Is this sad, or am i?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!