The Mimic (2001 video game)

"“Temptation comes at a price, through manipulation, problems will arise. Their pain was required and what they sought for was not what they desired.” -The description of the game in PlayStation"The Mimic (or The Four Beasts in EU and Japan) is the horror game made by Mimic Beasts and published by Konami. It was released in January 15th, 2001 for two platforms is PlayStation and Microsoft Windows.

The Mimic it received generally neutral reviews from critics upon release and was commercially successful. It is considered by many to be one of the hardest video games ever created.

Storyline
A young man named Yasu went to his old high school in search of his missing friends. When he walks into the main entrance of the building, he notices a trail of bloody footprints leading somewhere deep in the dark hallways. As he follows the footprints, he comes across various notes written by his friends that warn him about a mysterious entity lurking within the abandoned school grounds.

Once Yasu finds a key in a classroom, he encounters an unnaturally tall girl with a pink hat — the monster that his friends probably warned him about. He continues to the school basement, where he finds the same girl crying in the sewers. As Yasu tries to approach her, she suddenly disappears like she did earlier in the classroom. He then opens the door, which oddly leads him to a small modern town in his home country, where he must find a key to escape the tall girl's little maze.

After escaping her maze, he finds a small village where he talks to a farmer about what was going on lately. The farmer warns him that if he had seen a girl playing the biwa, it would already be "too late". He also mentions that he had something upstairs that might help Yasu. After the talk with the farmer, he grabs the key upstairs and goes into a cave, where he is chased by statues that resemble Hiachi, but they fail to catch him since they were too slow. After escaping the cave and the statues, Yasu opens a door underneath a Minka using the key from the farmer's house.

Yasu is discombobulated as he ended up inside of a hotel. He talks to a penguin lady who was laying sidewards about what's going on and warned Yasu that he can't escape the hotel. After talking with her, he arrives at the second floor where he is chased by Biwaki but is not harmed. After he enters the third floor safely, he sees a map and he continues on with his journey. He saw himself walking into a maze where he has to go to the next floor while being chased by Kuriko. He then finds an elevator and escapes the hotel safely, then he wonders where he was until a voice told him that he was in The Imperial Palace, leading to the beginning of Chapter II.

After escaping the hotel, he asked the voice about its identity. The voice introduced to him as a "friend" and opened the doors of The Imperial Palace where Yasu encounters a servant who can extend her neck in lengthy distances. She chases him at the entrance of the palace while he finds a key to a door with a lever. Once he pulls the lever, he rushes up the stairs and managed to escape the servant, Megumi.

After entering the door upstairs, the voice whispered to him about something. He didn't seem to believe it and shrugged it off. Yasu then makes his way to a somewhat crumbled land and then to a door with a lever to pull, on the right. As he pulls the lever, the voice introduces a large samurai figure to Yasu as a "friend". While trying to find an escape, Yasu finds notes that are written by his friends telling him that it's too late to find them. He didn't believe it and continued to find an escape. Yasu managed to escape the samurai and explored deeper in The Imperial Palace. He managed to escape the palace by finding butterfly spirits and using them to access the glowing doors.

Yasu is teleported to The Realm of The Forgotten where he explores around the realm and encounters the same samurai earlier from The Imperial Palace walking around of the realm whilst looking at Yasu before disappearing into the waters of the river. Yasu continues his journey to the other end of the realm by finding another butterfly spirit to open another glowing door.

After entering the door he walks through the hallways of the school and the hotel. At the end of the hallway, Yasu sees a doll leaning onto the wall while he hears the voice telling him that everything has been a mimic of his reality since the beginning. He now has to escape a hospital full of doll copies. Yasu managed to escape with a key and a butterfly spirit while being chased down by a doll named Shaku, in two separate mazes (there are two dolls, one in each maze).

Yasu finally meets the voice that was inside of his head, as they meet face to face with each other. Sama chases him out of her maze while finding a Butterfly Spirit in one of the three gardens to escape. Once he escapes, Kusonoki soars up from the waters and states that he'll never escape the curse of The Witch, leading to the beginning of Chapter III.

Yasu travels to a boat and then to a house. He then passes through the house with a feeling of déjà vu before entering a swamp with a tall monster lurking around to catch him. He has to offer a blade in a shrine in order to open a passage to a cave. After he enters the cave he heard Sama's voice provoking him; if he's still searching for his friends or just trying to survive after he all went through.

He then has to go through a watery passage, while surviving a couple of hands trying to catch him, which leads to a large tree with chains and seals around it with a large centipede climbing on the tree. It stares at Yasu whilst saying if he ever wondered what happened to the butterflies he used and sacrificed before dropping into the waters. Afterwards, he climbs the tree to get a butterfly spirit and goes back down to place it on a black pedestal before entering the red door ahead of him. As Yasu heads towards the door, Sama mocks him again saying that he sacrificed another one of his friends. Yasu didn't believe what she said, accusing her of lying and continued his journey.

Yasu appears to be in a Minka that once belonged to someone. He then has to offer a blade, a rose, and a corrupted spirit found in various rooms before going in the basement. Once Yasu enters the basement, he meets a slit-mouth woman named Mihari that aggressively tries to capture him by the boarded window but fails to do so. Mihari and Yasu meet again in another portion of the basement. Mihari roams around the maze trying to hunt Yasu whilst finding the colored skulls and placing it at the collection of hands. After collecting all four skulls and putting them at their rightful place, a door opens and Yasu enters to face Sama.

Yasu appears in the same Minka again but as he goes downstairs, he sees a lifeless body of Kaito with a key laying on his lap. Yasu gets the key and uses it on a door with ofuda (御札) surrounded by it. He enters a hallway full of paintings that are all the same. At the end of the hallway is a bloodier version of the same painting. Sama's face appears at that painting as Yasu nearly bumps into it. Subsequently, he then goes into a passageway that leads to Omukade's Lair. Yasu has to turn all four pillars green by interacting with the four skulls in each pillar while surviving Omukade, the giant centipede.

Once the puzzles are completed, a huge door opens and Yasu enters through it, leading himself in a hallway seeing the monsters' heads pasted on the rocky walls. Sama then revealed that the monsters he encountered are her puppets and Yasu's ancestors who blinded him into this curse. At the end, Yasu unexpectedly returns to his home but questions if this was really home.

Yasu notices that something is off in his house. He first saw the note written by his mother, saying that they went to his high school for a "parent-teacher conference" which was years ago. Yasu then proceeds to go upstairs to see a floating woman inside his room but the door automatically closes as he got too close and she disappears. He knew something was off and decided to go into his parents' room which he found a key for the garage in one of the drawers. He went downstairs to open the garage and garden, seeing another key for the basement. As Yasu enters the basement, a song plays from the radio while he searches for a crowbar to open the barricaded passageway. It leads to another room full of crates and a woman laying on the flat pedestal who he assumes was a "Halloween prop" but it disappears as it jump-scares him. Yasu then grabs the key found at the edge of one of the crates and opened the locked door.

Yasu goes deep into the basement and enters a bloody swamp, wondering what kind of sick nightmare he's in. As he goes onward, he encounters multiple groups of aggressive dummies that are trying to ambush him when he does not look directly at them. After Yasu manages to survive Tokito, he goes opens a door which he thinks of as an escape.

Yasu now appears to be in a small space with a door on his left. He then enters that door to see the gym of his old high school which gave him déjà vu. He thought to himself that he never found his missing group of friends, and hoped that his parents would be okay at least. He then enters the school finding out his parents, Daku (Normal Mode) and Keiko (Nightmare Mode) are now chasing him around the school as he collects the keys and butterfly spirits scattered around.

Yasu now appears in an unfamiliar village with a building in the other end. He then goes into the building to see a statue of a samurai with a code sculptured on the base. Yasu then goes upstairs to find another butterfly spirit to get access to the white door to the left. He finds himself in a protracted hallway and hears a familiar tune playing from a radio that his mother sings to Yasu as a lullaby for him to sleep. As he continues to open doors at every end, the song gets more distorted. At the very end, he sees a bloody room with a safe inside. He then puts in the code he saw from the statue earlier to get a key inside. As Yasu leaves the room filled with hallways, he unlocks the door to the opposite side where it leads to another room full of spider webs and enters a forest.

Yasu now finds himself in a foggy forest with such a sinister red environment. He has to collect six cursed items which look like a samurai's equipment and burn them in the white flame beside a giant tree. He managed to burn all the six cursed items while surviving from Kusonoki who is chasing him down once again. Kusonoki then appears in front of Yasu as a mirage and revealed that he is his main ancestor (or great 10x grandfather). He also told his story why Sama was targeting Yasu as a result of Kusonoki sacrificing himself to "save" his daughter who was held hostage by the witch which led him to her trap and cursed the family bloodline. After telling the story, Kusonoki instructs Yasu to get his Blessed Blade to defeat Sama once and for all but warns him not to be tempted as Sama can find a nimble way to deceive Yasu at the end.

Yasu wanders through a cave, finding Hiachi, Futaomote, Shaku, Biwaki, Kaito, and Mihari trapped in a spider web. While a red door emerges from the ground and violent shaking from the ground, he tells himself that he promises that he'll save his parents. After entering the red door, he uses the blessed blade that Kusunoki gave him to destroy all of Sama's seven hearts found in different chambers while being chased by Sama in her Saigomo form. After he manages to slay all seven hearts, Sama is finally slain and he kills Sama once and for all.

After Yasu kills Sama, a large tower of arms grabs her body down in the depths of the waters saying, "WHAT A USELESS TOOL." to her as she forfeited to a mere human whom Sama was after for.

Yasu's ancestors have been freed from Sama's curse and he managed to save his parents. The next day Yasu wakes up with an anxious heart as he bolted down the stairs to be greeted by his parents that do not remember the incident that happened before. He calms down as he and his family are safe...for now.

Release
The Mimic was released for PlayStation and Microsoft Windows in 2001, from January to March in North America, Japan and Europe. It became available for download from the European and Japanese PlayStation Network of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable on July 20, 2010.

Reception
Writing