Christian Laforet's Blog, page 7

Crime (and) Story

I was going to post an update about my novel, but found it too depressing, so instead I thought it would be fun to talk about the crime story I’m working on, and how my early writing process, as a whole, unfolds.

The above mentioned crime story is for an anthology. The book will have three stories, each in the 20 – 25K range, and will be written by myself and two other authors. I agreed to take part in the project before having any sort of idea as to what I was going to write about.[image error]

With a deadline looming, I got out the trusty note pad and started jotting. This marks the first step in the evolution of a story for me. I have about a hundred blank note books. You know the ones, those 80 page Hilroy’s we all remember from school. Every August I load up on the things when they are 10 cents each leading in the new school year. I like to get a nice mix of colours for the covers, but seem to lean towards red and green. Anyway, I crack one of those bad boys open and let my brain dribble all over the page.

My stories always start out as a simple concept. For example, when I wrote One Way Road in The Space Between Houses collection, I simply envisioned a very old woman driving a hot rod like the devil was on her ass. I didn’t know what she was driving from or towards, or why she was driving at all, just that she was driving.

The crime story started much the same way. Making barely legible notes, I began plotting a Die Hard-esque story about a grocery clerk. I really liked the concept and so started adding flesh to the bones of the story. Which brings me to my next step. Plotting.

In that same note book that I made notes in, I now plot. Basically it’s like this. I work my way through the story as it exists in my head so far, as a series of chronological bullet points. I’ll do this several times adding in new information and events until I have somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or so points. Sometimes (as with my novel), I’ll even repeat this process a couple dozen times.

Once I think I have the plot worked out, and the pacing seems right, I move on to the next step; detailed plotting.

I go back and look over the most recent bullet pointed plot and on a fresh page, start stretching those points into small paragraphs. I’m still not writing mind you, but rather getting much more detailed with what is going on in the story.

Where a simple line reading something like: Josh watches the guy closely as he unloads the truck.

Becomes: Josh watches the guys closely. The guy, who seems nervous, keeps making eye contact before abruptly breaking it with everybody in the room. When the guy’s boss tells him to get the truck unloaded, he jumps. He quickly gets to work, his body language showing how tense he is. Josh, suddenly feeling a bit nervous himself, moves to a different spot which gives him a better view of the strange fellow.

Much like the previous stage, I’ll go over these expanded points many times until each one is four or five times the size it began as. I’ll also take this time to move stuff around, or add in new characters and events. When I finish with this step of my process, the story reads like some sort of Cliff Notes version of what I’m planning on writing.

It was at this point that my Die Hard grocery store story got shelved. I really like the story, and was looking forward to writing it…but, it just didn’t feel right for a crime anthology. The story played out more like an action thriller, which is all good, but not the tone I was looking for.

So with a sigh, I circled back to step one.

With a new idea all plotted out (this one with a 100% more strippers!), it is time for the final step, writing it. Being that the crime story had a quick turnaround from concept to typed page, it has flowed very smoothly. In the past (I’m looking at you novel) I’ve had some struggles finding the story I had plotted while sitting in front of my computer.[image error]

And voila! That’s I a story goes from idea to page. I’ve met other writers who have a completely different approach, which proves that there is no right or wrong way to create a story.

I got my first reading of the year coming up! More on that next week.

-C

Coming Soon!

Hey everybody! So, I’ve been talking to my buddy Ben Van Dongen (see what he’s all about here https://benwltp.wordpress.com/ ) and although it pains me to admit it, he was actually right about something…for the first time…ever! I don’t update my site enough. So, with the confidence of a new year before me, you’ll be hearing from me a lot more often.

This brings me to my first hurdle though. What the hell am I going to talk about? Ben’s blog focuses on various events and things from his life, but that’s not really my speed. Not that I think he is wrong to spend time on such topics, it’s more that I personally don’t like writing about that stuff. Because of that, I’m going to keep things as work related as possible around here. Basically, I’ll be giving updates, info on events and books and talking to and or about other authors and their work.

Since this is the first post of the year, and telling everybody your plans for the next 365 days is the cool thing to do, I will spill the beans a bit about what I have coming (fingers crossed) this year.

Firstly my debut novel. I’ve been slaving over this thing for so long now, that it just seems like a part of my everyday life. Although technically I’m on the 3rd draft of it, that doesn’t mean I’m as far along as it sounds. You see, I’ve taken so long in writing this book that I’m very unsatisfied with some of the story elements and have made some rather startling changes. This means a lot of re-writes instead of editing. The good news is that the book will be finished soon-ish, and my shoulders will feel a whole lot lighter.

There will be a whole lot more about this sucker in the near future.

Secondly is a novella (novelette?) I’m writing for a crime anthology. The anthology will be the second book released by Adventure Worlds Press (No Light Tomorrow: Illustrated Edition was the first) and has a tentative release date of fall 2017. Besides myself, the book will feature the literally stylings of the above mentioned Ben Van Dongen as well as crime author Edmond Gagnon (more about Ed here https://foodtravelmovies.wordpress.co... ). I’m really excited for this story (and the entire book), it’s nice to work on something different. Plus, it takes place in a strip club so, you know, I have to do some research. Strictly for purposes of the story! I will take no enjoyment in watching the beautiful naked women!

Thirdly, I’ve started preliminary work on my follow-up novel. The story, a strong mix of science fiction and horror, is one that has been kicking around in my head for a couple of years now. The planned start date for writing is early summer. I had considered doing a sci-fi adventure book, but figured it best to stay in my comfort zone and keep to the scary stuff.

And lastly, I have a small, and super-secret project in the works. Why is it super-secret you ask? Well, to be honest, I’m keeping a tight lid on it because it is very new territory for me and, quite frankly, may be a steaming pile of crap. Because of that, I really don’t want to build it up too much.

And there you have it, a brief rundown of all the things I most likely won’t accomplish in 2017, but if I get even a couple of them finished, I’ll be a happy camper.

See you next week!

-C

Big News

So, while plugging away on my novel, something crazy happened. I’ve become a full fledged publisher!

The very short version goes like this. After reaching out to publisher Mirror World Publishing to see if they’d have any interest in releasing the illustrated edition of my second book, No Light Tomorrow, I was asked if I could meet with the owner.

She had something bigger than just publishing the book in mind, and instead asked me (and other Adventure Worlds owner Ben Van Dongen) if I would be interested in turning Adventure Worlds Press into an imprint of Mirror World. As an Imprint, we would focus on horror and hard sci-fi (two things Mirror World does not deal in) as well as other fringe projects.

Of course we agreed and the rest is history. To hear Ben’s take on the even, hit up his blog right here: https://benwltp.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/how-to-become-an-imprint/ and to see what Mirror World had to say about the whole thing, click this bad boy right here: https://mirrorworldpublishing.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/introducing-our-new-imprint-adventure-worlds-press/

The first book out under the Adventure Worlds Press imprint is, you guessed it, No Light Tomorrow Illustrated Edition. But we are already planning out 2017 and there should be some fun books coming soon!

 

Driving Through Time

By Christian Laforet

Grant hammered the gas pedal. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway heading towards Manitoba. The broken yellow line stretched out in front of him like an endless snake—a beast with no head. Aware of the cell phone sitting on the passenger seat, every few seconds he would tap the screen with his finger. The time appeared in bold—7:46 p.m., EST. That was not set in stone though. Soon he would pass into the Central Standard Time Zone and the numbers on his phone would flip back exactly one hour.

The sweat, breaking out along his forehead for the last thirty minutes, felt cold and abrasive on his skin. He wiped it away with his sleeve, but knew it would come back.

Flying past a sign announcing the upcoming border, Grant reminisced again about what his Grandpa told him when he was a kid.

***

“It was just after I joined the army,” the old man said, as he rocked in the worn, wooden chair.

Grant sat transfixed before him, knowing another interesting story lay ahead.

“They stuck me on a plane to B.C. I remember leaving at noon, and yet when I got there, it was only 11 a.m. The guys I travelled with had a good laugh when I scrambled for a phone and attempted to call myself at the airport in Toronto…but guess what?”

“What, Grandpa?”

“I was still there! I talked to myself for a good ten minutes before the me in Ontario had to board the plane I just got off!”

Grant crinkled his nose at that. “Grandpa, you didn’t actually travel through time. You were in a different time zone.”

The old man leaned forward, his slippered feet planted firmly on the floor. “Well, I know that now, but I had never heard of a time zone back then, and that’s exactly why it worked! I thought I had traveled through time. I believed it with all my heart and soul, and sometimes, that’s all it takes to make something real.”

***

Grant never bought into his Grandpa’s tale. Even as a child he dismissed it as being too silly, too outrageous to be true. Now, however, he repeated the story, line for line, in his head. What if it did happen? What if want and desire were enough to defy something as concrete as time?

Tears blurred his vision as his thoughts switched from his Grandpa sitting in that chair so long ago to a moment a lot closer to the present—to what he had left behind. Coming home from work, Grant had taken side streets to avoid construction. The little girl, chasing a ball from between parked cars, appeared in his line of sight for less than a second. Before he could react, his tires jumped. Even now, he imagined strands of her golden hair were stuck to his bumper.

Looking at his phone again, the moment he had been waiting for arrived. The numbers flipped to Central time. Heart pounding, Grant lifted his cell as he directed his car onto the shoulder of the road. His Grandpa’s words echoing through his mind, I believed it with all my heart and soul, and sometimes, that’s all it takes to make something real. Eyes squeezed tight, he said a prayer to anybody who would listen, and then dialed his own number. Maybe, just maybe, he could tell himself to take a different way home.

Digital Death (Pt. 6)

Level 6: The last Boss!

We’ve made it all the way to present day (approximately). I’m happy to report that there are now more horror games than ever. It’s like everybody finally realized that the horror genre is ripe for the picking when it comes to video games. So…fuck yeah!

Alright, before I get super current, I need to go back a few years for this first one. The game came out on the PS3, but I didn’t play it until just recently on the PS4.

The Last of Us (2013)

I’m about to say something that may cause people to roll their eyes, but I don’t give a squirt. The Last of Us is as good a story, both in acting and content, as any movie I have ever seen. Never, in all my years of gaming, have I been so emotionally involved in the characters I was playing as. Joel and Ellie’s (the above mentioned characters) story is touching, chilling, tragic, loving, and everything in-between.

Set in a zombie (not really zombies but you know…basically zombies) apocalyptic future, Joel, who lost his daughter during the initial outbreaks, has to help a teenage girl, Ellie, on a journey. I know that doesn’t sound totally original, but that is really just skimming the surface of the heart of the game. Thanks to the relationships involved, every action and plot point has a tremendous amount of weight.

On to the nasties roaming the levels. They are essentially zombies, but instead of simple, rotting corpses shambling towards you, these suckers have some sort of coral (as in reef) growing out of them. They are pretty terrifying, and are almost always better avoided than confronted. The worst thing you can do in The Last of Us is charge through levels. Do that and you will be killed! A lot!

The ending is very divisive and not what you would expect from a video game (then again, nothing about this game is typical). I, for one, found it to be the perfect resolution for the story. It fits the characters like a glove and had me getting all emotional. I think I paced the house for like an hour after the credits rolled talking to myself, convincing myself that Joel and company made the right choices.

There is talk of a Last of Us sequel. I kind of hope it doesn’t happen. This game is a masterpiece of gaming, and really doesn’t need a part 2.

Alien Isolation (2014).

Hands down, this is the scariest game I’ve ever played! There, I said it. Sure, I’d heard the buzz surrounding this one for a while. I watched video of people shitting their pants while playing the demo, but I wasn’t scared. I’m a God damn horror connoisseur! I’ve literally dedicated a large portion of my life to the scary stuff. So, fuck this game, right? Right? Wrong! Alien: Isolation bent me over and went balls deep.

You play as Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda (awesome!) and you are looking into the disappearance of your mom. Some new clues lead Amanda to a space station that, you guessed it, has a bit of a bug problem. You have to deal with asshole, gun wielding humans, terminator-like androids and one very nasty Xenomoprh. What makes the Alien so heart stoppingly horrifying is that it comes out of nowhere, can’t be killed but will always kill you (seriously, I’m talking instant death here) and is fast as fuck.

If you love the Aliens movies, then you have no reason not to play this game. It is basically a 12 hour love letter to those movies.

The amount of times I hid in a locker, far too afraid to move because that mother fucking Alien was out there…somewhere, were too many to count. To make shit scarier, you get one of those motion trackers from Aliens, you know, the ones that beep when something is getting closer. Which would be all fine and dandy, if the think worked as well as you want it to. And even when it does work, it doesn’t matter because the Alien is so God damn fast that it rips you open quicker than a piñata at a fat kid’s birthday party.

There are sections of the game where you have to deal with the murderous androids and dickhead humans. These sections, although intense, feel like a relaxing walk on the beach compared to any part with the Alien.

When I beat Alien: Isolation, I let out a sigh of pure relief. I was a ball of stress, my nerves were shot. I imagine it was the same feeling that hostages get when they are rescued.

Sequels? I fucking hope not!

Until Dawn (2015)

This is it, the last game on my list. Although not as scary as Alien, and nowhere near as deep as The Last of Us, Until Dawn still does something truly special. It is basically a ten hour interactive slasher movie.

The first I heard of it was while watching a video on IGN in late 2014 showing clips from all the horror games upcoming in 2015 and Until Dawn was amongst them. It sounded like an awesome premise. Like the best slasher films of the 80’s, a group of friends reunite at a cabin in the woods exactly one year after the disappearance of two of their friends. Sign me up!

You get all the stereotypical cast (you know, basically a group of people who would never be friends in real life), and you control them all at one point or another throughout the game. The objective is simple, keep at least one player alive until dawn.

Being a lifelong fan of slasher movies, I LOVED this game! You are presented throughout with various choices (either dialogue options, or different actions) that dictate what happens next. Basically, if you act like an asshole, your toast. Like having sex? Not a good idea in this game. Kill some harmless forest critter? Goodnight Irene! But it even goes beyond that. Not every choice is clear. For instance, if you find a flare gun and decide to give it to one of your friends, when you’re attacked later, you don’t have it to defend yourself. But if you do give it to them, it may just end up saving their life. The whole thing reminded me of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books from when I was a kid.

Sequel? Nope. But I really hope we get one. There are so many fun tropes and clichés to play with in the slasher genre that there is material for ten sequels.

A few other recent goodies I’ve encountered are: Outlast, The Evil Within and Soma.

I guess that’s it for now. Maybe in a few decades I’ll do this again. Thanks for reading!

Christian

Digital Death (Pt. 5)

Level 5: Where we start at the depths of the ocean, move on to the farthest stars and end in…Twin Peaks???

Hi there! Welcome back to my stroll down memory lane. Last time I was a major downer, this time, high on life (and drugs!) I’m all smiles. So, like I said, the first half of the 2000’s were fairly light on the scary stuff for me, but I finally got my shit together, picked up a Xbox 360, and got my horror on!

Sometime in 2005/06 I started hearing of this next game. I had made some new friends thank to returning to school. What’s that? Oh, I was in animation. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty awesome. Huh? Did I graduate? Um, well you see…don’t judge me!!

Bioshock (2007)

I hadn’t really played much in the way of first person shooters (FPS) since the Doom days. That game messed me up that badly. So when a pal of mine got all excited about this little game called Bioshock, I was somewhat lukewarm. Sure, the gameplay footage looked seven shades of rad, but still, it was a FPS.

When the day arrived, I shrugged my shoulders and said something crazy like, “Fuck it! You can’t shit and skip at the same time without making a hell of a mess.” And after I recovered from the mini stroke I had just suffered, I said, “You know what, I’m gonna buy that game!” And I did.

The opening, very Lost-like, sees you floating in the middle of the ocean. Plane debris litters the water around you and there is a light house jutting out of the surf ahead. With nowhere else to go, you head towards the light house. When you get there, you realize, that ain’t no light house, it’s a goddamn elevator! What else can you do but go down.

Welcome to Rapture!

You find a complete underwater city awaiting. Rapture was supposed to be a utopian society for the upper class, but shit went sideways and now it is a nightmare. Besides hordes of crazed, and often deformed, folks called Splicers, you also had to contend with the Big Daddys (No, I’m not talking about repeat screenings of the Adam Sandler movie, that would be truly fucking terrifying!!). The Big Daddys are huge ass dudes wearing old school diving gear and they will fuck you up with the quickness.

What makes the game great is that in the beginning, the Big Daddys are so threatening, that if you step to one, your ass best be ready. But, by the end of the game, you find yourself looking for those behemoths, just to smash them.

An ingenious gameplay mechanic called plasmids, allowed you to wield all sorts of amazing powers. From being able to throw fire and electricity, to being able to control the above mentioned Big Daddys, the plasmids were pure awesome!

Bioshock had two sequels. Bioshock 2, which introduced an even tougher baddie in the Big Sister, and Bioshock: Infinite, which was technically a good game, but didn’t really do much for me.

Dead Space (2008).

What happens when you take Resident Evil (that game was so influential that pretty much every horror game that came after owes something to it), cross it with Doom 3 and add in an Alien aesthetic? You get Dead Space!

As soon as you begin stalking the halls of the Ishimura, you know you’re in for some shit. It turns out that some folks have been messing with things they shouldn’t be a messing with, and have turned everybody aboard the ship into horrible monsters. What is that thing? A big statue… I know that sounds kinda stupid, but they make it work.

This one pushes some nostalgia buttons that harken back to Splatterhouse, let me explain. You don’t get the typical weapons (guns) in this one, oh no, you get mining tools. You use things that are meant for cutting and drilling. You don’t just shoot these poor bastards, you eviscerate them! With limbs flying, it feels like the spiritual successor to…that’s right, Splatterhouse.

The ship is a maze of similar looking corridors and rooms. This doesn’t become repetitive though thanks to a handy-dandy navigation system that always points you towards your next objective (without this, I’m sure my feelings for this sucker would be a lot different).

Isaac (the protagonist) wears a dope suit that would give the S&M crowd fits and he can upgrade it throughout the story. Throw in some amazing scripted events and a humdinger of an ending and you got a winner in this blokes books.

There are four more games in the Dead Space series. Part 2 was the business!! Part 3 was kinda shit. Then there was Wii game (never played it) and, if memory serves, a puzzle game called Ignition (again, never played it)

Alan Wake (2010)

Way back on the PS2, there was a game called Max Payne and it was the tits! I loved that game! Max Payne 2 was even better. So when the folks behind those two games were jumping into the world of horror, I sat up…and then waited, and waited, and waited. This S.O.B. took a long time to see the light of day.

Finally, it came out and after I wiped the Cheetos dust from my fingers, I got my hands on a copy.

Right out of the gate, I loved the premise of this game. You play as a writer named Alan Wake. Fancying myself a writer, even back then, it resounded with me. So, you’re Alan Wale, and suffering from writers block, you take your wife to the town of Bright Falls. Soon after arriving, Alan’s wife is kidnapped by mysterious forces and he has to find her.

As Alan, you encounter weird shadow creatures that can only be vanquished by light. Because of this, you are armed with a flashlight.

Bright Falls, which was inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, is a freaky place. You can add it to Silent Hill as places not to take the family on vacation.

Alan Wake had a sequel called Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.

That’s it for the 360. A few other games that stuck with me on the system were: Gears of War 1 – 3 (not full horror, but still super awesome!), Metro 2033 (not the best game, but a really cool story) and Dead Island (Zombie fun, and, a Friday the 13th ester egg near the end of the game—look for it!)

See you soon with part 6!

Digital Death (Pt. 4)

Level 4: Japanese people are weird and why are the Russians always up to no good?

Remember how I mentioned that 1999 was the greatest year ever? Yeah, well 2000 was a giant pile of shit. Pretty much everything good from the previous year was torn away to be replaced with cruel, mocking reminders of what I had lost. Don’t worry, you can put away the world’s smallest violin, this hasn’t devolved into a pity party. I just have to set up where my head was at in the early 00’s and why for a solid few years I had all but moved away from horror (which included horror video games).

Instead, I threw on my wizard cloak, grabbed my phaser (set to sexy!) and got my geek on. Because of this, all my time went to things like the Dragonlance books, and JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games for those who have a life). The real world was scary enough, I didn’t need to add to it with video games.

That said, there was one exception during this sad horror-less period in my life…

Onimusha: Warlords (2001)

Picture Resident Evil (any of the early ones will do), now set it in feudal Japan and instead of science run amok, the creatures are the result of evil spirits, and you get the gist of Onimusha: Warlords. The game was even made by Capcom and if I remember correctly began life (during the conceptual stage) as a Resident Evil game.

This was the first big game I was looking forward to on the new must have console, the PlayStation 2. Funny historical note regarding the PS2, there weren’t enough of them to meet demand when it launched. People went crazy trying to get their hands on one. Luckily, since I had recently suffered a nasty injury, my dear Mom went above and beyond and snatched me one on the release day (thanks Mom!)

First things first, this game was gorgeous! Although it used the same style of pre-rendered backgrounds found in Resident Evils 1 -3, it was much better. Basically think of the RE games as a crack whore, and Onimusha like a high-end escort; they’ll both have sex with you, but you can only bring one to the prom.

The combat was also really tight, and since you played as a samurai, you obviously wielded a bad ass sword. The gameplay was a hack-n-slash affair, but doing so in a survival horror setting was something new and it worked really well. You also had to collect orbs and things that came out of your vanquished foes. With these orbs you could level up your attacks and powers. Unlike other survival horror games, it was actually in your best interest to fight the monsters, instead of running past them.

The plot follows a dude named Samanosuke (yeah, it’s a mouthful) as he goes to rescue his Princess cousin from evil demons. It sounds silly but the presentation and storytelling was top notch so you believed. Plus, its Japan, shit’s just different there. When Samanosuke arrives on the scene, he realizes that he doesn’t have the power needed to deal with the baddies, but luckily for him, some nice spirits called the Oni lend a hand and give him a supernatural tune-up.

Leaving a bloody swath through Japanese mythology ended up being a thoroughly rewarding experience. By the end of the game, you are a powered up wrecking machine (this actually costs the game a point in my book. If you are maxed out, which is easy to do, you smash the final boss no problem).

Onimusha had three sequels. Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny and Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (which ended the trilogy and co-stared Jean Reno! Seriously, the mother fucking Professional was in this game!!), and lastly Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (this one kinda sucked balls and had nothing to do with the previous games).

That’s enough of the Japanese for now, let’s set our sights on the Russians.

Cold Fear (2005).

Okay, I know what you’re saying. Either, “Cold Fear? Are you serious?” Or, much more likely, “Cold Fear? I’ve never heard of it.” I’ll start by stating this, yes, Cold Fear is a Resident Evil clone. And yes, it didn’t add anything new to the survival horror genre. But you know what? It’s my list, so too bad. I loved this game.

So what is Cold Fear about? Basically, it’s Resident Evil on a boat. I know that sounds lame, but the game was super awesome.

Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for any horror story set either on a boat or train, or maybe the cool part of my brain was trying to break free of warp speed and wizards, but whatever the reason, I was drawn to this game. And it didn’t let me down.

You play as a US Coast Guard, Tom Hansen, who boards a Russian Whaling ship. The rest of the Coast Guard is quickly killed leaving you alone on a boat full of nightmares.

It turns out the Russians were up to no good…because you know, Russians. They found some scary creature while drilling at an oil rig and decided to make biological weapons out of it. Surprise surprise they lose control of everything.

You end up at the above mentioned oil rig, but first you have to navigate the whaler. The ship, which is rocking violently because a fierce storm is the star of the game. Shipping crates slide around the deck. Lightning flashes reveal shambling zombies. Continuous rain makes visibility minimal.

A mad scientist, a damsel in distress and some great boss fights make this RE clone worth playing.

No sequels for this one

Digital Death (part 3)

Level 3: The worst town ever!!

Boy, 1999 was a crazy year for me! I had a steady job, both the Matrix and Phantom Menace had come out (screw you guys! I like the Phantom Menace!), and I even managed to get a girlfriend (I know, that one surprised me as well). With all that great stuff going on, I was ready to declare 1999 the greatest year ever in the history of years…and then Silent Hill came out and ruined me. But before we travel to that awful little town, we need to make a pit stop first in Hong Kong.

Fear Effect (1999)

We all like cartoons (that wasn’t a question), and we all like horror stories (I’m just assuming), so what happens when you combine them? You get Fear Effect!

A couple things right out of the gate for this one. First, it was cel-shaded. There was a run in the years following this game where cel-shading was all the rage, but this one predated that jazz. Also, unlike the Resident Evil games, which used pre-rendered backgrounds (for the movie buffs, think matte paintings, for everybody else, basically static images) this bad boy did something different, it used full-motion video on a loop. This made the environment pop in a way that was not really seen at that time (it was also responsible for making this rather short game come on 4 DISCS!!!). Things were always moving in the background. Sure, it was a little weird if you hung around long enough for the loop to repeat, but hey, it was still awesome.

The gameplay was a mix of shooting, puzzle solving and quick-time events. You got your pick of mercenaries. A couple of grease balls named Deke and Glas, and super fox Hana. Obviously, I picked Hana. Mmm, Hana, in her tight leather pants and over-abundance of cleavage…

Huh? Oh, right, the game. A fun thing about Fear Effect was that you could literally be scared to death (hence the title). Your health bar would deplete if you ended up in bad situations. Hilariously, you could actually regain health by calming your character down (things like solving puzzles and killing baddies in an efficient manner) would bring you back to the green.

The plot found yummy Hana and her jerk-off partners hired to retrieve some Hong Kong crime boss’ daughter. The girl was kidnapped by a cult or something (cut me some slack, I’m going off memory here, sheesh!), and forced you to descend into hell to get her back. Besides Asian inspired demonic spirits, you also had to contend with a little known crime syndicate called the TRIAD!!! Yup, the odds were stacked against you. Also, did I mention it takes place in the future? I’m pretty sure I did…no, oh, well, it takes place in the future. It has a strong Blade Runner aesthetic.

Fear Effect was dope enough to get a sequel, called Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix. The second game had some fame of its own due to some implied lesbianism between Hana and a smoking hot blonde!

Alright, enough of that, it’s time to get to the real shit.

Silent Hill (1999)

I have to go back a bit for this one. Sometime in the late summer/early fall of ’98 I was reading the newest issue of EGM magazine (for my younger readers, a magazine is like a website on paper) and I came across a list of all the games shown at that years E3 (E3 was the mecca of gaming. For three days, the stats for acne and eye glasses would rise dramatically in the host city).

EGM kindly took the time to divide all the games up into their respective genres. And thanks to the huge success of Resident Evil 1 and 2, there was actually a survival horror section. Of the dozen or so games featured here, one jumped out at me: Silent Hill.

Even with nothing more than a grainy screen-cap the size of a matchbook, and a plot summery no longer than 40 words, I had this feeling in my stomach (it turned out to be gas from the 2L of ice cream I had just eaten, but at the time, it felt like fate!)

Flash forward to mid ’99 and I’m walking out of my local Electronic Boutique (before they changed their name to EB Games) with a copy of Silent Hill in my fat hands. I get home, head to my room, tear into a bag of Doritos (I’m assuming on the Doritos because I was super fat) and stuck that bad boy into my PSX. …And my life was never the same.

I was not ready for the level of shit that was going to be thrown at me. I can admit it. Sitting back, watching the opening cinematic, I was sure about two things in life: all computers were going to die thanks to Y2K and Silent Hill was just another Resident Evil clone. I was so wrong (and had a lot of bottled water to drink). Silent Hill is nothing like Resident Evil. RE is like going through a fun house, yeah, there are some scares, but it’s all just shits and giggles. You could probably bring your mom along and she’ll have a good enough time. Silent Hill is like getting locked in an insane asylum for the night, and then getting skull fucked by the inmates. And then, in the morning when the staff arrive, instead of helping you, they skull fuck you as well.

This game was pure nightmare fuel. Yeah, the monsters were scary, but it’s Silent Hill (the town) itself that ruined my life. In most games (hell, in most horror stories period), there are rules. If you want out, you just need to have a big enough gun, or a priest, or a gun that fires priests. You tell yourself (even though it’s a game) that the creatures and locations have to follow the same rules of physics that you do. Walls are solid. Bullets kills everything and if you find a green herb and a red herb you can mix them together to make a healing powder (just like real life). You can’t leave because you haven’t found the blue key card yet, but as soon as you do, you can open that physical door and be on your merry way. But Silent Hill throws you a curve ball because it doesn’t play by those rules. Some monsters you just can’t kill. Others seem to have no interest in killing you! The world changes and transforms around you. When you enter the front door of a house and it is daytime (although foggy as all hell) and leave by the back and it is nighttime for no reason (not because of lazy design either), you know the rules have gone out the window. And then, AND THEN, the air raid siren goes off. That’s the moment when Silent Hill goes from just another survival horror game, to a whole other thing. You see, when that wailing siren sounds, it means that the world you are in is about to change…FOR THE WORSE! Basically, the only way out of this nightmare is to see it through. You can’t run, you can’t hide.

Back to that siren. I’m not kidding when I say there were quite a few years after playing this game that when I would hear the air raid, I would start praying for a fucking tornado!

You play dim-wit Harry Mason who decides that he needs to take his daughter Cheryl (who he found as a baby, by the way!) to Silent Hill. A butch biker cop comes roaring past on the road into town, moments later, her bike is seen laying off the side of the road, she’s gone (I assume she either needed to change her wife beater shirt, we all know she wears, or re-spike her short hair). Anyway, moments after that, a figure walks into the road causing Harry to crash. When he comes around, Cheryl is gone. With the only thing nearby being the town of Silent Hill itself, Harry, running like a man with two prosthetic legs, heads in.

The story, which revolves around a cult and girl named Allyssa, hits you with all sorts of crazy mysteries and plot twists right up to the somewhat vague ending (there are actually different ending depending on how you played). When not fighting creatures that would have had H.R. Giger calling for his mama, you had to solve all sorts of puzzles. Some of these were pretty straight forward, while others took me for fucking ever to figure out (a particular one late in the game involving astrological signs nearly broke me—the sad thing was, the answer was as simple as could be).

Oh, and one more thing before we move on, Silent Hill had a nucking futs soundtrack. The tunes, an industrial music nightmare, would leave me on edge for hours. Fun note, I still jam to all the Silent Hill soundtracks when writing, it’s that synonymous with horror for me.

Silent Hill has 7 sequels. Some of them really good (part 2 and 3), some really bad (Homecoming and Downpour) and one that could have been great if not for the fact that like, half the fucking the game, is an escort mission (The Room). We almost had a Guillermo del Toro/Hideo Kijima produced Silent Hill game come our way, but that got canned because god hates us (Although you could play the terrifying demo, P.T. for a while).

Whelp, that brings us to the end the PlayStation 1. I feel a need to bring up a few more games before I leave though. First is Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This game was amazing. A vampire/Lovecraftian tale of epic proportions. Next, Nightmare Creatures 2, a shitty game with a great story and rocking Rob Zombie soundtrack. And finally, Dino Crisis (another Capcom game) which was basically just like Resident Evil except instead of Zombies, it was Dinosaurs.

Come back next week when we go next gen, and spend some time on a boat.

Digital Death (Part 2)

Level 2. In which I lean to smash every piece of art I find because there must be a key hidden within.

Towards the end of 1995 something crazy happened. O.J. Simpson was found not guilty! Also, the PlayStation came out. Whereas one of these things would be relegated to a trivia question, the other changed the world!!!! Okay, maybe not, but the PlayStation was the tits and since I was a spoiled brat, I got one for Christmas that year.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my Genesis…or my Sega CD…or my 32X (what can I say, I was a Sega mark), but it just seemed like the right time to try something new. I was already familiar with this whole cd business thanks to the Sega CD, but, if you ever played that piece of crap, you’d know that what I knew wasn’t much.

One of the first games I got (besides Ridge Racer which came with the system if my memory serves me) was a little diddy with a somewhat odd title called…

Resident Evil (1996)

Alright folks, here it is, the big daddy of horror gaming. Don’t believe me? Ever heard the term ‘Survival Horror’? Yeah, that term was literally coined by Capcom (makers of the game) after RE hit the scene. To be fair, RE didn’t really invent the genre. Alone in the Dark, which featured similar gameplay mechanics did proceed it. But since almost nobody played that game (definitely nobody I knew anyway), RE gets all the credit.

The story finds some special agent types, called S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics and Rescue Service), investigating disturbing reports from the forested area surrounding Racoon City. It seems that there have been some recent attacks and the victims appear to have been…eaten! Anyway, the S.T.A.R.S. unit head out…and promptly crash their helicopter in the forest. Doing their best Harrison Ford impression, they casually walk away from the crash like it wasn’t shit. Unfortunately, the woods are teeming with zombie dogs. The zombie dogs, or zogs as I call them, force them to take refuge in a massive nearby mansion (The Spencer Mansion).

The game starts as soon as the doors close behind you. Character options are either Chris Redfield (sharp shooter and all-around panty dropper) or Jill Valentine (the master of unlocking—no, really, she is actually called this in the game. It’s like, shit, I can unlock like a champ, maybe I can be a master of unlocking as well…). Depending on who you pick, the story changes slightly. If you go with Chris, you meet jail-bait Rebecca Chambers. Choose Jill and mouth-breather Barry comes running to your rescue suspiciously fast. He reminds me of that weird cousin who always tries the bathroom door just after you go in. It’s like, dude, we all know you’re just trying to see somebody naked.

No matter who you select, the real star of the game becomes quickly clear: the house. This place is a work of art. Exquisitely detailed rooms. Confusing, yet somehow brilliant, floor layouts. Secrets and mysteries hiding behind nearly every painting or statue.

Much like Doom, Resident Evil loved forcing you to backtrack for various keys and items to progress in the game. Thankfully, some time was put into making this interesting. You didn’t just have to find a key to open a door. Oh no. You had to find a jewel that fit into the eye of a statue that released a crest that fit into a slot on a wall that unlocked a door to a nearby room that had a giant snake in it, after you killed the snake you found a key that lead you to a room that had a sheet of music that when played on the piano opened a secret room that held the key to get into the library where the actual key you were looking for was located in a book (whew!).

The house, owned by evil corporation Umbrella, was used as a lab to make monsters. The creatures came in several great varieties. You got zombies (both human and dog), killer crows and poisonous snakes, lager than normal wasps, and giant (I’m talking rhino sized) fucking tarantulas! These things are just the beginning. Later in the game, the areas which formally held zombies, were now home to a real nasty customer: The Hunter. Basically really pissed off Battletoads, the Hunters were a force to be reckoned with. Whereas the zombies shuffled around like it was like it was wine night at the retirement home, the Hunters were fast and very lethal. Flight was better than fight when a Hunter was on your ass.

Besides all the monsters roaming the halls, you also had to deal with the bosses. Bigger is better in RE. Humongous snakes, plants and sharks are scattered around the grounds. All capped off by the final boss, a big, naked, Terminator-esque freak show called the Tyrant.

Throw in some super rad live action video at the beginning of the game (alright, you got me on this one, the live action stuff is pure cheese), and enough twists to make M. Night Shyamalan jealous and you see why this sucker was a winner.

Resident Evil has a whole whack of sequels, spin-offs and remakes (Wikipedia tells me 22!). They are all good to some degree, but the real standout (my favorite in the whole series) is…

Resident Evil 2 (1998)

Resident Evil 2 holds the very distinguished honour of being the best sequel of all time (IMO). Sure, Street Fight 2 was rad, and Red Dead Redemption was so much better than its little know predecessor that it’s almost laughable, but for my money, RE 2 takes the cake.

Not only was this game bigger and badder than the original in story, scope and graphics, but it did something that truly blew my sad little teenaged mind.

Let me paint you a picture. 17 year old Christian has just beat Resident Evil 2 for the first time. A celebratory gulp of Faygo Red pop swishes down my gullet as the credits roll on screen. What to do next. Being the popular chap that I was, my only options were, hang out with my mom, or play another game. Sorry Ma, but I had to go with the game. Just as my grey matter started quivering in anticipation of what game would get conquered next, a funny thing happened. A message appeared at the end of the credits. It said something like, do you want to play scenario B. Huh?

Now, if you had played RE1, you would have known that after beating it, you can start the game again, this time with extra weapons and outfits. I figured this must be something similar, but thanks to poor localization, was oddly phrased. But hey, I had time on my hand (it’s not like I didn’t have all night to watch the Italian channel hoping to see some boobs thanks to their liberal views on nudity), so I hit continue. And then my mind exploded.

To better explain what I’m about to say, I have to go back to what happens when you first fire up RE 2. As the game begins you are forced to pick your player. Option 1: Sexy biker chick, and little sister to RE 1’s Chris Redfield, Clare. Option 2: Metrosexual rookie cop, Leon. Because Clare was as close as I was likely to get to a girl, I of course choose her. From there, the story unfolds. Like RE 1, no matter who you pick, the game progresses almost the exact same.  But now, when you star scenario B, your player is selected for you, in my case it was Leon. And this is where shit gets innovative. You suddenly find yourself playing the other side of all the events you had just gone through as Clare. Basically, it was a whole second game. All the unexplained things that happened during your first play through are addressed here. You even have a completely different big bad to fight. It was truly some brilliant game making from Capcom.

You might be like, “dang, it wasn’t that great, Christian.” And I’ll be like, “go fuck yourself!” This was before everybody had the internet (funny—and by funny I mean sad—side note, I didn’t own a computer until I was in my mid-twenties), so it wasn’t common knowledge that this second game existed. I had just finished, what I felt was a fantastic and completely satisfying game in RE 2, and then to discover this whole other game…it left an impression.

Unfortunately, Capcom never went this route again (except for a very sad sack attempt in Devil May Cry 2, but yeah, that game fucking sucked), so even to this day, it still stands alone.

Like I said above, there are a shit-ton of Resident Evil games out there, with more on the way, but the one that has me soiling my Spider-man underoos is the upcoming Resident Evil 2 remake! RE 2 with current graphics and technology? Yes please!

Come back next week when we take a road trip to the WORST. TOWN. EVER!

Digital Death (Part 1)

Level 1. The time my 10 year old ass got rocked by a guy named Rick

Hey, know what I love? Horror video games! Seriously, I can’t get enough of them. Some of my all-time favourite horror stories have come in video game form. When done right, a video game can be the most immersive story you can experience. Don’t believe me? Imagine the scariest movie you’ve ever seen. Got it? Now instead of an hour and a half, make the story stretch for days (even weeks or months, depending how fast you play your games). On top of that, the story is completely interactive. You are not just along for the ride, you actually get to control the fate of the protagonist (to a degree).

Nothing beats a scary game. With that in mind, here are some of the ones that have left the biggest impression on me.

Splatterhouse (1990).

My cousins had a turbo Graphix 16 (I know! Lucky little bastards!). I was stuck with a broke ass Nintendo while they were rocking 16 bit graphics. The Nintendo had waaaaaay more games, but it didn’t have anything even remotely close to Splatterhouse. I could remember sitting on the carpet in front of their 20 inch television, watching glorious bodily mayhem explode across the screen.

You played as a hockey mask wearing, 2X4 swinging fellow by the name of Rick. Being a huge (HUGE!!!) Friday the 13th fan, I was already down with the guy based solely on his choice of facial armour, but then when I witnessed the first creature get spattered against a nearby wall Jackson Pollock style, I officially joined the Rick fan club.

Besides the gratuitous gore, what really stuck with me about this game was the setting. You had to traverse a house so haunted that it would have sent Father Merrin running for the hills. Every floor of this place was a nightmare. The best part was, none of it made sense. You would exit a room on one level…then come out into a cemetery on the next, and then walk into the attic after that. I really didn’t notice the odd-ball architecture as a kid, but yeah, The Winchester House wishes it was as weirdly designed as West Mansion in Splatterhouse.

The ghouls which came at you one at time (ala every kung-fu movie ever), were ripe for the killing. Besides the above mentioned 2X4, Rick also rocked everything from knives to the holy grail of horror gaming, the shotgun! Each instrument of carnage dealt out unique destruction. Use the 2X4 and you would splat the baddies against a nearby wall. Using bladed weapons would lop off heads, while the shotgun would blow their upper bodies clean off (I told you this game was rad!).

Two sequels followed (which I played when I upgraded the NES to a Genesis), and there was even a recent remake (I played this on the Xbox 360). These weren’t bad (part 3 really tried to get innovative and the remake upped the ante by adding nudity to the mix), but like the best shock-rockers screaming on stage in their leather pants, once you get past the gimmick, it doesn’t seem that enjoyable anymore.

Doom (1993).

Picture this. You are a space marine. That automatically makes you the coolest version of a marine you could be. Next, imagine that you are going to Mars. Why Mars? I don’t think that was explained, but does it matter? It’s fucking Mars…nuff said. So there you are, hanging on the red planet getting all kinds of Martian trim when BAM! All. Hell. Breaks. Loose.

I’m not talking figurative Hell either. I’m talking about some hellfire and brimstone shit. All of a sudden you are running and gunning you way through nightmare mania. A few things you can expect. Walls made of human skin with bloody pentagrams cut into the surface? Check! Zombies? Check! Demons of all varieties? Check! Endless backtracking for primary coloured key cards? Ugh…check.

Key cards aside, Doom was a mind-fuck of epic proportions (or maybe because of the key cards…). This was my first forays into what would become a staple of video gaming, the first person shooter (or FPS). Nowadays, every third game is an FPS, but back then, it was still a novelty. So what’s the big deal about it being a FPS you ask? Let me tell you, nothing causes stress like not being able to see what is behind you in a horror game. Doom was great at this. Monsters would appear out of nowhere (usually from hidden doors) right fucking behind you. To make matters worse, either as a stroke of brilliance, or poor technology, monsters anywhere near you produced the same volume of sound. The clicking of an Imp nearby would cause you to spin like a drunk uncle at a bat mitzvah, only to find that it was actually two rooms away.

With over 20 years of hindsight, you realize Doom has some strange levels. Don’t forget, this place is supposed to be a military/scientific installation. That being said, I would have hated working there. Besides the fact that you would have to travel down endless corridors (and don’t forget those fucking key cards), but there is, like, no furniture to speak of. Just hundreds of toxic waste barrels that blow up faster than my bathroom on taco night. And if that wasn’t enough, employees needed to watch their step, because around every corner there is a random pool of glowing green liquid that will quickly deplete your health. You would think the company would want you to avoid this stuff, but you’d be wrong. Often times to get one of those pesky key cards, something the staff would need to get around the place, you’d have to walk across the stuff. I’m not even going to mention the large openings in the walls letting in all that fresh Martian air.

These things aside, Doom left a big impression on me. Whereas Splatterhouse was my first horror game, Doom was the first game to legitimately scare the shit out me. I would play it not because it was fun, but rather as a way to conquer my fear. I would blow through each level at breakneck speed hoping to get to the end as fast as possible.

Doom has two numbered sequels and an upcoming remake. Doom 2 was a bigger version of Doom 1, while part 3, which was released on the X Box, was actually a remake itself of part 1. I know, confusing.

Come back next week for part 2 when I examine just why that resident was so evil.