During my teenage years, I witnessed my grandmother’s valiant struggle and eventual victory over breast cancer. For more than a decade afterward, our family cherished every milestone—birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries—grateful for the extra time we were granted with her.
Earlier this year, my wife and I celebrated the arrival of our beautiful daughter. My grandmother never had the chance to meet her. She never will. In 2023, the cancer returned with a vengeance, and she passed away while I was thousands of miles away on a professional assignment in France. I can still recall the haunting clarity of the phone call that shattered that evening. I remember how the once-inviting aroma of my dinner suddenly turned stomach-churning; I remember the look on my colleague’s face as I told him I had to leave—he knew instantly. On my walk back to the hotel, I saw a sunset of such profound beauty that it felt like a silent message from her, telling me her pain had finally ceased. I spent the following hours in tears, gripped by a desperate wish to see her one last time and a feral urge to crush the very concept of cancer out of existence.
I have harbored a deep-seated hatred for cancer my entire life. It is a thief that takes without mercy, an infection that taints everything it touches, threatening life indiscriminately.
I find solace in believing she has moved on to a place free of agony. But the suffering she endured was real, as is the grief of my grandfather, who now speaks of his own departure as a reunion. It lives on in my mother, who watched her own parent wither in a battle that couldn’t be won. My hatred for this disease has only intensified; it is no longer just a grievance—it is personal.
Note: The following sections contain significant plot spoilers for Total Chaos.
Total Chaos fits the traditional mold of survival horror, replete with viscera, nightmarish creatures, and heart-stopping jolts. However, for me, the game served as a profound form of catharsis. It provided a digital arena where I could take makeshift tools of destruction and drive them into the heart of a metaphorical rot. Every impact, every spent shell, felt like a small victory against the decay. I found myself smiling as I tore through the manifestation of a disease that was consuming Tyler, the story’s dual protagonist and antagonist, as he grappled with malignancy, clinical depression, and the collateral damage these conditions inflict on loved ones.
Fort Oasis was once a thriving community, the place Tyler and his wife called home. Eventually, that home transformed into a prison. While Tyler remained trapped in the decaying town, his wife longed for the mainland, desperate to reconnect with family and escape the trauma of watching her husband’s spirit and body dissolve. She couldn’t bear the transformation of the man she loved into a stranger—someone capable of forging crude weapons from scrap metal and stone to slaughter the cancerous masses roaming the streets.
The enemies in Total Chaos are often indistinguishable heaps of muscle and gore. While some might find the enemy variety lacking, I found it poignantly accurate. Cancer is an void, stripped of the humanity it consumes. These creatures were once recognizable, but they became something monstrous that I refused to let survive. The game frequently nudges the player to flee, but I chose to stand my ground. I exhausted my resources to ensure every entity stayed dead, striking at fallen bodies as if I were destroying the very cells that tried to steal my grandmother’s soul. To them, it was a horror game; to me, it was a reckoning.
The labyrinthine environments ceased to be obstacles and became my hunting grounds. I scoured every corner for supplies—not just to survive, but to sustain my campaign of vengeance. Total Chaos is a brutal balancing act between managing mechanics like hunger and blood loss and my relentless drive to kill just one more monster in her honor.
Over the course of my twelve-hour journey, Tyler’s internal monologue began to mirror my own encouragement. I thought of the times I held my grandmother’s hand, pleading with her to keep fighting. She persisted for me, and in turn, I persisted for Tyler. They both simply wanted to be free.
To defeat cancer is to survive the treatment as much as the disease. Chemotherapy is a poison meant to kill the bad cells, but it ravages the good ones in the process. It is a war of attrition. I felt this as I navigated the concrete ruins and flesh-warped halls of the game, pushing toward the black, festering core of Tyler’s agony.
The climax of the game presents a finality: Tyler must outlast himself. It is a confrontation between the man desperate to rebuild and the man desperate for the peace of the grave. The violence only ceased when I emptied every remaining bullet into the source of the torment. Only then was he liberated. As the credits rolled, the turbulence subsided. Though shadows and light still linger over Fort Oasis, the struggle has reached its end.
I hope that Tyler found the peace he sought, wherever that may be. I have to believe the suffering is finally over.
If you or a loved one are affected by cancer, the Cancer Support Community offers a toll-free hotline available 7 days a week at 888-793-9355.
