100 More Gruesome Games For Halloween! ( 100-98 )

Crikey! October already!?

Yes, apparently the time has come to once again embark on a journey into gaming's gloomy, goo-encrusted dark side in preparation for Halloween.. and pluck out another hundred gruesome games from it's putrid pits!

Last year's list proved to be quite popular, so obviously there are lots of you out there who enjoy a bit of a scare whilst gaming....Hopefully then, you'll find this year's lot to be just as pleasing to your twisted tastebuds!

Like last year, I should point out a few things first! The list puts the games in no order of preference, it's just a list.....Also, some of the games are ones I've only very recently discovered, so I won't be that far through them! This seemed to confuse some people last year as they wondered why I was reviewing games I had barely played...Basically these lists are just meant to be a bit of fun to let you know about some cool games I've found and not Top 100s or in-depth looks at the tiltles...just a sort-of heads up about the many different Grueome Games there are out there! Sometimes I'll get carried away and give an almost proper review of a game, other times just a few words about them....it all depends on how much time I have, how much a game has grabbed me, and what stage of my inevitable October cold I'm at....

Anyway, now that that's been cleared up, let's not waste anymore time and get this thing on the go!

100 - Nosferatu (SNES) :

First up, we're off to help some poor chap rescue his girlie from the clutches of an evil Nosferatu (or vampire  as they're more commonly known) who has snuck into their house one night looking for a snack, and carried her off to his castle so he can nibble on her later, or make her his bride or whatever it is this particlular bloodsucker wants to do with her.....

The game starts off with a nice atmospheric intro, and then you find yourself plonked right in at the deep end and facing a Prince Of Persia meets Castlevania style journey through various monster infested, spiky trapped levels. The baddies you face are a varied bunch, ranging from bat-like vampire imps and melty-gloopy zombies to weird flying eyeballs, ghostly axes and ceiling lurking grabby things! Thankfully, you seem to be quite capable of giving them a good bashing, and combat is quite satisfying. You get some help from red crystals you pick up along the way too, which give you a little power-up for every three you can hold on to! They can be easily lost though, as if you run into a wall or get knocked down by a monster you drop one of them and it vanishes....

Other crystals can also be found lying around in boxes in rooms...these boost your health and as such are very much required. Be sure to check any boxes you find by pushing Up two or three times, as sometimes there's more than one crystal tucked away inside....

Every now and then, you'll face an end of level boss...and these are some odd chaps indeed! The end of the first level sees you tackling a hunchback who suddenly changes into a werewolf...pretty much the type of baddie you'd expect in a game like this really....but the end of Level 2 has you sizing up not one, but two Gorillas!! Any game that throws in random apes gets bonus points from me....but I wasn't expecting them!

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to see any more bosses yet. The game is pretty hard right from the start, but Level 3 sees a massive ramp up in the difficulty by adding lots and lots of spikes....spikes in the ceiling, in the floor, in the walls....spikes bloody everywhere! The controls don't help you much either, as there are one or two odd button combinations required to get our hero to do what you want him too, although if you play the game enough you do get slightly more used to them...But yeah, after hours of play I still haven't managed to make it to Level 4 yet...

Overall then, it's a nicely presented and atmospheric platformer, slightly ruined by some dodgy controls and by being a bit too difficult for it's own good! Still, it's well worth a go or two, especially if you're a fan of Prince Of Persia, Flashback or other similar titles....

99 - Night Hunter (ZX Spectrum) :

Having just looked at how to battle bloodsuckers, we now switch sides and take a bite at life as a vampire! And not just any old sucker, but Dracula himself! He's on a mission to gather up some old parchments and thwart Van Helsing's plan to put him into a daisy-pushing position for good.....

These parchments are lying around all over the place, and taking control of our old bloody...sorry...buddy...you'll have to find various keys and objects to help find them all. Trying to put a stop to this are various helpers of Van Helsing. Well, I say trying to put a stop to it....the men will come along and give you a punch in the face every now and again, but the women just seem to run around not doing much at all really. Still, they all provide a rather handy source of blood and health for Drac at least!

Not like the witches who are flying around all over the place...they seem to have something against vampires and will also bash you around a bit. Luckily, being a vampire has other perks which come in handy, and the ability to change into a bat or a werewolf for a short time helps you avoid these hags and also the various pits and holes which also litter the landscape. It takes a while to work out how best to use these other forms though, and I spent a good deal of time falling through holes and getting confused to begin with...

Once you get used to it though, the game is really quite enjoyable! Nothing startling by any means, but it's nice to play as the baddie every once in a while! It's also available on various other platforms from the era too, so even if you don't have a Speccy there's a good chance you can still experience some Helsing harassment on your system of choice......

98 - Phantasmagoria (PC) :

I got a couple of complaints that last year's list didn't have enough PC games included in it. That's something I intend to remedy this year! The problem has always been that I've never had a PC very capable of running games, and being someone who's always had consoles I've always found the setting up of PC games very fiddly and annoying....

Thank heavens for http://www.gog.com/  then! After finally getting a semi-decent PC last year, I decided to try them out and was very pleased to find that when you download games from there, they get rid of most of the faffing about setting up DOSbox, etc. and just let you get straight into playing the games! Phantasmagoria was the first game I decided to give a go..

Writer Adrienne Delaney has just moved into a new home with her husband Don, hoping to find inspiration for a new horror novel. The house used to be owned by a famous 19th Century magician named Zoltan Carnovasch, and is filled with all manner of spooky items and props.....

However, what the happy couple don't realise is that old "Carno" was a bit of a nasty piece of work, who liked to practice all manner of dark deeds! As Adrienne explores the house, she starts to uncover things that should really be left covered, and things soon escalate to horrific heights!

Being from 1995, the game uses Full Motion Video, the "next big thing" in videogames at the time. Having only experienced console FMV games until very recently though, I can safely say that the PC handled such games a lot better than most consoles of the time, especially when they applied it to point-and-click style games such as this.....

It's fairly easy to control Adrienne, and exploring the mansion and discovering it's secrets is a lot of fun! There are quite a few odd characters you'll bump into during the course of the game too, and although the acting skills vary from character to character, it just helps add to the B-movie style feel of the whole thing...

The game was very controversial on it's release. Designed by Sierra's Roberta Williams who was known for producing family-friendly fare, it features lots of violence, some really gory cut-scenes and most controversial of all, the infamous "rape scene" where Don forces himself onto Adrienne....

Because of this, the game was banned in Australia and many US stores decided not to stock it. This didn't really affect sales though, with Phantasmagoria being one of the best selling games of 1995. No doubt this pleased Sierra, who had invested a lot of time and money into the project...

The script for the game was four times larger than most movie scripts, being 550 pages long and having 100 additional storyboard pages to assist artists in creating the 800 scenes in the game! Filming took four months, with the final chase sequence alone eating up a week of that time. Actress Victoria Morsell spent hour after hour in front of a blue-screen performing the hundreds of different actions players can make her character do in the game, and another 200 people were involved in production! And that's not including the 135-strong Gregorian Choir that was used for the game's score!

So did it all pay off? Well....yes! The game is a lot of fun to play, and although it sometimes suffers from the usual point and click problems like needing to click on something at the right time and in the right place to activate it, and wandering around with not much happening if you're not sure how to advance, it never really gets too difficult or boring. As I mentioned, sometimes the acting can be a bit iffy but overall it's a good, gruesome game that's perfect for playing at Halloween! 

Right, I think we'll leave it there for the moment....sometimes when I did 5 games at a time and waffled on about them lots last year, I felt the posts were maybe a bit too long! Others were a bit short...so I've decided to try and judge this year's posts a bit better, meaning that I'll try and stop when I think I've gone on long enough! I know this will upset those who like to keep things in a nice, neat fashion...but yes, the numbers will be all over the place in this countdown! Anyway, check back in a day or two for the next splurge of games.....