So the lack of time to put the blog together this year has meant that the Gruesome Games section has been somewhat lacking....to make up for this, have a post that brings together links to all 253...yes 253....games that I've covered so far!
I had big plans for another list this year, but it looks like you'll need to watch this space next year...there's still plenty more where these came from! ;)
The first 202 games are listed down from 100 in their order from the first two lists, and then all the other games I've covered since then are numbered after 202..if that makes any sense? (It probably doesn't, but it does in my head...so...)
Click the name of the game you want to read about to be whixked away to the appropriate link!
Halloween again! We made it another year! I might still have time to do one last story from the Digital Comic Museum later, but just in case I don't let me just wish everybody a Happy Halloween! It's been great fun taking part in the Countdown once again....please go visit the other bloggers taking part by clicking the badge below! Have a good one everybody!
Yay! We've done it! It's Halloween and here's the last 10 games on the list! Thanks for sticking with me throughout, and if you're just arriving...well, you've got a fair bit o' stuff to get through!
Comments about your favourites, any games not in the list that you feel should be or just some feedback on whether you enjoyed the blog are all welcome!
10 - Bonze Adventure (Arcade) :
We'll start this set off with a nice simple game to explain. Emma, the King of the Underworld has been cursed or something...and has gone a bit loopy! You play the role of a Buddhist monk, Bonze Kackremboh, and using your prayer beads as weapons must destroy all of Emma's followers and rid him of the evil spirit that has made him crazy!
Travelling through the underworld is pretty tricky, but the great graphics and spooky music make it an enjoyable task! A nice little platformer, and definitely one you should sample for it's hell-based horror fun!
9 - The Thing (PS2) :
Storywise, this survival horror title is a direct sequel to the events that transpired in the 1982 John Carpenter film, and has you filling the boots of Blake, leader of a team sent to find out what has happened to McReady and the other characters from the film...Needless to say, it doesn't take long before you find out.....
Wandering around outside in the snow, your health bar will continually deplete as the Antarctic weather takes it's toll, so you'll need to quickly get indoors again or at least find a heat source so you don't end up as a snowman...
The Things that you come against vary from little spidery things which can be dispatched with pistols, to massive bosses with loads of tentacles and teeth...some middle sized ones will require you to pump them full of bullets and then finish them off with a flamethrower..and just like in the movie, members of your team may secretly be hosting a parasitic alien, and suddenly change into a Thing and try to have you for lunch....
Lucky you have the test kits to help you out, then! You can use these to discover if someone you think is acting a bit suspiciously is hosting a parasite. Just be ready with your gun in case they are! This is actually a bit of the game I found to be a bit disappointing though, as on more than one occasionI had just tested someone who passed as not hosting, and then two minutes later they had mutated and were trying to eat my face....
What works a lot better is the Trust system...all the members of your team have the ability to get scared or start distrusting you. If an area becomes too scary for them, they'll start panicking and if you don't order them to go somewhere where they can relax, they might start shooting at you or even end up shooting themselves!
You also have to keep the team's trust, as if they suspect you to be a Thing (like if say, you shoot someone who acts odd without testing them first) then they'll stop obeying orders until you can win back their trust by killing mutants or giving them extra ammo or something....
Generally, the team are pretty handy to have around, as they all have certain skills....engineers can fix fuse boxes, medics can keep the team healthy and the soldier can give you some extra firepower when things get tricky! But as you'd expect, you'll go through a few team members before the game is finished, so don't get too attached....
It all makes for a rather excellent adventure and a worthy sequel to the film...it has loads of little nods to it's source material, with references to things that happened in the movie and of course comes with a similar moody soundtrack. If you're a fan of The Thing, this really has to be played...if not, then you're left with a pretty damn good survival horror to add to the collection!
8 - Luigi's Mansion (Gamecube) :
Mario's brother finally got free from his sibling's shadow, and got his own chance to shine with this launch title for the Gamecube! After Mario wins a mansion in a competition and goes missing when he decides to check it out, Luigi takes up the task of searching for the mis-placed plumber...
Upon arrival, he meets the mysterious Professor E.Gadd , who explains that the competition was just a ruse by the Boos to kidnap Mario! He lends him the powerful Poltergust 3000, a vacuum cleaner with the power to suck up spooks, and the Gameboy Horror , which allows Luigi to see where he is in relation to the mansion's map....
It's basically a rip-off of Ghostbusters , with Luigi traipsing the halls and rooms of the mansion, setting loose the Boos by knocking on furniture, and then battling it out with them to pop them in the hoover. It's excellent fun though, and every now and then you'll come up against a Boss ghost who won't expose their ghostly heart to you until you work out a way to trick them.
Y'see to suck up the ghosts, you need to show their heart up with the beam of your torch before locking on to them to suck them up, but as this doesn't work with the bosses, you'll need to find another way to get them to comply...
Being a Nintendo game, the presentation in this is marvellous...Luigi shivers and shakes, and you can hear his voice tremble as the scaredy-cat shouts for his brother. Animation on everything is superb throughout, and contol is effortless, even with the Gamecube's rather unwieldy Fisher-Price style controller...You can tell that the game was pretty much designed around it!
Anyhoo, it's well worth helping Luigi out, as although some people don't see this as being in the same league as the Super Mario games, it's still an excellent Nintendo classic, and comes with everything you'd expect such a title to have!
7 - Project Zero (PS2) :
Now this is properly scary! Miku Hinasaki's brother has gone missing while investigating a spooky old mansion, and so off she goes to look for him. Once inside, she discovers a place filled with lots of freaksome Japanese spooks, and the only thing she can do to stop them is use an object called the Camera Obscura which she has found in the mansion...
If you can manage to take a snap of a spook before it reaches you, you'll do some damage to it.. The longer you can keep it in the frame, the more of it's energy you'll zap..but they don't make it easy for you, as they float about all over the place before lunging forward to get you in a ghostly grip! All the while they'll whisper things and moan and groan in your ears, making for some very unsettling battles..
The camera can also be used to find hidden secrets around the mansion. If you come across something which looks a bit odd, try looking through the camera and more often than not it'll help you work out how to beat a certain puzzle hindering progress. Also keep an eye out for slightly less aggressive ghosts who'll appear every now and then...if you can snap these, you'll be able to check them off of a ghost list you get a bit later on. Upgrades can be found for the camera which will add extra oomph, as can different film types...
Your quest to rescue your brother is a truly frightening one...if you play this game in the dark wearing headphones, you might actually have trouble sleeping afterwards, and it's rare I can say that truthfully after playing a game! Although the voice acting and script can sometimes seem a bit shoddy, the atmosphere and minmal sound use make playing this a truly eerie experience, and having a ghost fly at you whilst complaining about having no eyes is a lot scarier than you might think it could be, playing a game!
Another brilliant survival horror for the collection, you'll be missing out on some quality scares if you let this pass you by....
6 - Elvira - Mistress Of The Dark (Atari ST) :
What's Halloween without Elvira! She might not be quite as well known this side of the pond, but I can still remember seeing her pop up, and out, everywhere at this time of year back in the eighties and early nineties...
Sorry to say I haven't played this one much yet though, as it's one of the games I have lined up for playing today! Apparently though, the plot follows on from the 1988 film Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.. After evil Uncle Elmo's death, Elvira inherits Castle Killbragant and set's about restoring it with a view to turning it into a tourist attraction for horror fans.
In the process of doing this however, our favourite horror hostess has inadvertently brought her ancient ancestor, Satan-worshipping sorceress Queen Emelda the Evil, back from the dead along with several hundred of her horrible minions. You play a chap hired by Elvira to help her prevent the full resurrection of Queen Emelda, who popped her clogs before her plans for world domination took hold.
It looks like I can look forward to a fairly good point-and-click style game with this one...it received lots of good scores back when it was released, and still seems highly regarded by ST fans these days! Maybe I'll write more about it on the blog later, if I like it enough....
5 - Grabbed By The Ghoulies (Xbox) :
If there's one thing you shouldn't do when you get caught in a storm with your girlfriend, it's head for shelter in a nearby mansion! This has seen hundreds of horror film couples end up in sticky situations, and for Cooper and Amber, the couple who star in this Rare title, it's no different..
Upon reaching the mansion, Amber gets kidnapped and it's up to you as Cooper, to go about rescuing her. You do this by travelling through the rooms of the mansion and defeating a set number of opponents by punching and kicking them, or battering them with any objects you find lying around...
There's a few twists and turns in the plot, but I'll leave them for you to discover yourselves..What you need to know is that it's a wonderfully presented jaunt through a spook-filled house, that'a absolutely perfect for playing on a cold, Halloween night!
I love this game! It came out to mixed reviews early in the Xbox's life, and people seemed to find it repetitive and fiddly...but I loved making my way through the haunted house, and was eager to see what the next room had in store for me. I do think that if was anything other than a game about a haunted house, and if it was released by anyone other than Rare, my enthusiasm for it might not be as great though...
4 - Scooby Doo Mystery (Megadrive) :
A rather excellent point-and-click adventure this one, where you get to play through a couple of episodes as Shaggy (with help from Scooby) and look for clues to solve the mysteries...
The first has you off to Daphne's Uncle's hotel, where you find he has mysteriously disappeared and the ghost of a Native American Chieftain has been scaring off the guests...The next has you battling a spooky clown in the Ha Ha Carnival!
Well presented and pretty decent point-and-click stuff indeed! Scooby and Shaggy have earned their Scooby Snacks with this game, and if you like these sorts of games, this is a rather fine example to add to your own list...
3 - Splatter Master (PS2) :
I picked this game up a couple of years ago, and it has now become a game I save for playing as part of my Halloween ritual! It has you taking control of a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, given sentience by an evil spell cast by the malevolent wizard Jagodd! Unlike the other things brought to life by this spell though, our straw-filled hero has been loved by his owners as if he was their own son, and after Jagodd's fiends injure the old couple, he decides to head out for revenge.....
What follows is a side-scrolling beat-and-hack-em-up where you dispatch the baddies by smacking them with your fists, or if you can find enough petrol, slicing them through the middle with your chainsaw!
Various pick-ups can be found, and you can visit a shop to purchase upgrades too! And you'll need them, as this is quite a tricky little budget game..I've only made it to level 3, but I get a little further every year!
It's a funky wee Halloween themed treat, and although far from perfect (especially the controls, which sometimes act a bit odd and cause you to plummet down a hole), it's managed to somehow become one of my favourite titles to play whilst munching on all the Halloween candy I somehow still manage to amass, despite being in my mid-thirties......
2 - Medievil (Playstation) :
Sir Daniel Fortesque: "Hero of Gallowmere". This is what's written on Dan's gravestone, as he's regarded as being the one to slay the evil wizard Zarok in the battle of Gallowmere in 1286...what really happened was a bit different....
Our hero was in fact the first to fall in the battle, getting an arrow in his eye right at the start! Although his men managed to win, Zarok was wrongly thought to be dead and after regaining his strength for the last hundred years, he's decided to once again try for domination...
Raising his undead army with a spot of necromancy, he unwittingly raises Dan from the dead too, and our now one-eyed, jawbone-less chum sees it as an opportunity to set things right, and finally earn a place in the Hall Of Heroes...
This PS1 arcade-adventure is another of my favourite games ever, as you get to explore areas filled with secrets and puzzles, battle all sorts of weird and wonderful enemies and embark on a truly epic adventure!
A true classic, you really should load this up if you've never experienced it. It's another one that any gamer should have in their collection. And it's horror-based antics mean that there's no time like the present to sample it's spookiness...
1 - Cauldron (ZX Spectrum) :
And so here we are! The last game on the list, but one of the first horror-themed games I ever played! Cauldron on the ZX Spectrum!! Although showing it's age a bit these days, it's still loads of fun..Basically, the rhyme from the instructions tells you what you need to know..
Harken witches everywhere, take the challenge - if you dare,
Tomorrow night, 'Tis Halloween, when only one shall be Witch Queen,
Six ingredients thou must take, and in the cauldron boil and bake,
Juice of toad, eye of newt, wing of bat and hemlock root,
Mouldy piece of splintered bone, found from deep in musty tomb,
Molten lava, cooled awhile, taken from the smoking isle,
Then the spell shall be at hand, to rid the pumpkin from the land.
Off you fly on your broomstick then, shooting bats and looking for keys to enter the underground lairs that hold the ingredients. Once underground, you'll need to traverse the platforms and collect your items, before flying back home and concocting the spell needed to defeat the evil Pump-king! Still worth a blast, this classic is just the ticket for Halloween!
So yeah, there we go! 100 games to give you goosebumps! The night is still young, and there's plenty of time to load these up on their various platforms, or via emulation, or whatever....thanks again for reading the blog, and let me know if any of the titles I've talked about has become a new favourite of yours, and perhaps we'll be back next year for a rundown of another hundred horror hits!
I'm off soon to play some of these into the witching hour..need to hone my skills just in case evil entities decide that this is the Halloween to really shake things up!!
Oh, and if you really can't be bothered playing any games just yet, don't forget that you can always read some of the horror comic scans I'm posting, or sit back in a comfy chair and listen to some spooky sounds I'm about to post!
Whatever you decide, I'll catch up with you barmy blog-readers later!! Good fright for now....And Happy Halloween!!
Halloween is upon us, and the list is almost done! Only ten to go after this lot, but time is short!
A few people have asked where's Resident Evil 4, or Silent Hill 2....well, I can tell you they aren't in this particular list! Great examples of horror games though they are, I've been trying to stay away from the more obvious games and go for some obscure stuff or games in a series that I think more people might not be familiar with....
That's why I look at Alone In The Dark on the Gameboy as opposed to PS2, or Dead Aim as opposed to Code Veronica...
Anyway, hopefully you've enjoyed it so far! Here's games 20-11....
20 - Darkwatch (PS2) :
Jericho Cross is having a bit of a bad day...the train he decided to rob turned out to be inhabited by the undead, the safe he was going to steal contained the body of Lazarus Malkoth, an ancient vampire lord...and upon opening it up, Lazarus decided to stick his fang's into poor Jericho's neck and go on a rampage to destroy all mankind! Not only all that, but his new found friend Cassidy has bit the dust and been resurrected as a spirit who now constantly harrasses him to do good all the time....
It's not all bad though! Lazarus's bite has imbued you with some funky vampire powers, and using these, along with a wide variety of weapons which all come with some groovy melee attachments like spiked handles or extra prongs to puncture enemies with, makes for some fun Old West style zombie-killing!
As a new memeber of the Darkwatch, you'll be able to choose which order to do your missions in as you try to put a stop to the evil vampire and his cronies, and along the way you get to indulge in a bit of horseback shooting and buggy-riding...apart from these brief sections though, it's ace first-person-shootery action all the way!
Having become one of the undead yourself, some choices have to be made...will you embrace your dark side and go around chomping on people willy-nilly, or will you try to stay a nice liitle vampire and free people's souls so they can move on up to heaven? Whatever you choose will affect not only the story, but also the special extra powers you can receive, as they come in Good and Evil varieties...
Making the choice even harder are the two ladies in your life these days....Cassidy the ghost, who wants you to be all nicey-nice and do the right thing, and bad girl Tala, a Darkwatch member who likes to keep things interesting by dabbling with the darkside...
The enemies you'll face are pretty varied too...some will charge right at you, some hang back and hide behind cover and dodge your bullets, some fly around your head annoying the hell out of you and some just explode in your face!
Summing it all up, it's a great FPS that really benefits from it's Wild West setting and vampire theme. It's filled with nice little touches, like your spurs jangling as you move forward for instance, and it'll keep shooter fans happy for ages. The moral choices help replayability too, as you'll want to check out the good and bad endings...
It's a shame that the sequel that was in production for new consoles got cancelled. I'd love to catch up with Jericho and see what he gets up to next.....
19 - Alone In The Dark - The New Nightmare (Gameboy Color) :
It was always going to be ambitious...trying to port a proper survival-horror game to the Gameboy. But Infogrames made an admirable attempt with this version of the popular Alone In The Dark, the series which many credit for creating survival horror as we know it today in the first place!
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work...the graphics are really impressive considering what they're running on, but gameplay basically consists of wandering around static screens, trying to find your bearings as the screen changes really confuse you as to what direction you were moving in...then you'll come across a puzzle that need solving, which just requires you to find the right item somewhere else on the confusing playfield.
Combat takes place in isometric screens which pop up when you encounter a monster, and it's quite tricky to line up your shots...and there's none of the pretty cool use of the torch we see in other versions of New Nightmare..
All a bit disappointing then, but it is still worth a go if you want to see the graphics the Gameboy is capable of producing...it's just a shame they couldn't get the gameplay to match! Have to admire their effort, though....
18 - The Suffering (PS2) :
Another excellent scare-em-up on the PS2 next....As the rather violent Torque you've been banged up in jail for the murder of your wife and kids...and it's not entirely certain if you're guilty or not...but it won't matter to the evil entities which have sprung up from the pits of hell on this death-tainted island penitentiary....
Evil has been happening here for years and years, and with your arrival the suffering that's been caused has taken form and it's decided to spring forth on whoever crosses it's path. You'll be wanting to get off the island sharpish, then and try to get back to civilisation...
You can play in either third or first person (first was my preferred viewpoint) and fight your way through the various parts of the island, battling some wonderfully designed enemies throughout! Also, a few ghostly entities are judging your behaviour, especially a certain Dr. Killjoy, who used to have an asylum on the island...
Based on your decisions and how you interact with the few survivors you'll come across, the game will decide whether you did indeed kill your family, or whether you're innocent..and you can get one of 3 different endings depending on what you do! Also, if you get the sequel to this game, your decisions will have an effect on the way it's story plays out too if you save it on the same memory card....
It can be a really freaky game at times, with you receiving phone calls from your dead wife, having visions of your dead kids, and other odd images popping into your head to unsettle you...and again, it's another perfect game for Halloween! There's even a nice little extra documentary included on the disc about a real life haunted prison that you can watch for added scares!
17 - Clock Tower (SNES) :
What's great about the Clock Tower games is the fact that you have someone constantly stalking you throughout them...it's a feature that Capcom blatantly stole for Resident Evil 3 with the Nemesis hunting down Jill Valentine, and it really adds a different atmosphere to survival horror games, as instead of going for the kills, you have to leg it and hide!
The first game in the series is probably the best, and it sees you take on the role of young orphan Jennifer, brought to a new home with some other girls from the orphanage where she's stayed up until now. But, when she goes to find the lady who's brought her to this new house, she loses her other friends and has to search the mansion looking for them, whilst trying to keep her cool when faced with all the weird happenings and scary characters she's about to meet....
This SNES point-and-click is really atmospheric, and you'll genuinely panic when you encounter little Bobby Barrows, the evil Scissorman! Watch out for parrots that shout "I'll kill you!" too! If you've yet to experience the hide-and-scream gameplay of the series, this should be your starting point!
16 - Sweet Home (NES) :
Ah yes, this is the game a lot of gamers now recognise as being the real grandad of survival horror...Released by Capcom in 1989, this Japan-only release featured many game elements that the company would later re-use in their Resident Evil series....
The door opening animations, scattered notes, and safe rooms are just some examples of the stuff taken from this and updated for use in Chris and Jill's adventures in the Umbrella Mansion...one of the characters in this game could even be considered the first "Master Of Unlocking!"
The game plays quite differently though, being a 2D RPG than the usual 3D adventure...and instead of special police units, the protagonists are film makers trying to photograph some lost artwork created by the mansion's old owner..
It should definitely be played, if only to see how much the genre owes to the game...and if you can try and look for the film that was released at exactly the same time, with the same plot..It's awesome too! You can find an English subtitled version online if you look in the right places...
15 - Splatterhouse 3 (Megadrive) :
In this entry of one of my favourite horror game series, hero Rick must once again use the Terror Mask's evil powers to help him rescue his family who have been kidnapped by The Evil One...
The first two Splatterhouse games were side-scrolling hack-em-ups, where pretty much all you had to do was move from left to right slicing, smashing and smooshing all the freakish abominations that filled the games with the weapons you found lying around..
This game changes things a bit, and as well as moving horizontally, you can now move vertically into the screen... The masnion has a choice of doors to go through too, and you'll have to make speedy decisions as also new to the series are some pretty tight time limits! You'll get different endings depending on whether you manage to rescue your family before they become demon food or not....
Also new, is the ability to power up the Terror Mask's abilities even further by collecting the magical orbs you find lying around or that are left after you defeat some enemies. Collect these and you'll fill your Power Meter, which when full will allow you to inflict even more damage upon your foes..
Brilliant stuff, made even creepier by the cutscenes which now feature more lifelike representations of the characters. So if you only wear one mask this Halloween, make sure it's the one in this game...
14 - Eternal Darkness (Gamecube) :
Another horror game heavily influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this Gamecube title was the first game to be published directly by Nintendo that featured an American M rating. It's more third person survival horror action, but this has a couple of cool features other games don't....
First of all, you don't just play as one character...As Alex Roivas, you enter your Grandfather's mansion after he's horribly murdered, and upon going through his stuff discover an old book called The Tome Of Eternal Darkness! Whilst reading this book, you get to control the characters that are central to the parts of the story being read! This is a great way to keep things fresh throughout the game, and it works really well in laying out the plot...
The other great feature is the Sanity Meter....as enemies close in on you and spot you, they drain your sanity. This causes all sorts of weird effects to happen while you play the game, such as making you think you've died when you haven't or convincing you that the volume on your TV is turning itself down...
I'm being a bit vague about the plot again, as it's another of those games that it's best to go into knowing not much about....The story is one of the games best points, and if you want to know what's going on, you'll need to find out for yourselves...and you really should, as this is a true horror classic!
13 - Parasite Eve 2 (PS1) :
Haven't really played this one that much...I've been holding off for ages while I try to find the first game cheap online. Parasite Eve was never released in Europe, and as such, starting to play this I always felt like I was missing a large part of the plot....but every time i bid on it, I'm winning until the last second then some numpty outbids me!
This second game was released though, and it plays more like a survival horror game whereas the first was apparently more of an RPG...you play as FBI operative Aya Brea, part of a special unit that hunts down creatures called NMCs, hideous mutations of normal creatures that are pretty damn creepy-looking....
As I've said, I haven't played the game nearly enough, but thought I'd add it to the list anyway, as what I have played seems pretty cool, and it gets a lot of good reviews...
12 - Cotton (Arcade) :
Funky shoot-em-up starring a witch named Cotton, who decides to help some fairies fight the Evils, so she can get her hands on some magical "Willows" that she really likes!
Nothing more needs to be said, just go play it and revel in it's witchiness!
11 - Silent Hill (PS1) :
As I'm running extremely short on time, and as any horror game fan worth their salt should know what Silent Hill is...and also as I plan to do a big Silent Hill feature for the Blog at some point, covering all the games...I'll say nothing more other than this...
If you haven't played Silent Hill yet, what the hell are you doing sat there reading this? Go...quick...run and play it! You've got at least another 12 hours before I put up the next, and final, Gruesome Games post !!
