Ok, so it's been a few years since I tried to cover loads and loads of horror games in one Halloween season...I always intend to, but for various reasons it never seems to work out the way I intend. But this year, I thought I'd give covering a big splurge of games a go again...we'll see how this pans out!
Just to be on the safe side I'm not going to bother numbering them, and I'm also going to try and rein myself in whilst talking about them to try and get through a lot, and just let you know that these things exist without spending too much time going into too much detail, but we know that hasn't really worked in the past, so we'll see how that goes too! Hehe....
Anyway, let's not waste any more time and get right into the first title, which is......
2Dark - (Xbox One, PS4, PC) :
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....
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Avenging Spirit - (Arcade, Gameboy, Modern Consoles and PC) :
After 2Dark, I feel we need something a little lighter, so this cute little possess-em-up platformer should do the trick!
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!
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Alien Breed - Special Edition '92 (Commodore Amiga) :
If you owned an Amiga in the early nineties, chances are you had some version of Alien Breed. I remember everybody talking about it at school, and as I only had a ZX Spectrum at the time, I was a bit jealous of all my Amiga owning friends, as this alien-blasting Gauntlet clone sounded amazing!
Skip forward to the late '90s and I was eventually making enough money that I was able to go to car boot sales and find my very own Amiga, for a lot less cash...and one that came bndled with a copy of Alien Breed - Special Edition '92! Finally I'd be able to sample it's brilliant-ness!
And it is indeed quite brilliant. Maybe not quite as good as Gauntlet, which it clearly takes a lot of inspiration from, but it still holds up fairly well and is certainly fun enough to be a worthy Amiga classic! Of course, another heavy inspiration is the Alien franchise, which should be obvious as soon as you see the box!
And like those films, the game sees you scurrying around metal corridors, trying to keep enough ammo as you battle the hordes of enemies that are taking over your base/spaceship/whatever...
Health packs, ammo, money...all of these things are required and can be found lying around the place, but a lot of the time they're behind locked doors, so you'll be needing to find keys too, so you can get to all that much needed loot!
Wave after wave of alien scum will do their best to stop you from completing the various goals of your mission, and there's a lot to get through, with this Special Edition coming with an extra 12 missions, including some where you're in the dark and can only see the blueness of the alien beasties eyes (apparently at least, I haven't got far enough to see that yet!)....
If I have any gripes about the game, it's that it can be a bit fiddly to control. You'll frequently get stuck on some of the scenery, and you'll be wishing that your little marine had eight-way directional shooting, which unfortunately he doesn't.....and this makes the game a lot harder than it feels it should be. You do get more used to it the more you play, but it definitely takes away from the shine of the rest of the package...
But the game is still atmospheric and groovy enough that you'll forgive it's faults, especially when you hear the Star-Trek-esque door noises, the classic si-fi trope of a female computer voice and the funky title music! Alien Breed then, is definitely one to play.....just remember that in space, no one can hear the narrator say "Green Marine is about to die!"
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King of the Monsters (Arcade, Neo Geo, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis) :
There's always room for some Kaiju-battling, and this fighting game from SNK gives you plenty of apartment-block sized baddies to bash! Originally released in the arcades in 1991, there's not really a whole lot to say about the gameplay of this title...it's exactly what you would expect! You fight either the computer or another player after choosing your character from the selection available, and battle it out until the other one's energy has dropped enough for you to finish them off!
I guess the way you have to pin them for three seconds, wrestling style, is a bit different from the usual Streetfighter-style of ending a match...and being able to pick up planes, cars, etc. that are passing by and fling them at your enemies is a little different, at least from most other beat-em-ups, but it's all pretty much par for the course with regards to other Kaiju battlers!
The arcade version is definitely the one with the most stuff to look at and interact with, and has an excitable guy who pipes up every now and again at the start of a match to shout about the giant beasties, but I found the Megadrive/Genesis game to be a bit speedier and slightly more fun as a brawler.
The Super NES version is probably the worst of the bunch, as it seems slower and clunkier. It's still okay, but you'd definitely be better off with one of the other versions if you're able to choose.
The Final verdict then, is that King of the Monsters is fine. But it's just fine. It's nothing special, but there's just enough fun involved for it to be worth a go if you fancy some beat-em-up action. Oh, and yes, when I was recording the video, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to press to pin my opponent, but worked it out eventually! Hehe....
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Escape From Monster Manor (Panasonic 3DO) :
When I got my Xbox Series S a couple of Christmasses ago, I had no idea that it would open the floodgates to thousands of games that I had been waiting to play for ages...but a few months after buying it I happened upon a video that told me about the Xbox's Dev Mode, and the emulation possiblities that it offered. One purchase of a portable HDD and much transferring of game files later, and I was finally able to emulate lots of machines that were beforehand unavailable to me....including the Panasonic 3DO!
I had experienced the wonders of the 3DO many years before when visiting a friend of a friend, and for years I wanted to play Need for Speed, Road Rash and whathever the hell that Golf game was that I had played on it....but then I discovered a few horror title gems that had also been hidden away on it. Including this one!
Escape from Monster Manor is a first-person shooter / adventure, that sees you enter the aforementioned mansion trying to find pieces of an ancient talisman that the owner of the manor had brought back to its halls in order to try and harness the great power within.
Unfortunately, he kicked the bucket and his descendants scarpered after discovering that lots of evil nasties had filled the manor, looking to find the pieces of the talisman and use it for their own nefarious deeds!
And so now it's up to us to try and piece the talisman back together before the bad guys can get to it. Armed with some sort of weird electro-doohicky zapper gun, we enter the manor and try to navigate its many corridors and corners, making sure to stay topped up with ammo, health, keys and some random coins and gems that can add to your points or give you extra lives.
Playing the game nowadays, it definitely lacks a bit of sparkle. The manor itself is a bit sparse, with no roof or floor textures and only random pieces of furniture sprinkled around every now and then to give a very poor impression of it being a house. The ghosts and ghouls all have a decidely 2D sprite feel to them, but somehow this does add to their spookyness! But the game has definitely taken inspiration from Wolfenstein 3D, which I guess is no bad thing.
Despite it looking a bit bare, the sound of the game really helps with the atmosphere. Unearthly voices, groans and screams fill the air, and spooky tunes play throughout. Random ghosts will pop up in front of your face every now and then too, which also adds to the feel of things.
And so in the end, traipsing through the manor is actually a lot of fun, and that early nineties experience you can only get from early CD titles seems to work in it's favour for adding that extra spark of spooky goodness. Go play it and discover it for yourselves!
Well, thankfully Blogger didn't bork on me tonight and wipe all my stuff. As you can see I took a break from redoing the Spook Sighting stuff, but I'll get back to that either tomorrow or Saturday. I hope you enjoy this first batch of Gruesome Games though, and hopefully I'll get a lot more in before the end of the month. In the meantime, you all know what to do...give that badge below a click to see what everyone else had been up to for the Countdown, or you can head straight over and visit Dex at AEIOU....and Sometimes Why, where he has some awesome monster cards for you to have a nosey at!
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