and exploration in Total Chaos are the current S and C words of gaming — Survival and Crafting. I don’t have any particular hatred towards these mechanics, although they are being overused by disingenuous schlock peddlers, particularly on Steam. However, Total Chaos’s survival/crafting are restrained and un-annoying – and, in its particular survival horror context, they add an additional layer of unsettling mechanical grit. Using a dirty bandage to stop a bleeding wound, or gnawing on moldy bread or “monster meat” to stave off hunger enhance the overall abjectness of the player’s plight.

Other horror game tropes, however, do annoy.

Chase sequences have never been a good time to me, and they’re present here. In a horror movie, they can be effective because they happen correctly the first time. In a game, if the player slips up and has to take it from the top, and each subsequent attempt eats away at the veneer of authenticity — of unpredictable (albeit fictional) danger — that is so key to the feeling of interactive horror. Not my favorite.

I also strongly dislike only being able to save at appointed locations. In some titles this isn’t a big deal, but in others it’s a pain, and it’s a pain two ways in Total Chaos. First and more urgently, it exacerbates the aforementioned fear-weakening repetition issue present in the chase sequence. Also, because players do a lot of crafting at save stations and a lot of scavenging before dangerous encounters, getting booted back to the last save means re-engaging with busywork that is enjoyable the first time, and a brainless annoyance the second time, third, fourth, and so on.

Also, although most of the monster design is deeply unsettling, the first goon the game throws at the player — a muscular demon in jeans (?!?) looks kind of lame and Unity asset-ish. But this is a small gripe, as pretty much every other creature is weapons-grade body horror.

In fact, pretty much all of Total Chaos is weapons-grade. Its recipe is a simple one — take rock-solid FPS and survival fundamentals, and flesh them with high-level, imaginatively distinct, and powerful horror. It’s not a subtle experience, but met on its own terms, warts, Wranglers and all, it hits like a sledgehammer in the best possible way. Brace yourself.

Score: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Trigger Happy Interactive and published by Apogee Entertainment. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5, and PC . This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 9 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was not completed (but will be when I recover my bravery). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, and Strong Language. “This is a survival horror game in which players assume the role of a shipwrecked character exploring an abandoned mining colony. From a first-person perspective, players collect and craft items while fighting zombie-like creatures in frenetic combat. Players various melee weapons (e.g., sledgehammers, pipes) and firearms (e.g., pistols, shotguns) to kill enemies; combat is highlighted by frequent gunfire and large blood-splatter effects. Some weapons cause enemies to explode into blood and chunks of flesh. One sequence allows players’ character to climb a chair and place a noose around their neck—the screen turns black as they kick the chair. The word “f**k” appears in the game.“

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles for story-related dialogue, but they cannot be resized. Beyond that, this game is not fully accessible. Lots of important elements in Total Chaos – monsters approaching, most notably – are telegraphed only through sound. This is a problem in a lot of first-person horror games, and Total Chaos offers no solutions on that front. An optional HUD element indicating directional sounds with an arrow or similar would be a big help here. A bar showing remaining stamina is available, but it’s small, and I often relied on the sound of the main character panting to back off and recover in the heat of combat. I would like to see a resizable stamina bar to counteract this issue.

Remappable Controls: The game supports keyboard + mouse and controller– and both are fully remappable.

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