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!
Time for another batch of Gruesome Games I reckon! It's been hard getting screenshots for these since all my tech decided to pack up right at the start of the month, so most of the screens are photos rather than screenshot downloads from emulators like I normally do, but they get the job done....
I'll also take this opportunity to give a shout-out to the West Mansion site, where I found a few extra images to put up...Give their name a click to head over to a great site that's been active since 2001! Right, now that that's out of the way, let's crack on with looking at some games!
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Splatterhouse (Arcade, PC Engine/TG) :
I've already covered a few of the Splatterhouse games on this blog, but it occurred to me last week that I've never actually covered the first two games that started off the series...so let's remedy that situation now by taking a look at the original.
Student Rick Taylor and his girlfriend Jennifer Willis get caught in a cliché....sorry, I meant a storm....and to escape this storm, decide to take refuge in the spooky old mansion known as the "Splatterhouse," so called because of rumours of heinous experiments carried out there by missing parapsychologist, Dr. West.
As they enter the mansion, the door slams shut and leaves them in darkness, the echo of the door barely having a chance to end before Jennifer's screams fill Rick's ears! The next thing he knows, he's waking in a spooky dungeon, with something stuck to his face. Something that then informs him that it is an ancient "Terror Mask" that has resurrected Rick and for some nefarious reason wants to 'help' him rescue Jennifer by giving him superhuman strength and encouraging him to splatter as many monsters as possible against the walls and floors of the mansion...
What follows is a very straight-forward jaunt through level after level of right-scrolling environments, with Rick and his not-at-all-based-on-Jason-Voorhees's-mask face-friend using anything they find at hand to bash the baddies, jump over traps and try to reach Jennifer before she becomes Dr.West's latest victim.
The enemies range from your standard zombie types, chairs and furniture, knives ....all the way to weird looking gut slugs and giant sack covered meat-beasts with a fair few other spectres and spooks thrown in for good measure. And there are a lot of them....
Although quite a short game once you know what you're doing, it is incredibly difficult! Stupidly so! I'd like to say that it's just a case of memorizing where enemies will appear and when in order to progress, but while this is mostly true, the game will still throw random enemies at you that unfairly kill you with no real way to avoid it. This will sometimes mean you end up in a death loop that'll quickly eat up your sparse life count, causing a great deal of frustration!
The game does have a checkpoint system that will stop things becoming too annoying though, and there are alternative paths you can try in most levels if you're finding a particular section too much after a while. The PC Engine version is also slightly easier, I find...and I was able to get much further in that than I did in the arcade game.
I'm not sure I'd recommend Splatterhouse to anyone these days if they weren't a fan of the horror genre though. As mentioned, the gameplay can be annoying, it's really unfair, and it basically just boils down to 'walk right, kill, jump, kill..walk right, die, repeat'......
But if you love horror movies, even just a little, the atmosphere and style of Splatterhouse will make you forget everything else, and you'll enjoy the gore that seeps from the screen as you battle your way through to Jennifer's aid. As I've mentioned previously, despite its difficulty, the series has become one of my favourites, and this is almost entirely down to the feelings it manages to capture as a love letter to the horror genre...
It's also worth remembering that the game comes from a time when such violence and horror was genuinely rare, if not completely absent in most other games, making it a horror classic by default of being such a rarity! So if you are looking for something a bit grim to spice up your Halloween gaming, you could do worse than playing this....
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Splatterhouse II (Sega Megadrive/Genesis) :
Splatterhouse II was my entry point to the series. Back in the day I owned a SNES, but my friend Ed had a Megadrive, and this was always the game I wanted to play when he would hook it up to his TV. Thanks to Ed generously donating me his old Megadrive and games a few years back, I now still have the original cart I used to play back in the day and the original system on which I played it, which still blows my mind!
This sequel sees Rick recovering from his ordeal in the first game, only to be visited by the reformed Terror Mask which shattered after Rick defeated the final boss of the original game. He was unable to save Jennifer, but the mask persuades Rick to put him on once more, promising that there is still a way to save her and only the mask can help him do so! And so Rick heads to another house and prepares to battle evil once more for another rescue attempt!
As sequels go, this really does go with the 'if it ain't broke' line....literally everything I mentioned about the first game can be said about the sequel! It's still scrolling right to fight, it's still unjustly unfair a lot of the time, and it's still best appreciated if you have a love of gore and horror!
There are a few small differences to note though. The fact that this game was a console release and not an arcade game, means that a password system has been implemented. Now if the game becomes too much, you can restart at a later date by taking a note of the password which will let you start on that level, skipping any frustrating parts you had to endure to get to that point.
Also, the spooky atmosphere and gruesome graphics have all been spiced up a bit, meaning that it's even more grim and delightfully disgusting than the first game. I remember one magazine review at the time getting a bit upset over the fact that one boss fight has you chainsawing through what look like hanging devil-baby foetuses.....
The sound is an aspect I didn't really mention when talking about the original, but in both games the random screams and spooky tunes help add to the atmosphere, with some nice evil cackles adding some more enjoyment in Splatterhouse II..
But again, I can't really recommend the game to people if they aren't horror fans. The gameplay is a bit lacking and too tricky for anyone who isn't, and while it seems a bit tamer these days, there might still be some who find the gore and violence a bit distasteful. But I repeat, if you are a fan of the genre, then this is definitely for you....there are few other games that manage to capture the feel and atmosphere as much or as well as the Splatterhouse series!
Somehow, using passwords and perseverance, Ed and I were able to beat Splatterhouse II back in the day, which is something I have yet to do replaying it this year...but I'm going to enjoy the frustrating fun of giving it another go in the run-up to Halloween!
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Zombi Mall (ZX Spectrum) :
Zombies really, really love shopping malls don't they!? Ever since George A. Romero's classic 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead, they've been popping up constantly in massive shopping complexes everywhere! I'm pretty sure I've even seen some lurking around my local Aldi store recently.....
Well, once again, in this game they've taken up residence in one such shopping centre, but outside the walls of the mall it's even worse! As a matter of fact the mall was the best place to be up until recently, with handy resources and food...but then the power cut, and the doors opened, letting a few of the brain munchers inside! And so you've been camped out on the roof for days...but now you've just seen a helicopter, and you need to find some way to get whoever is flying the thing's attention!
And so you must use your wits and ingenuity to escape the mall, by collecting items, combining them, solving puzzles and avoiding the zombies! Luckily they have a limited field of view, so will only bother you if you get too close. Of course, sometimes you will get close, causing you to lose a bit of your energy, so avoiding them as much as possible is definitely the best course of action. Also, don't do what I did in the first few minutes of playing and exit the building via the front door, or you'll be consumed by a massive horde of undead fiends and force an immediate 'Game Over!'
This 2022 release from The Mojon Twins is a fun little adventure, and I enjoyed hunting around for keys and trying to work out which items to use. If you want to try it out for yourself you can find more info and download links at the game's Itch.io page! Definitely a great one to be playing during the creepy season.....
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Resident Evil - Gaiden (Gameboy Color) :
As I've mentioned in previous years, I generally try to talk about games that are less well known as I love sharing information about games that might have passed you by. As such, game series like Silent Hill and Resident Evil have been sorely under-represented on the Blog of Stuff. This doesn't mean that I don't tend to include all of the games in these series at some point, because I do eventually....but with Resident Evil Gaiden I can cover a game that whilst being from a well known series, is still one I'm guessing a lot of fans missed!
I'm not sure if the events that take place in Gaiden were ever considered canon in the Resident Evil universe, but if they once where they certainly aren't any more! The plot has Barry Burton going on a mission to rescue Leon Kennedy after he goes missing while investigating a viral outbreak on a cruise ship...
As Barry, you'll find things a little different to how Resi games usually play. Given the limitations of the Gameboy, we obviously couldn't expect fixed-camera, 3D environments...even if Alone In The Dark did make an attempt at this a few years later, although that game shows that Capcom were probably right in taking a different approaach. That approach being a top-down perspective, where you wander around the ship looking for clues to Leon's whereabouts and try to find out what caused this latest zombie outbreak.
You'll still find some sparse ammo and occasional notes scattered around all over the place, so it has at least retained that from the main games, and although the spookiness has been lost a bit with the shift in perspective, there's still enough exploration and zombie slaying to keep things interesting!
The combat is a bit odd though...when you encounter a zombie, either by bumping into one or aiming your gun at them, you'll find yourself in a first-person mode where you're looking through your character's eyes at the approacing undead fiends. I guess this makes Gaiden the first non-lightgun game in the series where you get to stare a zombie straight in the face.....
You blast the baddies by way of a sliding reticle, which moves along a bar at the bottom of the screen. You need to time your fire button press to the moment the reticle reaches the middle of this bar. It seems an odd choice to make for the combat at first, but ultimately this is probably the only bit of the game that has any real sense of tension, as you rush to hit the zombies before they reach you. Apparently the sliding reticle element was original Resident Evil's director Shinji Mikami's recommendation, with the rest of the battle concept being inspired by creaky old fantasy game Dungeon Master!
Eventually you'll meet up with Leon, and a character called Lucia...both of which also become playable characters...but as of yet, I've not reached them as I've only just started playing the game myself as one of this year's Halloween treats!
First impressions of the game so far are that it's a wildly different, somewhat less impressive than normal entry in the series, but still has enough of the usual Resident Evil features to feel it's worth playing. The exploration seems decent, and although I feel the combat will get repetitive quickly, there's something oddly enjoyable about seeing the zombies stumbling towards you in first-person on a Gameboy! The in-game music can get a bit grating after a while, but I love the moans from the zombies...an element that helps it keep some of the atmosphere from previous titles.
One point I should mention is that I'm playing via emulation, so I can't really comment on the how the save system would be on an actual Gameboy, but I have heard people mention that for a handheld, having a system that only allows you to save at certain points is a bit annoying..
All in all, it still seems like a game that's worth checking out, even if it is all now some sort of fever dream that Barry Burton had in his downtime after he escaped the mansion of the first game! If anything happens to change my mind after playing it on Halloween, I'll keep you posted.....
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Be sure to head over to the Countdown to Halloween hub to see what the other Cryptkeepers have in store for you today, as we get ready to enter the last week of the Countdown! Just click the badge below to find a list of links to wonderful bloggers like Maple Grove Cemetery!
