The Evil Within (Xbox 360)

The Evil Within (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3. PS4. PC) :-

It would be safe to say that Detective Sebastian Castellanos is having 'one of those days'....thinking his work was done and looking forward to relaxing with a nice cup of cocoa and a read of his favourite self-help book "How To Sound Like A Gritty Video-Game Character", he and his colleagues, Detective Joseph Oda and Junior Detective Juli Kidman, are diverted from their journey home to go and investigate a multiple murder at a nearby asylum...

A grisly scene of mutilated bodies and blood-splattered benches awaited at Beacon Mental Hospital, and after witnessing some very odd happenings via the hospital security cameras, he now finds himself hanging upside down from a hook, surrounded by similarly hanging corpses, whilst a large, disfigured-brute-of-a-chap with a cleaver starts hacking away at one of the aforementioned deceased....

Luckily, he remembers reading another self-help book, "How To Escape Cleaver Wielding Disfigured-Brute-Of-A-Chaps", and makes his escape! Unfortunately, he cancelled his subscription to these self-help books and missed out on the one he really needed to read....."How To Escape From Weird Disorienting Hospitals With Rooms That Seem To Lead Outside Or Through Time Or To The Insides Of People's Heads And Are Populated By Even Weirder Zombies, Monsters And Traps That Were Deemed Too Gruesome To Appear In The Saw Movies"...

And so it is that you'll have to take control of Sebastian through the magic of your game controller, and work out what the hell is actually going on and how to put an end to it all...navigating him through all these nasty traps and mind-bending portals to other places, and using the small amounts of ammo you find to try and defeat the swarms of mutilated monstrosities that are determined to see you fail!

Every now and again you'll hear Claude Debussy's Clair De Lune playing, and if you follow the music you'll find yourself at blood-spattered doors that open to rooms containing a cracked mirror. Examining these mirrors will transport you to another section of the asylum, watched over by the mysterious nurse Tatiana Gutierrez. She helps you out by letting you save your game, and by introducing you to the Upgrade Chair that lets you improve your abilities by injecting Green Goo into your brain!

This green gloop can be found lying around the environments in jars, or left behind after defeating enemies, and can also be used to upgrade weapons and give them more firepower, accuracy or ammo capacity. Another thing you can access in the safe haven of Tatiana's rooms are a set of lockers that hold various treats to help you on your journey. Keys for these lockers can be found hidden in Statues littered throughout the main game in obscure nooks and crannies...

Shinji Mikami, creator of Resident Evil, directed this game and you can really sense him trying to recapture the feel of those early survival horror games...Limited ammo, claustrophobic spaces, camera angles that don't quite show you everything you want to see..and for the most part this works wonderfully at creating feelings of panic and dread.

Occasionally though, you'll get frustrated at the camera or controls, especially when you come to the boss fights or brutally hard sections of the game. And there are plenty of those! I played through on the easiest setting, but I still found myself running out of ammo and having lots of near-controller-throwing moments when I kept running into the same traps over and over again.

Persevere though, and it shouldn't take you too long to get past these obstacles and get back to enjoying the twisted, topsy-turvey environments that may or may not be real, and get on with the quest to find out who the mysterious Ruvik is, what he has to do with all this and what part the other patient Leslie has to play in uncovering the truth...

The Evil Within is a proper survival horror game and was described by some as 'what Resident Evil 5 should have been'. If you've been missing the old feel of the Resident Evil games, this should be more your cup of tea, and you should enjoy working out how to solve the puzzles and squirreling enough ammo away to take out the giant, jaw-dropping boss creatures! 

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and having finally finished last Halloween, I'm lamenting the fact I've yet to purchase an Xbox One so I can enjoy the sequel.... Never mind, maybe I'll get to play it next year....but all of you with newer machines can revel in the fact that Sebastian also missed out on another self-help book, "How Not To End Up In The Entirely Same F**ked Up Situation You Found Yourself In Three Years Ago"......

Bioshock (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Bioshock (360, PS3, PC) :

After surviving a plane crash into the Atlantic Ocean, this game's hero finds himself entering a lighthouse that also houses a lift to an underwater world where things have gone very wrong. He receives a call for help from another chap who is fighting for his life in the underwater city, and sets off to find out what the hell is going on....

Rapture, for this is the city that has went all to hell, is filled with crazy folk known as Splicers, who have genetically modified themselves via injections of a substance called ADAM...if you are to survive in this hellhole, you'll need to fight fire with fire and collect a fair bit o' this ADAM yourself. This will give you various different abilities to use against your foes...

How you go about collecting this ADAM depends on how naughty or nice you want to be...There are these little girls called Little Sisters who run around filled with the stuff, y'see! And they are protected by these mammoth lunks called Big Daddies. If you manage to take out one of these Big Daddy protectors, you have a choice of either harvesting the little sister's ADAM for yourself or setting them free from the sea-slug that resides inside them...Needless to say, whatever you choose there will be consequences....

This is an awesome game and one that really makes you think. From the dilemmas of collecting ADAM, to the twists and turns of the wonderful story of which I've been deliberately vague. You really have to experience this game for yourselves!! Go get it and play it if you haven't already! And while you're there pick up Bioshock 2 as well, as it's almost as good!

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Please remember to go and check out the other groovy ghouls and boils that are taking part in the Countdown To Halloween, as they're posting lots of cool stuff on their blogs too!

Just click the pumpkin below to be taken to the hub, where you can access all of the Halloween horror from! 

Dead Island (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Dead Island (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) :-

Yet more zombie carnage in this FPS....well, I say FPS, but really you'll be doing more smacking than shooting...smacking and hacking and thwacking and splatting! And shooting too, but it's more melee based and uses all manner of upgrades for you to create new weapons to cut the zombies up with! A FPM then...First Person Melee...

You take control of one of four characters as they find themselves trapped on an exotic holiday island that has become over-run with the undead flesh eaters that are being far too overused in games these days. This one keeps it interesting though, by letting you use the aforementioned weapons to bash their brains in, and takes a leaf from Left 4 Dead's book and introduces a few different zombies to keep you on your toes!

The Walkers wander around being all slow like traditional zombies, and sort of huddle together to make it tricky to get round corners and things...the Infected sprint towards you like the more modern zombies in stuff like 28 Days Later, spitting and shrieking and getting all up in your face to try and eat it off.....the Thugs are super-zombies that take a lot of damage before they pop their clogs, so it's best to save the bigger, more powerful weapons for them....Suiciders plead with you to kill them, then explode in a mess of blood and guts when you get close to them, ruining your favourite shirt...

Then there's the Rams, straight-jacketed loonies who charges at you and try to smash you against walls and is also very tough...Butchers, who have their hands chewed off into bony knives which they'll use to try and carve themselves a slice of you...and finally, Floaters...zombies who have become bloated after lying around in water and now have the ability to spew projectile acid vomit at you like Left 4 Dead's Boomers.....

You also get to wander or drive around a huge open world, exploring the various hotels, bars and beaches and later city streets and sewers...and you'll find other survivors who'll wnat you to complete various quests for them such as gathering supplies, finding their relatives or helping to hold off an onslaught. You can hook up with another 3 players online too, making it a bit more fun to go on a zombie slaying spree, although they can sometimes wander off and start other missions which can get confusing, so it's best to stick to playing with people you know will stay together as a team. If you can find the right players it really helps add to the game as you work together to get things done!

It isn't just zombies you have to deal with though. Later you'll find other humans who are trying to survive in their own way, and are using the undead uprising as a means to getting what they want. So far I've found that this is where the guns come in handy, as the humans tend to be a bit more savvy than the brain munchers...

In conclusion then, it's a great game that's a lot of fun to play, especially if you can get a couple of online buddies involved to help you out. There's extra arenas available in the Game Of The Year edition or as DLC, where you can bash away at zombies to your hearts content too, and an extra mission set where you get to see the action form the side of one of your human enemies..

It has plenty of faults too though...the game can glitch pretty bad, with you ending up stuck in scenery, have items disappear or just freeze the game up...but it's enough fun for you to ignore these bits and just get on with the mayhem. So again, it's another one I recommend...

One last thing before moving on...the trailer for the game caused quite a bit of upset, but not for the controversy of showing a little kid get bitten and flung from a window that you'd expect would upset people. What got people moaning was the fact that such an arty trailer suggested that this would be a game where you would have to really think about the fact zombies were human, and deal with the emotional effects of having to end their existence again...Too bad for the people who were expecting that then, that it ended up being a violent gore-fest that revels in the fact you can bash zombies brains in with a customised oar or flatten loads of them in an instant with your car!! 

Shadows Of The Damned (Xbox 360 / PS3)

Shadows Of The Damned (Xbox 360 / PS3) :

This is a game from the creative super-duo of Shinji Mikaki (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry) & Goichi "Suda 51" Suda (Killer 7, No More Heroes)....and it's totally insane!

Described as a "punk rock road trip" by the developers Grasshopper, the game has you take control of Mexican Demon Hunter, Garcia Hotspur, as he goes on a quest to the demon underworld to rescue his girlfriend Paula who has been kidnapped by the Demon-lord Fleming! He's accompanied by ex-demon Johnson, a floating skull who can transform into weapons and a kick-ass motorbike....

Your journey into hell is a bizarre one, which sees you feeding strawberries or brains to cherub-headed doors, shooting goat-heads to lighten up darkened areas, reading fairy-tale-style storybooks about bosses you'll face...and even taking part in an odd little 2D-shoot-em-up on some levels!

The main part of the game though is a pretty damn decent third-person shooter in the style of Resident Evil 4...What makes it different, is the light/darkness mechanic. Demons are constantly trying to plunge you into darkness where they're stronger and you constantly lose health...Luckily, Johnson can fire out a Light Shot which when fired at the aforementioned goat heads will light your path ahead. It can also be fired at demons who retain some of their darkness, making it easier for you to finish them off with one of Johnson's many gun-forms!

You'll constantly be finding crystals when you defeat the demons, and these come in three varieties...White, which are used as currency and given to a big friendly demon named Christopher in exchange for alcohol (which replenishes energy) or Red diamonds. These Red diamonds are also hidden away in the levels, and let you power up the various different gun-forms that Johnson transforms into...these new forms come from the last type, Blue diamonds...which appear after you defeat one of the many boss demons...

This game won't be for everyone though, because as well as it's decidedly Grindhouse-style leanings, it also has a rather immature vein of humour that centres around a certain part of the male anatomy! These jokes litter even the main dialogue of the game, and this might put off some people from playing it....I personally didn't find it too much and the rest of the humour makes the game funny, especially the dialogue between Garcia & Johnson and the various stories in the storybooks! And there's a revelation about strawberries that might well put you off them for life!!

I had a real blast playing through Shadows Of The Damned...it had me hooked from the start! Take a look at the videos above and if you like the look of it, give it a go! I reckon it deserves a bit more recognition than it seems to have received...and even if you don't enjoy the humour, you'll still find a lot more in it's quirky settings and gameplay to keep you amused!

Decap Attack (Sega Megadrive / Genesis)

Decap Attack (Megadrive/Genesis) :

When the evil Max D. Cap and his minions rise up from the Underworld to wreak havoc, Professor Frank N. Stein sends out his latest creation, Chuck D. Head to put a stop to Max and his cronies! Chuck is a headless mummy....wait, no..actually he's not headless! His head just resides in his stomach...and he can force it out using his intestines or something in order to bash any baddies that happen to get in his way...

As Chuck, you can also get the help of Head, a skull you'll find lying around the levels. He'll attach himself to your torso, and you can lob him at enemies or statues or whatever, with him zooming back to you boomerang style! He'll only stick around until you take a hit though, so it's worth trying to avoid trouble...

Also helping you in your quest are various power-ups hidden away in little gargoyle-type statues..(this is also where you'll find Head should you lose him)...These power-ups don't activate immediately though! They get stored in your inventory, which you can access via a button push and receive helpful information about what each power-up actually does from the Prof. and his assistant Igor...

The levels take place on various parts of a skeleton-shaped island that has been split into various different sections. Every few levels you'll reach the end of that particular section and face an inevitable boss...but even when you defeat them, you might not be quite finished with that section yet, as you have to find a special item on each stage..and if you haven't found it yet, you have to go back and search the level for it!

Vic Tokai's Decap Attack is an enjoyable platformer, with my favourite bits being the groovy graphics and funky spooky music...I would prefer it if the baddies followed suit though, as only a few of them appear spooky enough for my tastes! Also, it can be a little tricky getting used to how Chuck handles to begin with, but if you stick with it you'll soon have no problems...and maybe that's just me being a bit poop!

Overall though, this game should keep you happy and comes highly recommend...Oh, before I move on, I should probably let you know that it's also a port of a Japanese game called Magical Hat Flying Turbo Adventure which has totally different graphics, music and level design..with only the gameplay remaining similar...

And just one more question...How exactly did Chuck come to have a head in his torso anyway? Isn't that a bit odd? Well, thankfully Nigel Kitching gave us the answer when he did the Decap Attack strip that appeared in Fleetway's Sonic The Comic in the nineties.....

Oh, and even if you don't have a Megadrive/Genesis you can play the game on modern consoles and PC by picking up one of the various Sega Megadrive Collections, which come with loads of other groovy games too! So now you've no excuse not to play.....well.....unless you don't own any of them either......

Minecraft (Various)

Minecraft (Various) :

"WHAAATTTTTT!???!??" I hear a million (well, slight exaggeration...maybe 30 or so) voices say! "Minecraft on a horror game blog! Surely you jest, good sir!?" 

Well, if you're saying that, then clearly you've never played Minecraft's Survival mode properly! I mean it's right there in the name...Survival...and that is what this Minecraft mode is! Ultimate Survival Horror!

You start stranded in a wilderness with nothing but the clothes you have on, and have to find some trees, chop some wood with your bare hands and then create tools to build a shelter before they come out at night...

Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders... All of them creeping towards you and wanting to put a stop to your breathing!  If you haven't created weapons and built a shelter by nightfall on the first day, you will die! And when you do get inside your shelter, you probably won't have been able to create a bed yet and go to sleep so you can skip until morning, so you have to sit there...all night...listening to the moans, groans and hissing outside the door. Unable to do anything until daylight comes to your rescue....

And then there's the Creepers! Even when you do manage to progress far enough into the game to survive the other enemies, there's always the threat that one of these numpties will sneak up behind you and explode with a massive KABOOM, making you jump about ten feet in the air and then come to the realization that the epic castle you've just spent 4 hours building has a hole in it the size of an elephant...

And the Endermen! These teleporting Slender Man rip-offs will mind their own business, and just randomly shift blocks around...unless you look at directly at them! Then they emit a horrible, terrifying noise and come after you like the rest of the enemies!

Then there's the Nether with it's Ghasts and Zombie Pigmen...and the Slime.....and the ever present threat of a fiery death in the lava pits...and..and...Well, you get the idea! Minecraft can be scary stuff, especially if you're under the age of 10, which a lot of its players are!

It even has it's own urban legends! Like Herobrine, a character said to actually haunt the game! He looks just like main character Steve, but has spooky  white eyes...He supposedly builds random constructions, and does weird things with your inventory items if you happen to bump into him. The creator of Minecraft, Notch, has denied he exists...but helps add fuel to the fire by stating in update logs "Herobrine Removed"....

They've also added a skin for your character so that you can pretend to be him and scare any young kids, nieces or nephews that you happen to be playing Minecraft with too, which is great fun!

So there! Minecraft is survival horror! And it deserves a place on the blog because of it, so I won't hear any moaning! Well, apart from the moaning coming from those bloody zombies outside the door of my hastily constructed cabin....*shivers*....