Here’s a pitch for you: a spec ops shooter, except it’s haunted. Well, that’s exactly what early access co-op FPS Contain is going for, where four of you gear up in tactical clobber and clear corners of military chumps and anomalous… rumps? It’s a mixture of Rainbow Six, a bit of Stalker, and maybe a touch of Control, with gameplay showing real promise. It’s also got me thinking about unexpectedly scary moments in shooters, too.
Developed by SinginGiant, Contain very much takes inspiration from tactical FPS games like SWAT or Rainbow Six, where it’s less about 360 quickscoping a 12-year old and more about steering a bunch of your pals carefully through a quiet complex. You know, where each bullet cracks the silence and puts your foes down in seconds (and vice versa). What looks neat about Contain is that you’re on the hunt to find and ‘contain’ anomalies, essentially areas plagued by supernatural forces. Think a wispy strand of RGB flapping about in the sky. A gaping chasm of red crystals. An attic that’s fleshy all of a sudden.
All of this has me thinking about some scary moments in FPSes, with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s (2019) Clean House mission springing to mind. I think it does a really good job of morphing what’s quite a familiar, mundane layout into a hive of jump scares. More generally, I do think playing as a defender in Rainbow Six Siege is genuinely a terrifying experience, especially as you hear the crash of your reinforced rectangles get blown to bits and your poor squaddies slowly fill up the kill feed.
If you’re keen to give Contain a go, you’re in luck as it’s out today in early access! According to its Steam page, it’ll stay in early access until “the game reaches a solid build” and when that happens, it’ll add more missions, weapons, and the like. Right now you can get a taste of “their vision for the game” with, hopefully, lots of FPS meets horror game goodness.
