100 Gruesome games for Halloween (50-46)

4 days to go, and 50 games left to talk about! It is possible? Of course..if I can call up some sort of supernatural force to give me a hand...

But my little Gruesome Game groupies, it won't get done unless we crack on with the next lot! Let's see what we can whip up here....




50 - Master of Darkness (SMS) :

19th Century London was a creepy place, of that we can be sure...and we've already visited it at least twice so far is in this list, one of which had us hunting a certain chap called Jack...well, if this Master System release is to be believed, it turns out Mr. Holmes might have been wrong in going after just one fellow !

According to this game, the murders have in fact been committed under the orders of a certain creature of the night, known by many as the Master of Darkness! Yes, old fang-face Dracula has popped up again...and as the dashingly heroic Dr. Ferdinand Social, you must go on a platform-hopping quest to destroy the fiend !

This is basically the Master System's answer to a Castlevania title, and it does a splendid job at emulating all the stuff that series is famous for...nice presentation, deadly platform action, hidden items, a variety of freakish enemies to defeat, and of course Dracula....all are present and very nearly correct!

Special weapons can be found by breaking open the masks which litter the levels, but you can only carry two at a time..so if you prefer a gun over bombs for example, be sure not to go near the bomb icons as the weapons are automatically replaced with whatever you pick up..

Levels are varied (So far I've been to the Thames, a Wax Museum and some sort of mansion or castle) and although the music can sometimes get annoying, and it can get a little tricky in parts, it's a nice little alternative to a proper Castlevania title and well worth a play!




49 - Go To Hell (ZX Spectrum) :

Apparently, the plot for this has you trying to guide a guy you once told to go to hell back out of the flaming furnaces of said nether region, as he obviously took you a bit too literally and did indeed go on a jaunt to the domain of demons.

It actually has a pretty cool interpretation of Satan's pad too, with a lot of crazy stuff all happening on screen at once as you try to guide the little chap through some hazardous maze. You'll see people getting their heads squished with spikes or sawn through the middle, and touching anything at all seems to drain your life essence away very quickly!

Far from perfect, and featuring graphics which could have come from the pits of hell themselves, this still somehow manages to be quite atmospheric and, dare I say it, fun...It's bloomin' difficult, but playing this will be much better than watching yet-another-repeat of the BBC's A History Of Horror with Mark Gatiss on Halloween night......




48 - Ghoul School (NES) :

Spike O' Hara, or as the player..you, is having to fight his way through school to try and rescue the cheerleader love interest, Samantha, from all the ghastly ghouls who have appeared after you brought a skull you found lying around in a graveyard to show to your teacher. Naturally, it was a particularly nasty skull with baddie-summoning powers, and so now the schools infested!

I think I must be missing something with this game. Reading reviews online for it before playing, they all quite liked it and mentioned picking up different weapons and seeing lots of different enemies...but after wandering around a bit, I found myself entering lockers which seemed to do nothing of any use whatsoever, fight endless one-eyed monsters, have a couple of run in's with green dudes who lob their head at you and get bothered by some bats....

But that was it...screen after screen of very similar graphics and gameplay, and nothing much there to hold my interest at all.. Maybe I just haven't given it enough time? Maybe my version is broken? I don't know, but what I played I found to be very boring and a bit bland...I found the un-released Zombie High to be much better for spooky school shenanigans!

Meh! See if it sends shivers down your spine, I suppose.....




47 - Voodoo Vince (Xbox) :




Vince the Voodoo Doll has been awoken from life as a pin-cushion by way of some carelessly dropped Voodoo dust. His mistress, Madam Charmaine, wasn't so careless as to drop the dust though...nope, it was her kidnappers, two thugs sent by the evil Kosmo the Inscrutable who she happened to catch in the act of stealing the aforementioned powder!

Kosmo wants the dust for his own devious desires, and has long sought the source of Madame Charmaine's powers. Thankfully, Kosmo's clumsy henchmen carelessly littered the place with the dust, and the now sentient Vince uses his psychic link with Madam C to get advice and directions from her, to send him in the right direction for a rescue attempt!

Picking up various voodoo icons gives Vince the ability to perform some horrific injuries upon himself, which then transfer to any enemies in the vicinity! Sometimes you'll need to find specific items to get past puzzles or enemies... a Jazz musician skeleton won't let you into the museum until you play him a tune, for instance...and for that you'll need to work out how to get a saxaphone!

Various other collectables are hidden away on the levels to get you exploring, and there's plenty of stuff to keep you entertained whilst you make your way to free your mistress. It all makes for a funky, funny and freakish adventure which will have you pinned to your seat for the duration! So you should definitely do do Voodoo even if you definitely don't do do Voodoo normally...or something....




46 - Castlevania - Lord Of Shadows (360) :




Castlevania is a long-standing horror series which debuted way back on the NES and had lots of hit sequels on various different systems over the years, with Symphony of the Night on the Playstation considered the series high-point...

Things were a bit different when the series tried to move from being great 2D platformers to modern 3D arcade adventures though. The N64 and PS2 had some decent attempts at making a good update, but somehow something was missing and Konami couldn't successfully produce a 3D sequel that was truly worthy.

Having played through this latest release on the 360 though, I'm happy to say that finally, in getting Hideo Kojima to throw his weight behind it, Konami have achieved that seemingly impossible task!

For a good look at what to expect and a thorough examination of the plot, you can watch the video below, but for those in a hurry or those too lazy to bother, here's a brief rundown...

Gabriel has lost his wife to an evil sweeping the land, an evil brought upon by the so-called Lords Of Shadow. The same evil is stopping the dead from crossing over, their souls trapped in a kind of limbo....Gabriel has heard talk of a mask which can bring people back from the dead, and it just so happens these Lords Of Shadow all have a piece of it..so off he goes on a quest to defeat the Lords, join up the mask, resurrect his girlie and generally save the day!



Along the way he receives help from Zobek, another knight from the same order as Gabriel, and the old god Pan, who helps Gabriel come to terms with what he must do to achieve success. And there are some terrible things which must be done...

The game basically steals sections from all the best games of the last few years, but successfully manages to piece them back together to make for something all it's own...there are platform sections that will have you thinking back to Prince Of Persia, Titan battles that owe a lot to Shadow Of The Colossus, hack-em-up sections very similar to God Of War...you get the idea!

Presentation is superb too, with a great voice cast including Patrick Stewart as Zobek, who narrates the tale...and Robert Carlyle as Gabriel. The graphics are simply amazing, with some of the most realistic settings I've seen in years...whoever designed this game obviusly visited real forests for instance, as the ones in this game feel truly organic...and it has a very mystical, fantasy vibe throughout which really captured me..

I love the way they've re-imagined a lot of enemies from previous Castlevanias too, and if you're paying attention you should find plenty to keep you happy if you're a fan...but there appears to be one particular enemy missing...a certain Master Of Darkness shall we say...well, hopefully without giving too much away, if you stick with the game to the very end, you shouldn't be disappointed!

Although quite a few people I know have said that it's a great game but far too difficult too early on, if you play through the game on Easy it's possible to beat it...but it will still require a lot of effort! Thankfully, you get to keep all your powers to play through it again on the more difficult settings and I can definitely say that if you complete it, you'll want to play through again!

It's the first game I've played in a long time that feels truly epic, and it really does feel like you've taken an extraordinary journey with Gabriel when it's all done...just speaking about the game here, I'm tempted to stop doing the blog and give it another play! As you can probably tell, Konami have made me very happy with this and it's a stunning return to form....so go do yourself a favour and sell wahtever you need to to pick this up! Just remember to start on Easy!

100 Gruesome Games for Halloween! (55-51)

55 - Trapt (PS2) :

Another odd game this one....You take on the role of a Princess who's father has been murdered, and everyone thinks it was you who assassinated him! Running from the castle, you eventually manage to escape the accusers to another royal home...but upon entering this new abode, a demon who has been possessing your right arm awakens, and forces you to commit murders so he can eat the souls of your victims! Which obviously makes it slightly harder to prove your innocence.......

As you can see, the plot is completely mental, but what the game basically boils down to, is some sort of medieval, gorier, Home Alone-type stuff! As your attackers enter the mansion to try and capture you, you can lay traps for them using a menu to pick the weapon you want to use. You can put things like bear traps on the ground, swing pendulums or drop rocks from the ceiling and make walls shoot out and crush your victims or fire poison darts, amongst other things....

It can be really satisfying if you manage to string these traps together, and disposing of the enemies is a lot easier if you manage to do so! The trap animations can be quite brutal (but never really that gory), and quite funny sometimes too... If Macaulay Culkin had these sort of traps, there's no way The Wet Bandits would have ever caused him any trouble...

It does have a few issues...cutscenes are long and many, the camera isn't that great, and the game slows down to a crawl sometimes when a lot's going on...but because of the unique gameplay, and the satisfaction of pulling off a trap combo, it still comes recommended!

54 - Darkstalkers (Arcade) :

Not much needs to be said about this one...it's a fighting game from the creators of Streetfighter 2, and plays very similarly, only instead of Ryu, Ken and chums, you have a bunch of mystical creatures knocking the crap out of each other!

It has a lot of nice nods to the horror genre, with the werewolf character being called Jon Talbain, an obvious reference to Larry Talbot from the Wolfman films for example...and it's all very nicely presented and plays exactly like you'd expect a Capcom fighter to play! It's got some awesome sequels worth checking out too...

53 - Zombie High (Megadrive/Genesis) :

Not really a proper game this, but I thought I'd add it anyway. It's a prototype of a game from EA that was never released, and sees you controlling a chap who has to deal with zombies taking over his high school...

It was previously thought that you could only get to the end of the first level of the game before you came up against some unstoppable enemies, and until yesterday that's as far as I'd got, but then I was really pleased to discover this link which tells you how to access a debug menu by plugging in a second pad and holding Start and A on that....

This lets you explore the game a bit more, and you can get access to levels with zombie cheerleaders and american footballers, and fight weird teacher bosses or bulldogs and stuff...Anyway, I thought I'd include it just as an interesting look at something that for whatever reason never made it to shop shelves...

It actually looks like it would have been a really fun little game if it had been finished properly, and it's a shame it got cancelled. Go find a copy of the prototype online, get a decent Sega emulator and check it out....

52 - Ghost Castle 1 & 2 (ZX Spectrum) :

Another one of these new Speccy titles now! As I mentioned previously, although Speccy games stopped being sold in shops years ago, there's still a lot of games released for it every year! Here's another couple of homebrew hits, which has you trying to reunite a little ghost with his lost body...

The first game is a puzzley affair, and has you finding keys to unlock doors so you can escape the castle. You have to think carefully about which order to pick up the keys, as if you open the wrong door first you could be trapped forever in this slimy hellhole! Watch out for those nasty other spooks too, as they want to keep you there so they can keep themselves entertained torturing you....

In the sequel, you've managed to escape the castle, but you still need to find your way through the castle grounds to the crypt where your lost body lies, so off you go avoiding more nasties in a flip-screen adventure!

Both games are loads of fun, and great examples of the quality of games still coming out on the dear old Spectrum! What? Why am I adding two games at once to the list??

Well, that's because you can pick both of them up in a Special Edition release from Cronosoft, and what's more...all royalties from the sales go to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice, so you'll be helping out a great cause too! So go buy them...even if you don't own a Spectrum! It'll be the perfect excuse to pick one of those up too......

51 - Dead Space (Xbox 360) :

The backstory and plot for Dead Space could fill a book, and we don't have time for that right now so let's try and simplify it a bit...

People what live in space and mine planets for stuff have discovered a big alien statue thing called the Marker..some cultist nutters thought it was some sort of sign from their God and started worshipping it, and then all sorts of weird, crazy stuff started happening! The Marker started to turn people into evil mutations called Necromorphs too, but the church decided to send the Marker up onto a spaceship called the Ishimura anyway, so they could transport it somewhere safe..

On the spaceship, it started changing everyone too, and the alien virus spread throughout the whole ship. You, as Issac Clarke, have gone to investigate the Spaceship to find out what happened to everyone and look for your girlfriend, who was a scientist aboard the ship....

Gameplay is in the style of Resident Evil 4, with the camera sitting up behind your shoulder and you hunting through the ship, laying the smack down on the alien freaks and solving puzzles and all the usual Survival Horror type things...

Dead Space does it all extremely well though! The setting allows for some nice anti-gravity sections, and features a fair few nods to some Sci-Fi classics like The Thing and Event Horizon. The different sections of the ship are varied enough to keep boredom from setting in, and the different enemies you face will keep you entertained too! And it has some epic boss battles!

The story should keep you stuck to your seat, and although a little unoriginal, it's told well enough to keep you happy...and features some nice twists and turns throughout ! In fact the game's presentation is all really good and the graphics and sound all help add to the suspense and horror you'll feel while playing!

Guns and your suit can be upgraded, and if you don't manage to get them to their full potential on the first playthrough, the game saves all your stuff so that when you start again you keep all your upgrades! This helps in making you want to play through it again, although it's enjoyable enough to want to do so once you finish it first time anyway!

I recently picked up Dead Space 2, and that seems to be even more filled with scares and awesomeness, so if survival horror is your thing, you could do a lot worse than playing through this series!

100 Gruesome Games for Halloween! (60-56)

Crikey! Less than a week to go and we're not even at 50 yet! That means we've got a lot of games to look at this week, so I hope you're ready to get your fear-filled thumbs ready for action as we rush through this next lot....



60 - Forbidden Forest (Commodore 64) :

A creepy composition of music sets the tone for this classic, which is reknowned for giving 8-bit gamers nightmares back in the early eighties! Armed with a bow and four quivers of arrows, you enter the Forbidden Forest to hunt down the evil Demogorgon! All manner of creatures try to put a stop to your quest and you'll need to keep your wits about you to survive...

You have to load up your bow before you can fire it, and this adds to the tension as you have to make sure not to stall too long, or you'll be eaten by spiders or crushed by a rain of frogs or whatever! Lining up the shots can be tricky too, but when you hit the target you'll feel like dancing with joy....and that's exactly what your little character does at the end of every level !

The atmosphere the blocky graphics and moody music give this game is surprising, as looking at the static screens you could wonder how the game could freak anyone out...But after you've run for your life through the woods being chased by skeletal warriors, you'll start to understand!

A brilliant day-to-night effect also helps the tension build, and you feel increasingly spooked as the daylight fades. The scariest bit of all is, of course, the Demogorgon itself...and as the lightning storm lights up it's horrible form, any horror game fan will be glad they entered this particular weird little wood....





59 - Mystic Riders (Arcade) :

Just going to rush right through this one! It's a nice little horizontal scrolling shooter, but instead of the spaceships that usually fill such games, you play as a little witch shooting lots of ghostly enemies over moonlit rooftops, mushroom kingdoms and the like!

Nicely presented, decently controlled and totally unoriginal, it's a nice enough way to kill an hour or two and suitably spook-filled for Halloween! Go give it a bash!




58 - The Addams Family (SNES) :

Based on the 1991 film rather than the TV series, this sees you running around the Addams' mansion trying to rescue the other family members , who have all been captured by the evil Abigail Craven and lawyer Tully Alford and imprisoned in various different rooms. You'll have to battle past the other inhabitants of the mansion...ghosts, monsters and other weird things...who apparently don't like being intruded upon!

It owes a lot to Super Mario World, and has you bouncing off the bonces of the baddies to defeat them for most of the game. Being Gomez though, you also get to indulge in a bit of fencing if you can find a sword..and even fly around with a rather dapper helicopter-styled Fez!

And unlike Mario, Gomez can choose what order he tackles the levels in..so if he comes up against a particularly tricky switch-hitting puzzle, he can leave it until later as he goes off and tries to rescue another family member instead!

It's a really funky platformer, and one of my favourite games of all time! It's filled with great graphics, groovy tunes and puzzles that although frustrating at times, will never see you stuck completely...if you've never played it, you really are missing out!

The Megadrive/Genesis version is pretty much exactly the same, and versions that had similar themes but different layouts were released for all the major home computers at the time..so yeah, go get your freak on, choose your platform and get rescuing those Addamses!!


57 - Amnesia-The Dark Descent (PC) :



The less I tell you about this game, the better the experience you'll have with it..All I'll say is that you play a chap called Daniel, who can only remember his name, where he's from...and that somebody or some...thing...is after him!

The game is a 1st person adventure, but you don't get any weapons...instead, using the mouse you open drawers, pick things up, turn wheels, etc... It works very well, and I can't help thinking this would be great on the Wii ! Anyway, you creep about in the dark going slowly more insane, trying to hide from whatever it is that's chasing you and find out why you've lost your memory and what the hell is going on.

To stop going completely mental, you have to find tinderboxes to light torches or find oil for your lamp in order to get into the light and feel less gloomy. Of course, if you stand about in well lit areas though, whatever is out there will be able to see you...

Things move by themselves, all sorts of freakish sounds fill the halls and you can hear Daniel whimpering as he hears or sees things that would make anybody question whether they were losing a marble or two...and there appears to be more than one type of thing lurking about in the shadows!

It's very atmospheric and chilling, and genuinely scary in parts! I'm loving every minute of it so far! Not having the necessary spec to run this on my PC, I've been playing this one via the new cloud gaming app, OnLive . Although it's far from perfect and broadband needs to get a lot better and faster for cloud gaming to really take off, it does allow people like me with crappy computers to play the latest releases in a slightly rubbishy way (the graphics glitch every now and then, and obviously lose a bit of quality, given that they are being streamed from a different computer miles away!)....

Anyhoo, the game is ace and I'd love to tell you more about it, but it would only ruin the experience! You should probably stop reading this and go and play it immediately! Just remember to come back again once you're done, and see what else is on the list....




56 - Ghosthunters (ZX Spectrum) :

This one's a bit tricky! Didn't get as far when refreshing my memory for the blog as I can remember getting back when I played it years ago! Maybe I'm becoming old and rubbish??

Anyway, the plot...Professor Twilight, owner of the not-at-all-obviously named Nightmare Mansion, offered a substantial reward for anyone who could clear his mansion of all the many ghouls, ghosts and zombies that have moved in. Three days ago, your brother, the amazingly named Chuck Studbuckle, took up this offer and since entering the mansion hasn't been seen nor heard of ! Being his brother (and probably also due to the fact that he still owes you a tenner) you decide you'd better go in and rescue him!

Entering the mansion, you've got to move from room to room looking for Chuck! Vampires, severed heads, zombies and the like will all try and stop you.. and as they do, your rising terror is measured via a thing called the Terror Meter! As this rises, you lose vital Macho Energy, and so you should try to kill these crazy creatures as soon as possible and move to the next room!

Lifts to other areas of the mansion are activated by collecting flashing objects, and any energy you lose can be replenished by drinking some bottles of magic potion someone has left lying around. To shoot the ghosts, you have to hold fire..this lets you move a crosshair around and get the ghouls in your sights to destroy them! This can be very fiddly, and is probably what makes the game so bloomin' tricky...

But....if you can find a second person to play this with you, they can control the gun while you control the little ghost hunter, making it all much easier and far more fun! The graphics and sound are all perfectly decent for a game that only cost a couple of quid when it came out all those years ago, and I suppose if you can get the help it's probably still worth a go..

Unlike most Speccy titles though, if you want to play this one legally you'll need to find a proper copy and load it up on a real Spectrum..It's by Codemasters, and they don't like people playing stuff they own for free, so it's not available in the World of Spectrum archives...Grumpy buggers, those Codemasters chaps!

100 Gruesome Games for Halloween! (65-61)

65 - Chiller (ZX Spectrum,C64) :

Another game where we have to rescue some poor girlie from the clutches of evil! This one seems to be based around Michael Jackson's Thriller music video, and the failure to have a licence for the source material doesn't seem to have stopped Mastertronic from making a game around it anyway! Apparently they did panic and recall the C64 version as they felt the music was too similar to Jackson's groovy graveyard hit, but a few copies made it out into the wild with David Dunn's original tune in place...

It's a platform collect-em-up which sees you visit the various scenes of the video (Forest, Cinema, Ghetto, Graveyard & Mansion), negotiating platforms and ropes whilst dodging the ghouls and collecting crosses to magic yourself to the next screen! Eating blue mushrooms gives you energy, but chomp on a pink one and you'll lose energy as their poison fills your gut.

This was among the first Speccy games I ever owned, having picked it up with issue 70 of Crash Magazine...and as such I probably spent a bit longer playing it than I would have if I had picked it up later on. It's quite a tricky little platformer, and I think I've only made it as far as the 4th screen once ! I recently tried out the C64 version (pictured above) and found it to be a little easier on the first level, but just as tricky after that. It's got a nice little tune, but I don't like the graphics as much...you lot can judge for yourselves from the screens above...



64 - Chiller (Arcade, NES) :

Next up, we have a game called Chiller !

"Hang on," I hear you cry..."Didn't we just look at Chiller?" Well this has nothing to do with the Mastertronic game, and is in fact an Exidy lightgun game from the arcades!

And a grim little game it is too, with you filling the blood-drenched boots of an unseen torturer, inflicting hideous wounds upon helpless victims chained up in dungeons, including crushing their heads with vices or ripping their bodies apart with racks.....

Its Grindhouse style leanings also allow for some gratuitous nudity on the last level, with you being able to shoot the clothes off one poor victim before finishing her off with another couple of shots....

Despite the rather gruesome scenes and unnecessary violence towards the poor characters locked into the various devices, there is quite a bit of guilty pleasure involved in shooting the switches and blades which cause the untimely demise of them all. The ghosts and ghouls flying around the screen look a bit daft and help lighten the tone a little, but as one of the truly gruesome games on this list, it might not be for everyone!

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the game is the fact a version was released for the NES, although it was of course edited, with a lot of the random severed body parts removed, no nudity and bizarrely, a nun and a baby carriage replacing a monk with a wheelbarrow full of body bits!?!? They also tried to make the violence less gratuitous, and claimed that the victims were in fact "undead monsters".....I haven't played this version yet unfortunately, but as a proud owner of an NES Zapper I am going to keep an eye out online...

Eeww! Maybe that was a bad choice of words...yuck!



63 - Bubble Ghost (Atari ST) :

Moving swiftly on fom all the blood and guts, we have something a little less gory. A groovy little French game where you have to help a ghost move a liccle bubble through some hazardous Haunted House environments, trying not to let it burst in the process...

Candles, walls spikes and a load of other obstacles stand between you and your final destination, and you need to move your bubble clear by clicking the ST's mouse and its buttons to position yourself, and then clicking a button on the keyboard to blow it along on its way!

It's the ability to manipulate the obstacles with your ghostly breath that makes this game really great though! Candles can be blown out for instance, and switches flicked....it really is a pretty funky feature, and gives the game a great deal of charm! The little ghost's animations and angry fist shaking when you burst his bubble also add a nice touch..

Progressing through the game becomes an addictive task, and you'll find yourself trying again and again after many failed attempts to get past the next level. It really is all a huge hoot!

And, as I've just discovered, there are versions for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, DOS, Apple IIGS and the Game Boy too! And even a game called Soul Bubbles for the DS, which seems to be heavily influenced by it, so if you don't have access to an ST or can't be bothered with emulation, then maybe you could check out some of those?




62 - Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack The Ripper (360, PC) :



Back to 19th century London now, as we get to enter the mind of the greatest detective of them all, Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Apparently some chap has been going around bumping off some ladies of the night in Whitechapel, and Holmes and Watson take it upon themselves to find out who this deviant is...

All of which is fine of course, as these horrendous real life crimes happened in 1888, and are thus morally fine to revisit for the sake of entertainment kicks! (Ahem! * Cough *)

Off to the scenes of the crimes we go then, and indulge in some crime re-enactments and speedy deduction using a rather nice interface to go about it all ! Filling the shoes of Holmes as he tries to work out how the crimes happened makes for some interesting gameplay that will keep you gripped to the task of tracking down the monster who committed these terrible acts!





What a pity then, that to get to these great crime investigation bits you first have to go about a serious of mundane tasks for the residents of old London, to-ing and fro-ing between locations for what seems like forever and listening to some horrendous voice acting in the process.

The game is a port of the 5th in a series of PC adventure games, and it comes with a lot of generic point and click type stuff that gets in the way of the main adventure. To give you an example of the sort of things you can expect, the very first thing the game has you doing after leaving Baker Street is retrieving a policeman's bag.

Now the bag could be in the grounds of a boarding house, but before the landlord has a look for it he ask's you to try and see to it that a tramp lurking around his property at night is removed. His neice stays in lodgings nearby, and so you go to ask is he could perhaps stay with her..But she tells you that although she's happy for him to stay, the guy is sick, so you have to sort out some medicine...Off you trot to the doctor before having to return to all the locations in reverse to tell all the people that the task they wanted done has been achieved...and all this just to get a bloody bag for a policeman!

Despite all of the crappy bits, roaming around the filthy streets hunting down Jack the Ripper can be fun, and if you think you can bare wandering around for hours doing the legwork to get people to chat to you, by all means give it a bash ...I just wish they had stuck to the crime scene investigation stuff throughout....




61 - Stubbs The Zombie (Xbox) :



Fed up of endless zombie games where you have to survive wave after wave of the undead? Tired of avoiding the zombie plague and starting to wonder what would be so bad about just succumbing to the inevitable and becoming a zombie yourself? Then Stubbs the Zombie is the game for you!

In this 1950's America-set tale, you control Stubbs, a chap who has recently returned to life and is out for revenge on the folks who put him in an early grave. Punchbowl, a futuristic city is being built atop the place where you were buried, and so you decide to explore and see if you can hunt down the people responsible for your death.

Being a zombie, the main focus of the game is to try and turn everybody else into the undead. In order to help you achieve this, various bits of your body can be used ! Stubbs' hand can be detached and sent off to leap on someones head and control their brain...his gut can be flung as a grenade...his head becomes an exploding bowling ball...and his farts are bad enough to stun enemies, making them easy targets for a bit of brain breakfast!



The members of the public you infect aren't quite as well evolved undead creatures as your good self, and so require a bit of herding to get them to go where you want them too...you can shove them around and if you walk a bit away from them, a whistle will have them regrouping and following the noise to where you are..making it easier to take on the soldiers and policemen who are out to put a stop to your mission.

There are some vehicles to be found too, and as this game was created using the same game engine as Halo, they all control pretty well and are a nice change to shuffling around. Sound too is superb, with versions of fifties songs sung by new bands and generic B-movie type sounds playing elsewhere! The enemies do get a lot tougher as the game progresses, but it never seems unfair and you should make steady progress..

Causing zombie chaos is fantastic fun, and the B-movie atmosphere adds a lot to the appeal of the game. It doesn't take itself too seriously at all, and as it was created before the current saturated zombie genre took hold, you could say it was before its time too..and it still makes for a refreshing change! I reckon it deserves a sequel on current gen!! Lets start a petition or something!!

100 Gruesome Games for Halloween! (70-66)

Only 9 days to go, so lets not waste any time and get right on with the next lot...




70 - Frankenstein (NES) :

A lovely animated intro tells us that in this game, Frankenstein's monster has risen once more from the grave and decided that he needs a new lady friend. Popping along to the nearest village, he indulges in a bit of arson and kidnaps the beautiful Emily ! Off you trot then, on a quest to hunt the fiend down and rescue the lady before she becomes the next Bride Of Frankenstein....

The game is a side-scrolly hack and slash affair, and adds a little exploration by letting you enter buildings to try and find extra items and power ups to help you out. These add things like projectiles that fire from your club, or extra life potions..the usual sort of stuff!

It makes a fairly decent job of it all, and it should have you giving a good attempt at ploughing through it. There's a good selection of baddies, and the backgrounds and music create a nice spooky vibe throughout! Be warned though, that it can be pretty tough in parts and not always for the right reasons....

There's some sloppy hit detection during battles and a couple of annoying platform jumping sections that are really frustrating, but if you can stop yourself from hurling your controller at the wall, you will get past them and get back to the hunt for old bolt-bonce! The boss battles can be difficult at first too, but like all the best boss fights, it's just a case of working out the right places to stand or the right way to attack...

So yeah, why not go and see if this one lights your flaming torch!

69 - Left 4 Dead (360) :

Yes, yes...it's another game with zombies in...but this FPS does do things a bit differently! Although you can play it as a Single player game, the real way for this to be enjoyed is as part of a team of four!

As usual, a weird chain of not particularly obvious events has resulted in a zombie apocalypse, and the zombies are of the newer, fast, running type and not the slow, shambling, easily escaped monsters of the old days...so you'll have your work cut out!

You play as one of a group of survivors who have so far escaped the sudden urge for brains or loss of the odd limb. You can pick from grizzly old war veteran Bill , biker boy Francis , office worker Louis and student chick Zoey...but there isn't really any difference in play whoever you pick, so it is just a matter of choice.

You have to battle your way through zombies that the game randomly flings your way, moving from safe house to safe house across varying locales and encountering quite a few different obstacles that need a little more brain work and/or co-operation to get past.

You'll also need to keep an eye out for the "Super Zombie" types...undead characters who have evolved beyond just running and chomping. There's the Smoker , who'll try to drag you close with his rather extraordinary tongue...the Hunter , who'll leap from the shadows and attach himself to your torso whilst ripping away your ribs...the Boomer , who will explode in a gloop of zombie-attracting, vision-obscuring pus all over your poor character...the Witch , who sits sobbing in a corner until she spots you or your torch and decides to come say hello to your innards...and last but by no means least, the Tank , who lives up to his name and takes a load of ammo to take down as he flings cars and bits of tarmac at you before attempting to pummel you to pavement-paste!

There are weapons and health boosting items lying around to give you a better chance, and again these are often randomly placed. This, and the random way the game decides which enemies to appear and when, are a good way of keeping replays of Left 4 Dead interesting, as otherwise the relatively small choice of four different scenarios with 5 levels each could become boring very quickly.

With four real online players, the game can be a real blast. You really have to stick together to get anywhere, deciding who'll do what and where everyone will be positioned, and branching out on your own will see you pushing up daisies in no time. If one of you does bite the dust, you can re-enter the game a bit later, so long as at least one of the others survives long enough to discover you hiding in a cupboard...

If you're playing solo, the AI is pretty awesome and shouldn't see you have any real difficulties apart from the other team members deciding to stand in your way every now and again, but they do move swiftly when fired upon..Oh, and occasionally they'll make a bad choice in trying to revive you whilst too many zombies are still kicking about, but I've seen human players make similar bad choices too!

It's all a huge load of groovyness, and I could talk about it for hours ( I haven't even mentioned the other game mode where you can fight as the super zombies against another online team of survivors! Or the Survival mode, where you have to fight as many zombies off as the game can fling at you!) but time is short, so I'll just skip to the end and say that you must play this game if you have any interest in zombies or first person shooters at all !!

68 - 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, the N64 one being where these screens are from!

67 - Deadly Evil (ZX Spectrum):

This is another game that has relatively recently been brought to my attention. Never having played it back in the day, it came up as a recommendation at World Of Spectrum when I was asking around last year for Halloween type games. I had a quick go, but only went back to playing it properly this year for the blog....

Undead beasties have appeared and run off with a princess, so you have to fight your way through the forest to rescue her and retrieve some ancient scrolls which will apparently send off all the undead back to the putrid pits they emerged from. Armed with a sword, you hop about the platforms smacking skeletons and avoiding evil hoodies who appear and fling fireballs at you...

I haven't got very far at all in this, 'coz it's bloomin' difficult! You only get one life, and there doesn't appear to be any way to get more health. I managed to pick up a few bits of scroll, but those annoying monks or whatever they are keep appearing, lobbing those fireballs at me and wiping out my health instantly!

As such, I can't really say whether or not it gets any better...I was slowly making progress, but in the end I gave up as I was just getting too frustrated at dying all the time! It does have a nice creepy tune at the title screen though, and doesn't look too bad...but nope, just too difficult I'm afraid!

66 - Cold Fear (PS2) :

The Thing meets Resident Evil on a boat!

Hmm..that was easy....right on to the next lot.......What? Not enough information? I thought that summed it up pretty well, but fair enough...

You take the role of Tom Hansen, ex-soldier and now under the employ of the US Coastguard, as he goes to investigate a Russian whaler which a SEAL squad has mysteriously disappeared on whilst trying to determine it's cargo. It doesn't take long to discover that some strange parasitic creatures called "Exocells" are using the crew and any other living creature they can lay their tentacles on as host bodies...and as a food supply too!

But where did these creatures come from? And what were the doing on a whaling ship in the middle of the Bering Straight?

This game is a typical survival horror type affair, with you creeping around dark corridors finding notes from unfortunate victims of the bizarre events, and constantly getting spooked by fetid foes who seem to be unhappy with you being around. It even has a similar camera angle to Resident Evil 4, with the view sitting behind your shoulder..

What makes this a particularly groovy take on the subject though, is the decision to set the opening part on a boat in the middle of the ocean! As a storm lashes the ship, you'll have to deal with keeping your footing as it bobs around and watch out for waves or hanging chains that are swinging about trying to knock you off your feet!

The seasick inducing swaying of the ship gives the game a refreshingly different atmosphere than the usual dark tunnel or mansion environments, and if you're a fan of survival horror, you'll enjoy the change of scenery!

Other than that though, it's pretty good but standard stuff. You'll have to do the same running back and forth, hunting for ways to unlock doors and solving not-too-difficult puzzles to get past certain enemies or obstacles...as I say, the usual stuff. All in all though, a great game for fans of the genre !

100 Gruesome Games for Halloween (75-71)

Argh! Only 14 days left until Halloween! And I might be getting a job this week, so I won't have as much time to devote to this list before we get to the night itself! This means I'll have to rattle through them from now on, and try to only give them a few lines of blah each and hope it's enough to let you know whether to seek them out or not....

Well, I say this in theory but I'll probably find myself still blethering on far too much about them and still not having enough time..hehe...but for now let's just see what the next 5 are!



75 - Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360) :



Funky 3rd Person shooter that really makes you feel you're playing a B-Movie! Giant ants, spiders, robots, spaceships and Godzilla-type monsters all try their damnedest to invade and only you and your Earth Defense Force can put a stop to it!

It lacks a lot of the shine of most modern titles, and definitely feels like a budget game...but the gameplay is superb and although a bit repetitive after a while, if you play in short sittings you should find plenty of enjoyment blasting the bugs through the upcoming long winter nights!



74 - Daemon Summoner (PS2) :

Speaking of budget games, I picked this up for a fiver...but I'm not entirely sure it was worth the price! A 1st person shooter that sees you hunting all manner of beasties after they kill your wife and family, it's a game that has bags of atmosphere but just falls completely apart when it comes to gameplay.

It feels a lot like one of those cheap FPS game you can find loads of on XBLA, where you shoot an endless amount of identical enemies but don't really have to, as you can just run past them without them giving you too much trouble.

Having said that, I've yet to make it past the 2nd level, which sees you trying to sneak past some vampires who seem to be deaf and blind at some points, but then psychic at others and notice you immediately.



Still it does have an excellent title screen with groovy music playing while a camera zooms over a graveyard...and an eerie, dreamlike atmosphere when you're playing through it....and I really want to like it, but for the price I can't recommend it! If you can find it for 50p though, then by all means give it a go!


73 - It Came From The Desert (Amiga) :



More giant bugs in this apparently classic, sub-game filled Cinemaware adventure! You take on the role of a Doctor Greg who has recently moved to the small, middle-of-nowhere town of Lizard Breath. A meteor falls nearby one night, and strange things have been happening in the town since...

Switchblade fights, house fires, detective work, games of "chicken", daring hospital escapes, crop dusting, army tanks and of course, giant ants! All of this is in this game, but having only recently discovered this via emulation and therefore being a newcomer to this title, I've yet to experience most of it...

What I have played has been excellent, atmospheric, well presented fun..and I've been assured it's one of the best Amiga games you can get....so this is one that I'll be giving a bash myself this Halloween!



72 - Mystic Marathon (Arcade) :

Bit of an oddity this one! You control some weird little goblin chap as he trys to come first in the Mystic Marathon, which I assume must be part of some sort of Fairyland Olympics or something....

What this means, is that you basically have to get from one end of the map to the other before all the computer controlled goblins, via any means possible! Lots of shortcuts and traps lie between the start and finish line, and all sorts of weird characters are out to stop you and the other racers too....

Ogres will try and stomp on your head, trees fling apples at you and mushrooms dance around trying to trip you up...but if you can enter one of the big stone mouths, he'll pop you out via another rock-faced chum a bit further down the map!

This is a bloody difficult little game though, and I've only made it as far as the 2nd race....anything you do wrong will pretty much cost you the win, and it can be frustrating when you get stuck at one of the traps. Still, it does seem to have you getting a bit further the more you play, so it's alright for a bit of fun every now and then when you fancy being a marathon running goblin...which is every other day for me!



71 - Trap Door (ZX Spectrum) :

Trap Door! Yay! I LOVE Trap Door! For those of you who are unaware, Trap Door was a groovy clay model animation series back in the eighties. It focused on the antics of Berk, a big blue monster who was living in a big spooky castle and working for the unseen " 'im Upstairs "...

It also featured Boni, a talking skull and Drutt, a weird spider thing...and told of the three chums' adventures with the Trap Door and the things which lurked in it's freaky depths! In fact, why am I wasting time talking about...here, go watch this episode....



Right, now that you've watched that (and come back from looking for more episodes on Youtube) you should be ready for everything this ace ZX Spectrum has to chuck at you, because getting 'im Upstairs food ready is what it's all about!

He'll shout down an order, and as Berk you have to work out how to go about getting what he's after, using all the stuff lying around to collect and make it! Oh, and of course you'll have to open up the Trap Door to see if it has anything down there to help too! Just make sure you let out the right thing...

This is a great game, and really captures the feel of the cartoon...largely thanks to Don Priestly's huge graphics! Working out what monster to use when and where can be tricky, but it's a joy to try and get it right. The animation of the characters is spot on, and although only a few screens long, the game has loads for you to do! Play it now! Go!

What??? Why are you still here?? Oh yeah, of course! How stupid of me!!! We can't have Trap Door without the theme tune!! Here you go then....

Corpse Convention !

Once more into the Halls of Horror at the Digital Comic Museum.... Here we join the Corpse Convention from the pages of Standard Comic's Adventures Into Darkness 6, from 1952....