Amnesia: The Dark Descent - The Review

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]

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - The Review

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]

Dead Space: The Review

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]

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

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]

Alone In The Dark: The Review

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.

Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly DIRECTORS CUT - The Review

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

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]

Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The Review

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]

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds - The Review

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]

Condemned 2: Bloodshot: The Review

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]

D: The Review

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]

Silent Hill Origins: The Review

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]