Horror found in non-horror video games - XCOM: Enemy Unkown - 2012

XCOM: Enemy Unkown is a science fiction, turn based strategy game created by Frictional Games and published by 2K Games. This game is and incredible and genre breaking game. It breaks conventions and causes confusion and anger in the player. Basically, the player takes control of 'The Commander', the leader of the elusive XCOM Project that is initiated after aliens make contact with Earth and become incredibly hostile and start to abduct humans for testing. This means that general game play comes down to two things. Base management and turn based combat.

The combat is what makes this game very horrific in a good way. Imagine the scene, a UFO has been shot down by XCOM interceptors and has crash landed in the forests of Germany. A squad of expert soldiers have been deployed to secure the crash site and ensure that any hostile life has been snuffed out whilst trying to ensure that no more damage is taken by the space craft in hope of it being salvageable.

You control this squad, as you slowly advance towards this UFO all you hear is the wind whistling through the trees. An almost silent musical score starts to play in the back of your mind and you start to get a little tense. Then suddenly, little grey men burst out of the darkness. They are intimidating and armed to the teeth with sci-fi-esque plasma weaponry. The music gets incredibly tense as you try to deal with this threat. Once you deal with one of the two little grey men, you think that you can take the other with ease. However, one of your four elite soldiers get's annihilated by the remaining extra terrestrial.

One of your men panic and tries to take a shot at the little grey man, however he misses and hunkers down behind cover. Once you finally take down the last of the aliens, you continue progressing towards the ship slowly. You see what looks to be two humans, couching down near the UFO. One of your soldiers advance towards these 'civilians' but she is taken aback by the grotesque nature of this creature's face. It is a lanky, genetically engineered mess of part alien part human. The soldier freaks out and she starts to fire wildly at the two creatures, missing with every shot.

The 'thin man' takes a shot at the soldier with plasma weaponry and literally melts her face. With two of your elite soldiers dead, you send one of the remaining soldiers up to the two 'thin men' to take a shot with a shotgun. One of the 'thin men' falls but a cloud spurts forward out of it's chest. The soldier than took the shot breathes in this strange gas. Suddenly, this soldier is convulsing horribly and dies from what looks like poisoning.

Your last remaining soldier starts to fall back to the helicopter that is waiting back in the distance. The helicopter looks like it has faded into obscurity and seems a million miles away. This last man runs as fast as he can towards the helicopter, whilst taking shots at the 'thin man' when another strange alien creature bursts out of the darkness with a trail of fire following in it's wake. This creature is a strange spliced creature of machinery and flesh, with jet boosters instead of legs.

This creature bursts through the air and slaughters your last soldier with advance weaponry. This mission was a complete and utter failure. Back at base, Germany starts to panic after the terrible handling of this situation and withdraws all funding from your project. This means that a country has given up hope on mankind's survival against this alien threat and has accepted that fact. Earth is lost to these invaders.

Yeah... with that scenario in mind, you can see why this game is scary as all hell.
Come back next time folks.

                                                      All content belongs to Frictional Games

A look back at - Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2006)

Well, I've been playing a whole lot of my old favorite survival horror games recently, and I came across this gem that had totally slipped my mind. No idea how it did because it is such a great landmark, even if people don't know it, in the survival horror genre. Let's begin shall we?

Call of Cthulhu : DCotE was released, for PC, in 2006. Developed by Headfirst Productions and published by our favorite publisher Bethesda Entertainment, this game was a buggy gem just waiting to be grabbed by a horror fan.

The Cthulhu mythos is an amazing setting to have a horror game. I mean come on guys, cosmic Gods who slumber in the sunken cyclopean city of R'yleh and are corrupting every man they possibly can to help them rise out of the sea and destroy the Earth. I mean, you can't get more doomsday-ey or horror than that.

Anyway, the plot for this game is very loosely based on the short H.P. Lovecraft story titled 'Shadow over Innsmouth'. We play as a detective by the name of Jack Walters, who was recently released from Arkham Asylum (not the one from Batman), which shows he is a bit unstable in his head.

Jack soon gets a new case in the 'sunny' little seaside town of Innsmouth, where a web of intrigue and pure horror starts to unravel as he learns of the towns dark secret and the nightmare that will never end... ehm yeah. This game goes a little overboard with it's plot, however, it is a generally good plot.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is fairly strange in this one. You play in an entirely HUD-less first person view, this concentrates the level of intensity to maximun capacity. making the player that little bit extra jumpy. This game is very survival based. Meaning, if you break a leg, you have to stop and fix it. This get's incredibly annoying after a while but it does show what developers are willing to go to when trying to keep to their genre.

Oh, and by the by, if you were hoping to blast your way through Innsmouth, well then you are in for a bad time. The game doesn't even give you a weapon until about 3 hours into the game. And by this time the entire town has already started hunting you down after the inn keeper fails to kill you in your sleep. There is a rather lengthy rooftop/building chase scene which is intense as it is hard.

Once you do get a weapon, the game get's no less intense or even easy. If you get spotted, your dead. Every man and his grandma will come at you with shotguns and try to wipe your soul from the Earth. This is where the game gets a little bit more insane. However, I shan't go on about this anymore.

This game does get fairly buggy at times, on the PC version without an unofficial patch. This means that on certain levels, things commonly disappear. There's a level called Devil's Reef, and you have to blow up five guys who are creating a giant storm. However, the rushed PC version denies sight of these guys altogether, so you are left shooting in the dark.

Anywho, I could go on for hours about the bugs of the game, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. This game is a brilliant mish-mash of insanity and horror with Lovecraftian settings all rolled into one giant explorable, although not sandbox style explorable, world. If you have not played this game, then I think that you should.

You know how I get at the end of a post. GO PLAY THE DAMN GAME NOW!

See ya next time folks.


                                                            All content belongs to Bethesda Entertainment

Silent Hill Revelations review

Well, we all knew it was coming. After my last post of my overview of the first movie, I just had to do a review of the latest installment of the Silent Hill film series. So let's just kick it off shall we.

Silent Hill Revelations carries on from the ending of the first film. Sharon, who know goes by the moniker of Heather Mason (a throwback to the game series), starts to have dreams of Silent Hill again.

This leads to some freaky stuff happening in her new town (which is never named) and 'the other world' or 'the darkness' starts to meld the two realities together and causes Heather to start to worry about her father.

When she gets home she discovers that her father has gone missing and there is a message left on the wall that simply says 'Come to Silent Hill'. Oh, before this a new character is introduced, another new student named Vincent who become Sharon's friend quite quickly. I wont ruin any more of the plot now so let's talk a bit about the relationship with the game series.

This film is very loosely based off of Silent Hill 3. Heather Mason looks exactly like Heather Graham, the protagonist of Silent Hill 3, and many of the locales are the same, like the amusement park and the asylum.

The film brings back many of the camera shots from the original film that were ripped directly from the video game. This still gives the film an eerie quality but is also a very nice addition for fans of the games.

Nothing else is really bought from the film apart from the new name that Heather's father takes. That being Harry Mason, the name of the protagonist from Silent Hill 2.

Now, apart from talking about the plot and relationship to the games, we shall talk about the acting. The acting of the two main characters, Heather and Vincent, is incredibly wooden and stilted in the most basic of scenes. However, when the monsters arrive, the acting becomes very intense and very very good.

TREMENDOUS FIGHT SCENE

One more point on the plot is the "tremendous" fight scene at the end of the film between fan favorite Pyramid Head and the new monster strange-blades-for-hands-and-blades-coming-out-of-face woman.

 This fight is incredibly bad. Unless the director was going for a slow lumbering fight where not much happens, then this fight is not a good one.

Also, one more interesting point is the names that have been given to several things within the film. The cult of whatever-the-hell-they-were-called have such a strange name that I couldn't even remember it, and a 'key' called the Seal of Megatron... um Medatram even, is just strange.

Apart from the gripes that I have with the acting, the fight scene and the naming, I do believe that this film still does justice to the game series.

As a film itself, it is very well executed and well thought out, but unfortunately the acting lets the film down. I think that this film series is probably one of the best in terms of creating a film from a video game. Usually films like this are not very good, just see Max Payne or the Super Mario Brothers film.

To conclude, this film is a good thing for this genre and should be watched... like now. Seriously, stop reading this and go and watch it... in 3D... because a guy get's his fingers cut off and they hit the screen... so go watch it. NOW!

Anyway guys, that's it for this review. Check back next week for more.


                                                              All content belongs to Konami and affiliates who created the movie.

Quick Look - Silent Hill (2006)

Quick Look is a little series where I am going to do what I did on my Halloween countdown. I'm going to quickly look over a film and talk about it. Makes sense? Let's move on then.

I already spoke about my feelings on the Silent Hill games in my little rant post I made earlier today. Well, this is going to be a quick look at the Silent Hill film that was made in 2006.

Now this film isn't particularly a good one, but it does hold the accolade of being one of the best game to movie films ever made. At least in my opinion.

The film re-creates many of the elements that made the games scary, even taking some of the viewpoints and camera shots that made the game series creepy.

This film wasn't the greatest to be honest. It killed certain areas of the source material it had, like the whole burning of the witch scenes etc etc. But it did shine in certain other areas. The creature design was very nice, they put a lot of care and attention in to bringing to life many of the creatures that frightened gamers when they played the game series.

Now, you will notice a lot of comparisons are drawn to the game series but that tends to happen when the film is of the same IP that the game is from. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

EXPLANATION OF SILENT HILL


Moving on, the film doesn't do a very good job of explaining what Silent Hill actually is. It does at almost the very end of the film but, it fails to explain a thing compared with the game. I

n the game, the protagonist of each game is drawn to Silent Hill through different motives. A letter from a lost wife, in search for a child/sibling, or even end up there by crashing on the road and literally rolling into Silent Hill.

Now the film does take one of these as it's main plot point. A woman goes to Silent Hill, looking for a way to help stop her daughter's strange dreams, only to be separated  from said daughter and forced to search the ash laden, fog strewn street of Silent Hill.

I'm not going to tell any more of the plot. Fans of the game have probably already watched this film and if you haven't watched it, then you should before you go to see the new one. That is why I'm making this on this particular film.

The new one is interesting, but the original should be seen first. I would do a review on the new one but I honestly don't want to, I don't quite know how I feel about it yet. When I know, I will review it.

Anyways, thanks for reading guys.






                                           All content is owned by Tristar Pictures and Konami Entertainment

A view on horror games

It's been a while since I've posted on here so I'm just gonna say I'm sorry for that but, let's get onto what I'm going to talk about today. Horror games.

Now, if you read my Resident Evil 6 review, you'll know that I am a die hard horror game fan. I've played every Resident Evil or Silent Hill game you could think of. But, I think that the horror genre, in video games, has been watered down like hell.

I remember the first time I encountered a zombie in the first Resi game, the music and the dodgey cutscene of the zombie turning it's head was scary as hell. Whereas, Resi 6 just puts you there with a machine gun mowing down walking corpses. I'm not just going to talk about that series here, although Resident Evil is a big name in the horror genre.

Let's talk about why this has happened. In recent years, horror games have managed to grab a much bigger demographic than they used to have.

The companies created these games would have created the games in these ways to reach a much wider audience. This goes especially with the evolution of the Resident Evil series.

This series has drifted much closer to the third person shooter genre of games rather than horror. This is ok for a wide demographic but, for horror fans, this is slightly upsetting. The originals had a really unique way to play, with wide shot camera angles and dodgey controls that added to the horror.

These mechanics and viewpoints were taken more by the Silent Hill series. Now Silent Hill is probably the only series that kept to the original idea on horror. Silent Hill cannot really lend itself to the Gears of War-esque direction that Resi took itself because of the universe that Silent Hill is based in. Silent Hill plays on the mind of the protagonist, so you can never really go in just shooting monster's in the face. So Silent Hill needed to keep to  it's origins.

MODERN HORROR GAMES

We'll move on to some more modern IP's that actually manage to terrify a player. Dead Space is a great horror series, especially the original.

With the silent protagonist of Isaac Clarke wandering around a derelict space ship being jumped on by massively strange and creepy space-zombie-mutant type things, we are shown true horror in the science fiction flying-through-space type era.

Dead Space 2 did a little bit more of the running and gunning ideal that Resi went for, but it still managed to keep the horror in the series at the same time. However, Isaac Clarke is no longer silent and has a crazy personality. Ok, Dead Space is good and all, but let's talk about Amnesia.

Amnesia brings back the idea of true terror in a video game. Daniel, the protagonist, has no special skills or special attributes about him. He has amnesia, obviously by the title, and works his way through a creepy and strange mansion whilst being chased by mutilated/mutated creatures that appear from nowhere and annihilate you.

The scariest thing about this game is the fact that you cannot defend yourself against these creatures, unless some strange coding bug kills the monster for you.

There are a lot more examples of games bringing pure terror to the masses, but they are all I'm going to talk about. However, I will say that a lot of people are saying that horror is dead in modern gaming but, I just gave you 2 examples of games which scare the living shit out of anyone who plays them.

Horror has not died in modern gaming, it's just that the main series in this genre have taken a back seat to other IP's that do what the originals did, but much much better.

This was really just a rant that I decided to write on almost 20 hours with no sleep so make sure you don't take this incredibly seriously. This is just my thoughts on modern horror gaming.


                                                                             Silent Hill image belongs to Konami
                                                                           Dead Space image belongs to EA Games
                                                                         Amnesia image belongs to Frictional Games
                      

Resident Evil 6 review - November 5th 2012

You guys thought that this was just a horror film blog didn't you? Well it was, but now it's expanded into horror media. I haven't posted in a while and that's because I've been paying this little "survival horror" game.

This game series has honestly gone down the pan. Resident Evil 1, 2 and even 3 basically started the genre of games we call survival horror. However, these games have been getting more and more orientated towards the 'Call of Duty generation' of gamers than the more traditional horror gamer. Resident Evil 4 introduced a brand new control method with a lot more active and action based style of gameplay.

Now this was all fine for me, as a long time Resi Evil fan. The game was still full of scary horror elements and dreadfully tiring puzzles which is what fans had come to expect. However, this game had no zombies... I mean, how can you have a Resident Evil game with no zombies? How did this idea come to pass? I have no clue.

 Now, after the aftermath of 4 came the bane of all Resi fans. Resident Evil 5 essentially butchered the horror genre of games. This one was definitely aimed a wider demographic and basically chucked all the elements that 4 had kept from it's horror lineage and replaced it with button/key mashing when turning cranks etc.

This was a big shock for the fans of the series, this led to many fans calling the series Action Evil and taking a back seat to all upcoming releases. Now I am not going to talk about Operation: Raccoon City because that was just Gears of War with some zombies, so I'm going to move swiftly on to talking about Resident Evil 6.

RESI 6

Right so, we went from actual survival horror to slight action with a lot of original elements to Gears of War with this series. Resident Evil 6 is a whole new beast. This game is entirely focused on the action.

The gameplay is just an advanced version of the gameplay we got from 5.This isn't necessarily a bad thing but, oh my God, they did screw up with this game. The enemies have nothing about them, at all. 4 had the terrifying, chainsaw wielding doctor Salvador, even one of the villager's steal Leon's jacket after chapter 1.

This is fairly amusing for the fans. 6, on the other hand, has absoloutley no quality in the bad guys that Leon, Chris or even Jake, the karate master, face. After we get past this, the story is just meaningless. Every character's personal background is locked in a vault labelled 'Collectibles' so we don't get much emotional interaction between protagonists.

The main story is nonsensical and, even though they all meld into one story at the end, is just a very linear progression to an unsatisfying end. I wont spoil the end for any of those that would like to play this atrocity to horror games so that's all I'm saying on story.

So, we've talked about everything bad about this game, which is most of it, but let us talk about something that works well and is very interesting. Agent Hunt mode.

Now, this new game mode is interesting in the fact that Capcom have borrowed from Left 4 Dead 2. Basically, if someone decides to play any campaign mission with Agent Hunt active, on veteran of professional difficulty, then another player can join as a random spawning creature and will be charged with killing the protagonist. This is done well because the player who is playing as one of the protagonists wont know who the player playing a creature is. Obviously they will when they see that this controlled creature has a much higher intelligence than the lack luster AI that has no sense of self preservation what so ever.

Another game mode that is interesting to play is the return of The Mercenaries mode. In this mode, players take control of one of the several protagonists of the story and go onto a map in which they must eliminate 150 enemies in a given time limit. Time can be found as pick ups and time can be gained by killing an enemy using a melee move. This mode is your basic, stand around and kill stuff, kind of game mode. No depth, no story but is great fun with a friend and an hour to kill.

So, I'll come to a final conclusion about this game. This game sucks. Simply put. From a survival horror video game fan, I was very disappointed in Capcom for what they actually delivered with this game. Now, of course, if you like this kind of gameplay and this genre of game, then this is right up your alley. But, for the majority of fans of survival horror, this game was very disappointing and very lack luster in it's delivery of any aspect of this game.

Thanks for reading, come back Wednesday for my next post.


                                                                      All content belongs to Capcom

10 Days to Halloween - Halloween (2007) - October 31st 2012

Well, today's the day. Halloween is finally here and I thought I would post the most unoriginal post that I could on Halloween. However, I'm not talking about the original version of Halloween, I'm going to talk about Rob Zombie's 2007 remake. Titled Halloween... confused yet? You should be.

Rob Zombie's version looks more into the history and life of Michael Myers before he becomes the rampaging, William Shatner mask wearing psycho that he is known for. And yes, that is a William Shatner mask, it's not fully finished because it's just a white cast of his face with hair.

Now, let's talk a bit on the film. Rob Zombie does a great homage to the original with this film. It's not seen as good a film as the original, but it is still a good film in it's own right.

The film has a very chilling and gruesome atmosphere, with great shots of Myers' masked face. The gore is just overwhelming in this film. One minute Myers is being talked down to, if that were possible, by a bar hooligan, and the next he is smashing his head into tiny pieces on the floor.

The story has a strange quality to it. Young Myers is a very interesting character in his own right, he actually speaks in this part of the film. It's a very interesting look into the masked murderer's mind.

I know you guys will hate me for this because I am ruining the film slightly in this post, but the film has a whole lot more going for it.

Rob Zombie has down a stellar job in remaking this film and I know that you will either hate it, because you compared it to the original, or that you will love it.

That's it for the countdown guys, I'm going to keep posting about three times a week so check back for more posts.





                                                                       All photos and video belong to Dimension Films

10 Days to Halloween - Shaun of the Dead (2004) - October 30th 2012

Welcome back to '10 Days to Halloween'. We're only one day from Halloween and I decided we need a bit of comedy on this blog. So let's talk about one of the funniest horror films ever made, Shaun of the Dead. This film is a British made film that parodies some of the greatest zombie movies ever made. The main characters are believable yet ridiculous at the same time and the atmosphere is full of chilling and heart wrenching moments but also is very funny at the same time.

Now some of the shots in this film are great, they take a lot of shots out of context and make the look very action orientated. Most of them are shots of Shaun (Simon Pegg) switching on the kettle or closing a door, but with use of zoom and some very cleverly edited shots, these look a lot like action shots.

The humour in this film is very satirical and very British but it does lend itself to an international audience. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's writing is great and helps this film in what it is trying to achieve.

Now I really don't want to spoil this film for anyone who hasn't seen it yet but then that means that this post will be very short. So, let's talk about the zombies. The zombies are your average Romero zombies, shambling monstrosities who want to eat you, not your brain but you. The action between the cast and the zombies is very clever and there are some very hilarious moments.

I'm going to end this post here, I really don't want to spoil this film. So go watch it! Or the zombies will come and eat you, not your brains, but you!

That's it for today folks, come back tomorrow, that being Halloween, for our last film in this countdown.


                                                            All photos and video belong to Universal Pictures Uk

10 Days to Halloween - The Devil's Rejects (2005) - 29th October 2012

Welcome back to '10 Days to Halloween'. Today we are going to talk on another of my favorite films of all time. That being The Devil's Rejects. This film is Rob Zombie's second original film, the first being House of 1000 Corpses which was just a giant music video.

Rob Zombie's love of old school horror films really shows in his directing of this film. With some great shots of the actors in creepy, Arizona desert motels and a great action scene at the opening of the film. This action scene really does not take away from the film's horror roots and actually adds to the atmosphere.

Let's talk about some of the actors. Sheri Moon Zombie is great in her part as one of the 'insane' serial killers. She is coupled with her brother Otis (Bill Moseley) who is also great in his role and has sprung a very memorable quote from about 30 minutes into the film. Sid Haig plays one of the most psychopathic but hilarious clowns ever seen, and I don't like clowns.

The actors really seem to gel together while they are on screen with each other. Couple these three serial killers with a Christian sheriff (William Forsythe) who starts to become a psycho serial killer himself in his man hunt for these fugitives.


As I've said, Rob Zombie has done a stellar job in the creation of this film and It just makes for such a great watch it's crazy.

Anyways, you should watch it. NOW!

I'm going to leave you with this impression of The Devil's Rejects. Come back tomorrow for some more '10 Days to Halloween'. Tomorrow is the second to last post and I will finally talk about a zombie film, just not one you would expect.





                                                          All photos and video belong to Lions Gate Films

10 Days to Halloween - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - 28th October 2012

Welcome back to '10 Days of Halloween', today we are going to look at A Nightmare on Elm Street.

This film is one of the greatest slasher films of all time. Also, we are going to talk about the original not the 2012 reboot/remake. This film is great for one reason, Freddy Krueger.

Kruegar is possibly one of the greatest villains of all time. I mean he invades your dreams and effectively murders you in your dreams, that he creates, out of your greatest fears... with his gloved hand of doom!

Anyways, Robert Englund is great in his role as Freddy. He is devious, murderous and even charming all at the same time. The film revolves around a group of teenagers that live on Elm Street. Who would have thought? Anyways, these teenagers start dying off, one by one, in gruesome ways while they sleep.

 It turns out that Freddy was created by their parents. (I say created but I'll just leave you to watch the film to find out what happened.) Anyway, Freddy is pissed off at the parents for what they did. So he hunts down and kills each of their children while they sleep.

The atmosphere in this film is great. It goes from a chilling feeling of despair to some absoloutley hilarious moments.

This filmed spawned 6 sequels and has become a cult phenomenon. I'm not going to talk more on this film and I've probably already spoiled way more than I would have liked so just go watch the damn thing!

That's it for today folks. Come back tomorrow and I'll have something new for you.






                                                    All photos and video belong to New Line Cinema/Warner Bros