» horror

I used to be a fan of the Silent Hill series but ever since Silent Hill: Homecoming came out and broke my heart, it was never the same. The latest addition to the series basically put the final nail to the coffin of the series. Why couldn’t Konami just stick to what worked instead of adding so much new features that actually changed the style of the game? To me Silent Hill: Downpour isn’t a Silent Hill game but rather a generic third person game with bits and pieces of survival feel to it.

The immediate difference I noticed was the amount of combats you had to encounter, paired with a sluggish control which made dodging, at least to me, hard to do and thus taking some series damage at times. The monsters you have to deal with are not impressive at all, they have lost that dark and twisted feeling to them compare to previous Silent Hill series. Monsters have always been somewhat “messed up” and dark throughout the series up to the last game. And why chopping the Pyramid Head and the Puppet Nurses? What’s the deal with that? Those are two of the most iconic monsters of the series with Pyramid Head being one of the most fearsome ones.

Then we have the graphics, which is not impressive at all and there are loads of choppy framerates moments for you to enjoy. They don’t just come out randomly but seem location based, meaning I will encounter the same choppiness going through the same location over and over again.

Finally, the fact that you can only hold a limited amount of weapons is plain stpuid to me. Making them scarce is one thing, which contributes to the “survival” factor. But limiting the amount of weapons the character can hold makes it annoying. Oh yes, all I saw during the game were bricks, throwable bricks everywhere and at some point in the game you can get practically unlimited amount of shotgun ammo. I mean come on…

All these problems combined killed Silent Hill: Downpour, what was Konami thinking when they were developing this? And I thought Silent Hill: Homecoming was bad enough, this one is even worse.

Naughty Bear, coming out in June, is generating quite some hype among gamers. So far it has released a few trailers/teasers on Gametrailers.com. I think this one in particular is the best of all. What do you get when you mix The Blair Witch Project with Naughty Bear? You get Bear Witch Trailer. After watching it for the second time, it really made me want to find another copy of the old Blair Witch Project game (I lost my original a long time ago).

Oh look what I’ve found, a short but sweet Dead Space 2 game play teaser. Though its only 30 seconds, it’s 30 seconds of sweetness. If I completed the first game 4 times (it was that good!) I hope the sequel will be even better than the first. Don’t let us down EA!

Enjoy!

When I saw it on Gametrailers, I couldn’t believe it, the video game version of The Grudge is coming out, well at least in Japan, for the Nintendo Wii. I can tell you I am a Japanese horror movie fanatic, I have all 3 games from the Fatal Frame series for the PlayStation 2, the forth installment is again for the Wii only, why?

Anyway, the trailer is pretty good in my opinion, the spookiness and the fact that you are exploring with just the flashlight makes the game even scarier. And in the end, the classic ghost-woman who makes creepy noise while crawling slowly towards you, just like from the movies! I’m pretty much used to all the horror movies, I don’t jump that easily but this one, although didn’t make me jump, I shaked a bit.

But why won’t it make it to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is really beyond me. That’s my grudge.

Capcom has released two lengthy (8+ minutes) trailers for Resident Evil 5. These two trailers are all about the co-op side of the game. While the commentators were a bit annoying because they were talking the entire time in JAPANESE which obviously I do not understand, the co-op game play as well as the graphics certainly look promising.

Resident Evil 5 is somewhat different from the previous series because I feel that the “horror” piece is missing now. Based on the trailers so far, it has become a survival third person shooter as oppose to survival horror third person shooter. There are also more ammo and healing items that can be picked up also probably because there are a lot more zombies, smarter ones that is, to kill. I hope there aren’t too many items for players to pick up otherwise the survival piece will be gone as well because you can just spray your ammo without worrying about how much you have.

Although I really wish the horror piece would remain (maybe its still there but not from the trailers), but the co-op feature is just too much for me to miss this game. If I decided not to get Call of Duty 5, RE5 will probably be my first co-op survival (horror?) third person shooter game.

And…I wish I was there at the Tokyo Game Show. -_-”

Trailers from: Gametrailers.com

Dead Space is out in less than a week, we are presented with yet another impressive animated comic movie trailer from Gametrailers.com. This month is going to be one busy AND expensive month for me with all these great games coming out.

Once I have it installed and I started the game right away. First impression, at least on the music, CREEPY. I started the chapter right away, my character was a high school guy for some reason in this maze looking forest somewhere in Japan. From the first cut scene, he was trying to save a girl from being killed by the dead people, or possessed people and ended up running for his own life. Ok I think I should not spoil the whole story.

Onto the game play.

The control is somewhat easy to get used to like any third person shooter. After another short cut scene from the first, I was controlling the high school kid and running for my life right off the bat. I picked up a “sake” (sake is Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice) bottle, I was exited that I found a weapon and I jumped onto the dead person right away. Bad move, since he had a gun, I was dead after a few shots. The environment was really dark actually, I should have turned up the brightness a bit but I didn’t expect to be this dark. So after dying a few times trying to run away from the dead, I managed to find the escape path by fluke.

Dead nurses from Japanese horror games/movies are still sexy, even if they kill.

The chapter was rather short, I would say 15 minutes or even less if you could manage to find the path right away. Therefore I cannot comment much about this chapter. The next chapter is actually from the demo where you get to use the man with glasses and I expect it to be longer.

Stay tuned!

And I thought August doesn’t have any games that will amuse me. I was half right, nothing on the shelf can but there’s one game on Playstation Store can, and that’s Siren: Blood Curse. I love Japanese horror style games so much I don’t think its right to miss this game.

Say tuned for reviews on all 12 episodes. Not all at once! But as I progress on each episode.

And by the way, if you are planning to buy the series, I strongly recommand buying all 12 at once for $39.99 to save some money (each 4 chapter set is $14.99).