Nightmare Creatures (PS1, N64, PC)

Nightmare Creatures (PS1, N64, PC) :

Adam Crowley is a bit of a git! He's only gone and released a nightmarish Transmortification virus on old 19th Century London town, and it's turning all the cockneys into hideous, deformed creatures of the night! Unlike Eastenders though, it's going to take more than a cup of tea to sort out this load of slobbering, gibbering, undead moaners....

Step forward our two brave heroes, Father Ignatius Blackward , a priest with more than a little knowledge of the occult and magic...and Nadia Franciscus , a vengeful daughter out to put a stop to Crowley's plans and make him pay for her immunologist father's death!

Third-person, hacky-slashy, action-adventuring is the way forward...through 18 levels of London fog, creepy cemeteries, stinky sewers and the like. Switches must be flicked to open gates, holes in floors jumped over and all manner of creatures hacked limb from limb using the various items lying around and some funky fighting moves made possible by using different button combos...

You also have to make sure and keep killing the various fiends and keep your adrenaline meter high, or you'll end up succumbing to Crowley's virus yourself! This adds a bit of urgency to the game, and also makes it a bit more difficult...

Roaming about in the London fog and creeping through rat-infested sewers makes for an atmospheric adventure, and the John Carpenter-esque soundtrack and random spooky sounds also help make you feel favourably freaked out!

There are sometimes a few camera issues, and the controls cans occasionally be a bit unwieldy..and like other PS1 games it's beginning to show it's age a little..but it still stands up as a decent and fun example of the genre! And you could always try the slightly better looking N64 or PC versions!

Resident Evil - Dead Aim (Playstation 2)

Resident Evil Dead Aim (PS2) :-

Now if you know your horror games, you'll know all about the Resident Evil series..With 9 proper games (including 0 & Code Veronica) and numerous spin offs, HD Remakes, etc...if you've been playing games at all for the past 20 years or so it'll be pretty remarkable if you haven't heard of at least one of them. One that you might not be familiar with though, is this light-gun enabled one on the PS2 !

An Umbrella employee named Morpheus has gone a bit off the rails (what a surprise!) and has nabbed a bit of the G-Virus..a newly modified version of the T-virus that saw Raccoon City wiped from the Earth...and has hopped aboard an Umbrella owned luxury cruise ship to escape, but also decided to use the virus to experiment upon himself and the other passengers!

The American government sends in special Anti-Umbrella Pursuit Investigation Team member, Bruce McGivern, to retrieve the virus and stop the threat. Also onboard is Fong Ling, a Chinese government agent who is also out to stop Morpheus her own way. Cue much tumbling around and flirting from both agents as they have the usual love/hate relationship type thing that always seems to occur in such situations...

Unlike the other Survivor lightgun games in the Resident Evil series, this one allows you to walk around in 3rd person mode using the GunCon 2 or a standard PS2 controller. This helps it feel more like a proper RE game, and makes it far easier to explore and pick up items.

When you do come across the inevitable zombie baddies, a quick press of the trigger on the lightgun sees you enter 1st person mode, and you can blast away the undead numpties at your leisure before popping back into 3rd person to leg it away again.

The game is filled with the usual rubbish, campy dialogue and the environments can sometimes feel a bit empty, but the story does feel like a proper offshoot of the numbered RE sequels, and has the usual increasingly difficult and weird bosses to defeat. It makes an interesting and enjoyable change from the usual Resi stuff, so if you own a lightgun and a PS2 you should definitely get this one in your sights...

Dead Rising (Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Dead Rising (Xbox 360) :-

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!!

Zombie Raid (Arcade)

Zombie Raid (Arcade) :

This is a funky lightgun shooter that was released in the arcades in 1995 by Sammy ! It had a shotgun attached to the arcade cab apparently, although I've only discovered it's delights via MAME and using a mouse, so it's probably lost some of it's atmosphere there...

Set in England in the early years of the last century, you play the part of Detective Edward Windsor and go roaming around graveyards and sewers battling zombies, werewolves and other creatures of the night! The screen pans around letting you pick off the baddies, who like to hide behind trees, gravestones and the like before leaping at you and biting your face off or shredding you with their claws! Occasional innocent humans will run across your screen too though, so you best avoid shooting them, or you'll lose some of your precious health!

There are a few bonus items to be found hidden behind destructible scenery, and a few other surprises like corpses hiding behind gravestones that suddenly slump forward, etc. that help add to the splendidly spooky setting!

This is a truly gruesome game, with bits flying everywhere as you blast the baddies away...it certainly isn't afraid to show you some gore! It has a nice variety of ghosties, ghoulies and long-leggity beasties to brutalize too which keeps it interesting as you advance through the game. It's all pretty standard lightgun-type stuff to be honest though, and there really isn't much more to say about it other than it's a lot of fun and should keep your trigger finger happy for a bit! Oh, and that you might have to fiddle around with the settings a bit to get mouse control working properly if you're playing it via emulator, but once you do you'll have a blast! 

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! 

Sanitarium (PC)

Sanitarium (PC) :

Waking up in a sanitarium after a nasty car accident, your character in this game realises he is suffering from amnesia and has no recollection of how he got there. Wandering around the madhouse, he chats with a few crazy characters and decides that it'd be best if he tried to work out how to escape....and it's not long until he appears to do just that...but by some rather unusual means...

This game is properly weird...and is another of those games that it's best to start playing not knowing too much about! Apparently the game design came about by Dreamforge wanting to make an adventure game that was different from the normal type of thing on offer, but everyone had different ideas as to what they should put in the game....

Eventually, they decided to put all these ideas in and come up with a weird main plot to tie them all together, and from what I've experienced so far, it seems to work in creating something truly different...

As you wander around the isometric landscape, you'll meet all sorts of bizarre individuals and come across puzzles that will need to be solved in order to progress, some of which are fairly straight forward, but others that'll require a little hunting around for clues..

Flashbacks happen every so often too, but is it your past you're seeing or someone elses....and what memories are real? It's this sense of not really knowing what exactly is going on that keeps you interested in what's going to happen next! You'll suddenly find yourself in an entirely different area, or even looking a bit different....it's totally insane but brilliant! The visuals help add to the atmosphere too, with some truly odd offerings to be witnessed...

The game oozes atmosphere, and its unusual story should have you hooked from the start...I'm certainly intrigued enough to keep playing! As with most of the PC games in the list, I picked this one up relatively cheap over at gog.com

Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (Xbox, PS2, PC)

Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (Xbox, PS2, PC) :-

Don't you just hate when you nip to the loo after a nice coffee, only to then blackout and wake up having apparently murdered some old guy who was minding his own business and just having a wee?? I know I do, and so does Lucas Kane, who finds himself in exactly this predicament at the start of the game...

You take control of Lucas, and using the two analogue sticks of your controller, hurriedly try to clean up the scene of the crime before a policeman in the diner where the murder took place, enters the toilet and discovers the mess! It's a truly unique start to a game, and has you wondering exactly what type of thing you're getting yourself into...

It turns out that Lucas wasn't exactly himself when he commited the crime, and like a few others in New York, has seemingly been possessed by a serial killer carrying out the murders using other folk as deadly puppets. Unlike the others though, Lucas has had psychic visons since childhood , and it seems he is destined to play a much bigger role than the murderer intended in this weird plot, that just keeps getting weirder!

Fahrenheit plays like some sort of rhythm-action interactive movie, and a surreal one at that. It's full of big action sequences that look like something from The Matrix, but the plot has you doing everything from mopping the floor to playing guitar to seduce ladies to fighting weird shadowy angel type monsters and dodging giant bugs in your office! Oh, and meeting a Kung-Fu master in a library and playing basketball, not to mention the naked sex scenes that seemed to upset the anti-videogame crowd more than the murder at the start.....

The best thing about it is the way it remembers what you've done as Lucas, and when you get to play as Tyler and Carla, the detectives trying to work out who the murderer is, your choice of where to hide the murder weapon, wash your clothes, etc. will have an effect on what they discover during their scenes...

It can get a little fiddly at times with the controls, but the bizarre story and innovative gameplay should keep you intrigued enough to see it through to the end! And then you'll probably want to play through it again to experience how different choices will affect the game...

Definitely one I recommend! The story in this one is definitely best experienced by yourself, and even the stuff I mentioned above is only a tiny taster of the weirdness you can expect...so do yourself a favour and pick this up!

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!! 

Extermination (Playstation 2)

Extermination (PS2) :-

Another game I'm just getting to grips with next.....This is a 2001 survival horror title developed by some members of the original Resident Evil team, and you can see the influences a mile off, as its filled with bad voice acting, key cards, locked doors, etc..... but all ends up being rather groovy despite its shortcomings!

You take on the role of a Marine Special Forces Operative named Dennis Riley, as he and his buddies go on a rescue mission in Antarctica. Needless to say, before long you'll realise things are a lot worse than people imagined and some sort of viral outbreak is turning people into big gloopy purple mutants that want to infect everybody else! Naturally you also soon find yourself facing this threat alone...at least until you meet one of the shadowy, suspicious characters that populate such games...

It actually reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing with its plot, despite there being no hint of any alien influence so far...but we'll see how it pans out! And as I said, it also owes a lot to Capcom's zombie horror series....but it does have a few interesting additions of its own to the survival horror genre!

For a start, your gun is really customisable...and instead of lugging loads of weapons about, it's just a case of finding the right additions to it to boost your firepower! I believe their are other weapons you can pick up later, but so far the one I started with is all I need! Well, that and my handy knife which comes in handy when there's a padlock needing smashed or one of the annoying little worm beasties is leaping at my face and I'm low on ammo.....

And unlike the early Resi games, if you get attacked in this game it's very easy to become infected by the virus, meaning that you essentially have to worry about two health bars..your general health and your infection level! You'll get progressively more infected as you battle the enemies, and eventually if it's left untreated, you'll need to rush to special machines to put a stop to the infection before you become the latest gloopy grunt...

This helps adds to the tension of the game, and can really get you panicking when you realise you're miles away from the nearest machine...and of course you'll need to have a special pack so you can use it on the machines too!

Other than that, it seems to be a rather enjoyable but pretty standard jaunt, with some of the usual faults.....an annoying save system that can mean you have to go back quite a bit when you die, lots of trailing backwards and forwards finding keys to unlock doors at the other side of the map....you know, the usual! 

But it is a rather under-rated title that deserves a lot more love than it seems to have received, and it can be found quite easily for a very low price....so you should probably give it a go if you're like me and need a good fix of hilariously bad dialogue and crate smashing every now and then! And who knows what delights I've yet to discover, lurking in the later parts of the game......

Zombie Apocalypse 1 & 2 (Commodore Amiga)

Just a very quick blog post today, as I'm really pushed for time, and there's not much to say about these games anyway!

Zombie Apocalypse 1 & 2 (Amiga) - 

Both of these games are PD (Public Domain) titles, the first being released in 1992 and  the sequel in 1994!

Both are also shooting gallery style games, where you control a crosshair via the mouse, and blast advancing zombies to smithereens!

They're pretty mindless fun for a while, but become pretty repetitive very quickly! Zombie Apocalypse II is the one to go for if you only want to play one though, as it has slightly better presentation, such as a groovy tune, and the extra gore when body parts pile up on the screen after you splatter the zombie hordes...Both games have grunts and moan from your undead enemies, but these can quickly become a bit grating too!

So yeah, if you want to waste 10-15 minutes mindlessly blasting zombies, you could do a lot worse than these games! Just don't expect anything more from them.....  

Oh, and don't get these games confused with the games of the same name that were released on Xbox 360 and PS3 a few years back...I haven't played any of those yet, but they just seem to be pretty standard Zombie-Robotron-style things...maybe I'll get round to them in a later blog post someday!?

Domain Of The Undead (Atari 800) & Satan's Hollow (Arcade)

Domain Of The Undead (Atari 800) :-

The box-art is probably the best thing about this stinker! It's basically a really poor Ghosts 'n' Goblins clone where you just move from one side of the level to the other, repeatedly shooting the rather rubbishy skeletons whilst also combating falling asleep from boredom! I don't think you should bother wasting your time with this....I'm certainly not wasting any more......

Satan's Hollow (Arcade) :-

After Domain Of The Undead, I needed to play a proper classic....Bally Midway's 1982 shoot-em-up was just the ticket! It's a rather groovy game, where all you have to do is defeat Satan's evil army of swooping Gargoyles, who are out to put a stop to you building a bridge to cross a lava-filled chasm leading to the big bad himself!

Flying in formation at the top of the screen, these fiendish flying freaks will drop eggs of fire and bombs to try and destroy your bridge building work, before swooping down to the screen and dive-bombing you...Luckily, you have a shield that protects you from attack for a short while, and you can fire back at the enemies as you move from the left side of the screen where you collect the bridge parts, to the right of the screen where you plonk them into position...

Occasionally, Satan's disembodied head will appear and try to spew flames on you too, so you'll need to avoid that as well! Every time you beat a wave of enemies, a little flag gets added at the side of the screen to keep tabs, but we'll get to that in a minute...

Once the bridge is complete, you can slide along onto another screen, where Satan appears and flings his trident at you. If you manage to defeat old devil-bonce, your little flags you got when kicking gargoyle-butt get added up as a bonus score, and you pop back to the first screen to fight ever more aggressive nasties!

Fairly simple in design, but actually pretty challenging, it's classic arcade gaming that will have you adding credit after credit for another go! Go get Satan behind thee now........

Magical Crystals (Arcade)

 Magical Crystals (Arcade) :-

You're an odd little wizardy type in this game, and all of your little pixie friends have been captured by some horribly nasty monster and stuck into these magical crystals....so you'll have to use your magic powers to defeat all the crazy enemies and break them back out, and go kick some baddie beastie butt!

And you'll encounter a weird bunch o' baddies indeed....everything from jelly monsters who split into smaller versions of themselves, to mad teacup-men who rush at you and try to drown you with their liquid filled heads!! 

Your main weapon appears to be mystical balls of energy or something,which you hurl at the enemies whilst also trying to avoid falling off the edges of the levels, which seem to suspended on nothingness... way, way up in mid air. 

Every now and then you'll come up against a boss (such as the aforementioned jelly thing) which will drop a huge crystal containing a Queen Pixie when defeated...or at least that's what I think is going on? I couldn't really find much in the way of story or instructions online to back up my theories...

Anyway, after you beat one of the bosses, you get treated to something a little different in one of the cool bonus mini-games! The ones I've discovered so far are pictured below, and involve a tug-of war with a random monster and some sort of whack-a-mole type thing. 

I believe there are others when you beat more bosses too...I can remember seeing a sort of skeet-shooting one when watching footage of the game on Youtube a while back....

As I mentioned earlier, the levels are just sort of floating in mid-air, and you often have to hop over large gaps in the level, or onto little moving platforms. Sometimes you'll land on one which will disappear after a short time, meaning you have to take extra care not to plummet to your doom. So you'll need to keep your wits about you....

You can also find the occasional power-up to help you out on your journey, my favourite being one which turns you super-size and lets you stomp on everything around about you! Great fun that one! 

And I think the pixies act as some sort of barrier when you collect them too, as they whirl around your body and seem to fly off if a stray enemy projectile hits them....

As you can see from the screenshots, the game looks great! And it pretty much is.....

It can get a little tricky when there are lots of projectiles flying around, or you hit a particularly nasty stretch of platforming, but overall it's a really fun game that any fan of cutesy-weirdness (or wizards.... or mad teacup-men....)  will really enjoy!