Avenging Spirit - (Arcade, Gameboy, Modern Consoles and PC) :
Today we have a cutel little possess-em-up-platformer from Jaleco!
So the premise behind this game is that while out walking with your girlfriend one night, you are both attacked. Whilst your girlfriend is kidnapped by these odd gangster types, a far worse fate has befallen you, and you have kicked the bucket completely.
As luck would have it though, your belle's dad is a scientist who has been dabbling with the paranormal and summoning your spirit into a jar, he informs you that he thinks he knows where your girlfriend might be being held and teaches you how to possess enemies so you can use their own powers against them as you go on a hunt-and-rescue mission to save your lady!
It isn't going to be as easy as you would first think though, due to the fact that you require spirit energy to maintain these possessions, and any hits that you take from projectiles or any bashes you receive from enemies, will decrease your energy until your spirit pops back out of whatever body you are currently possessing and you'll have to find another body before your 'un-life' force runs dry!
Taking control of the different enemy types is what really makes this game stand out from the platforming crowd, as each new baddie comes with it's own unique set of skills, and playing around with them until you find what suits can be great fun, as you traverse some tricky platforms and the usual jumping sections you find in such stuff.
I'm most familiar with the arcade version of the game, but it did also come out on Gameboy, and playing both again for this article, I have to say that the Gameboy version was a lot more speedy. I was emulating both games though, and the arcade version seemed to be a bit slower and clunkier than I remember, so it might be an emulation issue, but nevertheless, both versions are worth a look as they each have their plus points! And I think the game was ported to all the modern consoles a year or two ago as well, so it should be really easy to find somewhere to play it. It's definitely a cute little curio to play for the spooky season!
Starting up 2Dark is an unsettling experience. As a top down, almost SNES like, retro-looking styled game you wouldn't expect the very first thing to see to be the brutal murder of your wife and kidnapping of your children. But as the protagonist and his family experience a camping trip gone wrong, this is exactly what unfolds in front of you.
And no, it doesn't mean that you immediately go on a mission to rescue your kids, as the next scene sets things up seven years later, where our hero has become a jaded, recovering alcoholic of a PI, who has also become somewhat of a vigilante....tracking cases where children go missing in the hope of finding a clue to the wherabouts of his long lost kids.
In doing so, he has discovered a child trafficking ring, and so heads to various locations to track down these sick child-traffickers, rescue the kids and shut the whole thing down, one way or another.
So yes, it's all rather grim....even more so than is usual in horror games, and the fact that the game's style is sort-of nineties in design makes it seem all the more wrong and gloomy. And everything is dark...really dark! Including the levels!
Each level works as a themed haunted house type thing, with, for example, the first being a closed down circus/theme park, and our hero, Mr. Smith, enters these buildings armed with a torch, a gun and some candy to lure kids to safety with and/or to fling at switches from a distance.
Of course the torch requires batteries, and the gun requires bullets, so you'll need to pick extra packs of these up along the way. But even armed with a torch, the overly dark levels can be a very dangerous place.
The floors are always filled with massive holes, that aren't easy to see, and more often than not you'll instantly die when you come across them for the first time. Hopefully Mr. Smith will have smoked a cigarette not long before you encounter the holes, as this is how you save your progress. Too many smokes though, and you'll have a coughing fit, which will alert the baddies!
Ah yes...the enemies! The game would like you to pass by most of these guys stealthily, but the mechanics of 2Dark make that very difficult, so usually you'll just try to lure them to a good area where you can blast their brains out, and get them out of the way.
As mentioned, any sound will have them hunting you down, and when you eventually find some kids, they can of course be very noisy, which makes it even harder to sneak past. Thankfully the bad guys can also fall foul of the many traps and animals that also fill the levels, which can make things a little easier.
When you do find the kids, you'll have to lead them to safety, keeping them quiet or in one place until you clear a path. Any enemy encounters will result in their deaths more often than not, and as mentioned, although the game wants you to be stealthy for the best scores, you'll get a lot further if you just clear out all the bad guys first. There are bosses to fight too of course, and these can be even more tricky to dispatch...
Overall though, the game relies heavily on trial and error. It took a few goes for me to get properly involved in it, and also to make any sort of progress. It did start to grow on me after a while, but with the very grim subject matter and the difficulty, this game won't be for everyone.
It was created by the guy who created Alone in the Dark and Little Big Adventure, Frédérick Raynal, and I can see what he was trying to do, but by capturing the old school feel, he's also captured the old school difficulty and I fear that will put many people off. But it does have a certain gloomy, depressing charm, if that makes sense. I guess it's worth checking out, so long as you know what to expect going in to it....
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 Luneplaying, 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"......
Adding yet another zombie-filled game to the list, we have Dead Rising from the masters of survival horror Capcom ! This is a bit different from the usual zombie games the company produces though!
As photo-journalist Frank West, you hitch a ride in a helicopter to a town where you here strange things are happening. Hoping to get some good shots, you head to the roof of the local shopping mall and tell the pilot to come back for you in 3 days...now you just have to stay alive that long!
It doesn't take long to realise that the place is crawling with zombies! You hole up with a few random survivors, some of whom seem to know more about the situation than they're telling. After a while you decide to head back into the mall to try and gather up any other survivors, and also to get those photos that'll guarantee you fame and fortune!
What makes this game stand out from the zombie horde is the ability to use pretty much anything you can find lying around in the mall to dispose of the brain-biting freaks! Lawnmowers, golf clubs, guitars, frying pans....even Servbot masks from the Mega Man games.... all of these can be used to fight the undead! And of course they'll also provide the perfect photo opportunity to get you some much needed points, which you can then use to beef up your skills!
Surviving for the 3 days is a tough job, and it isn't helped by certain survivors who have gone a little crazy. These are known as Psychopaths and must also be destroyed before they end your fun. Later on, a weird cult shows up too and they also try to stop you from finding out just how the hell all off this came to happen!?! Needless to say, you need to change your tactics when dealing with these foes, as they ain't no brainless brain-munchers....
The game is a huge load of fun, but it is stupidly difficult in parts. And it's not helped by a save system that only allows you one save slot, and if you die you can save your character but not your progress. This saw me starting the game at least 4 or 5 different times, but eventually I was able to progress all the way through having beefed up my stats enough to be able to take a bit of a beating!
Anyway, the story should keep you entertained enough..the mucking about in the mall definitely will..and you should definitely at least give it a go and see if it's your kind of thing! If it is, then there's a few sequels and 2 XBLA games to accompany it! You should try them out too, as they add to the fun by allowing you to create your own zombie-killing weapons!!
"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*....
Yes, in today's selection of Gruesome Games I take a look at some video games based around two of horror cinemas greatest villians, a Mr. Freddy Krueger and a Mr. Jason Voorhees! Who will come out on top as the winner and have the best games? Read on to find out....
A Nightmare On Elm Street (C64 / PC DOS) :
First up, we have a man who has probably helped keep the coffee industry booming since the 80s, that devious dream -demon Freddy! This 1989 game from Monarch Software is based around Nightmare On Elm Street 3, and has you controlling the Dream Warriors from that film...
The first thing you'll need to do is find Krueger's house , and so you guide your little white stick figure character through the streets, looking for a house with all the lights on! Freddy is chasing you all the way, and if he catches you he'll drain your Soul Energy, which you need to survive! Once you find the house, you'll have a quick chat with Sister Mary Helena, and pop inside to rescue your friends....
The game now changes to a top-down view of inside the house, and you'll get a better look at whatever character you picked at the start of the game. Each character has their own special dream power that they can use in the fight against Freddy! Kincaid has a power punch that can break through walls and Taryn can use her special knife throwing ability! These use up power though, and you'll need to use them sparingly...
Various items can be picked up like baseball bats and daggers to kill enemies with, coffee to keep you awake and coins with which to buy upgrades and stuff. Enemies trying to stop you from reaching your friends include skeletons, ghosts and even killer wheelchairs taken straight from the movie! There's also fire, slime and deadly spike traps to avoid, so you'll have your work cut out trying to reach pizza-face and put an end to his nasty nightmares...
Handily, the bar at the side of the screen lets you know what level the rest of your gang of warriors are currently residing on, so that makes it a lot easier to find them and insures you won't waste too much time hunting for them on every level and can just concentrate on trying to find the exit until you reach the area where they're at!
Obviously, the PC version looks a lot better than the C64 version, and runs a bit smoother too...but they both play more or less the same and have pretty much the exact same layout. I've tried to include similar screenshots from both games here, so you can see the differences for yourselves, and you'll see that the PC version also has some nice little extras like floorboards, little rugs with eyes on and actual slime on the ground on the slime levels (complete with smothered bodies) !
These extra little touches make the PC version the one to go for, but the C64 version is far from awful, and I would have been happy to have owned it back in the day! The C64 also has a nice little rendition of the Nightmare on Elm Street music on the title screen, so it gets bonus brownie points for that too! But yeah, both games use the licence to good effect and are pretty enjoyable adventures worth giving a go!
Also using the third Nightmare On Elm Street as inspiration, LJN's game for the Nintendo Entertainment System has a similar plot, but plays quite a bit differently. In this you have to find Freddy's bones which have been scattered around the levels, take them to the furnace in the High School and burn them so Freddy is put to rest and can no longer threaten Elm Street's teenagers!
As one of these teens yourself, you'll find yourself on Elm Street outside various buildings, only one of which can be accessed from the start. Annoyingly, you have no idea which, so you'll have to fight your way past enemies such as snakes, bats and zombie-types and push up on the controller at every door until you find the one you can enter!
Once inside you'll be faced with platforms to jump around until you reach a boss at the end of a level, who'll drop a key for another house, and you'll be dumped back outside, searching once more for the right door...which is the most annoying thing about the game really, but I suppose it adds some longevity.
What keeps the game interesting is the whole sleep mechanic..If your sleep bar falls too low by getting attacked, you'll enter the dream world and the various snakes, bats and spider enemies will become twisted skeleton or phantom variants of themselves! You'll need to collect coffee to try and keep yourself awake then, and if you do doze off there's a stereo that can be found to waken yourself up again!
Special dream power pick-ups can be collected, and this lets you switch to a special souped-up version of yourself and use abilities like Shadow Warrior (Ninja), Acrobat or Wizard. These aren't as impressive as they sound, but make for some amusing illustrations in the game's manual!
Mr. Krueger will pop up for a ruck if you fall too deep into slumber...an incident that's preceded by a scary "Freddy Is Coming!" message flashing up on the screen! You should see him off with a few hits though, as he's disappointingly non-scary once he appears. The boss versions are better at the end of the levels, with you facing off against Snake Head Freddy, Big Knifey-Glove Freddy and a few other incarnations! (Names above are what I called the incarnations of Freddy...these are not official....obviously...)
Anyway, it's a fun enough little game, and should keep you entertained for at least a few goes on Halloween! And while you've got the NES out you can give this next game a bash too.....
At Camp Crystal Lake, six counselors are looking after the latest batch of kids who are their for the summer, and everyone's enjoying the peace and tranquility of the lake and its surrounding countryside. Unfortunately for them, one child who had a particularly bad experience at the camp a few years back has returned, all grown up and with an axe to grind!
For some reason, the place has also fallen prey to all manner of spooky nasties like zombies, angry wolves and crows! Must be something in the water! Anyway, you take control of the counselors and can switch between them as they try to stop Jason murdering all the children and/or other counselors!
The counselors have differing abilities, and the faster ones are better used as scouts to look for items.Others are better at crossing the lake in a boat. A couple of them seem to be completely useless, but I'll leave it up to you to discover which ones for yourselves...
Using a map, you can see where you are and at moments of danger an alarm will sound and you can check to see where you have to head in order to stop Jason hacking someone to pieces! Unfortunately if you enter the woods, the map becomes pretty useless and it's easy to get lost among the maze of paths and find yourself bombarded with enemies.
All you have to defend yourself at the start, y'see, is a bunch of rocks! Throwing these at enemies isn't always that successful as they travel in an arc and sometimes miss wolves completely. Thankfully, there are other weapons to be picked up such as knives that fly in a straight line and are much more effective.
If you manage to make it past the enemies to the area where someone is being attacked in time, you'll receive a rather premature "Thank you!" from whoever you saved, and then discover Jason lurking in the cabin right beside them! You'll then have to lob rocks, knives or whatever else you have at him whilst dodging his attacks and hoping he gets bored and leaves!
Once he does, he'll be gone for a little while and then he'll attack somewhere else..so you'll need better something he's scared of to truly beat him! Apparently he's really scared off big, flaming torches, so if you light all the fireplaces in the cabins with lighters that the enemies drop, a flaming torch will eventually become available..as will a flashlight that will help you see your way in the caves, which is a place I never found during my few games. Apparently the severed head of Jason's mum awaits you in there too, so I'll need to keep a look out when I go back to playing again...
When night falls, the enemies become a little tougher so watch out for that, but if you manage to fend them and Jason off for 3 full days you'll win and everyone will be happy except for poor old hockey-head. Hurrah!
Well, I went in to playing this having heard this was one of the worst games of all time, and having played it for at least 40 minutes I can say that I find that analysis totally wrong! Sure, it's by no means a great game..but it's not that bad! Once I worked out what I was meant to be doing I actually had quite a lot of fun trying to save everybody and I'll definitely be going back to play it again in the future and try to find Mrs. Voorhees severed head!
So don't believe the naysayers...give it a go and see what you think yourself! Of course, maybe you'll hate it anyway, but that's half the fun of playing games you haven't played before! One man's Arkham Asylum is another man's Rise Of The Robots! You'll never know until you play 'em!
Oh, and one thing you can definitely thank the last two games for are these wonderful things...
Yes, NECA have made action figures based on both the LJN games and they come in the same colours as the characters in game! They'll look great on your shelves and are a perfect Halloween gift either for yourself or a friend! Oh, and they also come in replica boxes based on the game ones too!
A few years before the NES game, one appeared on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 & Amstrad CPC computers. In this one, the main aim is to gather all your friends in safe spot that you've secured by placing a a huge cross in it!
Jason has disguised himself as one of your friends and won't show himself until he's ready to attack, at which point you'll have to confront him and use one of ten weapons that you've found lying around to bash him with!
Now this game is a lot worse than the NES version! well, the ZX Spectrum version is at least. It looks terrible, controls terribly and is just well...crap! The C64 at least has some spooky music, and when someone dies you'll hear a blood-curdling scream, which I imagine at least freaked out some kids back in the day! It controls a lot better too, and also looks far nicer....although for some reason Jason looks more like a random guy in black jeans and a black top than the knife wielding behemoth we're used to seeing on screen!
Apparently, the best version of the lot is the Amstrad version, but as I'm still struggling with trying to get an Amstrad emulator to work so I can sample its games, I've yet to play that one. So although the C64 might be fun for 5 minutes, I can't really recommend you play either, when there are so many more gruesome games to eat up your time....if I ever get round to the Amstrad version, I'll keep you posted!
So there we go! I think in this particular battle of the baddies, Freddy wins hands down! His games are a lot more fun than Jason's, but there's still room for someone to make a truly great game based on either series, as none of the games could be called amazing!
Since posting this on the Blog Of Stuff, a new Friday The 13th Game has been put in to production after successful funding on Kickstarter and Backerkit...
Players take control of Camp Crystal Lake counselors trying to escape and defeat Jason...but one player will fill the somewhat sizable shoes of the man himself and be able to teleport around the map, using heightened skills to hunt the other players down....
Developers Illfonic and Gun Media plan to release the game in Spring of next year on PC, Xbox One and PS4, with a possible single-player mode coming in the Summer, despite the stretch goal for that mode not being reached.
It all sounds rather interesting, will undoubtedly upset the censors, and might finally be the game Friday The 13th fans have been waiting for....I guess we'll find out next year!
As another little side-note, both Freddy and Jason have featured in Mortal Kombat games as downloadable characters!
Both have moves based around their special skills, and both are pretty fun to play as....with their moves being way over the top in suitable Mortal Kombat style!
It's just a pity that they don't appear in the same MK so we could pit them against each other to settle this feud once and for all.....
