The Raccoon City Times

THE LAST OF US: VGA announcement trailer

2011-12-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

in a word WOW, so this is how good console games can do plants and water when they actually try? thats impressive if its all actually in game like it says. Coming from naughty dog i would not be surprised.
So what is it?
Its the road meets i am legend meets those japanese survival games that never get popular over here. Starring Ellen Paige. Fighting fungal zombies in a ruined new york.

Personally i am very excited for this, i wondered why nobody tried to use the real world zombifying cordycepts fungi as a plot device before.

heres hoping its very tough makes survival more important than fighting and going one man army on it.

ALAN WAKE: American Nightmare VGA announcement trailer

2011-12-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

Welp, guess we know what the next instalment of the Alan Wake series is all about. No longer named night springs apparently. I adored the first, beat it about 8 times last year so im sure i will get this too. Interesting that it features more about mr scratch, an idea in the first game many just dont even know was in their after they beat it. That and new kinds of taken.
All in all it looks like Alan Wake may actually be leaning more towards the survival horror influence of its roots than its action thriller ones.
So lets see how this pans out- and relates to a full retail 'second season',

Silent HIll back on the EU Playstation Network store

2011-11-28T08:08:00.000-08:00

Well this snuck by most gaming news sites i visit.

Browsing the PSN store for some ps one classics i spied the original Silent Hill is back on the store for £5.79 in the UK.
The game was up for a couple of days in 2010, but hastily taken down when it received unanimous reports that the game would crash at the moth boss and never go any further for anyone, not just one or two players but the game itself was broken.

Well its back up now and i just finished downloading it. I'm not one for reviewing the classics- because they either aged so badly they arent a fair comparison to todays games or they are just so well known, and well regarded that a 'review'- However i may give a little follow up to see if this ones worth your money- that and the psn parasite eve 2 i was browsing the store for at the time.

Still, if your willing to risk it it is there and ready to go.

WELP.

2011-09-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

I tried to ignore the nu-mettul. God help me, i tried.

So yeah, here is the latest, unfortunately put together, trailer for silent hill downpour. My opinion? my early thoughts about some inspiration from the suffering and alan wake seems like it was right on the money. I'm gonna hazard a guess that they may even try the alan wake/ alone in the dark route and make it more like an episodic horror tv series. Which i cant say i would be adverse to. Both of the aforementioned examples, regardless of overall game quality, pulled it off quite well. I think it would certainly help in a game like this to have a "previously on silent hill" when you load it up after a while without continuing.

Am i expecting a good story? possibly. Maybe a little cliche' in that 90's american horror kind of way but i enjoyed that schtick with Obscure so it could keep me entertained here. What about the gameplay though? the brief fashes we see between all the cutscenes showed what looked like a 3rd person clunky movement thing that reminded me of deadly premonition. Which let's be honest was dogshit at its best, however its story carried it through. Will this be able to do the same? Honestly i kinda doubt it.

We're gonna have to wait and see. After all it's not like we aren't going to play it when it's released.

Right now i'm tentatively excited for it, its showing a lot of influence in its direction from resident evil 5, alan wake, the suffering and silent hill homecoming so maybe it could be a perfect storm of influences. Or just the accumulated crap of all its touchstones combined into one terribad package. Time'll tell i suppose.

NORMAL PROGRAMMING WILL RETURN SHORTLY

2011-07-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

So i have been tremendously busy.

Though i have, in my spare time, been working on some stuff for here including video reviews now i can capture footage from consoles to my Mac and got some sound equipment set up thats higher than youtube vlog calibre so please, bear with me folks.

-also, still playing horror games, just beat dead space 2, expect thoughts on that soon.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - The Review

2011-04-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Platforms: PC, Mac OS X, Linux
Release date: September 8th 2010

Well bugger me, only a week or two after my post about trying the demo to finally silence all the requests for it my birthday came around and some generous mate had gifted me a copy of amnesia on steam.

Whilst the demo left me a bit cold I gave it a go, being a freebie and a gift after all, and in a brisk 6 hours I was done.

What is amnesia? Well if you haven’t played it the game is an indie developed action adventure horror game with light puzzle and stealth elements.
You are Daniel, a man who wakes up in a dark, seemingly very recently abandoned mansion with no memory of how he got there and only a note from his former self to guide him.
Unfortunately for Daniel said note directs him not away to safety but deep into the bowels of the castle to kill a man who put him in this situation. Sort of. It’s difficult to explain without spoilers but basically Daniel was at an archeological dig and discovered some artifact of a lovecraftian style origin and now a sentient ‘darkness’ is after his soul and has killed anyone associated with him. He came to castle brennanburg for help and unfortunately for him the help came in the form of another evil which in its own way is far worse than the darkness chasing him.
Essentially Alexander, the castles Baron. Has made Daniel do terrible, unspeakable things in attempts to ‘cure’ him of the darkness. Things that will literally come back to bite him as he makes the trip from the upper castle to the deep bowels beneath it.

The game itself is a first person physics interaction game.
To begin with you can pull and push open doors and draws, pick up items like chairs and rotate them and throw them and the game eases you into the mechanics of it.
A major mechanic being the lack of weapons and sanity.
As Daniel progresses the game becomes darker, both in tone and literally. Staying in this dark allows Daniel to creep about but at the cost of his sanity which can only be restored by completing the puzzles required to progress.
OR he can use a lantern with a finite amount of fuel or tinderboxes to light candles and torches to create light and keep him calm and sane.
-but also make him easy to spot for the castles residents.
Said residents are the remains of Alexanders experiments. Mutant hulks like a cross between Frankenstein’s monster, a cenobite from hellraiser and the average walking fleshsacks from silent hill.
They stalk the halls of castle brennanburg with purpose. To kill you. They are filled with supernatural strength and fighting back is utterly futile. All you can do is hide, either in the dark or in cupboards or closets and wait for the monsters to pass or dare to brave the pitch black darkness and lose sanity whilst you attempt to sneak away from them.
The castle itself is experienced through a series of connected hubs with a puzzle that you must solve to progress and items key to the puzzles solution hidden in side areas all connected to the hub. The first of which is a fleshy growth covering a tunnel entrance and the lab, wine cellar and storage rooms around the hub allow you to concoct an acid to allow you to melt it away and progress further to Daniels final goal.

As with the demo my experience was marred by its nature. Though not to the point of the demo which is not exactly like the final product mind you, but I found it hard to immerse myself in a game so requiring of your voluntary engagement with the world it tries to paint out.
Again the blurry jelly vision, the spawning of a monster behind you in your way as you go down a one exit room to get a key item or the many times it wrenches control away to show the character getting scared instead of letting the player become scared repeatedly enforced the notion that it isn’t real. The flawed attempts to jerry rig scares in what they felt needed to be expressed as scary rather than shown pulled me out of the game with its irritatingly uniform and obvious choices for placement and points for such things to occur at.
This is a poorly done way of not allowing the scares to come naturally but foisting them up your audience and then dashing your hopes to do so because of the very forced nature in which you attempted and failed to scare them.
Honestly at many points I myself could have been scared If only I wasn’t told I should be.
Case in point.
In one scenario I am in a dark room, my torch is out of fuel and in the murky dark I see a humanoid figure walk through a doorway down the long black hallway.
At this point my jimmies where fairly rustled.
In another scenario as I walk down a hall there is a torch at the end that bursts into flame all on its own- which has nothing to do with the plot or any reasoning and never occurs again or has any relevance- and the camera is wrenched out of my control as Daniel appears to experience severe spasms, or something.
All I could do was roll my eyes at the cheesy attempt and sit, arms folded, as I waited for the game to have the good nature to give me control of the character again.
For all the artificiality of the repeated hub layouts or lack of major story this is amnesias weakest point and makes many tense moments redundant. So surely it is a failure as a horror game, right?

Well not really.
One thing this game does well, for the most part, is ambience. The grimy, dark castle that leads onto rotten prison cells, a flooded sewer and worse is a well paced and well thought out path of an increasingly dark and oppressive location that truly makes you feel as though you do not belong there.
The is an almost effervescent creepiness that permeates every moment of this game that may come and go between little well lit areas that allow the player to catch a breath but the feeling of ‘wrongness’ about the location is constant throughout.
The music in particular is well done. It is a subtle undertone that allows the developers to alter the mood of a location at a moments notice and it’s a shame some of this subtlety did not go into the scripting of events as well.

Gameplay wise its actually pretty good. My only minor gripe is that you may be running from a monster and get ‘stuck’ on a flat surface of terrain, a common problem with many physics heavy games and no different here.
The puzzles are actually pretty easy. You collect a series of items with only one solution and you just cannot progress until you search all the off-rooms of that hub and collect them all. Simple as that.
On the whole the very nature of the gameplay is shallow. Either you are safe in a well lit room and you spend the time pulling open draws or doors to find items or you are crouched in the dark hiding from enemies that- due to a constant auto save and respawns with no progress lost- are not really much of a hindrance anyway.
Shallow is really the term for amnesia. The scares are there, the ambience is there, there is enough story, character and design genius to draw you in and get you going.
For most though its constant hammy attempts to try and force you to evoke emotion rather than naturally draw it out makes it not last longer however.
Perhaps its just a sign of its indie nature but not only are you always aware this is just a game, but the tiny budget and inexperienced design team means you can see when and where things will occur as surely as a teenager in a slasher film saying “I’ll be right back” being singled out as the next to be killed off.
It has the setting, I felt very much alone in the castle, but never truly at risk and only through design choices which hampered the experience. The pacing in particular is excellent. Many games would ram monsters down your throat but only in one instance did i ever encounter more than 1 at once. In fact i do not think i saw a monster- at least more than a shadow in the doorways for the first 2 hours of the game. It eases you in and allows you to build up to the reveals of monsters which makes there limited appearances all the more impacting. It is just a shame that this pacing is completely countered by the artificial scares put in place by the level designer.

On the whole I played through in a single sitting in which I died 3 times and was never more than mildly spooked- mostly when there was no scripted events or monsters and just me alone in the dark, empty rooms of castle brennanburg.
I felt slightly dissatisfied with the time spend during the game. The was no real change in the experience from the first hours play to the last and I never really cared for the faceless blank slate of a character as i progressed.
Don’t mistake me for out and out disappointment with the time spent. Amnesia is a unique experience that I had not played the like of before and it was certainly a memorable one.

I just cant consider it truly scary. Certainly not anywhere close to either my top horror games of all time or just as a notably great videogame because in the end, it’s kind of a dull videogame that has squandered its potential as either a fun game to play or as a terrifying experience.

I finished the game, described it to my friends with a funny wavey hand motion followed by an ‘eeehh..’ escaping my mouth but a funny thing happened the next day.
I sat down to get some work done ay my desk and as I stared at the imacs screen the amnesia icon was luring me in, making me want to revisit the experience again already even though it offered nothing new.
Doe’s that mean against all my criticisms it is a great game? Not really. An enjoyable experience you will sit through more than once however? I think that that’s probably closer to the mark.

I was not left overwhelmed with Amnesia. It has certainly been overhyped by word of mouth. However any aficionado of horror games would do well to experience the game much in the same way i would point to D's dinner table, koudelka or nanashi no geemu. None of which are truly balls to the wall scary or a truly stellar videogame experience but as an experience they are note worthy due to there unique nature and as such i recommend these oddities as something for any horror fan to play through at least once and in this respect amnesia is no different. Hell even if you are looking for cheap thrills the more susceptible players may be thoroughly spooked by it. So by all means do not let me dissuade you from this game. I would very much recommend it.

Just don't expect the be all, end all final boss of horror games most websites make it out to be.

SCORE [6/10]

SCARE FACTOR [6/10]

"Hey guy! you gotta try amnesia!"

2011-04-05T02:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, Okay, so i keep getting emails to try games, in particular spammed to no end to try Amnesia: the dark descent. Honestly i've put it off because the trailers just made it look like someone took penumbra and reskinned it with the tile set from oblivion and thats sort of a one trick pony for me.
I realize the irony of saying that after playing a dozen or so resident evil games but what can i say, im a fickle hypocrite like that about my entertainment.

Anyway. I've tried that demo and honestly? its okay. However i feel i have to post because i feel like the developers have shot themselves in the foot with the mechanics. To put one point up to cite as reasoning i would blame the sanity effects from removing me from any immersion the game builds up.

My experience whent something like this:

-walk into dark room.
-see monster.
-get creeped out.
-start to hide.
-suddenly get shakeycam/jellyvision 'insane' effect.
-remember its just a game and death is nothing but a respawn with no time or data lost.
-previous event loses all impact and ambient fear imbibing in the player.

Now this could very well just be me but when my guy could see clearly and i was walking around with nothing creepy actually happening i was more open to scares than when the walls are bloody and the screens spazzing out. It felt almost farcical in nature to me. It utterly ruined every moment in this horror game that should have scared me. Which at best renders it a grimdark adventure game with irritating sanity effects which are not needed in any fashion but an artificial way to attempt to instil fear and a sense of urgency in the player. Which, once you realise this in the first 15 minutes, you are constantly aware of the artificial nature. that it is all fake and nothing can hurt you.

In filmmaking terms this is what we call a huge no-no. Rule number 1 is to create a world that draws your audience in. If you are constantly reminding them- intentionally or not- that this is all make believe they distance themselves from the piece and are far more likely to notice the unpolished bits and pieces as they play and all the more decrease how much they enjoy your product.

Basically through their own attempts to make the game scarier they made the game no longer scary for me and in doing so defeated the point of their own creation.

Sometimes games developers need to remember they are not a board game dungeon master attempting to paint a scene and impress emotions on their player about events they cannot actually see and explore. They are closer today to theatre directors, assembling the parts on the digital stage for the player to take the primary role in a story of their own production. You dont need to set up a system to make them feel. just allow them to feel it on there own as they explore the world.
Amnesia had a scary world, but in an effort to make an already scary world scary they make it no longer scary and in doing so the game i experienced was a failed product.

Not to say i dont recommend it but gameplay and story must go hand in hand but we are for more forgiving of story errors than gameplay ones. Heavy rain has plenty of plot holes, but the gameplay experience keeps you engrossed. This is a case of the opposite where they story keeps trying to engross you, but the gamelpay mechanics rip you right back out of it and its a shame that this happens but its just like the spamming of jump scares as you quickly alter your directional view in F.E.A.R. Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice?...

silent hill online?

2011-03-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

whujuwha?....

http://kotaku.com/#!5783702/multiplayer-silent-hill-rumored-for-xbox-live

Konami might be working on a multiplayer xbla silent hill?

Adaption of the 2 player arcade schmup or a brand new resident evil outbreak style multiplayer?

Who knows but worth pointing out to dream about the possibilities.

Well its friday.

2011-02-18T01:25:00.000-08:00

So by now you, along with the rest of the world should be aware of the announcement trailer for dead island not being, well, dead.
If you haven't heard of it before it was announced in '05 or '06 and was due in 2008, it had a trailer that has aged terribly. Both in terms of what the game was like and the style of videogame trailers (namely terrible heavy metal music and smash cuts to lots of red text every 9 seconds on a black background) and a couple of videos to advertise its still impressive 'multi layered damage system'.
Then it vanished. Like Duke Nukem Forever and Alan Wake most folks assumed it was dead. A project to ambitious to have seen fruition.

I was pretty surprised to hear an announcement trailer for the product had appeared and was doing the rounds. Even more so that so many people where gushing about it being one of the best trailers ever made for a videogame. So of course, being a horror fan and a filmmaker i had to check this out.

I was not disappointed.

Not only doe's that get me excited for the game but that is, from a technical standpoint, a superb piece of work. In less than 3 minutes with no dialogue we get a narrative about a family vacation that has gone as wrong as it could possibly go and it invokes genuine emotion in its audience.
Sure the choice of music and the focus on the girl is a bit of an obvious, guaranteed heartstring pull but still it remains bloody effective. -pun not intended.

As a videogames enthusiast i am excited for the game without seeing anything to do with how it plays, so it definitely did its desired job with me. As a filmmaker myself i am impressed by it. Personally i feel the edits of it in chronological order have a bit more emotional impact, but still it remains an impressive piece that is easily up there with gears of war's mad world trailer or resistance 3's 'on the rails' trailer as one of the best attempts to sell a videogame as something a little more meaningful than "Bro check it, you will totally be able to kill some dudes in this!". For that alone the creators of such trailers should be applauded.

Reader Questions no.3

2011-01-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

Left these for a while, answering a few.

Via twitter from Daniel Ross: "you write a lot about games would you ever want to make them?"

Honestly? from a technical side? no, been there, tried that. as dull as the devils face. Never want to do that again. Though i would very much want to writer/direct a videogame. but coding? modelling? real technical stuff? never again folks.

From an email from 'darknezzzgoeff': "I visit all these horror sites but my favourites would be yours and christ survival horror quest you should look it up! (im a reader of it) but you have very different ideas and tastes why do you think that is?"

Simple, entertainment, like art is subjective. One mans greatest game is anothers piece of crap. Take obscure 2, i loved it as a homage to 90's horror films, Chris from the site mentioned above really disliked it mostly due to thematic content. Is either right? no but neither is wrong either. In fact to get a good gauge on how a game is you need to read all the opinions, not just all the high ones or all the low ones.
I dont agree with a lot of his opinions just because i have different tastes but i would definitely recommend them for sincere credibility on his opinion. Its one very much worth paying attention to if you like horror games. visit his site on the links list to the right to check it out.

From an email from Alyx Soni: "is left 4 dead survival horror?"

No, i'd say it's survival panic. The goal isn't to scare you with oppressive dread on what might happen but instill adrenaline pumping panic about what you know WILL happen, just not exactly when at all times.
This is aided by the multiplayer aspect, which makes it more engrossing when its not an a.i being ravaged by a hunter but a real life friend whos crowding up party chat with vile obscenities.

From a tweet by 'crazy leon': "Ever gonna mention your top 5 worst horror games."

HURM. Not a bad idea for an article.

That's 4 for now, i'm out. thanks for reading as always gentle internet folken.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - The Review

2011-01-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

Developer: Climax Studios
Publisher: Konami digital entertainment
Platforms: Ninentdo wII, PSP, PS2
Released: December 8th 2009

This is a tough one. really, i mean that.

This is a very hard game to surmise, to attempt to quantify the sum of its parts as some value of its worth as entertainment. To be honest its hard to call this a videogame, let alone a horror one.

Near as i can judge its an interactive experience that, unlike heavy rain, does not try to be that. It is just what its become in the process of telling its story.

Or telling Konami's story, again, i should say.

So yeah, read on but bear in mind, regardless of arbitrary scoring at the end this is a prime example of how i am one guy and as such the scores of meaningless, its just a process to express my feelings about a game upon completion of it having seen all it has to offer you as a genuine opinion of one person who loves horror games to another.

So silent hill shattered memories is a retelling of the original game in what most consider resident evils long standing rival to the survival horror franchise crown. A game that got me into the genre, a game that layered nuance, subtext and context upon the player in a way not truly seen before in videogames as a medium.
To be honest i was pretty damn wary of this. The more time passes the more i am so utterly disappointed by the cheap name drop cash in that is silent hill origins. So news of the same developer handling a re-imagining of the source of it all?
Madness, surely.

Well i was wrong, if silent hill origins is the worst experience in the franchise, including the gba visual novel and arcade lightgun machine game, then shattered memories is one of the best, in some ways usurping its original.

The game plays as an over the shoulder style explorative action adventure come light puzzler. You play Harry mason, driving along in the car with his daughter cheryl, only to crash it. Not in fog this time, or due to the ghost of some spiritual half a girl but to a blizzard the likes of which silent hill has never seen.
See Harry is not passing through silent hill this time. it is his home. trouble is he doesnt remember a lot of things about the town, and other people live in his house...
Of course Cheryl disappears and Harry spends the game looking for her, traversing silent hill proper and also some of its surrounding countryside.
The game is faily linear but the linearity is never the same at defining points. this is all controlled by the games 3 piece play system.

The first type of play is i lonely exploration of the 'real world'. A mundane snowy town thats got most inhabitants in the warmth behind closed doors. There are no monsters, no nightmares round the bend. Just a man looking for his missing daughter. A very real nightmare for every parent that requires no fictional entities to make it all the more dreadful.
This portion plays like an amusement park ride. See the sights of silent hill. An easter egg filled walk through the town where you learn as much or as little about the game as you want. There is no reason to not stop and spend as much time as you want in every area exploring every nook and cranny and drinking it all in.
The second type of play is the psychological evaluations. In first person perspective you the player are interviewed by dr. kaufman- now less a creepy peddler of drugs than a doppleganger for mass effects illusive man- who wants to help you with your apparent mental problems.
To do this you undertake certain tests as the game progresses. either you solve a riddle, or colour a drawing or just answer some yes/no questions about yourself. The opening titles recommend being as truthful as possible and i did and it was an interesting process because your choices and therefore your mental outlook shape the game around you.
Maybe you come to a small shopping arcade and there are a number of stores, but only one leads to the next area. Maybe guy A plays it and its the record store, but girl B plays it and its the electronics store. This all depends on the player and the unconscious choices they make.
There is no stark fable style good or evil choices. its all subjective. There are things like if you tend to linger the camera on the breasts of mannequins or female characters and the players lecherous nature will alter the game to suit there psyche. The enemies hips will bell out and there faces will become more feminine, cybil will dress in a much less....professional way. Whereas if you prefer art or posters then maybe the enemies look more like sculptures and dahlia seems more punk-ey than junky.
The third portion is the other world. Every time Harry nears a crucial point in the plot the world literally ices over in deep glaciers of nightmarish, angry jagged exploding ice like glass from hell. This world is full of the rawshocks. An obvious play on the psychological term rorschach tests that also change depending on the player. all starting as some raw fleshed skinned humanoid nightmare thats only goal is chase Harry through these mazes of ice and darkness and grapple him to the ground for a nasty end. Which is an ironic metaphor in a remake of a game where the spirit of the horror has gone from oppressive isolation to crushing loneliness- and this game is very much about loneliness on a few levels. You can hide from them for a time, use flrase and fire to keep them back and move obstacles to slow them down but these adrenaline fuelled periods of terror in between the calm have a single focus 'RUN'. you cannot fight them, you cannot win, all you can do is run from the problem and find a safer place to continue you journey to cheryl. a journey that will be different for most of you.

Basically its all based on you with no stark right or wrong. Because whilst there are 'good' and 'bad' endings the story is always the same.

And it is most certainly a sad one.

This is a completely different silent hill story. its still got the same named characters and places, and Harry still needs to find his daughter, but the whos, whys and wheres are a very different silent hill. Dahlia is not only a young woman but she is Harrys wife, there is no cult, no white drug, no out and out supernatural evil.
Like the games development the story is a much more personal affair. You are not saving the world in some way, or fighting a dark god or some other detracting out of left field enemy but from beginning to end this is a story of a father and his daughter and there separation. This simplicity and sole focus doesn't not detract from shattered memories, in fact i can say it only strengthens it. The game pulls you in in a completely different way per person, two friends will play it and feel completely differently about the plot twists and characters by the end than the other.

Personally i found the game surprisingly engaging on an emotional level. I went in expecting weird shit and lame attempts to scare, but honestly between tense marathons from rawshocks, and the creepy exploring the story i got was much more touching than i expected. My ending in particular got a rise out of me few movies or games have in a decade.
However like i emphasised this may differ completely for you. Based on you and how you played you may be left hating the characters and the story.

But can anyone hate the experience?

I don't believe so.

Gameplay was its a very different silent hill. nunchuk controllers movement and the wiimote is everything from harrys arm holding the torch in third person to a key in a lock or a channel tuner on a trv to a hand you move to solve puzzles like shaking tins to hear if theres a key in one you can upturn to get it out.
No longer is there a radio but a smart phone that you use to take pictures, save, load the menu and even take calls that involve you holding the wiimote to your ear to hear out of its speaker a eerie message left by some emotional ghost or a call from another townsfolk out in the blizzard.

Honestly i wasn't expecting these motion controls to work but they are intuitive and engaging- and capable of more than i would have thought on the wii, especially the torch in a game that for its platform looks absolutely fantastic.
The biggest complaint is the visual cues on how to shake the wiimote and nunchuck to shake off rawshocks during the otherworld phases are often wrong or the movement detection doesnt work well. but truthfully its pretty easy to get through without getting caught once and a handy check point system means even if you do its not an hour of gametime lost or anything.
The biggest portion of the games controls or harry interacting with the normal world and most use the wiimote and the a and trigger and somehow climax made so many things feel intuitive and natural with this claw grip motion.
The camera and torch acting as the same hand as the point of view works seamlessly in this snowy town and the option to zoom in and focus makes it much less constrictive than it would appear to be in the limit range of movement given to a sensor bar compared to a never ending thumbstick held in one direction.
An excellent example of the zoom being in the elementary schools principles office where harry must decipher his password by exploring every nook and cranny of his office to find every clue to get in to find what he needs.
In fact most of the puzzles are well thought out. none are truly hair ripplingly tough but all are neat. another involves altering the positions of statues so there shadows spell out a word. something done in real time with a very impressive lighting engine for this not so hardware heavy console.

The voice acting is not its strongest point but its not resident evil level cheese at all. harry is played as a normal guy. and i mean a truly normal guy, not the hollywood 'normal' guy that other games like alan wake or heavy rain failed to capture. He truly comes off as a poor man caught in a terrible situation. and each member of the backup cast no matter how small there part all put in the effort.

Soundtrack wise its Akira Yamoakas last silent hill soundtrack and he goes out with a bang, like the voice acting id say it pales to silent hill 2s raw emotional nature of it but it still knocks it out of the park. in particular another series of collaborations with mary elizabeht mglynn are haunting and beautiful.
Also it was nice on a personal note to see the change from foggy or rusty nightmare to a more natural, but out and out psychologically devastating world meant we see akira abandon his usual heavy industrial interludes for a more melancholic sound that only serves to emphasise this game is less about making the player feel scared at the oppressive, almost hateful nature of the world around them. But sad, lonely and altogether isolated. not only from the townsfolk in the blizzard but form the protagonist himself.

All in all it is an experience that is hard to evaluate. which is why i will probably deem this my worst review to date but honestly this is a game you need to play. it is the best silent hill game since 2 and you will give a shit about these characters and not just wait to see who gets killed off if and when the next dramatic push forward occurs.

Is it a masterpiece? not at all. the very nature of its split play style means you get wise to it and know "no ice, im safe no worries" or "ice, dont worry, this will have a set end point i just need to reach". This is why i feel it fails utterly as a horror game, because it gets less scary as the game goes on.

However this fault does not dull that fact that this is a pretty damn unique experience in the way that makes silent hill great. does a silent hill game have great combat? no. fluid controls? not really. Tough characters you can get behind? never.
It does have memorable characters, a superb soundtrack, a spooky world you will adore to explore every facet of and an ending that leaves you numb as the credits role.

You know how i classify this kind of game?

It's Silent HIll. simple as that.

SCORE [9/10]

SCARE FACTOR [4/10]

just a tidbit.

2011-01-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

So whilst busy with a lot of boring junk i did manage to poi'chus' playstation move and heavy rain move edition for the playstation 3.

After spending quite a while with it i will say that it is lighter and much more comfortable than the wiimote, the battery lasts longer and it is much more responsive than the wii mote. Though i can complain that the camera doesn't track it as consistently as the wii sensor bar and the buttons are still poorly arranged.

I think a motion controller with a hand held interface should not be a long remote, it should be something ergonomic and hand fitting- hell i'll conjure the powergloves vile name for this.
In games that have you open locks, sword fighting or aiming and shooting a pistol you want to grip it in the curvature of your hand, not have something you hold at an odd end of middle point like move or the wiimote.

Dont get me wrong, in terms of controller design the move is a step up from the wii's controller, but they could have continued the curve motif and make it curve slightly to fit a hand more ergonomically, and add the start and select next to each other and not on equidistant on either side of the tubular surface of the thing.

Of course im sure they wanted to get around the 'why would i purchase a family member a black button covered dildo?' but honestly at least it doesnt vibrate...

Honestly its worth the cash, particularly when you consider the line up which is why im posting this here.

2011 is looking to be the year for the ps3 in terms of what most games enthusiasts want. the wii's kinda slowing to a crawl, microsoft is really focussing on kinect, a novel interface but not a list of titles i know most folks whove played games for more than 15 years now don't really care about as the focus point to there console experience, but the ps3 is releasing a lot of new games, a lot of big name sequels included and many of them are being made move compatible as a bonus.

The big seller for me is dead space 2, which i still cannot find any concrete evidence that the full game is move compatible or just the hd port of the wii railshooter dead space extraction. However i have heard it mentioned here and there, honestly the idea of standing in a dark room fighting of necromorphs with a motion controller is scary, exciting and potentially embarassing in equal measure. Judging from the out and out resi 4 control style mimicry im hoping it is, since resi 4 on the wii was a hoot and im tempted to get resident evil 5 on the ps3 for move, even with boulder punch wagglan.

There are also rumours that siren blood curse is getting a patch to make it move compatible and its not just these 3 horror games on the list.

all in all if you are a horror games fan and dig immersion or new ways to play- especially if you tried shattered memories or fatal frame 4 on the wii the next 2 years are going to be quite exciting for horror motion gaming. So if you have £45 laying around and own a ps3 grab a move, yes it is a wii knockoff, but its the price of one game to play games in an entirely new way and while that may be odd if you werent around for the mass peripheral whoring of the NES days thats well worth it lemme tell you.

"So why don't people like Alan Wake?"

2010-09-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

Before i put up my review for Alan Wake i thought this was note worthy to write about.

I had been following Alan Wake for about 6 or 7 year maybe and as such had a lot of prior knowledge about it before it's release. However many of my friends had barely heard of it before it came out earlier this year, and many of them had been put off by the lukewarm reviews.
Knowing these type of videogames were my forte' and i usually end up being the go to guy when they have a question like "what does X mean in silent hill?" or "how do i do blank in resident evil?" they all approached me with the same question: "What's the deal with Alan Wake's reviews?"
See anyone can tell paid reviews are... i don't want to say crooked, just skewed. for example Halo Reach is getting 10/10 scores, but still has plenty of criticisms in the reviews. That doesn't make sense. giving something an absolute perfect score. saying it cannot be any better and then listing off its faults? its why i dislike numerical grading. Grading is subjective and articles should impress an opinion of the experience, nothing more- but thats a debate for another time. Point being, people are giving an impression of the experience. A game could be excelling in all its points from a technical standpoint and yet still the review is always the written expression of the reviewers experience.
Which in the case of Alan Wake will often be marred by a pre-associated stigma in my opinion.

To be blunt, even with little knowledge of the games development, Alan Wake is an extreme case of 'what might have been'.

Let's go back to the beginning shall we?, It's the early 2000's and Remedy entertainment, creators of the critically acclaimed Max Payne series announce they are working on a 'dark survival horror game' according to a small blurb in the Official xbox 360 magazine. This naturally piqued my interest, i believe my ravings at the time involved "its my favorite genre made by the developers of my favorite shooter!" or something along those lines.
Keeping my ear to the ground i searched out what little tidbits of information i could find. This would be a long wait however as it would be nearly 7 years before i got my hands on the finished product (In which time i started attending and successfully graduated from college AND university), the product i eventually got was not what i had been so eagerly awaiting however.

The earliest premise i can recall- and forgive any possible inaccuracies, as i've said its been a long time since i first heard about the original version of Alan Wake,- was a 'dark survival horror-thriller' about a writer named Alan wake, a insomniac who's wife had left him and with it he lost his muse and his writing ability. She had recently disappeared at the start of the original story, Alan alone headed to the washington state costal town of Bright Falls for some much needed R&R. He beings writing a book filled with and fueled by his nightmares. However Alan soon finds out that when the sun goes down the idyllic town changes, his nightmares come to life and a group of men in yellow raincoats are hunting him down. 'They come for him at night, and light is his only ally'. The tone was different, This wasn't a gritty episodic thriller, the music was different the world seemed different to the finished product. Even Alan himself was different. Hell the very type of game was different.

What we were shown was a free roam sandbox game unlike anything that had came before it and in all honesty still has yet to appear at all. By day alan explored the countryside, the towns and farms and locale's of bright falls in search of clues as to what was going on. By night the world turned against him and Alan needed sleep. Using Coffee thermos' scattered around the world to stay 'A.Wake' (ba-dum-pish) he could find a safe haven, somewhere either secure or a place he could rig with traps to ward off the light sensitive 'dark townspeople' that were hunting him down when the sun fell. One early example being using a tripwire and a floodlight to light up a narrow hallway if the door to it was broken down.
Whilst this may seem vaguely reminiscent of the likes of dead rising, albeit on a much larger scale, back then this was a completely new thing. As the game progressed we saw new stuff being demo'ed to show how far this amazing game was coming along. There was nothing but good praise for it "it represents everything exciting about the future of video games" "most eye catching game of e3" "i literally could find no better looking game" ect, ect.
The last big thing was this tech demo for intel's at the time most impressive core for gaming rigs which at the time was jaw dropping.

Then? nothing. The game fell completely off the radar. spending a few years considered as vaporware that would remain only a legend that never saw the light of day. Which in a way wasn't too far from the truth. Most people forgot about the game and those that didn't only looked at it fondly as something that 'would have been cool' and just dismiss it for the next big game that was soon to come out. Almost to the point where Alan Wake was considered this generations Duke Nukem forever ,which at the time of writing i can't help but grin to myself about that.
Then finally three years ago Kotaku announces that Remedy has confirmed the project to still be in production but it has been "reworked" and the team are 'taking a break' to revitalize themselves for the "new" Alan Wake, leaving many wondering just what happened to the old one they spent the last four years working on.

Then there were rumors of a windows vista exclusivity which in fact would later turn out to be completely unfounded. Not only that but the game was not coming to pc at all, and was in fact an xbox 360 exclusive game now.
Which, needless to say, annoyed many and the next announcement annoyed as many, if not more and left many confused. The game we would be getting was not what we had been waiting for. We would now be getting a story heavy, strictly directed episodic game. Basically the final version you have probably all played by now.
The official line was that sandbox just didn't work to direct a heavy story which isn't strictly accurate for anyone who has played the likes of Grand Theft Auto 4 or red dead redemption- a game that was in development for 5 years and released on the same day as Alan Wake- and that the game was rebuilt from the ground up as a "dvd boxset of a tv series" in terms of structure style instead. Something tried a while back by Alone in the Dark and wasn't particularly well liked for the choice then.

Of course there were rumors as to why this stark change was made. Some said money, Many blamed Microsoft. The most common was the crisis of the time forcing many studios to close, Rare being the poster-child example at the time, and that making the game was simply proving too complex and expensive and so to save the project they reworked it into a smaller game the console could handle. With lead by the hand directed pathways between set pieces, isolated by steep drops or high fences, to keep the player on track through small cross sections cut out of the ghost of the former, much grander world.

-and therein lies the problem.

What we see is good, great even (but wait for my review for that), however this is always damped by the ever constant looming, weighty shadow of what might have been this sense that no matter how good the product we receive is it still remains only a hurried cobbling together of parts from a far grander work to save a project from failure and that remedy had no problem releasing a neutered bare basics pale imitation of the original, eagerly demanded game was proposed to be.
Now this does not mean the game we have is bad. at all. It does mean however that if the reviewer has been following the products creation for its entirety there opinion can be very harshly skewed by said feelings of being handed a half hearted, uninspired product only put out to recompense the developers on there losses.

At the end of the day though it is just as likely as any negative possibility that one day the developers just went "you know what, this isn't working out as what we want" and took it back to the drawing board. Which is absolutely okay and there is nothing wrong with such a decision. The most famous of which being the complete redesign of resident evil 2 long into its development cycle- and the series' 4th installment too now that i think about it.

Yet no matter how great resident evil 2 was, we always want to see the "resident evil 1.5" that might have been (which is actually possible- more on that at another time), the scrapped version could be absolutely terrible, full of ideas that seem great but utterly fail. However the fact that there is a version we will never play has an air of mystery and revealing of the 'man behind the curtain' to it in equal measure.
We feel something is kept from us that may be just as good, if not better, than what we paid our hard earned money for. At the same time it just shows the developers are more than a logo on the case. They are human. They can make mistakes, bad design choices and can also have the good fortune to perceive these problems and take more time out of there own lives to improve on it till they feel it is ready for you, the audience. Still this ability to fail can inspire a lack of confidence and make us more, if not overly, critical of faults in the final product and judge it on "what could have been" instead of the faults and merits of the stand alone shipped retail product which is all a review should ever do. Honestly i think there are very few reviews for it that don't have a little bit of that sentiment to the final opinions on the critiques of the game and i have had to think really hard before finishing my review if i am letting my prior knowledge alter my opinion. At the end of the day i managed to write a review for Alan Wake, the game remedy worked damn hard for you on for a long, long time and write about the game, without wondering about the game we could have gotten.

For at the end of the day this is what Remedy had the pride to put there name on and ship with confidence that it represents the best they could do with the project. Sure things could have been better if things had been done a different way, if it stayed on the pc as well. At the end of the day this is what we received and can only judge it as such. Still i'm sure for many reviewers this has proved hard to do and i don't blame them. I don't think it means you should dismiss the reviews, i just hope i made some sense with this lengthy diatribe and you see what i mean or at least made some sense out of this wall of text in which i have tried to express my opinion some of the overly, an seemingly unneeded, harsh criticisms you have seen and emailed me about.

-and most of all, as usual, thanks for taking the time to read and i hope you found it interesting as always.

I caved.

2010-07-30T02:24:00.001-07:00

So...yeah. That's a new XBOX 360. What can i say, i never really play my PS3 much and my Wii hasnt gotten any play since mario galaxy came out so i went with what i unfortunately own most of my games on.

Let's just see how long this one will last huh?

Goodnight sweet prince.

2010-06-26T02:12:00.001-07:00

HURM.

I get back into playing some horror games. whats come out that i havent posted about? resident evil 5, left 4 dead 2, silent hill homecoming ect. ect. What do i own them all on? the xbox.

I turn it on and 40 seconds later it red rings. superb. Not my first, just my first microsoft won't repair for less than £100.

*sigh* i don't know why i keep putting up with this....

Something neat for PS3 owners in the uk

2010-06-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

So i took one of my bi-yearly trips into playstation home to have a nosey and wouldn't you know it but they've added-in summer for some reason, the haunted house hospital,'the ward of despair' from siren blood curse that was released on halloween in '09.

I don't know why we have it now, maybe its been hidden in the mess of files home was till the last interface update but its there, its free and im about to give it a shot. Two sec's.

.....Okay, tried it. Its a little janky, but its got a few genuine jump scares. you and 5 other people are meant to work together to escape.
You really dont work together, you basically set off alarms and stuff to get keys and stuff to escape the hospital from siren. Its a little creepy and i jumped once. it even attempts to use resident evil set camera angles.
Don't get me wrong its not that great but ive seen worse in retail games and this was just a neat freebie so give it a try!

Konami announces Silent Hill 8 with a trailer at this weeks E3

2010-06-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Well, i wasn't expecting this. good week to get back into things huh?

So there's the trailer and i am not quite sure what to make of it. For one thing this is the, what?, fourth developer on a silent hill game? Honestly i'm not sure but it seems like a new survival horror franchise, just using the silent hill games as a basis.

From the trailer it looks like we are going to get the same sort of play as homecoming meets shattered memories (look for a review for that later this week) and i like that. There's a few things that i want to point out.

For one thing the moment where the new protagonist picks up the torch and waves it around with himself dead center in the screen seems a little suspect to me. At the same keynote konami revealed they already have games in the works for microsoft's unfortunately named Kinect and the playstation move. Is it possible we will see controls in 8 similar to shattered memories intuitive torch controls and puzzle solving elements? i for one would love to see that because i can say before any critical review that the controls were part of the reason i enjoyed shattered memories much more than homecoming. For now who knows, but i would bet some good money that this will see motion gaming integration. At least as a possible control method if not a fully implemented one.

Another thing was the, for lack of a less filmmaker based descriptive, was the mise'-en-scene. The 'whole of the scene'. This means the general ability to build a world using location, music, lighting, actors- or in this case character models.

Watching this trailer its mise'-en-scene didn't feel like silent hill. If anything it felt like the suffering crossed with fatal frame. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The prisoner with psychological problems isn't a new thing, it certainly wasn't by the time the suffering was released. It works though. You would be hard pressed to find someone in a worse psychological state without an escape in terms of game protagonists, and honestly its not an average joe looking for his missing loved one. Again. Which is a nice change of pace.

I got the fatal frame vibe from when the protagonist entered the apartment building. With the moving inanimate objects and the little girls it seemed to show something a little different this time. For all of its similarities to the live action movie and homecoming what we see here is a different kind of horror. Instead of what's come before in western attempts at silent hill -in your face scares that underwhelm and seem to scream "YO' DAWG, THIS SHIT IS CRAZY!" we have the scares for the audience and remains unseen for the in game character.

This seem's to suggest a different style of horror. By seeing the scares while the protagonist remains oblivious allows us to be further scared as we put ourselves in there shoes. In many ways its so much worse to have this thing literally breathing down your next without you knowing than a gibbering sack of skin twisting its head, jacob's ladder style, at you straight in your face.

Its highly reminiscent in tone to the openings of the fatal frame games which i have honestly found is the most consistently scary series in the entire survival horror genre.

Honestly we didn't see too much to read much more into it. It could be a cliche mess. It could be a new enthralling survival horror game with a silent hill flavour. Regardless i got a good impression from this, at least in terms of tone. from music to direction to construction this showed a very different take on silent hill, in a subtle but different way.

I'm holding off for gameplay video for a definitive judgement. However let's be honest. we will all buy it, and since when has gameplay and combat mechanics been the selling point of a silent hill game?

Hello old friend.

2010-06-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Well after a bit of thinking i've decided to restart this blog. The main site we have been working on is coming along, but slowly. Plus i figured why didn't i just keep this going as a fun little side project, since that was how it got started in the first place, and thats my thinking now.

When save point goes online it will have most of my reviews and articles and such, but i'm gonna get back into The Raccoon city times blog for my own little hobby of horror videogames.

In retrospect i think it was stupid and overzealous to stop altogether, especially when ive played a lot of new horror games since then and so much has happened in recent months to the genre as a whole.

Well, enough rambling, back to the games!

time for an announcement

2009-12-01T05:38:00.001-08:00

So rather than just stay silent and keep working on the official save-point.com, we have decided to start a blogger version for the time being, it can be found at http://fantastic-contraption.blogspot.com heres hoping it proves popular as we make the transition to a full website for video game enthusiasts to find news and articles that give a genuine, honest opinion on games instead of posting what's allowed by there sponsors like some current sites out there.
So check it out in the coming weeks as we start to post and maybe you'll like it. i for one hope you do.

The Calling trailer

2009-07-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

So first off no, your not alone for not knowing about this. It's a hudson release on the wii.

Yeah, a horror game on the wii from the guys and gals behind bomberman and mario party.

That would put me off to be honest but the trailer was neat, im a sucker for the long haired pale ghost bit and the end of this was genuinely creepy for a game with lower end graphics.

Anyway, heres the trailer.

Proof of being alive topic time!

2009-05-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

So first off forgive the lack of any articles, but ive moved house, had to deal with a lot of crap to get the net hooked up and now im in the final month of my film degree.

but ive been playing some horror games on and off, namely semi recent releases like F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin and Resident Evil 5. Though ive finished nothing of late so i dont think i can warrant a good article on any games ive not seen the credits roll on.

However the last few months have seen the net crawling with threads on forums debating if resident evil 5 IS even a horror game at all. In my personal opinion it is an action shooter with horror overtones, it doesnt intend to scare any more than gears of war does but there are mild jumps and rushes of adrenaline from certain set pieces though the soundtrack has greatly shifted from action and suspense to action movie music. -and i have said often that music is a key ingredient in a successful horror piece. But!, on the flipside of this we have fear 2, which literally has a shock a minute to the point where my controller was almost consistently on rumble and you were turning clone soldiers and the homeless creatures from condemned into clouds of so much red matter. this was so over the top i quickly became desensitized to any and all attempts to shock me or instill fear as i played. Plus if any fast moving or stealthed enemy showed up i simply hit the time freeze button and shot them in the head.

but this is getting into a ramble and those are topics for much longer posts at a later time, what i wanted to comment on was the current parting of ways between to series that have gone hand in hand as the two leading sides of the survival horror coin, and thats resident evil and silent hill.

Or more specifically Resident evil 5, and Silent hill Shattered memories.. For those wondering what im on about dont feel stupid, this games been prettty under the radar thus far. Its a re-imagining of the original silent hill on the wii pc and psp, developed by Climax studios, again taking over for team silent on this wii centric remake with a twist ill get to in a second.

So first off lets look back at the mid 90's resident evil and its "stylish but shameless rip off" as it was dubbed at the time silent hill have just been released. Both archetypal horror stories, you play a person in there 20's looking for missing people they know in an isolated location where unnatrual events have come to fruition pitting the player against a menagerie of monsters, either science or supernaturally based. Each have there charms, great memories for the game enthusiast to hang onto, yet remain distinctly different regardless of there obvious first glance similarities.

Now jump a decade on and we have a great divide between the once all too similar franchises. Resident evil is a new type of creature altogether, finishing the transition to full 3rd person shooter it began in resident evil 4. its still at its heart the same franchise but the essence of the game contains a little more in common with gears of war and other bloody shooters pitting your against humanoids with guns and weapons and large behemoth creatures to take down as you progress. Basically it lost the survival. when you had to survive in the early games thats because there was not enough ammo to take down everything, you had to survive by dodgeing the lurching zombies as you ran through the tight corridors, in 5 you have rocket launchers by level 3 onwards and hardly anything is greater than an equal threat.

Though silent hill appears to be going the other way, the remake is focusing on combat evasion rather than a rambo style "turn everything organic into a red paste" shoot off. tie this into the freezing environment replacing the rusty , fiery hell and i think its the one franchise of the two that is sticking to its roots, albiet in new and interesting ways and i for one am really looking forward to the new silent hill far more than i did for resident evil 5 and i dont think i'll be the only one.

So there my point, ill cut my ramblings off before they get to tangential, but there you have it folks, taking the fight to the majini guns blazing as the special forces chris or hiding in the frozen hell of a new silent hill as disturbed writer harry. i know which one of the two id call survival horror, but whats our view?, discuss.

-uhh.....

2009-03-17T19:00:00.001-07:00

Playing silent hill homecoming and resident evil, hang on.

"generic denial of death anecdote not found"

2009-03-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

So its quite as the streets of raccoon city in september here because im working hard on the design of save-point and i haven't bought any new horror games.

Though now its finally come out this weekend i should be buying silent hill homecoming later on today.

silent hill 2 NES edition, whaaa?....

2009-02-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah, so this is very old news, but honestly, its bitchin' and still news to me. this is a "demake" of silent hill 2 for the NES, dubbed soundless mountain 2 (take that you konami copyright goon force!) that looks really good for the hardware.

I'm out.

okay, now im suspicious

2009-02-09T09:20:00.001-08:00

So apparently the video IS legit for dead rising 2.

But honestly this has me worried, ive pointed out that video was not impressive, and mostly recycled footage, so if thats representative of a game and most of us are willing to dismiss it as a bad fan made video, what does that say about the final product.

im all excited about more rising, but honestly it smells fishy to me, why was it tagged as fake?

im holding judgement on this one.

dead fake.

2009-02-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

no doubt you've seen this doing the rounds -

-and its being featured on all the big name sites like kotaku.- but am i the only person who's bothered to notice the bloody video is tagged with the word "fake"?!?, or that its almost entirely footage from the original games opening cutscene. the rest is either frank in lost planet or some zombie character models in a casino level from some sega game thats name escapes me.

you learn at university when studying film that the smallest changes can edit anything into something new, just google scary mary or shining on youtube, why this has sold so many people is beyond me. the team behind the original game has said the "we'd like to but theres no plans right now" line so many times its like a bloody mantra.

also why would frank start a game dressed as mega man?!?

i understand that wishful thinking on the fans and slow news days on the journalists part will cause something as traffic generating as this (i realise the irony) to spread like wildfire but come-on people!, this is fake.

end of story, if im wrong good, we get a new dead rising, but i highly, HIGHLY, doubt it.

So... quiet 'round here huh?

2009-02-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

So yeah, indeed it has been quiet as hell. partly because my current s.h games are siren blood curse and left 4 dead. Which i have yet to get the most out of to review. but more importantly, ive a announcement to make.

I started this blog a year ago because i love videogames, survival horror has always been my Niche' genre, but i also have an equal love for Roleplaying games, Action adventure games and the like and at the time the situation i was in dictated that i had to pick my niche' and go with it. i didn't have time for articles. news or major reviews of many genres. but this blog has been excellent experience to show i can and it doesn't interfere with my work or my University studies.

However the thought of a full ,journalistic, videogames site. By videogame enthusiasts and for them, cheesy as that sounds, was always in my mind. Never anything like gamespot was when it was still respectable, or IGN. but more like an online magazine, somewhere between kotaku and giant bomb. but with the more independent blogger vibe thrown into the mix.

Well long story short is im going for it. this place will hopefully not update less whilst im at it. but in the long run i should be able to spend the start of this year making the transition from this blog to the full blown games site. So it could be the end of one type of gameing site from me, the start of another, better one.

so look out for save-point.com coming sometime later in the year.

"LIT"

2009-02-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

So i just found this on youtube, a trailer for an upcoming wiiware game called "lit", created by WayForward and released this monday. Lit is a puzzler survival horror ,from what i can tell, about two people in a vastly altered version of there school, where creatures are lurking in the dark.

So right up my alley then. honestly this reminds me a lot of obscure by hydravision from what ive seen and it looks pretty cool.

Heres the trailer doing the rounds right now -

brief commercial brake

2009-01-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

LOOK.AT.THIS.

its a mod for left for dead that recreates the locations, but not the story of resident evil 2. now im still on a left for dead kick, hence why there's still no article on here about it, and resi 2 ties with silent hill 2 as my all time favorite survival horror game from when the genre was at a "golden age" of sorts.

i know ive got it on the 360 but these mods are tempting me to grab it on my mac as well.

Alan wake site gets a revamp

2008-12-17T11:06:00.001-08:00

-and a nice one too i might add. been a while since any wake news came out, shame the sites lost some of those really impressive weather shots it used to have but still, any wake news is good news, and keeps it out of the same folder city of the dead and asylum were put in.

have a ganders.

http://www.alanwake.com/

okay, ive found it

2008-12-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

'member i wrote how i was perplexed, neigh, flabbergasted at the notion dead space proposed. that E.A could make good games still?!?, insane i thought. there had to be a chink in its armor.

-And whilst i loved the game and have not actively searched for such a chink found it i have.

ready for this?

great game, great graphics, controls, solid voice acting and a.i

-BUT!, it occurs to me they left something loose which has been snagging at the back of my critical breakdown of the gameplay experience every-time i play.

to be blunt what the hell is the deal with Isaac's girlfriend?

let me explain.

SPOILERS

So Isaac discovers at the end that the woman he came to save, the love of his life, is dead, has been since before the mission started, he saw her commit suicide at the end of that vid log and blocked it out.

okay, keep that in mind.

So the biggest problems are as follows:

1: Isaac cant open a sealed door, across a large ,deep pit there is a switch to open it (great design), and his girlfriend appears and opens it for you, with you protecting her from necromorphs.

-SHE ISNT REAL!?!, what is pulling the switch, what are the necromorphs attacking?, the official explanation is that she was a hallucination used by the red marker to get back to the planet, so then how is this possible?

2: if she is a mental figment of Isaac's mind being used as a puppet by the red marker to return it, why?

- The red marker created the necromorphs, so why is it trying to work against them?, why are the necromorphs trying to stop this imaginary woman from doing there creators bidding?

now that IS slightly explainable, the necromorphs are controlled by the hive mind on the planets surface, which was created by and sealed on the planet by the red marker, it was released and used its minions to stop it being resealed again.

but then what is the marker doing?, if it can also effect peoples minds and wants to keep the creations it makes sealed, why give people visions which lead to the opposite effect?

3: at the end, when all seems safe, Isaac is accosted by a nercomorph version of his girlfriend.

-the hive mind no longer exists, the necromorphs are all dead, or brainless vegetables.

-how did she get there?

-if the hive mind did not want the marker returned why not just send her after Issac to break his spirit?

i could go on about this for a while but the more you think about it the less the plot makes sense.

Humans reverse engineered this red marker from a black alien one. So how did they do that?, unitology came AFTER, so why?, if it looks like a carved rock with no energy readings why bother? -and again, how , what gave them a starting point? if it was just to copy the code for the necrotic polymorphing life-form why not just copy it off the original?, surely they must have done already to know what they were copying to create the hivemind to begin with.

-i can digress more but to end, thank you E.A for reinforcing my secure belief there will always be an impossible to ignore, glaring fault, in everyone of your games.

-ah, the theory is still sound.

-still a great game though.

Has my favorite silent hill forum gone under?

2008-12-04T17:21:00.000-08:00

So ive been trying to check out the silent hill forum that got a mention in the credits, ive been a member since 2004 and venture back every few months or so, only now it appears its gone. The sites account suspended, is it just me?, if not, anyone know why? -granted i didn't visit much but it had a very regular list of posters that, whilst very strict, leaning towards grammar nazis sometimes, ill admit it, its still a very good sight for survival horror fans.

im digressing slightly but yeah, anyone getting on here?: silent hill forum test, click here

Resident evil: Degeneration - The Review

2008-12-04T16:38:00.000-08:00

So for all you survival horror fans who have been living under a rock for the past few years, first of all welcome back to the surface world, 'o dwellers of the underneath. second. Resident evil degeneration is the 2nd canonical resident evil cg motion picture outing by capcom, the first being resident evil 4d-executer. This outing tells the tale of the time between resident evil 4 and 5, When an airport in the american midwest is caught in the midst of a T -AND G virus outbreak.

Things look bleak but wouldn't you know it,, all around unlucky people of the millennium Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy happen to be in the area.

Released on december 17th in japan and the 30th of the same month in the u.s (no english and european release date though...) its not long till you can all get your grubby mitts on a copy.

-however this lucky bugger just finished watching it.

My mostly spoiler free thoughts?

I went in very skeptical, studying film academically for the last few years has, unfortunatley turned me into a film snob at times. Though being a long, LONG time biohazard fan, -and that i enjoyed the live action outings (bar the first) as mindless fun for 2 hours i gave it a shot.

Now you all expect me to say i liked it but actually i really enjoyed it. a lot. coming from me thats a lot.

It starts off quite slow, and given the trailers show only a small airport i was thinking "over an hour and a half?, they must stretch this out!" but honestly no they dont. the only spoiler ill give is that the airport is only a portion of the plot and thats over with 65 minutes to spare.

my biggest gripe was that, aside from the romero zombies and the g virus mutation you've all seen in the trailer, it seems the t virus is much more tame nowadays and cant be arsed to create lickers or hunters and the like.

but for what it is i loved what i got. seeing claire and leons reunion was a total nostalgia trip back to the summer of '98. the little funny moments they share and in jokes- like at one point claire arms herself with a red and white umbrella and quips about the irony- make it a joy to watch for a fan, and for a regular zombie movie enthusiast its action packed enough to drag you in regardless of wether you've been a longstanding fan of the biohazard series.

graphically its very impressive, in some ways its not up to advent children's standards (the cg final fantasy movie -for the rock dwellers) and in others its better. The facial expression's, whilst often a rarity are so striking they take you out of the moment a little, like when claire winks at leon before a door closes we see her entire facial muscles move on the side thats winking. now that's attention to detail.

i cant say too much without ruining it, and i really don't want to, the fans have got to discover the little jokes and hidden references for themselves. but all in all after a slow start i was enthralled right till the ending credits. i hoped till the last 5 that there would be more monsters in it like i mentioned a few lines back but i have to say ive not seen a horror movie that ive enjoyed as much in quite a long time.

To sum it up all us silent hill fans dug some aspects of the movie, the use of yamaoka's soundtrack, the use of static camera and a great set piece list throughout. but it wasn't made by konami, it wasn't made by anyone behind the games and it was simply to make cash.

Biohazard degeneration on the other hand is a proper movie for the fans, its not a cheap rehash of ideas or a tie in- though it does tie into resident evil 5- its a flick thats had a lot of care and attention to the source material included and i know if your a fan of the games you will really enjoy this.

Now just sit back and twiddle your thumbs for a couple of weeks, -OR replay resi 2 and 4 to get with the lore again, i'm playing 2 right now and it takes me back.

just wait folks, your in for a bloody treat.

Valve put up left 4 dead "movie" posters in online store.

2008-11-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

So have a gander's, gentle horror loving folken, at the latest addition to the valve store. For those yet to play it each of the 4 stories in left 4 deads campaign mode has a fake movie poster for its loading screen at the start, listing each gamertag in the credits as each respective character they are playing. Now you can grab these from valves online store to go with your companion cube t shirt and lifesize headcrab. at 15 bucks for all 4 im very tempted, but for all i know ordering 4 pieces of paper form the states could cost an additional 10 to 35 bucks in postage costs.

Still, cool thing to frame and put in the studio at least.

-Oh, and rather than get all fanboy...ey and rave about it right after release im holding off on my left 4 dead review till ive played every mode to death.

EDIT- that would have been a good intentional pun to end on wouldn't it?, just a fluke i assure you.

Dead Space: The Review

2008-10-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

Developer: EA redwood studios

Publisher: EA

Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC

Released: October 24th 2008

Genre: 3rd person sci-fi shooter/ survival horror

So its 3:24am and ive JUST finished dead space. i was really excited about this, which was confusing because ea hasn't made a good game since oddworld strangers wrath in my opinion. so after couple-a-hour stints is it the next big thing in survival horror?

Honestly? no.

and for once I'm disappointed to admit it.

I read the comics, did all the puzzles on the site, read all this lore voraciously, i had to know what the plot and back story was. All of that i loved, and don't get me wrong, i love dead space too. but its just a clone of resident evil 4.

So if you don't know already (and if you don't your mother and i are very disappointed in you young man), you play Issac Clarke. An engineer on a small ship investigating a distress signal coming from a dead, silent, drifting hulk of a mining ship the usg ishimura. unfortunately they get trapped there and they find out that, whilst the crews dead, the atmosphere certainly isn't.

cheesy i know but it works.

anyway i cant say much, but what i can say is the story can be wrapped up in 5 minutes, theres a good minute long interesting scene every few hours but all in all i finished the game wanting to know more, not in a sequel, but in back story. i needed it to be explained to me in a more concise and plain way.

Though this is a successful new ip so you know ea is gonna bleed it dry so i expect ill read a novel about it some time in 2009.

-Plus there is an animated feature film that tells the prequel story, so i guess youve gotta buy that to get the full experience.

bad e.a.

Game play wise its pretty much resident evil 4. remember playing silent hill or resident evil first and then the other and going "hang on, the controls are exactly the same". this is just like that nostalgic 1998 feeling, whether its good or bad i don't know but there we are.

The merchant is replaced by a machine, but you still get loot and ammo from enemies, which you can then use to buy new guns and upgrade them and stuff. but like resi 4 you cant upgrade it all in one play through. theres logs, over the right shoulder aiming. in fact its pretty much resident evil 4 with a new skin.

though thankfully they've got none of those damn quicktime events. everything, including being dragged by a tentacle across a room and having to shoot its week points to escape is real time relying on you, not pressing a a lot.

unfortunately i was drawn in with comparisons to bioshock. lets be clear. - THIS IS NOT BIOSHOCK. this is resident evil 4 by a mile between the two games. the problem with that is that the ishimura has no character, if you go in expecting rapture type world that's full of character you in for a disappointment. instead you get something more akin to the mars base from doom 3.

-anyway I'm going off on a tangent here, but the point is, rapture felt like it had a history, like you'd joined a game halfway through the worlds narrative. but in dead space all you've got is a blue line leading you in form an airlock to set pieces which seem to have been waiting for you.

Which neat leads me to the fact that this is not open ended, its funneling you down a path half life 2 style. only with back tracking for the final 3rd. it lacks character, you go here, do something, get told to go to the next point and follow the path. Which is lame but how its done is neat. issac uses , when clicking the right thumbstick, a hologram that beams along the ground to your next destination. in theory its really disappointing but its cool and different.

Speaking of which. theres no hud, well there is, but it not in your face. issacs spine is his hp bar, he gets a holographic inventory and display above weapons for ammo. its real time and immersive but unlike alone in the dark its not adding to the fear its just a neat factor.

overall i got used to the hud instantly, you can still pause, but it just feels like an interactive movie at some points.

only trouble is its less aliens and more jason x.

to sum up the controls its responsive and easy to use, but its overcomplicated by combos. left trigger plus x is stasis freeze, x alone is health packs, which is a poor choice when you might need to freeze a fast enemy, and use your last health pack by mistake and then get badly hurt because you didn't freeze it in time and have no health pack.

However, i can ignore most faults because of the dismemberment system, i got used to so much shooting out legs and arms off that i tried another game in the same vein and kept missing headshots because i aimed for the joints.

its fun, but its never implemented any more than you see in the first fight and it had more potential i think.

You can also upgrade weapons with a system reminiscent of the sphere grid from final fantasy x. you gain power cores across grids to upgrade the powers of your suits and weapons. its a nice touch but unlike resi 4 you may have to level up two blank spaces before you can gain any actual power ups.

Graphics wise space is beautiful. an orange ether permeates the sky and rainstorms of meteors flow past like a stream. However inside its, well, like i said, its doom 3 all over again. its not very easy on the eyes, theres jagged edges were there should be smooth surfaces, edges are grainy and cloudy and the colour pallet was uninspired. Again I'm going to compare it to rapture, but also the starting areas of resident evil 4, either Spanish woodlands or the art deco of fort frolic and its just bland in comparison to either. the game lacks character. the hero is iconic, but the levels and creatures leave a lot to be desired. it never detracts from the gameplay though, i had a blast. but in retrospect i think "yeah, at the time i didnt notice it but-", and im getting this a lot as i write this review. i enjoyed myself, but i can pick so many nits with this game. though possibly i am just being biased due to my poor previous experiences with ea?

Sound wise i was really disappointed, its poor and buggy and all in all annoying at times. there can be a creature in the next room but its so close to the door that tension building music is playing. but i would just be browsing the wares in the store and i noticed that after 30 seconds it stops instantly and then restarts. i cant think of that many items but i can say that its barely even ambiance, they couldn't feasibly release a soundtrack to this like obscure or alone in the dark.

i could go on about the factors that bugged me, but these faults, though they number in the good dozen or so, never mess with the experience, because honestly its the scariest game Ive played in a long long time. which surprised me. though like many games this does lessen as the game goes on but all in all i enjoyed it, it inst very good in the grand scheme of things but for 10 hours of horror gameplay id say its worth a rental but a full purchase buy?..... maybe, for once I'm indecisive, some of you will love it and disagree with me, saying I'm too harsh, others will hate it and say I'm too lenient but id say give it a try.

on one hand you will have a great time, on the other you will not care about it at all 1 year from now.

so i give it a loose-

SCORE: [6/10]

SCARE FACTOR: [8/10]

Remedy wakes up from slumber to release new trailer

2008-10-21T14:39:00.001-07:00

Too cheesy?, yeah i thought so too, but im lost for good titles right now , gimme a break!

anyhoo, horror fans prepare to go nuts for the new alan wake trailer!, 'nuff said.

Bioshock 2: Sea of dreams PS3 easter egg trailer

2008-10-20T00:00:00.001-07:00

A little late on the uptake i know, but i think ive got it.

So theres a lot of speculation on this, and my first thought was rapture rising from the sea, but i think ive got it now.

The girl is one of the little sisters, now in her teens, that jack saved from rapture in the good ending. only instead of living normal lives like the others she went all "carrie" and has similar plasmid abilities to jack and the splicers. maybe jack made the big daddy doll to give her something familiar to attach to when she was little and now its bringing back these long blacked out memories or rapture and she is unconsciously shaping the sand behind her to the images in her head as she looks out at the sea.

Perhaps it doesn't even take place on rapture, and this is just the catalyst for it, im definitley getting a carrie/ring vibe of the girl, but only time will tell. aside from a terrible endgame boss bioshock was almost perfect, maybe it could have used some more period music but the art deco style just captured my imagination. So needless to say i cant wait for this.

But seriously folks, the trailer, whats your speculation about it?

On the topic of homcoming

2008-10-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

Now since pj doody was kind enough to give me an interview for the site ive gotten about 200 emails if i knew when it would come out in Europe. also comments on here, pms to my xbox account, i was once even asked in a game of lone wolves in halo 3!

well i asked pj because a lot of people are getting different dates , most commonly october 30th and november 13th, he was a great guy and asked about it and its still sketchy but apprently no we in the uk and europe cant expect it this month, im guessing novembers 2nd or 3rd week. so it doesn't have fable or dead space or the like to compete with. but that just a guess on my part.

not to exact i know, but please, enough wit ze emailzzzzz!!!

The Suffering: The Review (or: "How Danny got back in the saddle")

2008-10-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

Developer: Surreal Software

Publisher: Midway games

Platforms: PS2, XBOX, Pc

Release: July 30th 2004

Genre: Third person shooter with psychological horror themes.

So a few posts back i posted a link were midway had, very surprisingly, put this game up for a free download. Being a horror nut (go figure) and the fact ive yet to see an xbox copy in stores i spent a good 6 hours on my poor connection downloading this. So yesterday i finally sat down to play it.

I'll then stood up after that "brief session" to find several hours had passed and i had finished the entire game.

So i guess i liked it, i think.

The game beings with the eyerollingly named protagonist "torque" (no, really) being admitted into carnate island penitentiary for the murder of his wife and children. Wouldn't you know it however that as soon as the locks bolt shut everything goes all "silent hill" on the islands population.

Now, do you remember the prison level from ghost hunter?, well this is it, albeit in a much more free roaming sense. from the off set your never given any clues theres maps and such but your not even told what button you use to see them. your just given a knife and told "heres the open cell door, escape!". Now this i really liked, i had no idea were i was, what i was looking for. i just fought my way through the demons filling up the prison and explored the blocks and tried to find a narrative in there. somewhere.

To be honest i dont know if this was intentional or bad design but i couldnt help but think it would make a good level in left 4 dead with 4 players stranded around this island trying to find a way off.

The level design is nice, albiet bland in parts. and sometimes the textures are apt to dissapear for sod all reason. really on the whole it feels so much like an incomplete test level from another game i cant place my finger on. the island has a mental institution, a WWII amy barracks, a beached slave trade ship and a graveyard of witch trial victims to name a few. i know ive played something like this before. its neat to explore but i cant escape this nagging feeling ive played something just like this before.

please leave a comment if you can think of he game im thinking of as this is bugging the crap out of me.

-anyway. music wise it not very good, just cheap screeching noises with flashes of gore to make use of those tired "jump" scares.

Control wise its not bad, but i find myself closing the program instead of opening doors because of poor placement on the keyboard at default (im not a pc gamer), sometimes the character, after a checkpoint starts constantly running to the left or right even when the keyboard is removed from the computer. I could go on but to sum it up its fun , to a point, it has faults.

This isn't really a long or in depth review, i think thats quite an apt analogy of the game itself, This game is like buffy the vampire slayer, or ghosthunter. A third person horror game that never feels like your in a world, like fable or resident evil 2. You are always conscious that this is an enclosed little area, like setting out pieces on a pre set puzzle board. Thats not to say it isn't fun. i had a relatively good experience playing this, going crazy with a shotgun running towards 2 done screeching terrors from beyond.

Is it worth getting?, its free, so of course. would i pay full price on release when this came out?, no. its an interesting gameplay experience, but in no way is it memorable, there are few scares, the story is ranging from inconsistent to none existent and it just needed more rounding off before release. For example, you can have prisoners or guards team up with you, but they can suddenly stop following you for no reason, disappear, or just get locked behind a door thats pre set to forever close after you enter it.

Honestly i can go on but these little faults allow for no mental interaction. its more of a mindless shooter with horrific imagery over a true survival horror. not once did i believe torque, who could turn into a bloody giant monster with a sword for an arm for gods sake!, was not going to make it through this without a scratch. To be blunt you just dont give a crap about him.

I know this review is inconsistent. but thats the game in one, its hard to define. can i recommend you will enjoy it for a gameplay session o two?, yes, its a free game that i can recommend. but is it worth your time as much as ghost hunter or obscure, let alone resident evil or silent hill?, no, honestly its not.

SCORE [7/10]

SCARE FACTOR [2/10]

Answering more readers questions

2008-09-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

Only 2 so dont expect some big thing.

Valdoran69 (huh.) asks "did that doody ,lol, guy send you a copy of homecoming free?"

If your a new reader he, or she, is on about the review i did with p.j doody, one of the writers of silent hill 5, and no. unfortunately the interview was just a nice deed he did for me, no silent hill 5 freebie...and still a month till we get it in the uk.

Sally asks "ive seen your site on kotaku and other big name sites a while back, i guess this must have given you traffic, why not start a full site?"

Honestly i thought about it a few months back, i was about to purchase a domain and i.p when i just figured that i didnt need to.

If you want a site like this but altogether more professional site then check out Chris' survival horror quest, a site ive been visiting for a good 4 ,maybe 5 years now. Again its a one man show but its the real deal and theres no better competitor on the net. Raccoon city times is what it is, One long time survival horror games enthusiast who has his own little easy to manage slice of the internet that you guys just so happen to like checking out, and that means a lot really, and im quite happy with that for now, i work full-time in a restaurant , attend a university for a degree and do freelance filmmaking work, i do this for fun in my limited free time and you guys like what i post and i like that you dig it so thats all this site needs really. i dont think i will, at least in the foreseeable future, change it to a proper website because it gets the job done and suits a guy like me just fine.

-and to the good 2 dozen emails about it, no, i haven't been contacted by hyrdavision with news about obscure 3, dunno were this rumors come from that i get messages from them.

Play the suffering for free!

2008-09-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Props to Chris of a certain questing site for the skinny on this one. Midways put the Survival in the slammer horror game The Suffering up for free download on our good old t'internet. Its a bit hefty at over a gig, but its free and ive not found an xbox copy of this so im getting this whilst the gettings good, so check it out and enjoy!

http://www.gamershell.com/news_60914.html

"So why'chu not been posting?"

2008-09-24T06:44:00.001-07:00

Thanks to dave from NJ for that one, as usual, send your complaints to underground_slacker@hotmail.com to get my ass out of my gamer coma.

to sum it up, ive been playing a huge number of games but not survival horror, so to sum it up

Braid- must own

The World ends with you - must own

infinite undiscovery - utter trash

force unleashed - worth renting

lost planet - its freakin' capcom!

Wow- made it to outland.

i can go on and on, but ive been meaning to get into games of a more horrific variety but theres been a slew of great games for me to play lately, and im a games enthusiast first, a horror nut second. In fact the only reason i focus on horror and not a general games blog is because its my favorite genre, but also because i could never find the time for all my other favorite genres. particularly rpgs.

Though the next few reviews are gonna be more obscure games or games like parasite eve that have been forgotten by many. so stay tuned, i will pick up on articles soon.

Hasn't this guy died twice already?, at least twice?

2008-09-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

The picture speaks for itself.

Yes, thats the one, the only, Ultimate B-movie bastard/ once leader of S.T.A.R.S for raccoon city mr Albert Wesker. Finally something of note worth posting, see a lot of stuff i hold off on since other more high profile sites focus on the same thing, but ive gotta give my five cents on this.

Ive always liked wesker, he was a double agent, so the "twist" was actually logical since he turned on chris and jill in resident evil. most games in this genre would have him turn out to be a secret relative or something like that yknow? hes never been blown up the way, say, sephiroth has been in the gaming community, yet hes easily more dangerous than he tyrants or possibly the nemesis. no matter how many times you kill him he keeps coming back, and given resident evils b movie inspired origins thats why hes such a great bad guy.

Just one more reason to look foreward to this game, though it kinda solves the mystery of how las plagas parasites turned up in arica huh?

DAMN YOUSE ADA WONG!!!

Well her it is.

2008-09-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

Its hard to believe but the sites already been going for a year, haven't updated much, which is a shame, but ive been very busy with film school and work, but ive got plenty of horror game to get into when things quiet down.

so heres to a year thats gonna be better than last.

or i hope so at least.

There WILL be a left 4 dead demo coming for the xbox and pc.

2008-09-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

So make with the clicky-clicky here For the info about it. its been confirmed for co-op play too.

Now this bugs me a little.

Its what?, 4 or 5 different areas? in total?, im not sure how this demo is going to come about myself. You can give the player a level to try, like the city one weve seen a lot of, and whilst the a.i and director engine will make every demo experience different, by the time the levels over they will have experienced a 5th or a quarter of what the game has to offer.

maybe it will be in one barricaded building and one stand off to survive or just a set 15 minutes of gameplay which pisses me off. but its a good way to give you enough.

honestly i dont know, but im a long time fan of zombie films, novels and games so im sold from the first minute after i heard the premise, but this doesn't seem like a demo-able game to me.

Is this bizarro world or something?

2008-08-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

Not a snappy title i know, but this is bugging me.

Dead space.

It looks great, i loved the backstory in the comics, like virus meets bioshock meets aliens. i cant wait for it to come out.

but heres the thing.

its made by E.A

see, when it was electronic arts i wasn't a fan, id buy a couple but more often than not be disappointed. out of all the big companies they just seem to be the biggest whores. sure capcom will report the same game a dozen times for nothing but revenue, but what there porting is a great game theyve put the time and effort into. E.A on the other hand just appears to want to make games that will make a tidy sum over breaking even on production and just repeat this again and again.

so its no surprise that they do a lot of ,if not all, of the yearly sports games.

but let me put this in perspective.

the last E.A game i bought and loved was oddworld, strangers wrath, a wild west fps version of the world from abes oddessy, and i loved it form start to finish.

then i got bored with the crap and decided, rather eloquently, i wasn't "going to put up with this shit anymore", and was just done with e.a

Then, for some reason, i decided to buy army of two. yes i am very disappointed in myself.

what follow was 3 hours of the most vile, reprehensible asshole "protagonists", and that word is used here looser than the 10 year old nickers of a 'lady of the evening' on hamstead heath. till i could stand no more and went back to my local gamestation and greeted the clerk with a hearty "what the hell man?!?".

they understood completely.

To be blunt ,poor controls aside, they were dicks, killing 3 dozen people who were, i shit you not, suicide bombers making that tongue on roof of mouth noise, turbans and all, and then using there "pimped out" golden plated, pearl encrusted machine guns like an air guitar whilst screaming "ladies lift your shirts" and bumping the 'respec' knuckles' was a little too low brow for a gamer who considers the medium an art form, as well as an entertaining pastime.

in short that was the final blow form E.A.

they produce utter shite to make money and thats it.

but dead space is some bizzaaro version of this were it actually looks really, really good.

i dont know, maybe ive gone senile at the start of my 20's or something.

E.A cant make a good game right?, right?

And the new topic is.....

2008-08-02T17:16:00.000-07:00

So im starting a new trend, since i am now A: employed and have income, and B: have just read all of S.D. perry's resident evil novels that i am going to try and get my mits on every english released ps-one game thats part of any of the survival sub genres.

this includes my first targets to track down, dino crisis and parasite eve.

will i find them without ebay?

will they be good?

will they be expensive?

have i gone slightly crazy?

all these and more will be answered in due time.

first to add to the list is Resident evil and fear effect 2: retro helix.

Resident Evil: Twilight - A Halflife 2 Mod

2008-07-31T02:11:00.000-07:00

So im looking for images to use in the banner for the update the sites going to be going under in the next few weeks and googling raccoon city, (and coming up with this very site a few times) i stumbled onto this -http://www.evilmod.de/view/base.php?site=home&head=1&changelang=eng its a mod for half life 2 based on the last 24 hours of raccoon city and it looks pretty neat, its 80% done and im actually looking forward to playing this and reviewing it on here. though im not normally one for mods, but this one looks worth checking out, ive been playing resident evil again dn reading the great s.d perry novelizations and im in a raccoon city mood again lately so this is worth checking out in my opinion.

New Wii Horror game, Cursed Mountain.

2008-07-31T01:06:00.000-07:00

Credit goes to the user Crave on the Chris' survival horror quest forum for this find.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/895/895191p1.html

So it seems the wii is getting into its horror stride of late, much like the gamecube did a year or two into its life span.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough to save mine which i traded in for rock band , the complete set on the 360.

Though im definitely going to get one for fatal frame 4, though i'm taking some lessons in japanese lately so i would love to import stuff like escape form bug island as well.

-anyway, im going off tangentially here.

So according to the developer, cursed mountain is:

With a fresh setting, gloomy atmosphere and the innovative use of the Wii controls, Cursed Mountain will deliver a unique, terrifying game play experience," said Hannes Seifert, Managing Director at the Deep Silver development studio. "Deep Silver is confident that Cursed Mountain will help to further establish our international presence, and help expand the survival horror game genre on the Wii platform."

According to Deep Silver, Cursed Mountain will boast advanced graphics and amazing scenery. Since the game is set on the "roof of the world," players will be able to see the entire game world from any level. In addition, the title will feature IR / pointer and gesture-based controls for exploration and combat respectively.

Although Deep Silver is still unwilling to divulge too many details about the project, we did get a few extra tidbits from Hannes Seifert, who also serves as executive producer on the game. Exactly who is the main character -- other than a climber, that is? "He is an experienced high altitude climber, well known in the international climbing community. He cares a lot for his younger brother, also a climber, and has deep concerns about his overambitious, high risk-taking nature," Seifert said. "Somehow he always knew his brother would get into trouble one day and sure enough, on a particularly difficult route that has never been successfully completed, his brother is lost.

Which sounds neat and dandy, if a little tired and unoriginal, im getting some silent hill,a little alone in the dark and some tomb raider for good measure vibe wise off this.

not to say it'll be bad, i just think it may be extremely linear, heres hoping its not though, the wii needs more credible horror exclusives to get it out of the "kiddie stereotype", it worked for the cube, it will work for the wii too.

Though i cant help but get a 30 days of night vibe off this.

which would make a neat co-op game like left 4 dead now that i think about it.

-On that topic

2008-07-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Time for a recap on alan wake.

So there's the two trailers again. Im imagining that if you've not heard of alan wake, but being a horror games fan visiting my humble little site that your excited now?

yeah, i thought as much.

In some ways the graphics are showing there age a little, compared to alone in the dark, but the thing is this is early build footage from YEARS ago.

its really been that long. for those who dont remember or are new to wake. The game is about a struggling writer who is grieving for a lost loved one and heads to the town of bright falls to clear his head and find the peace he needs to right his new novel.

its all very stephen king and i dig that.

The enemies are wakes nightmares made flesh, there only weakness being the light, so they only attack wake at night.

so when alan sleeps he has to set traps, like a trip wire that sets off a lamp flooding a hallway with lamp to ward off the raincoat phantoms.

though they can break the lamp and stuff so youve really gotta think carefully.

the weather ranges from sunny, windswept or rainy to thunder storms or full blown, terrain destroying tornadoes.

i could go on and on but this really is a must own game for any 360 owner, horror fan or not.

Wake up!

2008-07-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

So there's been a rumor doing the rounds that Alan Wake, my most anticipated horror game yet to be released, from the creators of the pieces of art that is the max payne series were going to finally show some new information about wake at the 2008 Tokyo game show (http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english/) and for those not in the know, there hasn't been any major wake news since the bloody jaw dropping weather engine tech demo which was staggering in its grandeur.

... Unfortunately these rumors have been quashed by the site bright falls.net a very reliable fan site for news on alan wake. Apparently this is VERY old news from last years tgs event.

Well im disappointed now, but to be honest the longer remedy works on improving it the happier i will be. so take your time remedy, i know it'll be bloody brilliant regardless.

and include an address unknown easter egg!

I'm wondering how many people will "lol" at this.

2008-07-22T05:10:00.001-07:00

So there it is. The Cover for left 4 dead, according to kotaku, and there rarely if ever proven wrong.

Now i think tis safe to say that the fan base for this is already waiting, i know i am. fans of dead rising and the like are most likely more excited about this than anything else coming out.

That said, even though good sales are guaranteed, how many of said purchasers will get the "all fingers no thumbs" double pun cover?

Personally this .....i dunno, maybe the 12th case ive seen for a zombie movie or games which is just a hand reaching up, its a cheap effect and i for one am frankly finding it to wear a bit thin of late.

Hopefully they wil come up with something a little better, maybe just a simple design like the orange box, but this?, meh. its riding on a pun, not character, like stubbs or dead rising. both have covers that draw you in to read the back of the case.

will this do it for people who dont know about it?

frankly i dont think so.

He's covered wars you know.

2008-07-16T04:35:00.001-07:00

Huh.

Well, colour me surprised about this. not the whole "capcom reporting a best selling game with no extras" they been an old hand at that game for almost ten years now. But dead rising on the wii?

I dont think this is a good idea. for one ,and if im wrong then good, but the wii cant have as many zombies on screen as the 360 can it?

if this was a ps3 port i could understand, but the wii?, im sensing a gimmicky control system and nothing more. That and it wont have achievements. now im no gamerwhore, but dead rising had tons of achievements which more than doubled the gameplay life of the game. it warranted a dozen replays, fighting zombies in new ways. ect.

Take that away and your just smashing zombies nonstop for 3 to 7 hours.

-or if im correct, just swinging a wiimote around.

Not sure about this one, but not particularly excited either.

Monter Madness: The Battle for Suburbia - The Review

2008-07-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

Developer: Artificial Studios/ Immersion Games

Platforms: Xbox 360, PC, (Soon to see a PS3 release as monster madness: grave danger)

Released: June 28th 2007

Genre: Arcade horror shoot-em-up

.....I know, i know. you screaming "Danny, what'chu been smokin', this aint no horror game!!1!oneone!".

Well if you look back at my early posts i said i was blogging on my passion for horror themed games. They don't have to be inherently scary. This falls into the category. Its not scary, but horror fans will most definitely dig it.

Basically i bought this dirt cheap for £5 in gamestation, my usual bargain haunt. It looked interesting enough to hold my attention, a gauntlet style romp through a suburban setting in the middle of a zombie outbreak. How could i not like that?

So basically its gauntlet meets zombies ate my neighbors, a lucas arts classic on them thar early consoles. you run around, with 3 or 4 dozen zombies around you and you have dual nail guns.

Danny like.

Its mindless carnage, and the live multiplayer is just as good. The soundtrack and overall art direction is nice, but nothing memorable. The characters are cliche' the nerd, the slacker, the prissy cheerleader and the goth girl. but there meant to be so its all fine and dandy with me.

From start to finish its a homage to all the good old horror flicks of yesteryear and i really enjoyed it, the controls are simple, if a little buggy in the vehicles (including giant mechs i shit you not).

Overall its a simple, but lengthy game, and i can only criticize its lack of co-op gameplay on xbox live, whilst this is being done in the upcoming playstation 3 release, a patch for the 360 version would be most welcome.

SCORE [6/10]

SCARE FACTOR [0/10]

Alone In The Dark: The Review

2008-07-09T03:27:00.000-07:00

Developer: Eden Games/ Hydravision

Publisher: Atari

Platforms: PS2, PS3, XBOX 360, PC, Wii

Release date: June 20th 2008

Genre: survival/ action horror

So i've put this off for a while.

I'm still slightly unsure about posting this review. Mostly because i still haven't completely finished it yet. Don't get me wrong, i've only got about an hour of gameplay left, and i think that is more than enough to give my view on the game. It's just bugging me that i've not finished it, for every other review i've finished the game before i post a review, hence the sometimes great distance between posts.

Though there is also some trepidation on my part because i don't think this is the sort of game that CAN be given a numerical value for its achievements as a game.

Though i only really use numbers as a rough guide on my final feelings upon completion of a game, like a low score is one to avoid, an in between one is somewhere between "meh" and a shrugging recommendation. if its high, then i really enjoyed it. aside from that I'm a major hypocrite and dislike grading reviews numerically, they should just be a thumb up or down at the end, and reasons listed within to justify said thumb...ness.

So, onto the game. Right from the start its VERY cinematic. it feels like an action movie, or disaster movie from start to finish. You reprise the role of Edward Carnby, paranormal investigator. Well, except for the new nightmare, which apparently is not canon. That or there just ignoring it for some reason. Anyway, i'm digressing here.

The game opens in a first person perspective, with Edward's vision blurring. To clear his vision you blink by clicking in the right thumbstick to shake of his disorientation.

"Neat" i thought, and it was, but its by far the least impressive thing to occur in the first hour of gameplay set in a collapsing tower block just outside central park. Its your job to get out before it comes down on you can escape the destruction and get into central park to investigate the cause of all this.

Apparently new york is being torn apart by quakes caused by "fissures" living streaks of lava that move with a malevolent intelligence. These fissures can even spread inside a human host, turning them into a "humanz". Creatures which can ONLY be harmed if you can set fire to the fissure running through there bodies. Ill get to the fire in a minute. There aren't many different creature designs in the game, id say 7 or 8 at the most, so its more resident evil 4 than fatal frame 2 if you catch my drift. Though all serve a great purpose and are placed in just the right places, like walking down a foggy road in central park, an upturned hotdog cart on the right, a burnout out car smashed into a tree on the left, and barely discernible shapes running at you through the fog....

Its got Mise-en-scene up the yin-yang. Like i said, its a action movie in the form of a survival horror game. So with any action theme there, of course, is driving sequences. Said driving sequences, and i had to pause and contemplate this shocking development, was actually fun, and i dont like driving games. It has a level of detail that i just adore. You can smash a window to open a locked door, check the glove compartment and shade for keys or items, hotwire it if theres no key. Hell, if worst comes to worst you can shoot the gas tank for a makeshift bomb.

Theres a few innovations in this, for one it is set in episodes and even has a "menu" like a dvd so you can skip "scenes" if your having trouble, or go back to redo others in different ways if you choose. I personally haven't used tis, but its good to have the option if its needed rather than not have it and get people stuck forever at one puzzle y'know?

Now the biggest design point of note is the fire. This game is all about arson really, and by that i mean beautiful high definition arson. Fires spread realistically, which takes some getting used to, i set fire to a door to get through it as it was locked and as i was checking my jacket inventory a spark jumped onto me and set me aflame. its little touches like those that i love and get infuriated by at the same time. the enemies main weakness is fire, so you can mix and match items found strewn about the park, bottles of petrol, fly spray and a lighter or something and makeshift your own fiery arsenal.

I'm only touching on one small factor, but the biggest selling point for this game, for me at least, is the freedom. Im not talking about the sandbox gameplay though. In GTA you can go anywhere, but every mission has very little ,if any, freedom of expression. Which im pleased to say 'Dark has in spades.

Example time - You have to ,at one point, cross a room full of enemies and kill them all very fast. How is up to you. My long time friend and reader ,who isn't much of a survival horror nut, Shot his way through by soaking his bullets in paraffin to make them more flammable, and therefore more harmful to the enemies.

How did you plucky young reviewer handle it?, well after years of yelling "your doing it wrong!" at the dumb gits in horror movies i went to bloody town on it.

STEP 1: break open a vending machine for a water bottle and drain it.

STEP 2: go into the kitchen and fill it with cooking oil.

STEP 3: add some bullets to the mix, wrap it in double sided tape and stab a whole in the bottom.

STEP 4: Trough it onto the back of the little creepy crawler creatures and let it wander about the room, leaving a deliciously flammable trail.

STEP 5: drop lighter.

STEP 6: PROFIT!!!

the trail is set aflame and takes all the creatures in the room with it.

Just one small example but the point is you can be john maclain or bloody maguyver, it all depends on you. For that reason alone i can give a recommendation to alone in the dark. Combine that with Good graphics, the sheer fact that they recreated the landmarks of central park, brick for brick is reason enough to applaud there efforts. Add to this some good choices on the design part, like having an older, mid 40's, guy be the protagonist and the like and another stellar soundtrack by oliver Deriviere (http://www.olivierderiviere.com/) the composer for obscure, no free download this time folks, Once again cementing the fact that this guy could give Akira Yamaoka a run for his money for the title of greatest composer in horror games.

I could go on and on about the bits i love, like having your coat be your inventory and have healing and switching items occur in real time, even during fights. Its so ambitious you can really see why it was in development for so long.

That said, now goods out of the way....

I think a list is appropriate.

Dying randomly for no reason.

Falling through the world for no reason.

Solving a puzzle without doing an obscure but mandatory action and getting stuck in a cutscene cycle.

invincible enemies.

cars exploding when you hotwire them

dodgy movement controls.

getting stuck on corners when your a foot away from them.

general bad collision detection.

randomly losing all your items when you die.

cars destroying themselves on the slightest collision

frame rate lag in large set pieces.

I could go on but needless for me to say, as you've no doubt heard it already before. This game is hampered by an unbelievable amount of unfixed bugs in the programming.

This doesn't ruin the game, its so ambitious that it more than makes up for the problems by giving you such freedoms, its just annoying. It stops you form being drawn into the game, you are never unaware that you are safe on your couch playing what seems like an interactive movie.

Whilst i do like that it also means there is no scare factor involved. The imagery is there, to be sure, but it never grips you, and just when it starts, a bug occurs to throw you for a loop.

Like i said, it doesn't ruin the game, just hampers the experience, but not enough to warrant an avoidance rating.

I could go on and on about this game, the good and the bad in equal measure. So i quickly surmise before this piece becomes the entire front page. I love alone in the dark, not as much as silent hill 2 or obscure but ive had fun with such a mind boggling freedom of choice in the game and i can overlook the bugs for that and i can safely say it is worth the money to pay for it instead of rent it. The games good and keeps you playing for long stints at a time, has good , albeit, buggy design and on the 360 it has achievements that stretch it out and amp up the fun factor a lot.

For once i would recommend the 360 version, if only for the achievements adding another dimension to the gameplay when used in conjunction with the dvd menu mode.

Overall i enjoyed it and im getting a good 8 out of ten vibe for this, though im also implementing a new score based on scare factor from now on, which this, due to bugs, fails at unfortunately, which is a shame as other than that its a pretty decent game. ambitious, but decent.

SCORE [8/10]

SCARE FACTOR [2/10] - Slight jumps and gore.

So they DO exist!

2008-06-19T13:15:00.000-07:00

Browsing the silent hill forum today i came across this.

Look familiar Survival horror fans?, it should. This is one of 250 Replicas of James Sutherland's (silent hill 2's protagonist) jacket. Its rare as hell and this is only the first time ive seen one since konamistyle stopped selling it, to be honest i was wondering if id just thought it up in a daydream but apparently no, my sound mind and reason did not imagine it, they really did sell them.

Apparently this particular one is being sold on the silent hill forum right now http://www.silenthillforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=10154 some people are getting a bit sniffy about the dude selling it but id never have the cash for one of these even when they weren't objects of legend.

Its just cool to show a little something like this i guess for the fans who've never heard of it.

Though to be honest i always thought James' coat was an army surplus jacket myself.

Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly DIRECTORS CUT - The Review

2008-06-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

Developer: Temco

Publisher: Temco

Realeased: April 29th, 2004

Platforms: Ps2, Xbox (backwards compatible on xbox 360)

Genre: Survival Horror

So right off the bat regulars will know im a big fatal frame fan, and today i finally finished the second game in the series "Crimson Butterfly", so my thoughts?

I bloody love it, heres why.

The game opens and introduces you to twin sisters Mio and Mayu. They are visiting a woodland they used to explore when they were children, and were mayu suffered a permanent leg injury, before the land gets flooded by the construction of an artificial dam. As they sit reminiscing about the past Mio snaps back to reality to find Mayu has wandered off. In the distance Mio can just make out Mayu following something into the deeper woods.

A crimson butterfly.

As Mayu follows her sister the sky darkens, buildings can be made out in the distance and people can be heard chanting.

And more butterfly's.

When Mio finally catches up to Mayu they are on a hill, by a shrine, overlooking a long since abandoned village, hidden for decades in the mountains of the regions.

Getting bad vibes they turn to leave, only to find the path has gone, so with no alternative route, given Mayu's bad leg, the sisters head into town.

At first the town seems dead, and it is, but it is by no means restful as they soon find out. "All gods village" has been in the same perpetual night for decades and the mad ghosts of the people who have died there roam the streets and homes, all with ill intent to use the sisters as part of there "ritual".....

So as you can imagine the plot kept me enthralled, its a story of loss, love, the nature of siblings and there responsibilities and it just never lets up, its like a cool mountain stream. It looks quite, simple, pretty, but try as you might you cant stop its progress, its a simple but powerful narrative ill spoil no further, but the endings a good one.

Gameplay wise its very much the same kettle of fish as the first fatal frame game, albeit with everything improved. the controls are responsive, well balanced and thought out, my only gripe being that, given the fixed nature of the static cameras in the game you can run up one corridor ,then ,given a reversed angle, start running back down it again without changing the analogue stick around.

Not a big problem, but worth a grumbling mention.

The sound is of the "less is more" variety, and its masterfully done, like bells, crunching gravel or creaking boards, rotten with age and neglect, all add to the mise-en-scene of each chapter and aside form the games theme played in the credits there's little music to speak of. But that only makes what there is have that much more powerful an impact.

Graphically its been given an upgrade for the xbox and it really shows, the characters are all memorable, there's like 50 different types of enemy in the game, which compared to resident evil or silent hill is a feat in and of itself, and overall its a great looking game, but that alone is not a note worthy thing.

I really must express to you the art direction of this game. its aesthetic, a grainy series of browns and blacks and general dark color palettes, are juxtaposed by the rich reds in the game every now and then. This contrast is a fantastic choice of design in terms of setting a mood, and giving the game a character which makes the predecessor pale in comparison to.

The pale girls, dressed in blacks and browns, in a shadowy forest, swarmed with the titular ,phosperecent, Crimson Butterflies is a powerful and memorable image.

Overall this is not your generic survival horror, this is something very special that only comes around every so often. Its an art house styled horror game, its psychological, thought provoking and terrifying all at the same time.

This Is , in my opinion, tied with Silent Hill 2 for the title of greatest Survival horror game in the genre. This game is an achievement in a world of mindless shooters and sex appeal over story.

If you are a survival horror fan you owe it to yourself to play this game.

[10/10]

DOOM 3: The Review

2008-06-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Developer: Id software

Publisher: Activision

Platforms: Xbox port

Released April 8th, 2005

Genre: Horror FPS

So another freebie here, gifted by a friend for a review, he knew id been going on about this for ages said it wouldn't come close to my expectations.

Given the hype he was right, it was far worse.

I know, i know. Im negative form the outset, how is that for a fair review?, well, its not. Though i will validate my feelings for a game i hold in almost as low regard as army of two, e.a's pinnacle in the calibre of shit games.

The story, what little there is has you playing a generic, in every sense of the word, space marine on a base on mars. Just as hes settling in to his new digs hell literally breaks loose, and you the only one man army on hand to stop it.

Not original, but hey, i let it slide, master chiefs not exactly the most charismatic protagonist yet still comes off as a heroic figure, so why not this guy?

-ill get to it.

Gameplay wise its okay, it definitely has kinks that need ironing out, for example the set controls at the start are horrendous, back switches weapons, the triggers open menus. its just a mess, and requires serious tweaking to get playable. The game also does not save.

you heard me.

i got halfway through, died for the first time and promptly swore my ass off when i saw i was back at the beginning were i quick-saved because of the terrible controls. i mean honestly, no auto save?, is this 1991? there's just no reason not to have it, if it can quick save it should have checkpoints and auto save features, even the most lackluster budget games are capable of this.

These are small gripes but right off the bat they break you off from engaging with the subject matter, and its very hard to be scared in a game when you are seething cruses at the controller.

I think the biggest gameplay problem is it was ported straight form pc to xbox and given a very rough control system, back then it was still like the xbox was just a pc for casual gamers rather than the franchise in its own right it has become and i think they felt they had little incentive to do more than just burn it onto a dvd, slap and xbox sticker on it and wave off the delivery man.

Sound wise its quite good, luckily i was expecting "ARD CORE METTULZ!" when i played this but luckily it does use the good old adage of silence being more deafening in horror than any soundtrack, it gets you, when you can get into the game, paranoid all the time, did i just hear a moan in the shadows?, was that something around the corner walking? its nothing at all memorable, but it gives the game character and i like that.

Graphics... now heres the thing. It was praised for implementing shadows right? well it doesn't implement them into the game, they drown the game in them. Again, thats all well and good when it comes to intent to scare. But it takes away form the enjoyment of the game, and with frustration comes disassociation and the illusion of the piece is ruined and it loses the ability to scare, this gets steadily worse as it progresses, by halfway you know that the darker a corner is, the more likely a monster will be in there. There not bad, kinda the way games of the time made players look like they were made of cottage cheese but thats just aging badly.

This port does have some cool extras, the first 2 doom games on the disc, trailers the like, overall its a nice package considering it was free. But in the long-run id say this is either a poor port, or has aged incredibly badly. I feel i must finish each one to give a fair judgment, but i cannot play all the way through this because its too much like work, its not scary, its not fun, its not a game. its an interactive screensaver, its not that its a bad game, its just there's so many better outings i can recommend instead, so this has dragged its score down.

unreasonable?, maybe. but i cant in good conscience give this such a score when i know there's a better game out there, hell i had more fun playing condemned 2 and you can just read my review on an older post about my thoughts on that.

Its really hard to give this game a numerical value out of ten, it feels like a 4 out of ten, so ill say that, but really i can just say "thumbs down" and shake my head in disappointment.

If you see this in a shop, put it down, go pick up prey or condemned instead, you'll thank me for saving, not your money, but your time.

[4/10]

"Experience the fear"

2008-06-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

So I thought it was time for a break down of fatal frame 4 from what we know.

from Beyond the Camera len's translations: http://www.cameraslens.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1213096669&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&

We can get a few things 1: That the protagonist has ties to a hospital, does this mean the girls pictured on the official site are her and other patients?, or did they all live on this island the hospital has connections to? They were "rescued", but are now dying off. is this a ring style curse?, or perhaps the purpose they were born for, are they more rope shrine maidens or something more sinister. 5 for the 5 elements in japanese folklore?.

Who knows, but the reading makes interesting food for though doesn't it?

What about the name of the game? "The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse"?

what significance does that bear?

The only reference i could find to an eclipse was the Shinto sun goddess "Amarterasu ", Who caused an eclipse by sealing a cave, from what ive read ,hurriedly, on the subject the world was saved by a sumo. which, whilst saying something for the bravery of the sumo, doesn't seem in keeping with the theme of the series.

What about masks?

The first thing that comes to mind are Japanese Noh Theatre masks. The noh performances are based on 6 groupings, possibly it could be used for 5 girls and an eclipse as the 6th grouping?

Although, the Noh theatre has routes in Buddhism, not shinto like i think the rest of the series is, so again. not in keeping with the vibe of its predecessors.

Honestly i dont think ill ever guess the story before i play it, but its fun to think about it and take wild guesses, and learn some folklore in the process.

Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The Review

2008-06-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Developers: Troika Games

Publishers: Activision

Released: November 19th, 2004

Platforms: PC

Right off the bat i was... unsure about bloodlines.

I got it free with S.T.A.L.K.E.R: shadow of chernobyl one day and knew nothing about it, save that it was a video-game rpg made in the half life engine based on a pen and paper/LARP (like action role play) game akin to dungeons and dragons, albeit set in a vampire controlled L.A.

Nether-the-less i gave in and tried it. since the idea of owning a horror game and not playing it, at least for a review, left me huddled in a corner, rocking back and forewords in a fetal position.

okay, not really, but still i felt like i had to give it a try.

So the game is a somewhat free roaming game, with 5 "hubs" that are a lot like a level from tony hawks underground 2 meets the early street levels of max payne. You play as a male or female character of your choosing form one of several subclans of vampires. each with different abilities ,some magic based, others brutish savages and everything in between.

Gameplay wise its a 3rd person horror themed action adventure with rpg elements. you have your typical wasd movement, aim with the mouse as a crosshair and either shoot in fps mode of swing a weapon in 3rd person. everything is simple to control, even though the jumping is akin to a crab performing gymnastics. the controls are slightly self piloting. you dont pick a lock, you right click on a lock and either do or dont, its not like thief or oblivion were you actually pick it yourself. Its a little gripe, but i like my games, not just horror, but across the board, to have a little room for self expression in it. Here the gameplay, whilst enjoyable, feels like its an unfinished tech demo for a playstation game. I know the whole "self expression" thing sounds uppity and pretentious, but this IS a ROLE PLAYING game, yet it never draws you into the character, you never make it your own, you cant choose appearance, very few dialogue trees come to different final conclusions.

.....i know im going off on a tangent here but it is a fallacy rpg that appears to give to the player the freedom it promises, and in gameplay alone you can see that it would have easily worked on the consoles as a straight up 3rd person action horror game.

-Anyway.

Storywise you can slightly affect your choices but overall its quite a linear experience in comparison to most rpgs, its rpg-lite. you are given the "embrace", become a childe of the night and are part of a clan, you are then cast out to do menial tasks for the night un-life of los angeles. during the beinnings of you getting into all these political shenanigans things start to go very awry. a ship, full of dead seamen and a sarcophagus driftsto shore, a powerful vampire suddenly becomes reclusive, and a serial killer is on the loose. Say what you want about its shallow designs, it does have a good number of sub-plots ,seperate from the core narrative, and i like that. whilst there isn't much choice, there is a choice WHEN to do most things and these little stories actual take up more game than the core story missions, and not unlike gta you will find yourself doing these way before heading onto the next area to fight another boss.

Graphically speaking its of the time. its made in the half life engine, which means details, but also a kind of ...i dont know, feeling you in a box with buildings painted around the edges. its not sandbox gameplay, its lunchbox gameplay, a close emulation, though it lacks the true freedom of its larger, sandier counterpart.

the characters are well designed, although a lot more time is spent on the women's cleavage than buildings which is A: questionable and B: unsurprising given this is a game about vampires, natures enemy of the corset.

All in all the graphics have character, they do have a tendency to jar, with the likes of warcraft and stalker contained in the same level, but the overall design thematically works soundly.

Overall i, not a pc gamer, but part of the console playing sub race whos primary evolutionary traits are playing first person shooters and being loud, Found bloodlines to be that rare thing. -A pc game i can actually play, its witty, exciting, though never scary. The music and graphics suit the dark, comic-noir feel and most importantly i had fun. if you own a pc that can play it, as a horror fan you should play it.

[8/10]

Getting affiliated or "How to Whore yourself out like it's going out of style"

2008-06-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

So here's a few websites that have listed me, so its only fair i give a little recommendation for each herein.

1: Black sanctuary - http://mental-fiction.net/survivalhorror/ I only discovered this one recently and it doesnt appear to be as well advertised as it should be. Basically its an easy to explore directory of sites about survival horror gameing. Rnaging from general review and article sites like this one you fine readers are visting right now. To "shrines" to various characters form games, though its lamentabel the town itself from silent hill games has no such place as it was allways the most malevolent of characters in my opinion. it also includes fan fiction site and forums and is generally a good source of information when you take all of these sites, adn therefore the sizeable amount fo survival horror fans connected to it.
Very much worth adding to favourites.

2: Chris' survival horror quest - http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/ Possibly my favourite site form the ones on this list. Ive been visting for, damn, must be 5 years now maybe? I dont so much go there for articles or reviews, more for the community on the excellent forum, and to hear Chris (a videogames deisgner himself) give an intriguing insight from the other sid eof the looking glass on the current situation in the survival horror genre.
A must visit for horror fans.

3: Beyond the camera's Lens - http://www.cameraslens.com/ By now you know that ,aside from my first horror passion silent hill, fatal frame is horror series i hold in the highest of regards. Not only because its still consistently terrifying to me, but it just has a style ot it thats like the game equivalent of an art house film. Evidently the Sites owners must have the same passion for these games given its Fatal frame theme.
To sum it up its bloody well designed, has genuine character to the site and its gonna be my location for fatal frame 4 news.
Not really affiliated ,but still very much worth a mention.

4: The Bitter End - http://survivalhorroronline.com/ Another general horror site, frequently updated with regualr news, that is a good source of information on more obscure games. The owners clearly go that extra mile by seeking out inromation, so yeah, another thumbs up.

5: The silent hill forum - http://www.silenthillforum.co.uk/ been a member for going on 4 years now, great commuity with allways a new philosophical discussion going on or something. really great stuff overall.

Theres a few sites im affiliated with, or just link to because you should visit them, so scat!, go have a ganders and get off mah damn lawn!!!

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds - The Review

2008-06-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Developers: Eurocom
Publishers: Vivendi
Platforms: Gamecube, Xbox, PS2
Released: August 27th, 2003
Genre: Horror themed beat-em-up/ Action adventure

Now i must admit, the time of Buffy has passed somewhat. I don't get into the reruns as much as i used to, but its always going to have some appeal for me, as Buffy the vampire slayer was one of THE key shows the springs to mind when i reminisce about my childhood viewing habits.
So i wasn't that jazzed to get into this one, but it was £2 so what the hell?, i gave it a spin.

The game opens literally dropping you into the middle of a fight. Giles' shop ," The Magic Box" is under assault from a gang of vampires. The task falls to the player to rid the store of these undead gatecrashers. Only a change has been made since the first one. Your not alone anymore.
Not only can you play as the titular Buffy summers, but now you are joined by the rest of the scooby's. You can fight using magic with Willow Rosenberg. Use vampiric strength with Spike. The Monster hunting skills of Sid the dummy. Faiths slayer strength.

and Xander harris, with the power of comic timing!

So each has different skills for you to use. Unfortunately you have no choice in which to play as, which would have added a nice multiple route ,puzzle solving aspect. Though this is because each characters location and motivations is intrinsic to the games plot.

To sum it up without spoilers, Buffys enemies are returning from the dead, alternate realities are "bleeding" into one another. Then wouldja believe its up to her to save the world?

So, game play. For the most part this is a fun, albeit flawed, beat-em-up engine. You use block, punch and kick (or in willows case energy or fire) to create combos with varying degrees of eviserating capabilities. Its fun, but its far to easy to get stuck in a combo by accident and punch yourself a path right past the enemy. then get knocked down by then and have ten bells of shit beat out of you for the transgression. Honestly, i know this was 5 years ago now, but i would have still kept this back a few more weeks to iron out some of the combat problems.
Story wise its basically a typical joss whedon creation. unique dialogue compared to most 3rd person games in the same vein. Though i must admit whedons "witty one liners" for characters, most noteably buffy and xander, have grown incredibly tired and stale since the first season of buffy.
I should point out that this is set between 2 episodes of season 5, just a while after joyce summers has died. overall the story has good dialogue, but the main plot itself seems like a straight up budget title, point being you could skip every cutscene and still play happily.
Music wise its the exact same stuff from the first game, granted i havent played it in a good few years now, but im quite sure that its the exact soundtrack that played through the first one. it still works, dont get me wrong, each scene is well set by it. it just sems cheap is all.
now i feel i should mention ,before i get to graphics, that this is a "monther" game.

What do i mean by "monther?" you ask?

a Monther is a game were you will breeze through 2 hours of gameplay and get to a point were you will be inexplicably stuck with no way of knowing how to progress, and without gamefaq's you will leave the game for months without knowing what to do.
For example, Xander had to get passed an electric fence. i saw an obviously pointed out fuse box, since its texture was a brighter hue than anything else in the room. I wasnt told this however, i was told nothing. save for the fact 20 minutes earlier a woman, ONLY IF YOU HIT HER BY MISTAKE. tells you that she hid a crossbow in the building.
I look everywere but find nothing. so the month begins, least, it would have had i had no internet connection.
Turns out you must beat open a locker, not use the same action to open doors, but beat a locker that looks eactly the same as 7 other lockers in the same room who are all indestructable boxes of scenery.
Then i shot the fuse box and climbed the fence.

This also occured in ghosthunter with the librarys poulterghiest, it doesnt ruin the gameplay really, but it just doesnt explain in any way what you need to do, and it should to some extent. not a major gripe to put me off the game, but worth ranting about.

Finally graphics, this is an odd one, character model wise theres 3 for each type of bad guy. though each model is skinned 3 different ways to streatch out the amount. thoughyou still run into the same ones in groups for some unkown reason, save the developers got a bit lazy.
xander, willow and giles look startlingly like there on screen counterparts in this videogame outing, buffy and spike however look like a generic npc from an mmo, no charcter to there appearance. just generic blocks.
the enviroments are varied enough, from a midnight churchyard to the streets of sunnyvale and beyond. there pretty cool and quite large for an origional xbox title, i was quite pleased by it. i was expecting small fable sized areas but the developers whent to town on this portion.

Overall its a game with character. Its flawed, but i dont think theres been a 3rd person action game yet that hasnt had a few glaring scratches in an otherwise stellar paintjob. Sure you can get stuck for months and the soundtack is recycled, but as a whole package it works. i had fun playing it and i think i will play it again some day instead of trading it in disspointed like i did with my last review.
If your a buffy fan its a definate purchase, though likely you have allready. For general fans of horror themed games id say give it a try, given its extreme budget pricetag its worth the miniscule dent in your wallet, but if it was brand new?, maybe not.

ill give chaos bleeds [6/10]

Project Origin (Fear 2) footage

2008-06-15T14:38:00.001-07:00

Just trawling the net and found this on youtube, its footage of project origin. The sequel to fps jump-em'-up F.E.A.R. The original had fantastic A.I, even if the story and scares were lackluster, but the atmosphere made it... when you were exploring yet another generic office or warehouse, NOT when you were being attacked by the guard robots from robocop.

still im looking forward to this myself, what about you?

Wow, this sites really been doing the round's lately

2008-06-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

-no, really it has.

i was googling silent hill 5 for any new info and this fine, grammatical error filled, site is showing up quite a bit. I even found a site giving an rss feed of it: http://www.blogged.com/blogs/the-racoon-city-times.html

In fact comments have been picking up, even if articles haven't, and there is a reason for that.

A while back the student loan i took out for my filmmaking degree came in and i purchased a top of the range I-mac, so i could actually have the suites to create professional level pieces of work, however my new mac doesn't seem to like blogger and very often I'm having posts deleted instead of being posted.

It also doesn't like youtube. Right now there are reviews for the darkness, vampire the masquerade : bloodlines, bullet witch, fatal frame 2: crimson butterfly and s.t.a.l.k.e.r: shadow of chernobyl which still haven't been uploaded, so stay tune and hopefully ill work this out soon.

'Least its got a spell check.

Fatal Frame: a true story?

2008-06-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

Not likely ,though apparently this is how the game was advertised outside of Japan.

See ,right now I'm playing Fatal frame 2: Crimson butterfly DIRECTORS CUT on in the Xbox 360, (expect a review, as always, when I'm done with the game) so anyway I'm online looking for a good crimson butterfly wallpaper thats suitably creepy and i look on the wikipedia were i learn that the original was indeed toted as a true story.

I remember hearing something about this a long time ago. Naturally i dismissed it but it turns out it has been doing the rounds on the net since 2002. Feeding off the fanfare from import of remakes of the time like ring there was tons of websites, not only claiming to be the true mythology of the Himuro Mansion, but also some saying, and heres an example of the worst, that someone was AT the mansion surrounded by ghosts , being forced to try and shoot themselves.

Problems with that story was the spelling and grammar was worse than my own, and i'm pretty sure guns are illegal in tokyo.

Point is that people really thought this was real, this: http://www.geocities.com/kazamaceo/researchpaper2.html was toted as pictures of the real deal, even when it says at the top, and i quote, it is "absolute crap".

But people continue to believe for the very reason survival horror is popular, because people want to believe its true, and people want to be scared. Since the release of the first game the creator has stated that Fatal Frame was actually based on two stories, an urban legend about a murdered family, and a ghost story about a hanged woman.

This isn't a stand alone case, there have been a few games in the survival horror genre being sold as a true story. Another example being these two examples for the video game forbidden siren, http://www.occultland.com/e/top.html and http://www.shibito.com/e/top_hp.html

Thee are listed on wikipedia AS hoax sites but i've still found examples in forums and on sites like yahoo answers about people who are genuinely asking if its a true story about red rain turning people into monsters. Granted there are some who TRY to give it a more feasible narrative, like a chemical accident that caused psychosis in a secluded community or something, not unlike the plot of George A Romero's "The Crazies". The story was totally false but again people WANTED to believe them, these horrifying situations were willed to be by these people fascinated with the possibility of such events being possible.

Why?

I think its because people love to be scared, its why the genre is so popular, and why people like me have sites like this. This comes to a head in these japanese games were there isolated culture cultivated such a rich and unique folklore thats so foreign and intriguing to western folks, its in japan so its far away, it cant reach you, your safe even if it is real.

Thats what people want, just an inkling of terror to be scared, but not real "this coudl kill you at any time terror".

Because if that was true war games would be the greatest survival horror.

The House

2008-05-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

to reiterate, fatal frame scares the shit out of me, this is in the same vein and whilst it seems the creator got lazy after room 2 youll get a good jump if you play it alone in the dark.

.....that wasn't a pun.

http://www.gamezhero.com/online-games/adventure-games/thehouse-horror.html

Is this sad, or am i?

2008-05-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.justin.tv/fourplayerpodcast/78043/Scariest_room_ever

Now i'm well known for saying that, out of all survival horror games, i'm man enough to admit that the original fatal frame SCARES.THE.SHIT.OUTTA.ME. By this i mean that i will walk through the whole game at a snails pace, occasionally going "oh fuck. oh fuck..." ,but just in determination to get through, never in genuine terror, more because i feel for the character.

however this video as linked above, raises a good point.

I have never been that bad in a video-game, although when it comes to games i'm normally the silent contemplative gamer who's there for the story as much or more so than gameplay. Point being that ive never gotten that scared, and ive played just about every horror game i can get my mitts on in england, bar only michigan, fatal frame 3 and resident evil outbreak 2, purely because there was something else on the shelf in the store at the time.

but ive played a lot of horror yknow, and ive never got that severe a reaction.

is that good or bad though?

am i harder? to scare or have i just been desensitized by an abnormally large level of exposure to the genre compared to the average?

OR- does this mean i am not getting my moneys worth?, these games are intended to scare, and if they dont scare me anymore am i missing out on part of survival horror experience?, by that i mean is the lack of genuine terror disassociating me enough to even tangentially experience the fear of the in game character and therefore not experience the game to the fullest of its potential?

So OBscure 3 is go apparently.

2008-05-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

I logged in today to notice a comment on my article about the possibility of Obscure 3 being made, here it is

Hey Danny...thanks for the link and for checking out my site. Yes, I can confirm that Stan lives on through ObsCure II and into ObsCure III which is in development as we speak. Hopefully those in charge continue to think I'm worthy enough to play Stan and we'll all be blogging about ObsCure III and how it's the best ObsCure yet.

Blessings...Joshua Swanson

So apparently i inkled in the right direction with that one, and i for one look forward to the next installment in the series.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot: The Review

2008-04-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, right off the bat, if you look on my gamespot profile you can see i gave the origional condemned a less than stellar review. citing it as one long rinse and repeat of reaching a door, then going to find something that opens said door. I also for lack of a more eloquent word springing to mind, bitched about the way it degenerates from intriguing CSI style hunting of a serial killer to magic and cults ala Fahrenheit (or indigo prophecy if you prefer).

In short it took a good premise and then through it out the window in favor of something much less unique and therefore slightly less entertaining since it was nothing new.

so i didn't like it too much, great in practice but very flawed.

This view has changed however since i played its sequel "bloodshot". Right off the bat the reason for the homeless people going crazy is explained, now i loved the intrigue of the original, the fact that birds were drying for no reason, the blacked out xray and the like and it all gets explained in the first half. NOTHING is left to the imagination. in fact the only puzzle at the end is the introduction of an even badder bad guy which is obviously just a plot device to stretch this already tired horse into a trilogy.

So remember ethan thomas?, that chubby, out of shape fbi crime lab investigator who was voiced by matt from heroes?

Did you like him?

yeah?

Too bad then as he's been replaced, or he's a time lord and undergone a regeneration, which given the plot wouldn't surprise me.

Gone is the flawed hero on the run form the fbi. in his place is , for lack of a better term, an asshole who has undergone steroid treatment, vocal chord transplantation and had a nice emo haircut for when he goes to good charlotte concert. its not the same guy in anything but name, he's bizarro ethan thomas. a completely unlikeable and boring action hero type protagonist.

i've mentioned this before when explaining why fatal frame is scarier than resident evil 4. if you play a strong action hero type right off the bat your thinking "oh yeah, yeah he's definitely going to survive this. he's no longer a likable character, he's one of marcus fenix's drinking buddies.

The gameplay is, thankfully, a saving grace of this as the combat has been greatly refined. in the original it was basically strafe left and right hammering down the attack button till the enemy was a fine paste or mist of "matter".

In that terrible mechanics place is a new way to fight, left trigger is left fist and right trigger is right fist, both at once block.... and later on use magic powers- but thats for a bit later on.

you can use combos and ,ugh, slow motion real time button events to do real damage that looks painful rather than just the rag doll recoil of the original.

Its just a shame that a good half of the game abandons this for outright sup-bar fps gameplay instead.

Case in point Ethan now fights these inner demons using a machine gun.

i wish i was joking. the controls are better ill say that, but not for the right reasons.

The enemy a.i doesn't seem to have gotten smarter, in some respects its gotten worse. enemies will just make a beeline at you or, instead of just hiding round a corner like the original, will just stand in plain sight, practically kicking up dust and whistling a jaunty tune.

There are now boss fights a plenty but thee are easily the weakest point of the game, there just bigger versions of regular guys and just take longer to fight.... unless you use magic powers.

the graphics range from bland early 360 graphics to superb in a bizarre mix. the opening is right out of silent hill, from red rust, to gooey crap (tm konami) covering the walls. and whilst the locations are varied many are just bland cut and pastes that make the original halo level design look ambitious.

that said its not all bad, sure the story is asinine, its got tons of pot wholes (like a main character disappearing half way through and never appearing again), the tazer serves no purpose this time, and you beat the final boss by shouting at him. but there is some great stuff in there too.

a fine example is running through an abandoned ski lodge whilst being chased by a rabid grizzly bear. or when you have to.... okay i honestly cant think of anything else but point is there's some good in there.

Its just a shame that its a pale shadow compared to the sheer amount of problems.

I finished it in one sitting, then got my money back. hands down the worst horror game ive played of 2008.

[4/10]

Changing gears for a second, next stop dissapointment.

2008-03-08T04:50:00.000-08:00

Now needless to say by now you readers know I'm a silent hill fan, and when a new Eldridge tome bearing the moniker appears on the shelves of forbidden planet I'm inclined, neigh, driven to buy the latest offering of silent hill to the comic book medium.

And more often than not I'm disappointed.

The ones on the silent hill experience UMD were good reads, not really inkeeping with the vibe and aesthetic of the series that we've come to expect but i enjoyed them for what they were, thankfully the one about a painter who painted murders and a school bus of cheerleaders fighting the creatures decked out in military hard wear was left out of the package.

They've never been a high point in my comic collecting fanaticism but yet again i saw a new one "sinners reward" on the shelf for £2.80, so i tried, i really tried, to fight against the urge but again i walked away with my all ready light wallet a little lighter and the result?

Utter disappointment.

Sinners reward is about a man driving along near silent hill ,he stops at a gas station with an old man running it who seems to be in every cliche horror movie ever made. wonder were they go for these gigs, the job center?, it look good on your c.v "i spend the last ten years sitting in a rocking chair, hocking into a spittoon and warnin' them no good punk kids not to go down tha' road, but they never listen".

Or something like that.

the story is another poor narrative trying to ride on the series rather than originality, he is a mobster on the run with the bosses wife, why they felt the need to add a 2 page traumatic past about being forced to shoot a dog is beyond me, they must have just been whacking each other off and been in such a euphoric state even all this cliche' crap must have seemed like pulitzer worthy gold.

and so she gets kidnapped and wouldn't you know it she is dragged to silent hill and our not of sound mind mobster has to go and find her.

I know ,Ive heard it before somewhere too....

Id like to comment on the art but there is in fact none in it. it uses prerendered character models from what looks like the Sims, they add some grain to some screen shots and add speech bubbles. its so poor and cheap i cannot stress it enough, rather merely ponder when comics went from actual art to something you'd see on a web comic from 1995.

Theres a part 2 but needless to say i don't think i will be getting it.

avoid [2/10]

Biohazard 2 romero ad 'making of' documentary

2008-02-18T04:22:00.000-08:00

Credits to kotaku for finding this. i don't normally put stuff up on here you can easily find on other well known sites but this ones worth it i think. I'm a big fan of the works of George Romero, from the crazies to land, Ive enjoyed them all.
Ive also enjoyed the bio hazard, or resident evil series (anyone else think they should have stuck with bio hazard as the name?) and in a documentary for that on BBC2 about 3 years ago they interviewed the series' creator who stated he was heavily influenced by George Romero's living dead trilogy, and when making the ad's for the superb bio hazard 2 (one of my all time favourites and unbiasedly i can say its one of the best games in the genre) they got Romero in to direct one of the ad's.
Unfortunately they were never released over here and saw some trouble in japan as well, but now thanks to the Internet just Google em and there up there to find with ease.
This is something new however, again kudos to kotaku for this. its a documentary about the making of the commercials. interesting stuff if your a Romero or resi fan, I'm both so it was doubly as good.
enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHHGGc-kYxg

D: The Review

2008-02-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Now this is an obscure one for you tonight folks.
released in 1997 on the Saturn, the PlayStation and the PC. D was a game i have only ever heard of on chris' survival horror quest and so when i found a pristine ,'as new', copy in a bargain bin at game station i snapped it up for 99p and gave it a go.
my thoughts then?
D is... interesting lets open with that. You play a woman named Laura who begins the game entering a hospital, only to find all the residents of said hospital dead in puddles of there own blood. She is then approached by what i can only describe as a fluid membrane floating on air like a rippling window which envelopes her and changes the hospital into some sort of medieval castle.
and it just gets weirder from there.
D is a game in the same vein as the likes of Myst, a first person point and click adventure. which might be alluring for some but for me seemed quite a tedious idea, however it has to be said WARP (the games developers) pulled it off in a rather interesting way here.
though by interesting i also mean the way an ed wood film is considered a "cult classic". Good but only for a niche value rather than as a serious project as intended.
the booklet gives barely any information other than the controls and the fact that the game is 2 hours long. I'm not kidding your given a 2 hour time limit to finish it. imagine my surprise when 10 minutes in I'm asked to please switch to disc 2 of 3 all ready.

The plot is as surreal as the locale', very little info is given as you play. you press start and are then forced to figure everything out on your own with no help nor hint given from the game except for a 'hint mirror' which can be used 3 times, once for each disc i imagine.
the basic feel of D is surreal, random dead bodies spiked into the back of doors, glowing bugs triggering visions of murder, talking water bubble's in the air and mirrors that try to grab your are only some of the bizarre spectacles on offer.
and finally a shenmue style real time event does occur with no margin for error, now that really bugged me.

The puzzles range from mind bogglingly simple to completely random, like finding a statue with 8 coloured buttons in front and absolutely no guidelines on what your supposed to do. this was really vexing given the time limit since you could breeze through all the puzzles till one final one on disc 3 stumps you for 30 minutes, and god forbid they could put a pause button in. granted that might be because they wanted you to feel the stress of it to complete the experience but in my opinion most gamers don't like being out and out forced into a corner gaming wise and this lack of freedom comes off as quite restrictive.

though its not all bad. for the time the graphics are very impressive. the opening camerawork and music throughout are enjoyable, not unlike a cheap, albeit entertaining, indie horror flick.
Basically i would give a most fitting analogy to this by comparing it to one of those interactive rides at a theme park like the haunting or something. it genuinely feels ,at 2 hours in length, like an interactive short film. it can be played in one sitting, which to some might be a gripe, to others it means getting a story without putting dozens of hours in.
personally i enjoyed it for its uniqueness but as a stand alone horror game theres many better options out there. but if your a collector this is a neat little obscurity that i can at least say is worth a look just to experience it once.

id give D reasonable [3/10]

Danny Interviews Patrick J. doody, one of the writers of silent hill 5

2008-02-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Just on a spur of the moment impulse on learning that he co-wrote silent hill 5. i sent a message to patrick asking if it was cool to do a mini interview about sh5 for the racoon city times blog, and surprisingly he said yes.
Some questions have been unanswered, for good reason, i know i for one wouldnt like the story to be given away before i played it. Imagine being told the ending to silent hill 2 after only 20 minutes play.

yeah, that'd pretty much suck wouldnt it?.

So ,on to the Q&A.

Whats been your role in 5's creation?
- My writing partner, Chris Valenziano and I were hired as the game's writers. Now, that term "writer" has a different meaning in electronic gaming than it does in television or film. On a game, the entire design team has a large hand in doing much of the writing. Even before we knew that there was a Silent Hill 5 happening, The Collective had broken story and compiled a summary of the game's events - all of which were written by the lead designer, the lead artist and the lead level designer. So, when Chris and I came on to the game, our first task was to look at that summary — which is several pages long and very detailed — and start to poke holes where needed. Now, this process began almost two years ago. Since then, the story has changed in several places, which is due to the collaborative efforts of the whole team. As you start to produce the game, you realize that certain story elements don't really gel with game play or you might discover that we can't really make more than a dozen separate heads for characters, so you start to whittle down the NPCs in the game. It's a very delicate balancing act between your narrative and all of the elements that go into production.
Unlike writing a movie script, a process in which the writers generally work on their own to produce a 100-page screenplay, writing Silent Hill 5 was written over a series of months, working with the whole team to make sure that the house of cards wasn't going to fall down! Now, on top of all that work, we had to be very conscious of the entire Silent Hill mythology, so everything we worked on as a team, would then go to Konami to make sure that any references to previous characters or any rules regarding the Otherworld shifts fit in the overall lore of Silent Hill. And believe me when I tell you that rules do exist and you can't break them.
On top of working on the story, we had to write all the cinematics, environmental signage, hundreds of dialogue slugs, journal entries and the game manual. All in all, it was the most writing we’ve ever done for a project (and we've written a 300-page novel).

Have you played the games and if so whats your favourite?
I think one of the reasons Konami hired us was because I was such a huge fan of the series, was very knowledgeable of the game's lore and wanted the game to have continued success. I played the original Silent Hill the WEEK it came out and it was the scariest game I had ever experienced. When I started playing that game, I knew I was seeing the future of horror gaming and I couldn't get enough. It's actually an amazing experience to now be a part of the series after having been a fan for so long.
Now, regarding my favorite, I know the fans love Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 2 certainly elevated the game to the direction that the series has gone. However, I'm a big fan of Silent Hill 3. I love all the characters - Heather, Cartland, Vincent - they are all so colorful and have great motivations. I also like that installment for its expanding history of The Order. Overall, Silent Hill 3 really feels like a complete experience for me - from great game play to fantastic story.

Since its a survival horror game would you say Silent Hill 5 is the scariest narrative in the series so far?
I think when we talk about Silent Hill and a "scary" story we are talking about two different things. Overall, the game's scares will be the biggest we've had, and that's not just jump scares - the eerie feeling of dread will be heightened because the designers can really immerse you emotionally through amazing environments and wild-looking demons. However, story wise, Silent Hill hasn't typically been “scary,” as it's more about the depths of madness and terror it takes the player. Clearly I can't talk about the story of the game, but I can say that we have worked very hard on making it the most disturbing drama of the entire series. My hope is that players will be affected by the game's end.

without giving away any spoilers will we learn anything more about the history of silent hill?
Hmm...tough question because I would love to spill the beans on some of the story, but that would ruin the fun! Here's what I can say about Silent Hill and this installment - you will discover some new secrets about Silent Hill by way of how its history has influenced a much larger society than you may have previously thought. And that's almost saying too much!

how would you describe the protagonist of silent hill?
Alex Shepherd feels very new to the series. He's less a victim of circumstance and more a man of action. Now, I know people are worried that having a soldier as the star of the game means he is somehow Rambo, let me assure you that he is not. However, he does take a much more proactive approach to the world around him. We tried to make him more aware of the strange events that unfold in the story, so if you believe in the theory that the player is the character, then I think he's going to feel more relatable to someone who would make rational decisions based on what he sees in front of him.

Thanks for the questions! I'm sure I haven't really explained much more than what is out there, but I was happy to throw in my thoughts. Good luck with your blog! I believe in horror gaming and hope that continued success of games like Silent Hill can keep horror fans entertained and terrorized at the same time.

Patrick J. Doody

So there you have it, whilst origins wasnt exactly on par with the rest of the series im eagerly looking forward to the next instillation in the silent hill series. So come on konami we cant wait much longer!

The latest additions to the collection

2008-01-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

The latest additions to my ever growing horror game collection over the last month are:

Forbidden Siren £5 (gamestation)- Watched a freind try it for a few minutes and it looks fantastic, the photos over polygons faces didnt work so well on the ps2 but still it looks fantastically scary.
D £9.99 (gamestation)- On a recommendation from the Chris' survival horror quest forum i picked this up when i spotted a copy, for the first time in real life or online, in gamestation as new. looks interesting to say the least.
Alone in the dark: The new nightmare £Free (gamestation)- Ive owned this before but got rid of it and whilst its not regarded as the best in the series this attempt at a cthulu type mythos really saw a lot of play from me, free with d as well so i cant complain for a freebie.
Silent hill 3 £10 (gamestation)- i finally found a copy and i have been waiting a long time to play this one.
The Darkness £11 (forbidden planet) based on the comic books of the same name ive passed this by for a while but an 11 quid xbox 360 game is a rarity and im one cheap ass gamer.
Bullet Witch £9 (forbidden planet) if you crossed devil may cry, earth defence force 2017 and house of the dead this would be the result.

Expect more reviews to start up soon.

House of the dead 2 ...and 3 (ugh) coming to wii in new bundle

2008-01-01T15:24:00.001-08:00

First kotaku, the most reputable site i know for legitimate rumours, posted this article: http://kotaku.com/gaming/zombies/sega-confirms-house-of-the-dead-wii-collection-323926.php about how sega announced the wii was getting a version of the acrade and dreamcast classic house of the dead 2.

In a recent article: http://kotaku.com/338613/house-of-dead-2--3-return-bundle-going-japanside coming out in Japan this march the wii zapper will be sold as the "house of the dead 2&3: RETURN" bundle.

Whilst its a little too comic book-ey to be considered proper survival horror its certain a fine arcade horror and one of my personal all time favourites that i would have recommended trying to find on the dreamcast, but now its coming out on this i dont know if i should.

i for one hope this makes it in the west too as buying one for cross bow training ,and then another for this means having two for the co-op play in umbrella chronicles.

curse you nintendo ,and your using of free games to sell perifierals, thats marketing evil is what it is.

Silent Hill Origins to get PS2 port according to kotaku

2007-12-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

http://kotaku.com/gaming/unconfirmed/silent-hill-0-gets-inevitable-ps2-port-331377.php and kotakus not known for posting turkey rumours , so its much more likely to be the real deal.
Personally its a meh point since i got it on the PSP, hence the revew last month, i think this might jsut be an ecuse to sell it for 5 or 10 quid more at the ps2 price and try and shift a few more units, plus ports arent particulalry known for replicating the quality of the origional, given the problems in the origional version, the screen ratio, incredibly short length and basic story i really dont think this ports going to be a good move buisness wise as it will probably only be bought by the most hardcore fans, then be dissmissed as a poor imitator, so this probably wont be a good move for climax, but thats just my 5 cents on the deal.

this months gameing

2007-12-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

this month im playing through the horror games The Darkness and Bullet Witch ,both on the xbox 360, expect a review soon.
also if i can fit it into my schedule ill also be playing through and reviewing sahdows of memories as ive been meaning to review this for a while.

Silent Hill Origins: The Review

2007-11-28T07:33:00.000-08:00

A mid western American town, just outside Brahms and south ashfeild, always shrouded in a veil of fog. we've all been there before, fought the horrors that lurk in that town. Silent hill. The "special place" for many horror gaming fans, myself included.
Its been 8 years since we first ventured into the forsaken town of silent hill as harry mason in the original game on the PlayStation one. yet all these years on some questions remained unanswered, most prominently, how did baby Cheryl get in the Field to be found by harry and his wife?. this is just one question that becomes answered when Travis Grady, a trucker driving though the area, almost runs over a girl in the road he enters the mythos of the town and a world of his worst nightmares.
I, like many hill fans was sceptical about this, as the same team which had been making the games for 8 years had not only turned over silent hill 5's development to a UK team, but origins was developed by the US team Climax , though also moved over to a UK team as its "original sin" format in early development was a resident evil 4 clone which wasn't in keeping with the experience we gamers had grown to love. Fortunately its turned out to be pretty faithful to the other games and almost feels like a team silent product.
The graphics are fantastic overall and for the PSP they are phenomenal, easily on par with silent hill 2, and it is done in a way that the screen and the fact it is handheld does not affect play in any way. only 2 out of in game engine cutscenes are used ,the opening and the beginning, all the others are done in game and look absolutely fantastic.
The enemies, well, unfortunately they start well but as you progress they suffer from final fantasy 12 syndrome, early bosses and enemies reoccur later, only in different sizes and with different textures on them rather than each area having unique character designs. Early creatures are quite tame, like a hairless sheep that's front half is dead and is being dragged by its back half, supposedly representing all the roadkill Travis feels guilty about from the past.Later ones are more interesting, ranging from two torsos intertwined in a copulating position, only one minus it's arms and legs to a screen filling juggernaut bent over backwards. these were pretty original and inventive and the recycled character models is only a minor gripe.
The bosses were the biggest let down of this game, there are 6 in total and to beat them all you just need to shoot, move, repeat till they die, even the ps one original had some that flew, others that burrowed and generally had variety, there is none of that here and it stands alone of this games crowning disappointment.
the combat situations are a little niggly for me, ranging from being backed into a corner by the creatures projectile attack and your half a second recoil animation means you can be repeatedly hammered by an enemy without being able to fight back, and then find that more have shambled up in the process. The weapons like in its predecessor, chronologically, not canonically, the room are destructible, whilst this adds realism, it just seems a bit futile since any enemy can just be pummeled by your fists and there own animation means you can return the favour and keep hammering at them without giving them chance to fight back.
The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic , but to long time fans its no surprise that akira yamoakas hit another home run with this. in fact the soundtrack may be better implemented in this one than others, in previous games you would need to enter an area or trigger a cutscene to change the music but in origins it can happen whenever, but its also the little things, ticking clocks, creaking open doors and splashing water all make for a much more in depth and believable experience than its predecessors in some respects. In fact the combination of graphics and sounds make this one of the more cinematicly vibed games in the series.
In size and scope however this game is slightly disappointing, you only explore a small portion of silent hill, of which some buildings are in different locations, a while the 7 year gap between then and the first game in the series may explain some of this, a large 4 story hospital is not likely to change its location easily, especially since it was still under construction and that's only if there is another normal world besides the foggy and dark otherworlds we encounter in the series. This was touched upon in the movies and it lends itself to that to add other aspects to the towns narrative.
Its a shame that with the small and simple game world, that takes you 4 hrs to complete, nothing more about the history of the cult or even the town is touched upon, only the main story of dahlia and her cult burning alessa, this i felt was sorely lacking. we find a series of deaths took place that seems to suggest a tie to an unseen, Walter Sullivan styled sub plot, possibly linking the PSP title to the up and coming silent hill 5. but other than that the whole game is the very definition of rinse and repeat. its just head to next circle on map, explore, backtrack for keys, solve a puzzle shoot a boss ,black out. repeat 4 times to finish game. and no variety from starting boss to finish, just shoot, move a little, then shoot again repeat till dead.
There are no difficulty levels to choose from and the one that is was painfully easy, and I'm a gamer that always plays on easy, but even so i NEVER died in this game, and only used 4 or 5 healing items during the course of the game. ammunition was generous and i only ever had to use it to finish the bosses, each of which using later weapons take less than one minute to complete. So needless to say this is not only a simpler silent hill, but also a much more friendly game for newcomers to the genre or even the series.

Whilst i personally can rant about this as a long time horror gamer. for people new to this its a gentle introduction that the most casual of gamer can appreciate, and isn't handheld gaming meant to be more casual? i think a little of the disappointment can be done away with when you take that into account. this was also the first silent hill game in the series, and whilst short i was never bored and found myself enjoying this more than the game it is preceding. so whilst i might wish for a longer ,slightly more difficult, game. i would gladly welcome another game in the series from climax as this game, especially for a handheld is engaging, with fantastic sound and visuals, and most of all. its great fun from start to finish.
ill recommend this for hill fans, though don't expect another silent hill 2, for PSP owners who like horror or are looking for something new. but if your a hill fan wondering if you should buy a PSP just for this installment in the series?...maybe not, like i said its great, but has some fairly predominant flaws to balance it out as slightly above average.
and as such I'm going to give it an average score of 7 and a half out of ten.

my personal view?, whilst it was a short trip it was nice to get back to the town that started my love for horror games way back in '99 and its a welcome addition to my collection. as i said its fairly cinematic and meant to touch on the 2006 movie and overall the shortness may be a factor as it plays like an interactive movie, rather than just short for the sake of being easy to produce as its obvious a lot of time went into this game. the pros and cons are all based on climax's own take on the franchise which, whilst not the best, is also not the worst so i commend them for taking on the project and having such an enthralling end result.

[7.5/10]

Bioshock: The review

2007-11-25T23:19:00.000-08:00

BioShock
Released: August 2007
Platforms: Xbox 360 ,PC
Developer: 2k
Genre: First Person Horror shooter, with rpg elements
Review:

I am Andrew Ryan and I am here to ask you a question:

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?

No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor.

No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God.

No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose somethingdifferent. I chose the impossible. I chose…

Rapture....

The year is 1960, and whilst flying over the atlantic ocean your plane crashes. Whilst normally this would mean you would be stranded the protagonist, jack, has had the good luck to crash within feet of a metopolis styled lighthouse rising out of the middle of the atlantic ocean. With nowere else to go you head inside, and the door slams shut after you.
The lighthouse appears to be a surface dock for a bathysphere submersible. with nowere else to go you enter it and are taken to the bottom of the sea. you are taken to rapture.
Created by Andrew Ryan for scientists, athletes and artists to escape the growing political and religous authority over there works. Ryan created rapture to be an "Eden", this all changed with the discovery of a sea slug.
This sea slug was discovered to produce stem cells known as "ADAM" which could be used to rewrite the human genetic code. anything ,from curing baldness to instilling ablities like pyrokenesis or teleportation, was possible thanks to ADAM.
For a time rapture remained the utopia Ryan envisioned. but over time an elite class formed cuasing social boundaries and deep rooted hatreds to be created. the very things ryan created rapture to escape. A former mobster, Frank Fontaine, used this as an opportunity to start a coup for power in rapture, using ADAM to mutate his recruits beyond all recognition into "splicers" .creatures no longer considered human, with warped features and even more warped minds. the splicers , by the time you arrive ,are all thats left of the once 7000 strong population fo rapture. all need ADAM to survive and your a perfectly easy target.
At least till you get some ADAM for yourself that is.
The spiritual sucessor to 2k's pervious fps meets horror rpg "system shock". Bioshock is, first and formost, a first person shooter. but one with heart, not mindless blasting. adding to this is roleplaying elements such as collecting money from fallen enemies to buy more genetic upgrades from the "gatherers garden" machines. This blends in a very nice way and isnt as intrusive to the plot as games like oblivion, were you could trundle into an area at a low level and be killed instantly by high level creatures. here the difficulty of enemies and there number teadily increases at a fair rate that ,while making the game progessivly challenging, does not make it impossible.I use oblivion as an example as the basic controls are much alike, the left trigger is magic, or in this case, plasmid abilities. The right is weapons. Overall the controls are simple and very easy to use and dont hinder the experience any, its a shame there not very origional so they aslo dont add ot the experience either.

The enemy a.i is where this game shines. For the first time in an fps..or any game i believe enemies can know you are there, even right in front of you, and CHOOSE not to attack you. a key example is the symbiotic relationship of the big daddy's and the little sisters.
Young girls were taken and implanted with the slugs and became little walking adam factorys. of course they were an easy target for splicers. this lead to the creation fo the big daddy's.

, Lumbering golem creations of frankenstein design in eeiry diving suits that follow the little sisters around as there protectors. If you dont attack the little sister however they will not attack you. if you get to close it will ,in a bizaarely touching way, run in front of her and shove you away raising its weapon at you till you back off. other than that it will simply follow the little sister as she looks for splicer corpses to harvest ADAM from. There relashionship is touching and creepy at the same time. for example the girls will say "look, found another angel mr bubbles" and the big daddy responds in its whale call like moan. Then after you kill the immensly tough big daddys to claim ADAM from the little sister (this is the only way to get more) the girl will drop to its side weeping and screaming for it to get up. you have to remember these were all people once, and it cant help but invoke emotion in the player, and i commend 2k for doing so.
Killing the big daddy's leads to one of the moral dilemas of the game. You can save the little sister, changing her back into a normal human child. and in doing so recieve 80 ADAM. or extract the slug inside her, killing her in the process, but gaining 160 ADAM. so you get more of a reward for killing the children, the choice is up to you (i personally saved them, what can i say, im a nice guy) this is one example of the moral dilemas that arise that affect your ending and the outcome of jacks visit to rapture.
graphics wise this game is incredibly impressive all the character animation is flaweless. not a glitch can be found and the retro futuristic setting right out of metroplosis is aweinspiring. wandering the bloodstained halls whilst light throws shadows of two enemies argueing in the next room whilst "somewere beyond the sea" plays on a steriogram is fantastic. looking outside to see the eeiry ,green glowing, subterranium metropolis ,still, with a whale sailing between skyscrapers makes you appreciate the sheer effort that whent into this game.
Sound wise its in the same vien as stubbs the zombie, period songs that ,in the context of the location, can take on a much creepier atmosphere and its a sheer delight to listen to, another game like silent hill that i would recommend the soundtrack to.
So am i giving this 10/10 like so many magazines have?, well, no actually, im not.
why?, dont get me wrong i prefer bioshock to halo 3, and it is a must own 360 game. but like prey or dead rising ,towards the end its almost a different game ,and it loses the initial wonder of it .and whilst still fantastic ,its not really going to be something you can play again and again. So it suffers in replayability. even all but 1 or 2 of the achievments can be, well, achieved in one play through. its a fantastic game that i can say any horror fan HAS to try once but will it keep you coming back like silent hill 2 or resident evil 4?, maye not.
So just for the lack of replayability im going to have to lower it to 9.5 out of 10. cracking game thats easily in my top ten of horror gaming and one you will think of more as a fond memory like a favourite movie or story than simply a run and gun first person shooter. at times scary, others emotionally invoking.

[9.5/10]

Tubbypaws does "li'l hill"

2007-11-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

http://tubbypaws.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-is-my-new-little-paper-tribute.html

Feast thine eyes on this piece of horror charm from the tubbypaws blogspot. Its a papercraft models you can print off, cut out adn with a bit of dexterous glueing youll have your own little silent hill diorama.

ive never been into this sort of thing, but im a big silent hill fan so as you can imagine this neat little finds made my day, the torch on the floor is such a good touch, they should use there talents to try a silent hill 4 one, probably one of the holes.

Still, its cute, charming and creepy at the same time, what a combo!

November games reveiws coming up.

2007-11-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

Th games i am currently playing through to review for this month are Bioshock on the xbox 360, Silent hill Origins on the PSP and Shadows of memorys on the PS2.

expect reviews in about 2 weeks.

"the true fan", what a load of garbage.

2007-11-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

So horror is something of a gameing niche', that i get. i dont get why the horror community at large is full of people who would describe themselves as "true fans". I believe some examples are in order.
On the gaemtrailers.com forums, a place well known across the net for its massive troll community, and the news of capcom no longer producing exclusives had just gone up. Needless to say the playstation 3 forums exploded with threads such as "capcom have turned traitor!!1!" and others just as moronic. In said threads it was all pretty much the same "how can they take resident evil from us, were the true fans, those boxboys wont apprecieate the games like us, ill never buy another capcom game again".
Being a man who loves a good troll war i trundled in with my piece, something along the lines of "but there jsut no longer exclusive to the playstation, the games are still going onto the playstation, jsut the 360 and the wii as well". Some whent "yeah i guess so, cant really complain", but not the true fans . No these guys had to explode on me claiming that i "obviously wasnt a true fan and didnt understand the games".
This topic is just one example but you get the idea, anyone who claims to be a "true fan" ,especially in the anonimity of the net, is just taking part in the age old "mines better than yours" argument. Theres no prize for a level of fandom or commitment, yet these sorts of people seem to feel there should be. that having a more in depth knowledge of a game makes them better than you.
Its utter garbage, there is no such thing as a "true fan" phrases like that adn "die hard fan" are meaningless, you can have someone whos such a fan they are devoted to the game but a "true fan"?. Sorry but theres no such thing, you either like somethign ro you dont, theres varying degrees of like or dislike between but thats the gist of it, theres allways people just as into a game, a book, a movie or a band as you, and allways some even more so. The phrase "true fan" seems to me to be some sort of self gratification for people who crave attention.
You never hear someone calling someone a true fan do you?, they are allways the ones exclaiming it themselves.
in fact the one place on the net ive yet to see this is the silent hill forum, you have people from all walks of life who visit the site just becuase they like the games, simple as that. theres no arguments about whos a bigger fan or a "true fan" and its nice to know some places can go on without this meaningless bragging.
Your either a fan or you aint, the closest thing in real lfie terms to the internet phrase "true fan" is "obssesive" or "stalker".

Just a small article on my own criteria

2007-11-17T20:31:00.000-08:00

So when it comes to horror games one of the sites i frequent most is Chris' survival horror quest , Which is stricly survival horror only and includes his reasoning for why, and what he concludes is a survival horror game, following certain criteria he has come up with. Being he is a games designer and i am a film maker our ideas of "the rules of horror" are obviously going to deviate at a certain point, so i thought i would use (steal) the idea to express why ill be choosing the games i choose for this site.
On his site Chris' has stated something along the lines of not wanting to do all "horror" games in his quest to play them all and as such focused purly on survival horror. Personally im not on a quest, nor am i in any hurry as my lack of recent posts will attest, to complete a list. This is just one gameing fanatics opinions on games in the horror genre and all its subgenres therein and i will review games and post articles at my own lesiure and i am, most importantly, not aiming to play every one ever so i will just review what i can when i get a hold of it.
As such i dont need to limit myself to one subgenre, of even just videogames, and can include any game i choose as a 'horror' game. Sohow do i go about it?

1:Whilst it goes without saying that the game must have horrific themes there is a degree of leneincy to games that arent scary but fit the theme, such as the gothic rpg koudelka.
2:There is such a thing as horror comedy (ala the evil dead) and i would list some games that arent exactly serious like zombies vs ambulance or the gregory horror show as such but others are comedic to the point of sheer absurdity and for my own personal tastes i wont focus on them.
3: ive got to own it, this may sound stupid but every game i review is in my possesion, this isnt a deal were i rent it specifically for this purpose, these are games hand picked from my own collection to be used as an article within this site, this means i will "go back to" any game and replay it for a fair and up to date review.
4: I dont limit to just a 3rd person shooter like resident evil or silent hill either, text adventures, point and click, fps and rpg are a few other genres which posses horror games hat fit my criteria.
5: it has to genuinley scare me, though not allways but this immediatly qualifys i as an entry.
6:Though not allways another genuine immediate reason is if the character dies, and i dont mean falls off screen or runs out of lives i mean actually only has a life and will die for good, usually on screen, they dont come back, hence the need for survival.
7: the artisit approach, again another giveaway but the locations, lighting ,sound ect all the "mise-en-scene" of a piece is crucial evidence if it is horror or not, this is more based on my studies of film than gameing but it still applies ,especially as the bridge between the two mediums draws constantly closer.

those are the 7 rules for now, though thats easily subject to change. I m fair in all my reviews and hope to, in a year or two have this place as a comprehensive site to find reviews and articles to honestly give well gauged representations of games in the horror genre.

Silent hill origins released in the UK this friday

2007-11-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

Being a member of the pointscard club thingy-ma-bob at GAME i get sent a catalogue every christmas about "possible gift recommendations" (AKA - buys these ,we need your money).

anyway this week i get one stating silent hill origins is released on November the 9th ,friday, this friday in fact. So any silent hill fans get 30 quid ready and get down to GAME (or my preffered gamestation, its cool, game bought them out anyway) and grab yourself a copy.

Ghosthunter: The Review

2007-10-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

Ghost Hunter
Released: December 5th 2003
Platforms: Playstation 2
Developer: SCEE
Genre: Survival Horror/ 3rd Person Shooter
Review: Almost as obscure as ….well, as obscure, Ghost hunter tells the tale of Lazarus Jones. An officer in the Detroit police department. He is sent on a routine callout with his partner to investigate a possible break-in at Montsaye High. The location of what became known as the “Detroit school murders”. A case in which ten students were all killed under mysterious circumstances ,with no marks on the bodies, the only clue to a murderer was the school science teacher, who vanished the same night and is the number one lad suspect for the murders. The school is currently under demolition and reconstruction ,however the construction workers have states they’ve been hearing bizarre noises coming from the school and this is were the police come in to it, believing the professor broke in and returned to the scene of the crime, Lazarus and his partner have been sent to investigate.
In the bowls of the school Lazarus discovers “the array” and unwittingly opens the device, releasing hundreds of violent and murderous ghosts, specters and revenants free to roam the earth once more. If this wasn’t bad enough Lazarus finds one ghost, a woman by the name of ’astral’ has fused her spirit with his own and now Lazarus can see ghosts. His partner is captured by the ghosts, the same ghosts who committed the Detroit school murders and were incarcerated by “the professor” self taught ghost hunter, and now the same mission falls to Lazarus. Recapture the ghosts he unwittingly set free, rescue his partner, and discover the truth behind the professors disappearance and what was the cause behind the murders in the first place.
Gamely wise this game is a 3rd person shooter were you capture ghosts using the capture grenade system, think ghost traps from Ghostbusters meets a Frisbee and you get the idea, throw the grenade into the ghost and a meter appears, you have to wear down its spiritual energy by shooting it, before the timer on the grenade runs out to capture it. Whilst this alone could get boring as its pretty easy as the corridors are all wide enough to get a good camera angle this is separated by intermittent puzzles which can only be solved by using astral and flying around the level as a ghost, utilizing the abilities of the ghosts you have captured to open doors Lazarus cant reach, or lure enemies away from a doorway or something like that. Both methods of control feel solid without any problems between the controller and actual onscreen movement, move the thumb stick a little and they move only a little, this is just one of the signs that this is move than another 3rd party title just made to sell a few hundred copies.
Music wise its very good, you might be walking through a library and hearing a ghostly voice saying “quiet ,please” to walking through a haunted Louisiana bayou to a banjo number being played to really set the scene, the compositions are all in keeping with the mood of the varied levels you visit and whilst not particularly memorable, it adds to the gaming experience as a whole.
The graphics, considering its 2003 are very good, whilst some areas do suffer from being poorly textured on the whole each level is varied and a character in its own right. Ranging from a ghostly WWII galleon or an abandoned prison island like alcatraz to a ghost town in a haunted bayou or a surreal mansion full of glass tanks full of decapitated baby figurines. It ranges from disturbingly realistic, to hauntingly surreal but it’s a memorable game from start to finish.
Whilst the lack of original plot, lock on feature or any replayability factors other than starting it all over again. ghost hunter is an acquired taste that, whilst not for everyone ,may be right up your alley, and to risk a copyright infringement suit against me : WHO YA GONNA CALL?

[7/10]

new dementium trailer on gametrailers

2007-10-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/26028.html

Im of two minds.

On one hand it may be the most bitching horror fps ever especially on a handheld.
on the other it might be using live action footage in the ad to spice up and make what may be a mediocre shooter game appear more appealing to a post resi 4 action orientated audience.

Either way this month my game budget is this or silent hill origins, and sorry to renegade kid but im a 'hill fanboy so thats my new game for this month.

A discussion in horror theory

2007-10-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/forum/viewtopic.php?t=800 In this thread on the horror gameing forum chris' survival horror quest. a user once again begs the question "should resident evil be considered striaght up survival horror>?". In my opinion its more sci-fi action orientated, but then the forums owner ,Chris, piped in and the topic lead to the possiblility of desensitization.
When weve been chased through racoon city by the nemesis, explored a haunted shinto mansion armed only with a camera and even venture into the depths of silent hill to confront peoples inner fears why should we be scared by anything nowadays anyway?
I brought forth the point that this could lead to manhunt style constant elavation of the shock factor to try and outdo previous horror games we are now desensitized to, in a way i might add i find particularly tasteless.
To which it was then pointed out not too many cuasual gamers play as much horror as i do, which is very true, but also there are so many games, like resi 4, cold fear or the suffering that you have no doubt in your mind that the protagonist will make it out of whatever hellish situation he or her is in with no trouble they cannot cope with. and i believe that is the sign of a horror game that is not accomplishing goal number one "initiating in the audience the idea that the character needs to "survive" not that they automatically will.
case in point obscure 2, these characters are just students, will very little chance of survival against the monsters overtaking the fallcreek campus, and in fact some of them do die through the course of the game, in cutscenes no less so they are meant to die with the narrative plot of the game which just makes you think "woah, if the jock (for exmaple) died, then hows the nerd going to make it through the same situation and live?. after all the greatest fear is death and fear of the unkown, so not knowing if your character will live is one sign of not a great but fantastic horror title, though of course the second factor is allways having a plot with enough intrigue and emotional development to allow you to atcually gain some sort of emotional attatchement to the characters you are playing as, there fore when they get closer to death, you heart beat starts to increase.
Though on that note i believe the third pillar that forms the foundation of a fantastic horror game is sound, or the absence thereof, no matter how realistic, or out of the date the graphics may be as long as the character devlopment is engrossing, the situation is horrifying and opens with many questions that will most likely not all be answered by the end and a memorable soundtrack then the game will scare and will be remembered as a great game.
Least thats the Danny Smith(aka: me) method of thinking on the subject.

Which is off topic by a mile, but does resi 4 count in the same genra niche as silent hill 2, resident evil 3 or obscure?, well i guess theres no diffinitive answer as everyone sees a game, as like a piece of cinema the different way so its never set in stone, which is why chris' list is constantly changing but oh well, if we didnt bitch about stuff like this thered be no reason for internet forums anymore.

and then were would we spend our time?, outside in the real world, no thanks, the real world blows.

Obscure 2: The Review

2007-10-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

Obscure 2
Released: September 2007
Platforms: ps2, pc and Wii
Developer: Hydravision
Genre: Survival Horror
Review: The sequel to the hard to find cult classic obscure/mortifilia. The sequel , which will be released next year in the states as Obscure 2: The aftermath, Continues the nightmarish story of the students who escaped leaf Moore high.Unfortunately for them the horrors they thought they left behind 2 years ago are back with a vengeance. The sequel takes some of the past characters and a good deal of new ones in a similar situation at Fallcreek University.
It starts simply enough, the frat boys of delta theta gamma are throwing a kegger and the protagonists decide to go and indulge in some binge drinking and teenage hijinks. Yet the crowd on campus has been experimenting with mysterious black flowers that induce hallucenagenic effects which have been growing on the grounds and as the party gets in to full swing all hell breaks loose.
To begin this review I must point out that this game was quite lucky to make it onto the shelves at all. Including theme’s on STD’s, unprotected sex, drug use and the usual gore and violence. Obscure 2 also includes the play stations first teen suicide and as such has been taken off GAME’s shelves altogether so unless you can find a game station, forbidden planet or mom ‘n pop style game store id say your luck is out on this one.

Now onto the game play. Right off the bat the creatures are no longer photosensitive. So any attacks based on light are largely useless, whilst light grenades and torches do still hurt them, this does not make your projectile weapons do any more damage. As well as changing how they attack without a cover of darkness the developers have also vastly expanded the creature repertoire for the sequel. One of the biggest disappointments of the fist obscure was the lackluster 5 enemy types, this has been remedied in the sequel and there are now 10 different types, ranging from hulking ,tumorous blobs to flying banshees or even scuttler spawning “womb” monsters that all have different attack methods and ,as such, different tactics to dispatch them. whereas the original was just a shoot till they drop afair. You can now utilize tazers to stun the enemy and let the other player, computer controlled or a friend, move in to finish them off.
The characters have lost there “press square” abilities in exchange for new forms of character traits. Gamer Mei can hack into security systems to open doors, and Amy’s no ‘dumb blonde’, as her puzzle decrypting skills will attest These range from lock picking to feats of strength or acrobatics. All must be used to fully complete the game and are so well balanced it never feels like a gimmick and allows for move variety than the resident evil gameplay style of “walk and shoot your way from point a to the end” which is a breath of fresh air into what has become something of a stale sub genre. The camera, when walking or aiming is controllable by the right thumb stick, though can be left to drift on its on if you so wish, and when aiming with the gun it goes into a 3rd person mode a lot like ghost hunter or silent hill 4 which is another improvement over the poor, and at times confusing camera angles of its predecessor.

Plot wise this is something unique. Its predictable, yet at the same time its done in such a way that it doesn’t make you roll your eyes, but rather pulls you in to the story more and I commend the writers for taking a chance and doing so. The characters personalities are slightly bland, but all well balanced and genuinely seem like kids stuck in a horrifying situation than the likes of Leon in resident evil 4, a hardened government agent who reamins capable in any situation. With this believability comes a greater amount of emotional attachment to the characters and a higher scare factor as the characters genuinely seem less likely to survive, even though the protagonists now number 8 instead of 5. Though larger. this group is never all concentrated at one location, in fact one major feature of obscure 2 that gives it a greater feeling of the teen slasher movies it is homaging is that characters can become isolated and different events take place at different locations at the same time. As the original was slightly odd with 3 characters staying put at the meeting point rather than helping there friends find a way out. In fact you could complete obscure using only 2 characters, yet in the sequel you must and in fact do use all 8 in equal measure to complete the game. This gives the game a much more fluid and complex atmosphere and adds more variety to the games events, yet another improvement over the original.

The graphics are, to say the least, very impressive, they push the ps2 to its limits, rivaling games like indigo prophecy/ Fahrenheit or Tony hawks American wasteland with ease. The characters are far more detailed and the locations are incredibly varied, ranging from a bloody frat house massacre or an abandoned university complex to crossing highways and fog laden woodland and exploring abandoned tunnels and even heading back to leafMoore high itself, The locations are varied and all have a character and charm that seems genuinely like the set of a Hollywood horror film.
The sound, like the original, is again a joy from start to finish and the artist has even been good enough to allow you to download it for free from his site http://www.olivierderiviere.com/od/flash/ ranging from soft rock guitars to a haunting French choir backed by violins and cellos to orchestral music this game has it all and whilst maybe not on par with the fantastic work of akira yamoaka for the silent hill series, it easily out does the bland and uninteresting music of resident evil. It helps set the scene allowing for the perfect mise-en-scene in a cutscene or particular location and it just wouldn’t be the same game without the soundtrack.

The game does suffer from a few faults however. The are no extras to speak of, nor is there a choice of difficulty, though there was always enough ammunition and health packs to make it through. I did have to reset the console about 4 or 5 times through the game from dying, though this means its just a fair challenge.
My biggest fault was the fact that save points could only be used once and were at some points 30 mins between each other which meant replaying a section a few times if you kept dying, this could have been remedied, however aside form that I can find no other major fault with this game.

Obscure 2 is much lengthier than its predecessor and should clock in the best gamer at around 7 hours, compared to the 3 and half for the original obscure this means essentially more bang for your buck, with more locations and horrific situations to survive in.
To surmise Obscure 2 is a fantastic horror game that I hope will not live up to its name like the original did, the story is intriguing, if a little cliché’. The game play, graphics and sound are all superb, the characters are average enough Joe’s to be more memorable than a hardened action hero and the co-operative multiplayer game play mode allows for more replay value than if you played it alone and it was simply a joy from start to finish that I can give a hearty recommendation to any gamer for.

If you like movies like the faculty or scream, and like games like silent hill or the suffering Obscure 2 and its predecessor might be the games for you.

9/10

a little tidbit possibly confirming obscure 3

2007-10-02T22:39:00.000-07:00

When wiki'ing obscure 2 for cast info for my review (see my next post for that one folks) i clicked on a link which lead to the site for voice actor joshua swanson: http://www.joshuaswanson.com/ which under the list of his "gig's" includes his voice work as kenny adn stan in obscure to including the phrase "i live on in obscure 3", whilst this may be on one hand just a comment on stan surviving at the end of the game. but on the other it might just be a little bit of news about obscure 3.
The 2nd ends slightly openly and could certainly be worked into a new outbreak for a 3rd game.

i for one hope it does.

games im playing this month, my take on obscure so far.

2007-10-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

So i decided to sit down and have a good long stint in Obscure 2 im now at the dam doing the turbine room bit..and failing. im waiting to finish it to think it over but its pretty well outdone its predesecor by miles, the graphics are spectacular for the [;aystation 2, outdoing tony hawks american wasteland on the xbox 360 by a long way , the soundtrack is superb adn the mise-en-scene of the locations just cannot be beat. The only thing that bugs me is you go through areas at no time at all, even though theres lots to do in each, though i guess thats meant to go with the fast paced teen slasher style. it just means you dont really get to appreiciate the areas as much, though they easily make up for this by being far more vibrant and busy looking than the leafmoore high of the origional, which whilst cool suffered from the origional resi mansions blandness, it looked okay but you never really stopped to appreciate how cool it was.

oh and so far the twins and kenny?, didnt see that coming.

-.....if you aint played up to the dam you could read something totally different into that,lol.

Dementium: The ward

2007-10-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

two link ot put forward on this ,they being http://www.renegadekid.com/games.htm and http://www.dementium.com/ .

News on this ahs been pretty quite, a few screenshots on kotaku but thats about it, and i think thats basically because noone was actually looking, a quick google search comes up with these two sites by the developers ,renegade kid, and i must say what ive seen is actually impressive.
Hotel dusk showed us how the ds could quite capably utilize a smooth flowing fps 3d enviroment and given by the way the creautres move fluidly, albiet there models are blocky, This is looking to be ,if nto the next silent hill series, then surely the next suffering, though it is highly reminicent of the cancelled gamecube horror title "the ward" which was pretty much the same scenario only the protagonist whent in there to take part in a game show, possibly the games developers are connected but right now thats unkown though the similaritiys are striking.
But right now all i can say is im pleasantly surprised at how this is turning out and it looks liek good fun.

...unfortunatly its being launched the same week, in the uk, as silent hill origins for the sony PSP, adn im afriad that, ebing only able to afford one by moneys going on the series i know and have grown to really enjoy, and i doubt im the only one with this frame of thinking, which is a shame as its not a good sign for what looks liek a fantastic handheld horror title that may fall without a trace.

Obscure 2 being released stateside

2007-09-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

First becuase of poor sales of the origional, which has since become something of a cult classic for its teen slasher movie style. Obscure 2 was not being released in the states, but apparently due to surprisingly good sales figuires from the uk and european release of obscure 2 it is now coming out in the u.s as "Obscure II:The Aftermath" on the playstaiton 2 and nintendo wii.

Official UK playstation magazine Silent hill 5, 5 page article

2007-09-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

Shamelessly ripped from silenthill5.net as my scanners on the fritz.
http://silenthill5.net/silenthill5/scans/silenthillvopmscan1.jpg
http://silenthill5.net/silenthill5/scans/silenthillvopmscan2.jpg
http://silenthill5.net/silenthill5/scans/silenthillvopmscan3.jpg
http://silenthill5.net/silenthill5/scans/silenthillvopmscan4.jpg
http://silenthill5.net/silenthill5/scans/silenthillvopmscan5.jpg

So theres Some decent information coming out about this game, and now my xbox whent from 100 dollar disc reader repair to full on (warranty covered) red ring of death in excited about this for the 360, some of the monsters are a little too "the suffering" for my taastes but its not team silents creation this time so im not gonna bitch too much about it, however the full page talking about "the nurses ample cleavage" is just creepy, surely thats not whats on your mind when you play a silent hill game, and if it is, go get help. right now. go.

Sadness

2007-09-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

I wouldnt be surpised if you hadnt heard of this title.
Continuing the 'Wii horror' theme for today This is the sadness site http://sadness-wii.com/ ,no it really is just a picture saying coming soon, and a "trialer" has been out for ,according to gamespot ,320 days now. Almost a year and theyve released 5 pictures of concept art, a 30 second trailer and a one picture "website".
This is appearing to suffer from "The Phantom" syndrome, and we all know how that "next gen console" fell through. Though visiting a few horror forums it appears that there has been major development problems with this project, even to the point of rumours about the company that is in charge of development involved in some kind of scam.
It's pretty fishy, but then who doesnt love a good rumour?

Fatal frame/ Project Zero 4 only on Nintendo Wii

2007-09-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3163198

huh.
Colour me surprised, but in a good way, the cube had a good amount of survival horror titles but so far the wii only has umbrella chronicles, sadness, escape from bug island and, well thats all i can think of right now. So its great to hear a horror game series i actually find scary, which is a rarer thing as ive gotten older and more desensitized to horror, Is coming to the wii , fatal frame, or project zero as its known over here is, for those who dont know, a supernatural survival horror in which you play a girl who's trapped in an anbandoned mansion or town, depending on the game and is trapped in there with the restless spirits of the dead. The only way to combat these ghosts is to take there pictures with the mystical camera obscura thus exorcising/sealing them away.
To do this the game goes into a 1st person mode, as seen through the cameras lens, and i think this could work well on the wii utilizing the wiimote instead of an analogue stick.
Ive allways found the atmosphere in this series be pretty damn frightening, which is allways the sign of a good horror game and i think this is perfectly suited for the wii and its nice to see some good horror games starting to come out for it.

The current horror games im playing :September '07

2007-09-26T08:53:00.001-07:00

So the horror games of choice for me this month are Silent hill 2: Inner Fears, Obscure 2 and Zombie virus. So expect reviews for each one soon.
I figure on the first day of posting i should point out that this bog encompasses all horror games, not just survival horror, so this includes 3rd person shooters/fighters like devil may cry and ghost hunter, point and lick adventures and more.

Just thought id point that out before i got some emails from cranky survival horror purists.

You know who you are...

Rainy Wood's Tokyo Games show ''07 trailer

2007-09-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/25298.html courtesy of gametrailers.com i bring you the trailer for new 360/ps3 survival horror game Rainy wood's, no its not about an emo porn star, but a series of bizaare murders in the town of rainy woods, you play a schizophrenic cop who ,along side his split personalitiy must solve the murders, its allready being toted as A: the twin peaks of gameing and B: an alan wake rip-off, ill bide my time to catch it on release before i make my judgement on this one but it looks definatley like someone just took the scripts from blue velvet and twin peaks, threw em together and built a game around it, but wether thats the makings of a good game ill wait adn see as sometimes even horror does not make for a good cross medium port.

Obscure II: the soundtrack

2007-09-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

Whilst scoping out one my usual forum haunts, chris' survival horror quest one member posted a link to a free download (legal i might add) to the Obscure 2 soundtrack, So give the dude a virtual high five and check this out: http://www.olivierderiviere.com/od/flash/

Obscure: The Review

2007-09-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Obscure
Release date: 2004
Platforms: Xbox Playstation 2 and PC
Developer: Hydravision
Genre: Survival Horror
Review: Published by french company Hydravision, Mortifillia, or "Obscure" as it is known in The UK and the states is a survival horror game set at leafmoore high. An american high school were students have been dissappearing and all is not as it seems at first glance. The 5, yes 5, protagonists are stuadents who attend the school but are shut in after dark by the janitor as he locks up the doors for the night. While at first this doesnt sound like too much of a problem theres a twist. Bizaare photosensitive creatures are infesting the school and attacking the students and your goal is to uncover the source of these disturbing monstrosity's and escape the school with your lives.Whilst many points for origionality are lost, the creatures, plot and gameplay could all be easily ripped off from resident evil or silent hill, there are many redeeming features that save this game from being just another resident evil clone. Light plays a large part in this game. The creatures envelop themselves in a black protective mist which lessens the damage they take and protects them from sunlight. As i mentioned the enemies are photosensitive creatures and using the combine mechanic you can tape a torch to the end of your gun and by setting it to high beam mode, which is only temporary due to overheating, you can burn away at the protective mist enableing you to take a shot at the monster and do much more superior damage. You can also, during the daylight portions of the game, smash in windows to flood a room with light and severly damage any creatures that are in the room or may appear as you look around for items and ammo.

The 5 protagnoists are all playable, though Kenny is avaiable in the opening prologue he does not become available for constant play till you rescue him about 2/3rds through the game. But each charcter has his or her own unique talents, the student reporter Josh can use his investigative abilities to tell you if a room is devoid of items or if there is somethign left to do. others include extra healing power, lockpicking ability, extra strength and speed and the ability to perform a double attack such as firing 2 shots in one action from a pistol. You are free to use whichever of the protagonists that you choose during the game allowing for the game to be played around your own style of play, do you aim to clear a room or enemies then explore?, or perhaps choose the flight rather than fight method? depending on your choice of characters your tactics to explore the school and combat the monsters is fairly versatile compared to the similar resident evil 0 were you could only choose between the strong billy coen or the medic rebecca chambers when you needed to.The controls are smooth and fluid with a good responsiveness. The cameras are static-staionairy but without the confusing camera angles of the origional resident evil. The soundtrack is superb, ranging from the opening basketball game played along to sum 41 to exploreing the abandoned hallways at night to an eeiry french choir the music allways sets the scene very well and it was entertaining from start to finish.A big selling point for this game is the ability for two player co-operative play, at any time during the game a freind can plug in a second controller and take control of one of the 4 other characters you are not playing as whilst this can hinder as much as help, actually working with another person rather than a computer contrlled bot is a breath of fresh air into the game and increases the replay value tremendously.So whilst a little short and not particularly groundbreaking plot wise, obscure is a highly enjoyable horror game for fans of the genre and an undrerated gem that i highly recommend.It is a shame however that this game is obscure by nature as well as by name, with little to no media advertising or magazine reviews it whent relatively unnoticed by the gameing community, in fact the sequel is allready out and has been released in europe and the UK only ,purely for lack of interest from the states, So if you want somethign a little new and out of the ordinary i recommend obscrue nd give it a solid 8 out of 10.