Samantha Lienhard's Blog, page 64

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Corpse Party

I’ve long intended to get into the Corpse Party series, but I was never quite sure where to start due to the number of different versions of the original game.

But this year, I finally got my answer with the release of a new Corpse Party remake. Since it’s pretty much a definitive version as near as I can tell, I picked up a Switch copy and finally played.

It begins with a group of students performing a charm intended to make sure they’re friends forever… but something goes terribly wrong, and they suddenly find themselves in another school, where a tragedy occurred many years earlier and vengeful ghosts stalk the halls.

They’re separated from one another, because the school exists on many different planes of existence. This means that while they’re all in the same location, they aren’t in exactly the same time or place. Corpse Party makes use of this in some interesting ways as you switch between groups of characters.

Although it might resemble an RPG visually in some ways, Corpse Party is essentially an adventure game. Much of your time will be spent figuring out how to get from one place to another, finding keys, etc.

And occasionally, being chased by ghosts and avoiding other dire situations that lead to the game’s numerous bad endings.

It’s fun, if a bit too reliant on checking and re-checking areas to see if something has changed when you have no specific indication that you should return.

It is split into chapters, with each chapter having its own save menu (which confused me a bit at first, especially since the “resume” option only loads temporary saves). Each chapter has its own set of possible endings, a true ending that unlocks the next chapter and several bad endings. Numerous “extra” chapters can be unlocked as well.

The story is dark and disturbing. It doesn’t shy away from gruesome details at all, whether it’s in the main story or in the history that led to this situation.

Now, while I often criticize games that immediately introduce you to a large cast of characters, I didn’t have a problem with that here. Although you meet many characters right away, its chapter-based structure gives you time to get to know them in smaller groups.

I do wish it had a way to skip read text, though, for the times when you get a bad ending and then need to go through a lot of dialogue before you catch up (although the option to make a temporary save helps). On the other hand, the collectible name tags you find are saved even if you get a bad ending, which is very convenient. It’s certainly a story-driven game, and the plot and characters are well worth sticking around for.

Corpse Party is a wonderfully creepy ghost story, and I’m happy this remake gave me the push to finally check this series out. I still have some extra chapters to finish up, but then I look forward to moving on to the sequels in the future!

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Higurashi When They Cry Chapter 1

I’ve been meaning to try Higurashi When They Cry for a long time, ever since I picked up the first five chapters in a visual novel bundle ages ago.

It’s intimidating to get into since it’s so long in its entirety, but I decided the time had come to play at least the first chapter.

Higurashi When They Cry Hou – Ch.1 Onikakushi, which is currently free, starts with a boy who has recently moved to a small, rural town and is enjoying life there with his new friends.

In addition to this entry being the first chapter of the larger story, it is divided into chapters itself, which made it easy for me to keep saying I’d just read one more chapter.

The first part of the story is lighthearted and pleasant, and it lasts much longer than you might expect for a horror story. This is slow-burn horror for sure. There are a few hints that something darker might lurk beneath the surface, but then after a certain point in the story, everything changes.

As creepy things start to happen, it gets more and more unsettling, with a bit of that sense of paranoia I so enjoyed in Chaos;Head (although not to the same extreme).

The end left me questioning what really happened, and I can’t wait to see what will happen in the later chapters. Is something supernatural at work or not? What is this leading up to?

I understand the first few chapters stand somewhat on their own, although they build on one another. I hadn’t intended to play all of the chapters back-to-back, but with how intrigued the end of Higurashi When They Cry Chapter 1 left me, I might not wait too long after all.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Resident Evil Village

I don’t understand Capcom sometimes. I really don’t.

Last year, one of our spooky October games was Resident Evil 7, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at Resident Evil Village this year.

Village picks up after the events of Resident Evil 7. Ethan Winters returns as the protagonist, trapped in an isolated village full of monsters as he searches for his kidnapped daughter. Like its predecessor, it has a tone that feels very unusual for Resident Evil at first, this time leaning into supernatural horror with vampires, werewolves, and similar creatures.

It attempts to explain all of this, of course, and I didn’t especially mind that shift in direction in the first place.

No, my major concern ahead of Village’s launch was that it might focus too much on action, and the demo together with the reviews left me with mixed feelings. But I saw enough encouragement from other survival horror fans that I took the plunge and bought Resident Evil Village (shortly after launch, in fact; I just ended up taking a long break partway through it).

Now that I’ve finished it, I have more mixed feelings than ever.

There are a lot of great things in Village. I loved the exploration in the village and the first major area. Searching for keys, backtracking, unlocking new areas – the classic gameplay loop was there. For me, the merchant dragged it down a bit, since finding treasure to sell to a merchant so I can buy items and upgrades isn’t the sort of thing I look for in a survival horror game (and I wasn’t crazy about enemies dropping resources, either).

The system wasn’t terrible, but my initial satisfaction of returning to a previous area with a new key item that let me unlock more areas and find more items faded into emptiness when I realized most of the new items would be treasures to sell.

You also can upgrade your physical attributes by killing animals for meat and bringing it back to the merchant. I actually liked that, since it made sense and didn’t make me feel too overpowered. In general, this whole aspect of the game was something I would have preferred to do without, but could accept because of the rest of the gameplay.

One section of the game was also so terrifying, I’d rank it up there as one of the scariest moments in any horror game I’ve played. I loved it.

But then, in the latter part of the game, it shifted toward action. It kept some basic aspects of the structure but had a bigger emphasis on shooting things. Then it veered even harder into action from there. Honestly, it went so far, I might have found it endearing if I wasn’t worried about Capcom’s direction for the series.

Can they just not help themselves? Are they still trying to appeal to two different audiences with the same game? Do they really want to make an action game and used this to test the waters?

If you’d asked me in the first half of the game, maybe even the first 3/4, I would have recommended Resident Evil Village in a heartbeat. It had action trappings that didn’t take away from the survival horror gameplay, and it followed in the footsteps of Resident Evil 7. But if you asked me during the final sections, I would have said no, they’ve gone back to action horror, it’s not like the old games at all.

Remember when Capcom went through a period of claiming each new Resident Evil game had both action sections and classic survival horror sections? That’s what this is. This is the game they claimed to have made so many times, but coming off of the success of Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake’s return to horror, I’m not sure why they decided to do it.

I don’t know how I feel about Resident Evil Village, and I don’t know where the series is going. Resident Evil 9 could be an incredible horror game, or it could be a return to action. It all depends on what lessons Capcom takes from Resident Evil Village.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Dracula: Origin

There was a time when I picked up a bunch of adventure games, one of which was Dracula: Origin.

Dracula: Origin is a point-and-click adventure game that puts the player in the shoes of Professor Van Helsing, on the trail of Dracula after an ominous letter warns that the vampire is coming for Mina Harker.

Despite what you might expect, it’s not even close to being an adaptation of the novel, though. In fact, partway through it introduces elements from H.P. Lovecraft, although as much as that made me smile, the story would have been fine without it.

The voice acting… isn’t great, but I got unintended joy out of serious, professional Van Helsing routinely crying, “Open!” upon unlocking a door or letting out a dismayed and confused “Closed…?” when he couldn’t.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward. You can click a spot to move Van Helsing there, or click on an item to pick up or a spot in the environment to interact with. Once you have an item in your inventory, you can make it your active item to use it in an interaction. There’s also a key that highlights everything that can be interacted with, always helpful.

Some of the item-based puzzles have questionable logic, and I admit I solved some of them by trying random items together until something combined (and one I had to look up entirely.)

Click for Dracula: Origin puzzle spoilersYou need uncontaminated water that “has never touched the ground.” I boiled water to purify it, but that wasn’t good enough. The solution?

Use the knife on the necklace to get a diamond.
Use the diamond on the mirror shard to get a rectangular mirror.
Use the mirror on the boiling water to get condensation.
Use the mirror on the flask to get a flask of condensation.

There are a handful of other puzzles as well, which can get pretty tricky.

Overall, Dracula: Origin was enjoyable enough. Nothing that really stood out, but entertaining enough if you enjoy classic point-and-click adventure games and are looking for a vampire story.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark

A years ago, we discussed The Darkside Detective, a humorous point-and-click adventure game about a detective who investigates supernatural incidents.

I enjoyed it enough that when the developers began a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, I backed it and got a Switch copy. (It’s available on all major platforms.)

The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark begins with Detective McQueen searching for his partner Dooley, who has gone missing, and once again features six lighthearted supernatural investigations.

Oddly enough, I found the first case to be more frustrating than the rest of the game, with puzzle solutions that felt illogical and sections that seemed to be unnecessarily drawn out. This might be because the first case has you visiting several different locations and traveling between them, while the others are more contained.

Anyway, most of the game was quite entertaining, and while I’m not sure it’s as funny as the original, it still had a lot of funny lines.

Bizarre situations, a bit of fourth-wall-breaking, and in general the cast of characters being a group of weirdos is where most of the humor comes from. While the cases have an occasional serious moment or two, this is a game that focuses much more on its humor than on its plot.

And of course, it’s perfect for the Halloween season, with ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural entities at the heart of every case.

Six cases are available now, but three free bonus cases are on the way. I’ll be sure to return to The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark when that time comes.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Echo Night

I guess this is ghost week for Celebrating All Things Spooky, because today’s review will once again see us quelling restless spirits as we discuss Echo Night.

I picked up Echo Night from the PlayStation Store during the shutdown concerns since it sounded like the sort of game I’d enjoy.

You play a man named Richard Osmond, who goes to his father’s house in response to a police report and from there is transported to a train, where he witnesses a strange encounter, and then to a ship haunted by ghosts of the people who died on board when the ship disappeared.

It plays a lot like a survival horror game or an adventure game, as a good portion of your time will be spent exploring, searching for items, and solving puzzles to access new areas.

There is no combat, but dangerous ghosts can appear in the dark and hurt you. This means the first thing you’ll want to do in any room is find the light switch and turn on the lights. Of course, sometimes you’ll find yourself in a place where the lights can’t be turned on, putting you in danger until you can find a way to get them working.

A major focus of the game is helping out the spirits you meet so that they can finally rest, which frequently involves being transported to a different time and place, while learning more about the mystery of the Red Stone that has caused so much trouble.

I enjoyed it, aside from the blackjack mini-game I spent too much time on in order to get the best ending.

Now, Echo Night is the first game in a trilogy. Echo Night 2 was only released in Japan, but Echo Night: Beyond for the PlayStation 2 was localized. Unfortunately, it was never ported to anything and is hard to find nowadays. If only the developer of these games was still around and a big deal nowadays, oh wait.

I’d be thrilled to see an Echo Night collection or ports, just saying. Until then, at least the first Echo Night is available on PSN if you want to resolve the mysteries of the vanished ghost ship.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Sound of Drop – fall into poison –

The oddly-named Sound of Drop – fall into poison – is a visual novel I picked up in a bundle quite some time ago and finally checked out this year.

It follows a girl named Mayu who goes with her friend to the local aquarium, where rumors and urban legends claim strange things happen on the night of the full moon. However, the aquarium holds special significance to Mayu – it’s the place where her sister disappeared five years ago.

When Mayu sees her sister in the aquarium, she chases after her and finds herself trapped in a twisted nightmare version of the aquarium, haunted by restless spirits.

Sound of Drop is a ghost story, and the early parts are especially dark. The horror becomes a lesser focus later on, but it still involve dealing with spirits and learning the truth about what happened in the aquarium.

You have many choices to make in this visual novel, and a good number of them lead to bad endings. There are over 25 bad endings, although unfortunately some of them are simply variations of one another that are counted as separate endings nevertheless. In addition to these abrupt death scenarios, there are also multiple main endings, including a path that can only be accessed after your first playthrough.

While the numerous bad endings can be slightly tiring, being able to quick-save ahead of any choice means it’s not so bad.

The story is interesting, if a bit confusing at times, and I liked the cast of characters. Sound of Drop – fall into poison – is a nice choice for a creepy visual novel, and learning the same developers made Fatal Twelve left me even more interested in trying that one.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story

During the eShop sale, I picked up Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, a game which caught my eye back when it was announced and then again when it ran into controversy for no reason that actually make sense.

(I got it for the Switch, but it’s available for other platforms too.)

Although it’s side-scrolling, it’s a survival horror game inspired by the classics, with Fatal Frame being the easiest comparison.

You play a woman named Mei who finds herself trapped in an abandoned apartment building haunted by restless spirits. As you search for a way out, you’ll need to put these spirits to rest through rituals, while finding notes that reveal details about their lives and the tragedy that took place there.

I appreciate that Sense uses inventory-based puzzles for its progression like classic survival horror, but it’s made unfortunately tedious because you often can’t pick up an item until you know you need it.

Instead of finding a key item to backtrack and unlock an area you previously couldn’t access, you’ll find an item you can’t pick up, then eventually find an area you can’t access, backtrack to get the item, and then return to unlock the area. It’s a small difference, but one that makes the experience more tedious. Fortunately, it stops being as common later in the game.

The puzzles themselves are good, aside from one that has its clue in a seemingly-unrelated note that I never would have associated with it if I hadn’t looked it up. A handful of areas also have instant-death situations if you do the wrong thing, which can be frustrating.

Enemies will kill you pretty easily, except that you find bangles that protect you from supernatural power. You can only carry a couple at a time, but having one means an enemy attack will shatter it instead of killing you.

It’s a good system that adds a lot of tension without feeling unfair. After a certain point, the game also introduces combat… but it’s really not designed for combat. Combat comes down to interact with an enemy to either stun it or swing your weapon in a rather awkward-feeling system, and it’s infrequent enough that the game probably would have been better off without it.

Saves are limited through use of tapes you can play at TVs. However, your first playthrough also gives you a quick save option and auto-saves. Subsequent playthroughs remove those to restrict you to the limited manual saves. There are some secrets and bonuses only found on later playthroughs, as well.

One more thing I probably should mention is the setting. As the name suggests, this game takes place in a cyberpunk future. However, that doesn’t matter as much as you might expect. I enjoyed exploring the apartments and learning more about the story, but the cyberpunk setting affected very little. Come for the ghosts, not for the cyberpunk.

Despite its flaws, Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is a solid take on the survival horror formula. As soon as I finished, I found myself hoping the developers would continue with the genre.

And what do you know? They actually already announced SENSE/s, an anthology series of shorter horror games, with the first one being a 3D survival horror game called SENSE/s: Midnight, due out this year. I’ll be keeping my eye on that for sure!

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Chaos;Head

One of the visual novels I wanted to cover this October was Chaos;Child, after I heard it involves psychological horror. To be safe, I looked it up to double check that it’s fine to play Chaos;Child without playing the earlier, unlocalized Chaos;Head.

The general consensus was that you can, but it’s definitely not recommended.

So, yes. I bought a Japanese copy of Chaos;Head and used the fan translation in order to read it.

And… I’m glad I did!

Chaos;Head is a dark visual novel, much darker than Steins;Gate despite them belonging to the same series. The first few chapters in particular filled me with a great sense of paranoia and dread, and it has some of the most gruesome murders I’ve seen in any game.

The story follows a loner otaku named Takumi, who avoids people as much as possible, frequently suffers from delusions, and has felt an unknown gaze watching him ever since he was a child.

Now a twisted serial murder case has everyone’s attention in Shibuya, and Takumi finds himself caught up in it when an image showing the crime scene is sent to him a day before it happens.

I didn’t mind Takumi as a protagonist as much as some people do. While he’s certainly not the most noble character, I sympathized with his paranoia and extreme social anxiety.

Some of his delusions can be triggered by the player, when green and red indicators appear at the top of the screen at certain points in the story. Clicking the green one usually causes a positive or sexual delusion. Clicking the red one usually causes a horrific or cynical delusion. The line blurs a little as the game goes on, and there’s also the option of not clicking either delusion.

What I find even more interesting is its use of paranoia, though. Takumi is paranoid, there’s no doubt about it. Yet Chaos;Head piles up so many unsettling mysteries that the player becomes paranoid too.

There were points when I could clearly dismiss Takumi’s reactions as paranoia, but that just meant I felt I couldn’t necessarily trust him to be a reliable narrator any more than I could trust what other characters were saying. It does an excellent job of making the player mistrust everything and everyone.

Chaos;Head is a dark, fascinating story. The ending left me with several questions and a few apparent plot holes, but it sounds a lot is fixed by the updated re-released Chaos;Head Noah, which unfortunately doesn’t have a translation yet. I’m happy I read it, not just to improve my experience with Chaos;Child (and apparently Robotics;Notes also benefits from having read Chaos;Head), but because it’s a great visual novel in its own right.

Since Chaos;Head Noah is said to be a huge improvement, I look forward to the day when I can read that… although I can’t help but hope it will get an official translation someday.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Silver Falls Episode Prelude

I first heard about the Silver Fall series when Silver Falls – 3 Down Stars was announced for the 3DS.

It looked fairly ambitious, and there weren’t a lot of 3DS games still being made. However, it was exclusive to the New Nintendo 3DS, so me and my original 3DS were out of luck.

So I was intrigued when I learned a new entry in the series was being made for the Switch, called Silver Falls Episode Prelude. I ended up winning it in a contest, so I decided to play it this October.

You play a deliveryman making a late-night delivery to a house that seems eerily abandoned, with notes that suggest something sinister has occurred. Episode Prelude is short, with its story mode taking under an hour to complete. Unfortunately, it’s also a little tedious.

The start of the game has the puzzle-solving elements of survival horror that I love. The house is locked and no one is answering, so you need to find a way inside by finding items to help you access other items, and so on.

However, this part of the game takes place in a wide open space with no threat, so it comes down to scouring the environment (first in the dark, then mercifully with a flashlight) for anything you can interact with. There is eventually a threat, although not as much of one as I expected for the number of items I was picking up.

The storyline in Episode Prelude is unclear, maybe because it’s a prelude. Aside from the ill-fated delivery, you spend some time talking to your boss, who is depressed about a vaguely-referenced incident, and later on you’re searching for him after a sudden transition.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I’d played the previous Silver Falls games, these characters and events might mean more to me.

What Silver Falls does do well is its atmosphere. Reading the notes in the first area to get a glimpse of the sinister events that unfolded there was one of the most interesting parts of the game, and there was a great moment later on where I looked up to see eerie green lights in the sky.

There’s also a battle mode, unlocked after you complete the story, which lets you fight waves of enemies. That might be a greater draw for some players.

Overall, Silver Falls Episode Prelude just wasn’t for me. It has some nice ideas, but it mainly just left me wondering if I’d enjoy the original game more.

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