Day 338 - Fused 240
Short and Free, Racing, Actually Sad ·
Sam’s Take:
Well okay Fused 240! Here I am just clicking on an old car picture hoping to get an easy old racing game to review, and then you come in and hit me with car-flesh fusion body horror. I wasn’t expecting to slowly fling myself forward one inch at a time as a metallic monstrosity in a desperate struggle for meaning and life, yet here we are with one wheel and a little funny claw.
I’m trying to think back to all the other PS1 era 3d horror games we’ve played for this project, and I think this is probably the strongest one not named Mouthwashing. To move forward you have to lean back then fling your body forward so you scoot like… one inch. After a good three minutes or so of flinging, it is revealed that there’s a lil guy inside this machine.
I’m trying to avoid more spoilers since I’m going to recommend this game (plus the lore is pretty sparse), but there was some sort of attack that led to people becoming fused to vehicles. The whole world is just shades of brown and grey, but just when you think you can’t stomach another slow crawl through brown nothing they pull this shit:
I’ll let Skeeter choose to be a little more spoilery if he wants, but I think this game gives off a strong sense of empty futility, and the ending made me legitimately sad. I had a very long day at work and just wanted to shitpost, so it did really have to win me over. I’m exhausted and don’t feel like I’m able to express myself in writing very well today, but Fused 240 is the real deal. Short, free, and worth the download.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 15%
Time Played: 17 Minutes
Skeeter’s Take:
When Sam and I complain about “PS1” graphic horror games, it’s not about the graphics. Well, maybe I shouldn’t put words in Sam’s mouth, but the graphics really aren’t the deciding factor for me. We’ve just seen a trend of horror games that use the PS1 aesthetic and then throw a few jumpscares in the game. Some of these games even lean on the graphics to make them “scary”. I think of these games as “Haunted House” games. You go into them expecting a few jumpscares, maybe a fun gimmick, but you never really expect to feel real dread. A haunted house is a cheap thrill, and I can appreciate those kinds of games and even have fun with some of them.
Fused 240 is not one of those games. Yes, it uses the PS1 graphics, but this story doesn’t set out to give you an adrenaline ride. It’s a slow crawl into misery and hopelessness.
I’m not going to spoil much, because I do recommend the game, however I think it’s near impossible not to spoil one aspect of the game for what I want to talk about. This is your chance to leave now and play it before I spoil some things.
At its core, I’d classify Fused 240 as a body horror game. There are themes of apocalyptic dread which factor in, but ultimately it’s about a man fused to his car:
After a strange flash, the man finds himself fused in the body of his car, which has been contorted and squished down to a pathetic Wall-E robot:
The player will spend most of the game alternating between pressing “F” and “N” to inch their car-man hybrid body across the desolate terrain. They awkwardly control a small crane apparatus that clumsily picks up cans and feeds them via a tube to the man inside.
All the controls are intentionally awkward, clunky, and extremely slow. The keybinds are spread throughout the keyboard which makes any action even more inconvenient. Fused 240 acknowledges tropes of common keybinds (WASD to move, for example) as well as player muscle memory to try to immerse the player in the feeling of being fused with something that’s not their body. There’s no muscle memory here, it’s trial and error. I love it when art embraces the medium it’s working in, and Fused 240 nails it with the controls.
All of this feeds back into the entire desperation of it all. The game doesn’t just try to tell the player how awful the scenario of being embedded in the body of a wrecked vehicle, forced to eat trash to survive would be to experience - it tries to get the player to feel that.
During the runtime of this game, I was constantly reminded of Tetsuo: The Iron Man. For those not familiar, in Tetsuo a man essentially wakes up one day with metal objects poking through his skin and starts to become tormented by these horrible nightmares and visions of (erotic) metal and flesh fusion. The metal slowly takes over his body, and yes his penis does turn into a drill, thank you for asking.
Tetsuo and Fused 240 share similar themes of hopelessness and powerlessness to an invading metal foreign body that has permanently altered their human body. It’s like if the worst possible version of a cyborg became a reality. Fused 240 doubles down on this hopelessness by placing the setting in a post-apocalypse, or perhaps an alternate dimension(?) and doubles down on that despair. The metal is parasitic and incomprehensible. For Tetsuo and the man in Fused 420, they can only experience the feelings of the metal commanding their body. They are powerless to it.
I really love this kind of horror. It speaks to me. It tends to vocal-fry groaning words into my ear that make me envision myself trapped in the body of a car, absolutely helpless for eternity, and I wouldn’t trade that awful and existential feeling for the world.
Recommend: My longest Yeah Boi ever
Replay Percentage Chance: YEAH
Time Played: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-ah
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