Project Origin (Fear 2) footage

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

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

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

-no, really it has.

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

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

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

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

'Least its got a spell check.

Fatal Frame: a true story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

The House

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

.....that wasn't a pun.

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

Is this sad, or am i?

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]