Silent Hill 2

The Long


Pros
- Gritty and horrifying
- Excellent aesthetic
- Adheres to the "less is more" Silent Hill rule
- Story is surprisingly deep and harbors many interesting psychological elements
- Graphics still look good even to this day
- Music is excellent and horrifying
- Enemies are both creepy and tie into the psychological points of the story

Cons
- Clunky combat and controls
- Voice acting works on one level, but ultimately brings the game down
- Story takes some unexplained, crazy turns and can be very convoluted
- Some puzzles are obscure
- Has some really dark moments

Welcome back to Silent Hill

The Long

James Sunderland has a problem. He recently received a message from his wife, Mary, tell him to meet her in their "special place" in the town of Silent Hill. The problem is that Mary has been dead for years. Another problem is that apparently Silent Hill is full of crazy monsters. But we'll get to that.

The Silent Hill series of games are unique in the horror genre as they aim for more subtle, quiet creeping horror rather than being in your face about it. The Resident Evil games are clearly catering for the B-Movie crowd, and the Dead Space game are more a combination of action and gore. Silent Hill has long bouts of silence, lots of dark rooms and corridors, and a gritty camera lens over the whole thing. It isn't really the monsters that freak you out in the Silent Hill games, it's the time between monster encounters. 

Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 are some of the scariest games I've ever played

It's a Japanese style of horror vs an American one, and I think it works on a more base level. Rather than blood and guts we have enemies that lurch about and twist in unnatural, unnerving ways. You aren't really afraid because your life (or your character's life, rather) is in danger, you are scared because the game sets up an atmosphere of dread. This is, in my opinion, very difficult to do in a video games (Super Metroid is another game that I felt did this very well) making the fact that Silent Hill 2 does it so well a breath of fresh air. Or maybe a breath of metallic, bloody air set alongside a rusted chain-link fence. Something like that.

Silent Hill 2 follows a similar formula as Silent Hill. You are essentially given the entire town of Silent Hill to explore, with its secrets, monsters, and more scattered about the town. After wandering for a bit you explore various buildings (an apartment complex, underground basement, hospital, etc.) in an attempt to find your wife Mary. Again, it's a slow burn. You don't see your first enemy or get your first weapon for at least 15-30 minutes. You don't get the flashlight until probably and hour or so in. The game wants you to soak up it's grimy, fog-filled streets, and its these moments of calm in a horror game that really leave you unstrung. Silent Hill 2 knows the fine balance between the tensions of waiting for something to happen and drawing it out for too long, and it manages to pull it off perfectly.

I have had legitimate nightmares after playing this game. 

But I'm speaking in generals here, so let's get back to specifics. Silent Hill 2 follows James as he makes his way through the town of Silent Hill, and on the way he encounters a handful of odd people who either want to help or hurt him. James is overwhelmed with guilt about the death of his wife, but he seem to not be able to recall exactly why he feels bad about it, and hopes that Silent Hill will hold the answers. He also meets a woman, Maria, who looks surprisingly like his wife, and what happens with her is analogous to what...actually that might be a spoiler. Forget I said anything.

The brilliant part about Silent Hill 2's story (and it's going to be hard to say this without spoiling the ending) is how well everything in this game fits into what happened to James with his wife. The city of Silent Hill in Silent Hill 2 is a representation of everything bad and worrysome about James as a person. After his wife died James felt sexually repressed, unable to be with another woman. Because of this, many enemies in the game are extremely disturbing but highly sexualized. One of the enemies (as seen in the background above) is just two lower halves of women put together. The nurses in the hospital, while being horrid abominations, also sports a lot of leg and cleavage despite being hideous. James is worried about no longer being a man, and also worried about betraying the memory of his wife, which means he's extremely insecure.

Which brings us to Pyramid Head. 

The now-iconic bad guy of the Silent Hill franchise

Pyramid Head is the only male enemy in the entire game [Correction: there are another batch of particularly nasty ones later on, but my comments as follows still stand]. He has (as you can guess) a head of a pyramid, which could make his shape distinctly phallic. He also carries a massive cleaver (phallic) and is completely invulnerable, essentially everything James wishes he was. In one of the most shocking, horrific scenes I've ever seen in a video game (minor spoilers here, but everybody's probably heard of this scene already), the introduction to Pyramid Head is you stumbling upon him raping two of those leg creatures I mentioned before. Yes, in a video game. And nobody apparently complained about it. Huh.

Anyway, after talking about James' sexual frustration, I think it's pretty clear where that analogy was going. The point is that there is an insane amount of depth to Silent Hill 2's imagery, and it is never particularly in your face about it (except maybe the mentioned rape scene), meaning you could play through the entire game and not get it. The game holds up either way, but its great to see video game developers trying something actually make their games have a level of depth beyond the initial layers. 

You can just...stay over there, ok?

It's unfortunate, therefore, that Silent Hill 2 has a myriad of problems to accompany its excellent batch of psychological horror. First off is the voice acting and script. While it's serviceable, I guess, and the disjointed  weirdness fits the game in a sort of "it's bad on purpose" way, I found it pulling me out from the story. There are people who will defend it to death and people who agree with me, so we'll just leave it as "If you like it, fine. If not, it's kind of a massive mess." You can still get the story well enough even if you think the script is awful, it's just a notch off.

The other, perhaps bigger issue is the archaic control schemes. Silent Hill 2 was in the era of horror games where "tank" controls were in full effect. Pressing forward on the stick moves your character forward in whatever direction he is facing, not "up" on screen relative to the camera (which is how most modern games do it). In order to turn you have to have James spin left or right and then move him forward (or find the sweet spot between forward and your direction, which makes him turn like an SUV). It's cumbersome and annoying, though I can understand this early level of hindering your controls to ramp up the tension. But even if that was the intentional point, it's still annoying .

That can't be good. 

The combat is also bland. You get both melee weapons and firearms, but neither work particularly well. James' strategy for killing things either involves auto-aiming at the nearest one and shooting, or swinging wildly in an attempt to hit it (and kicking/stomping the writhing enemy after it goes down). Again, it works in the way that you realize James is not a good fighter, so his cumbersome attacks fit the character. But it also makes certain parts of the game extremely frustrating. Since this game is more about the story and atmosphere rather than combat anyway, I suggest playing through the game on Easy. 

Combat is not a high point of this game.

As stated already, the music and graphics in Silent Hill 2 are excellent, the soundtrack being especially creepy. The graphics are excellent looking for the PS2 era (still holding up well today), and the grainy filters only make the whole thing appear grittier and darker. The music is haunting and chilling, setting the standard for the Silent Hill games having excellent sound design.

This song gives me the chills. 

Despite all the problems, however, if you have any inclination towards horror I heartily suggest getting a copy of Silent Hill 2. There's a reason many people have said it's their favorite game of all time (yes, a horror game with poor gameplay is their favorite game of all time), and that's because it does what matters exceptionally well. It's a beautiful game and a journey into the macabre and terrifying, and it is a trip absolutely worth taking.

It can be hard to get a copy on PS2 or Xbox without paying a fair amount for it, but if you have one of those dang-fangled next-gen consoles you can get the Silent Hill HD Collection coming out on March 20th (which has both this game and the also excellent Silent Hill 3) for only $40 release price. Since that puts each game at about $20 (and gives the graphics a much needed HD boost with widescreen support), that's a very good price for what is easily one of the best horror games ever made. Just be aware that you might not sleep easily after playing it. 

Were I to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five stars. And remember...

Pyramid Head knows where you sleep. 

Plants vs Zombies

The Short


Pros
- Addicting twist on the tower defense genre
- Easy to learn but very difficult to master
- Dozens of plants to choose from
- Charming aesthetic, from the zombies to the plants to the kickin' soundtrack
- A metric butt-ton of game modes including survival, minigames, puzzles, zen garden, and more
- Seriously, this game has more content than three $60 retail games
- Crazy Dave is awesome. The ending song is awesome.
- Horrendously addicting

Cons
- Those damned bungee zombies.
- Unlocking stuff costs lots of money, which lead to some awful microtransactions on the iOS version
- Co-op / Vs modes only available on the PSN and XBLA version
- "Create a Zombie" only available on the PC Game of the Year version
- WHERE THE CRAP IS PLANTS VS ZOMBIES 2?!

If' there's anything zombies hate, it's photosynthesis

The Long

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Plants vs Zombies is pretty much my wife's most favorite video game ever. She's beaten it all the way through at least six times, maybe more since she has it on her iPod touch now. We own this game on every system known to man (except PSN, because we have it on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and XBLA) and for some reason neither of us have gotten bored of it yet. Yes, I'm talking about a tower defense game that's grid-based, where plants battle zombies. Really.

Though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. PopCap is pretty much rolling in fat cash (and is still an independent developer...so wild) at this point. These are the guys who invented Bejeweled, ok? They also made the Zuma, Bookworm, and tons of other simple, addicting games. Which is why when I first heard of Plants vs Zombies I shrugged it off. Bejeweled? You mean that game my mom plays? Please. 

Zombies also hate chlorophyll. 

It wasn't until we booted it up during a boring evening on vacation that we realized the truth: Plants vs Zombies is freaking amazing. I remember Destructoid gave it a 10/10 and I thought they'd lost their freaking minds. Well guess what, it was totally justified. Plants vs Zombies is an addicting, content rich tower defense game that is both extremely accessible and immensely deep. And here you thought it was just a simple, casual game. 

Plants vs Zombies doesn't do anything particularly new (aside from being freaking incredible) to the tower defense genre. You are given a 9x7 grid (your lawn, though eventually you go to the backyard pool and even on the roof) which you can plant anything on. All plants (except one "super" plant) only take one spot, so you can essentially have a maximum of 63 plants. Zombies come in from the right to individual lanes, never swapping unless (again) you use a particular plant to force them to bounce around like that. You plant your attacking plants on the left and try to kill the zombies before they reach your brains on the left (safely hidden inside the house). It's extremely simple; even my mother could figure it out.

Don't tell my mother I bad-mouthed her in my review. I love you mom!

To plant stuff you need "suns," which you gather by either planting sunflowers (with their adorable grins) or picking them up during daytime levels (which means they were literally dropped from the sun). Having to click on suns keeps it interactive, even during the boring beginning stages of the levels, where you are trying to gain a steady income as fast as possible. After that you have basic pea shooters which will slowly fire on advancing zombies, wall-nuts (which also have adorable grins, just look at them!) that block the zombie's paths, and more. The game keeps introducing a new plant nearly every level, which in turn adds a new strategy to attempt. The pacing is exactly perfect, and by the end you'll be juggling nine different plants, fighting off tons of zombies, and it'll all be completely intuitive. IT may look overwhelming at first, but Plants vs Zombies hits the sweet spot: it's never too hard, and it's never boring. And it rewards you just enough to make you keep on playing for hours and hours on end.

You go from "single, shuffling idiot" to "28 Days Later" pretty quickly

PopCap's other games had the benefit of being straight puzzlers with no determinable goal other than to waste time, meaning they only got old when you were finished with them. Plants vs Zombies, on the other hand, has a definite "end" to it (after maybe 4-5 hours of zombie-pruning mayhem) which would have slowed other developers. They might have just called it good (4-5 hours for a $10-$15 is still a good deal), or maybe have thrown in some junk side content or tacked on competitive multiplayer just for kicks. But this is freaking PopCap, so they go nuts. (or dare I say...Wall-nuts?)

This game has more bonus content than any game ever made in the existence of video games. This is not even an exaggeration. Right after you beat the main game, you can go back and play through it again, but this time with Crazy Dave (your lunatic neighbor) picking your first three plants for you (and often picking garbage, which adds to the challenge). You can collect pots of plants in the single player mode now that you've beaten the game, which are put in your zen garden and are raised to either sell or collect. You have more seed slots to unlock for levels, tons more plants and plant upgrades, and more areas for your zen garden. You have somewhere around 25-30 minigames, all of which are excellent and unique (Zombie Bejeweled is one of my favorites). You have wave based survival modes on all the different landscapes. You have a puzzle mode where you play as the zombies trying to get through the plants. You have a vase-smashing puzzle game that can be quite the challenge (both the puzzles and urn levels have a bunch of pre-set levels as well as infinite modes, and the survival mode can be infinite too). 

All this in a game that started life at a $15 price tag. Normal $60 games don't give this much crap out!

Hecks yes, Beghouled is rad. 

I'll say it again: this game is extremely addicting. The gameplay is tight, has tons of variety, and the tons of modes are just icing on the cake. All this content would be useless if the underlying game sucked, and it most certainly doesn't. You thought a 9x7 grid would mean the game was gimped and stupid? Well you are gimped and stupid, valued reader! Because this game is better than any other tower defense game ever made. Yes, I just brought that to the table. Prove me wrong, dear reader (in the comments, please :P)!

There are a few nitpicks I have. PopCap keeps releasing this dang thing on any platform that can even remotely support it, often adding stuff each time. For example, the XBLA Version, while suffering from not having mouse controls (which it still works quite well on a controller, by the way) does add full co-op support for every part of the game, which is really cool because I could finally play alongside my wife. It also adds a vs mode that's more like a competitive puzzle game, where one person plays as the plants and the other the zombies. It's pretty fun too, but neither of these modes are on any other versions besides the PSN and XBLA version.

The same goes for "Create a Zombie" mode, which is admittedly just a gimmick bonus, but that's only in the Game of the Year version on the PC. Sad times.

The flavor text for the plants and zombies is hilarious too (screenshot from iOS version)

The iOS and Android versions also have an annoyance: in-game microtransactions. Unlike the PC/XBLA/PSN versions, the minigames on iOS and Android require in-game currency to buy. Which you can earn pretty quickly if you know how to manipulate the Zen Garden, but the amount of cash required is still astronomical. It gives you the offer to buy in game coins for $1 increments, which I suppose is fair since the game is $10 on XBLA/PSN/PC and the iOS version is $3 (except I was an early adapter and paid $6), but the whole microtransaction thing still bugs me. I really hate it, in case you were wondering, but in this instance it doesn't do enough to damage the experience. It does mean most of the content is locked by a money-gate, though, so keep that in mind.

Lastly, the DS version looks way the crap worse than the other versions. Even the iOS/Android versions look way better (they technically run at a higher resolution than the XBLA/PSN versions, though they are scrunched down a little to fit on the screen). I suppose I should finally finally note that I consider the iPad/Android Tablet version of this game to be, by far, the best way to play the game. Picking up suns with touch is intuitive and excellent, the touch controls flawless in every way, which makes this easily a killer app for both iPhones and iPads (and Android phones and Android Tablets).

There is seriously so much crap to unlock (screenshot from iOS version)

I'm pretty sure you can guess what my closing remarks are going to be. Let me put it this way: this game was selling for $2 on sale on Steam the other day. TWO DOLLARS. It's on portable devices for freaking $3. You can buy it anywhere else for $10. You can even play a rather extensive demo for free in your web browser right now on PopCap's website. This game is insanely cheap and straight up amazing. I'm pretty sure you can afford it, so what are you waiting for? Go out there and buy it! And if you are thinking to yourself, "hmm, I wonder if this game is worth $10 or if I should wait for another Steam sale?" then you need to get your life in order and freaking go buy it this very second. I give you my personal Nathan guarantee that this game is worth every penny. I have yet to see someone I've recommended this game to come back disappointed. Plus, your kids can play it! And it's a way better game to have them play than that crappy Angry Birds game, let me tell you that much.

Make Plants vs Zombies 2 PopCap. You can have all my money. But while I'm waiting, I'm going to go beat Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone again. 

Five out of five starflowers. 

More like a billion out of five starflowers. 

Dead Space 2

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, visceral bloody violence like the first game
- Controls are tightened and improved from the last game
- More weapons and upgrades
- Set on a massive space station, its environments are far more varied than the first game
- Crazy story that expands on the original
- Isaac finally talks
- Same integrated UI, "strategic dismemberment," and general polish from the first game
- Great graphics, horrifying enemies, and everything else combines to make quite the thrill ride

Cons
- Despite Isaac finally taking, he doesn't really say anything meaningful
- Game is very much more "action" than "horror."
- Some of the enemies and gory events are borderline crass
- Has a multiplayer mode that nobody plays, even though it isn't particularly awful
- Gets so over the top and unrealistic at times you'll swear you are playing a Call of Duty game
- Only a handful of new enemies, with the basic staples being recycles from the first game
- Why are there so many closets for enemies to jump out of? And why would they wait in a boring closet, anyway, when they could just be running up and eating my face?

Isaac's back and ready to slice-n-dice.

Warning: Like the first review, this one contains screenshots that are both violent and disturbing

The Long

It's been often stated that if Dead Space is Ridley Scott's Alien, than Dead Space 2 is James Cameron's Aliens. It's an adept analogy, as the Aliens movies are perhaps the best horror movies set in space, and the  Dead Space games are the best horror games set in space. Like Alien, the first Dead Space was somewhat slow, put you on a single ship, and eased you into the horror elements before blowing you away. Dead Space 2 is Aliens, which was released with the tagline "This Time It's War." It is war, and Isaac is ready to blow some Necromorph scum's arms, legs, and whatever other nasty things pop out of them off on his quest to get rid of the bastards once and for all.

Dead Space 2 is much more an action game than Dead Space, and is certainly less subtle. While Dead Space started with a slow build, where you crash-land on the spaceship and walk around in the dark for a while, Dead Space 2 starts with a dude's head exploding about two inches from your face before he turns into a bloodthirsty, violent Necromorph.

I wasn't kidding with that content warning

From that point the game turns "on" and does not turn "off" again until the credits are rolling. Dead Space 2 is a good deal more an action game than the first Dead Space, and because of it a lot of the "horror" elements are gone. Dead Space was scary in the same ways the Silent Hill games are scary: during the quiet moments in the dark, as you collect your thoughts about what might be lurking out there in the dark, scared to continue forward. Dead Space 2 says "screw that, cut 'em up!" and sends you forward with a boatload of weapons to blast zombies to pieces. Which I'm totally fine with. Unlike Resident Evil 5, which tried to blend action and horror and failed (mostly on the "action" side), Dead Space 2 accepts the fact that it's action first, horror second and rolls with it. Which makes it work.

That isn't to say there aren't some tense, shocking scenes in this game. And yes, screwing this up does exactly what you think it does. 

This is evidenced by the fact that the controls are much improved over the last game. While Dead Space's gameplay was far from bad, it could be clunky at time. Isaac was wearing a heavy suit, which made him less versatile and speedy than say, Master Chief. In Dead Space 2 Isaac has a newer, lighter suit, and the gameplay changes respectively. Melee and stomping is better and faster. Isaac seems to move at a slightly better clip (though I still have to hold a button to run. Why? We have analog controls now, people.), the shooting seems tighter, and overall it just plays great. I'd say after Gears of War, Dead Space 2 is probably the best controlled third-person shooter out there. Which is good, since you still have to be shooting with the precision of a surgeon in order to blast the limbs off the numerous types of Necromorphs that want to make you lunch. The zero-g controls have also been dramatically improved, letting you float around rather than leaping like a crazy person from platform to platform. 

Most everything good has carried over from the first game. The "Hudless UI," where everything is displayed on Isaac's suit, is back in full force with a few subtle improvements that make reading his various meters easier. The graphics still look fantastic, with the enemies being horrible monstrosities, the environments being extremely detailed down to every splatter of crimson blood, and the effects being flashy and satisfying. Guns handle well (with a few newcomers like one that shoots javalins), though your original Plasma Cutter is still the best weapon in the game. 

So what's new? Well, zombie kids for starters

Visceral Games pretty much took everything about Dead Space and improved it. People complained because you spent the whole game on one ship, so they gave you a whole space station to explore. You go to various districts ranging from a residential area, a space-church, an elementary school, a biological lab, a computer mainframe, and more. You also spend a good deal of time back out in space, and these are some of the most awesome, gorgeous moments of the game. People complained because there wasn't enough enemies. So they added tons more: packs of zombie kids, a new type of zombie baby, a zombie that charges you like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park, a zombie that barfs acidic goo on you that slows you down, and more. People complained that most of the game was Isaac being bossed around, so they...actually that didn't change too much. But it does lead into another big change: Isaac actually talks in this game!

Silent protagonist no longer. 

Yep. Despite being mute in the first game, Isaac is chatty in this one (which makes it seem, in retrospect, that he was just giving everybody the silent treatment in game numero uno). This means he can decide things for himself and tell these things to other people, as well as have a deeper interaction with other characters and be more involved in the story. I think it's an improvement story-wise, but character-wise Isaac just isn't very interesting. He switches between moping about his dead girlfriend to yelling cuss words at people he doesn't get along with, and there really isn't much variance. He's also a cold-hard killer, doing some nasty things and making some tough decisions, but never really having a sort of personal reconciliation about it. Come on, dude. You can't get over your dead girlfriend, but you kill both zombies and people in this game, but you hardly bat an eye? It's like they gave you a voice just to push the story further, not develop your character...oh yeah, that's exactly why they did it. Hmm. 

That's fine, though, because I liked Dead Space 2's story. I mean, it's not going to win a pulitzer or something, but like Mass Effect, Dead Space has a relatively deep mythology that has plenty of resources for mining. Think I'm actually part of a bigger, living universe is a big step in immersing me in the game (and it's clear they want me immersed, based on the HUDless UI and the fact that it's a creepy horror game), and the story does that well enough. There's also a rather sad moment (which the screenshot above depicts) that actually made me feel some genuine emotion, so kudos to you Dead Space 2. You did alright. 

Now back to murderin' 

There is very little about Dead Space 2 I didn't like. The graphics, sound, and voice acting are all exceptional. The shooting is fun and provides a great mix of tension and adrenaline pumping zombie blasting. The minimal puzzles are easy and non-frustrating, and the story wasn't world-shattering but it was still worth a run-through if you liked the first game. Dead Space 2 also had a rather crazy nod back to the first game about 2/3 of the way through, which is probably my single most favorite moment in the entire game. If you played the first game and loved it, prepare yourself for a treat.

Again, there isn't much I didn't like, but there were a few things. A few parts, especially the beginning, feel a lot like the first Dead Space. Your first weapon in the Plasma Cutter, everybody won't shut up about cutting off the baddies' limbs, etc. Another problem was there never seemed to be enough stores. I kept filling up on health and ammo and wanting to dump it off, and in the first game the stores seemed well paced so that I wasn't throwing items away. In Dead Space 2, I kept having to leave presents behind, which made me sad. The infant baby enemies (a new enemy type) seemed really crass. I won't say they crossed a line or anything (I mean, come on, it's a Dead Space game), but it seemed more like they were being tasteless to try and prove how "hardcore" they were, rather than actually provide genuine scares. The last thing is kind of a silly one: enemies seem to pop out of closets from everywhere. Yeah, it's a genre staple but come on. I began to predict when enemies would pop out of walls or from the ceilings just because they use the exact same time-lull between incidents. Mix it up, guys.

Nothing bad happened here. Nope. 

The game also has a multiplayer mode that I'm certain nobody played. I booted it up for about two matches: it's essentially Left 4 Dead's multiplayer mode but with Dead Space enemies instead of Left 4 Dead enemies. Which sounds fine in theory, sure, but again...nobody is playing it. It seemed like kind of a tacked on addition, and there is certainly a large disconnect between it and the single player story. Maybe next time a co-op mode would be a better idea? Just don't, for the love of all that is good, make your main game mandatory co-op. We all saw what happened to that other action-horror franchise when they did that.

Dead Space 2 is just a really, really solid game

You really should try Dead Space 2 out if you are a fan of horror or action games in the slightest. Though you should play it after the first one; unlike many "second" games (like Gears of War 2) that make the first game look kind of pale in comparison, Dead Space was already on a platform so freaking high that Dead Space 2 just sort of stands alongside it rather than knocking it off. Both games are absolutely fantastic, and with a third one for sure on the way I really can't way to see how this all ends.

Steam sells this game frequently during sales for only $5 on computer, which also has better graphics. On a console you are looking anywhere from $20-30, which is still a very fair price. Even though this game is much more about action than horror than the first one, it's still a kick-ass game, so grab your Plasma Cutter and slice up a few more Necromorphs. 

Five out of five stars. 

Clock Tower: The First Fear

The Short


Pros
- Horrifying, genuinely scary
- Conveys a sense of helplessness rarely found on any game
- Pixelated graphics still do a great job in bringing the horror
- Multiple endings, most of which do not end well for your main character
- Good mix of genuine chills and jump scares
- Very unique experience on the SNES

Cons
- Never came out in the US; you'll have to find a fan translation ROM if you want to play it
- Uses a point and click interface but doesn't support the mouse, making controls cumbersome
- Puzzles and areas can have convoluted and difficult solutions, making a guide almost a necessity
- While playing as a frightened, helpless girl is great from a horror perspective, but from a gameplay one it can become tiresome
- Story gets really weird, especially near the end

Believe it or not, this game is pretty dang creepy

The Long

First off, it is worth nothing that Clock Tower: The First Fear was never released in the United States. I was given a fan-translated ROM by a friend back in my game-making days, when I was using an DOS-based RPG making engine to make everything but RPGs with it. Having made two horror games already, my friend thought it would be interesting material, considering the engine we used was essentially limited to 16 bit graphics. What I found was a surprisingly creepy SNES experience, that rivals even modern horror games with how downright scary it is.

Clock Tower: The First Fear follows a story of several orphan girls who are brought to a house by a mysterious old woman who wants to adopt them. After the old lady leaves for a spell, the power in the house seems to go off, and as the girls go out and explore they are murdered one by one by a little man wielding a pair of giant scissors. ...Ok, that sounds really goofy now that I typed it, but trust me: it gets creepy.

He either makes really big scrapbooks, or she should climb faster. 

Thus begins your quest as the last (?) surviving girl to rescue whomever is left, find those responsible, and get out alive. Or you can just take the car and leave, if you want the bad ending. Clock Tower offers you lots of options (and I think about 7-8 different endings), so if you want to be a jerk and run off you can. Just don't think it'll end well.

Hint: It won't. 

The story in Clock Tower is relatively basic and has a few bizarre twists, as one would expect from a Japanese horror game. Something worth noting is the deaths of the other girls: there are several for each, many depending on what order you visit certain areas, and some of them are horrific. None of them are particularly gory (the game would probably get a "T" rating today) or even violent, but the game does an excellent job using its limited hardware power to produce some shocking kills. The first time you walk into a new area and find one of the girls in trouble, and despite all you do you can't save her, you'll get why this game freaks me out.

It's a real accomplishment, to say the least. Often when you are wandering around the mansion the only sounds are your footsteps. You'll go into rooms that require you to look at things you don't want to (hint: don't look behind the shower curtain. Nightmare fuel, that) all for the sake of puzzles, and the ambiant silence combined with the fact that any moment you or your friend might die is nerve-wracking. It's a seriously intense experience, even though the game would be considered extremely slow by today's gaming standards. 

This probably won't end well. 

Another aspect that keeps the horror going is the gameplay, for both good or bad. The general gist of the game is that your character's tension rises as scary things happen, like jump scares or seeing her friends murdered without being able to help them. If she's relatively calm you can control her decently, able to run from Scissorman whenever he pops out (and he does so randomly...or sometimes not at all...talk about tension). However, if her "panic" meter caps out, she starts making mistakes. Like fumbling with doors, or tripping when she's running, or being unable to stave off a direct attack. This means you have to be extremely careful to not scare the crap out of her (and her face reacts in the corner when you see particularly horrific things, which is a nice touch). If you lose your cool, you're done.

Seriously, do not click the shower curtain. Do not do it. 

Another thing that ramps up the tension (more for bad than good) is the controls. The game uses a "point and click" interface, which also is utilized for your main character's movement. This might have worked if Clock Tower supported that goofy mouse that came with Mario Paint, but it doesn't. So you have to use the SNES controller with a pointer, which just...sucks. Especially in high intensity scenes, where you are frantically looking for hiding places or escape routes from Scissorman, all the while trying to not get cornered, the controls can really mess you up. Item selection and use is also difficult, making actually playing this game almost a chore.

Despite the simple style, I would argue this game looks really good. 

This is an adventure game, a Japanese game, and a horror game. All three of these genres are known to be  difficult not because of actual gameplay difficulty, but because of convoluted goals and just general hardness. Clock Tower is very convoluted. It'll take you several runs, inching your way along as you progress, probably finding several bad endings before finally making some headway. I'd personally say give it two or three goes just to experience it on a "naked" run, then use a guide. The game it still pretty intense and scary, even when you know what you are doing, but it is just so damned difficult to know what to do it's almost impossible to get a good ending without cheating. It doesn't ruin the experience, though, which is what matters.

The fan translation is a good one, though the story can still be convoluted. 

As stated, the sound design in this game is fantastic, and the graphics are good as well. There's something unnerving about seeing such horrific scenes playing out with retro SNES graphics, which works to the games advantage. As I've also said, there is next to no blood and gore in this game, but it still manges to be completely horrifying and unsettling. It just goes to show you don't have to pull a Saw and make your movies/games a gorefest all in the name of "horror." That is assuming you do it well, which Alan Wake tried and got really close, but unfortunately didn't quite make it. 

I really, really like Clock Tower: The First Fear. I liked it so much it inspired me in my sequel to my first horror game (Pitch Black) to incorporate a lot of Clock Tower's elements into the sequel (Pitch Black 2)

See any similarities? I drew that background in MSPaint, by the way. Be impressed. 

It has a few problems, but if you like horror games and want to see what the SNES offered, you really should check this game out. It's completely free, you'll just have to search for a ROM that's translated, so you really don't have anything to lose. 

Despite issues, I feel good giving this game four out of five stars. I could seriously argue that it is the scariest game I've ever played (though Silent Hill 2 & 3 put up an excellent fight), or at least it was scary and impactful when I played it almost ten years ago. I can see why they didn't import it over here (it isn't something the SNES audience would have boughten back in the day), but thanks to the interent you can still experience it. So go for it!

Saw

The Short


Pros
- Captures the gritty, dirty, horrifying world of the Saw movies
- A fair number of the infamous traps make an appearance
- Voice acting is decent and the game has a good atmosphere to it
- Puzzles can be very difficult and brain-teasing, which is great
- Captures the essence of the Saw movie franchise perfectly, which will please fans
- Really easy 1000/1000 G for Achievement hunters

Cons
- Combat, while not broken, is really, really poor
- While it has traps, it doesn't have nearly enough
- Puzzles are good but really repetitive
- Graphics look bland, even for an Unreal 3 engine game
- You spend 90% of the game indoors in the same gray corridors
- Endings are stupid
- While it has a strong start, it quickly burns out and runs out of ideas

"Hello, reader. I'd like to play a game..."

The Long

I have a confession to make, and one that'll probably lose me a lot of respect points from my readers: I actually really like the first Saw movie. I'm a huge horror fan, and something that is often missing from the genre is (at least an attempt at) a clever story with lots of interweaving elements. Usually it's just monsters or murderers killing lots of people, and even if they try to put a story in at the beginning it degenerates. Saw managed to keep its interesting premise (two guys are locked in an unknown room together, both chained to the wall, and one is ordered to kill the other one with whatever he can find) all the way to the end, with a shocking twist that completely caught me off guard.

The movies got awful pretty quick (I saw all the way to the fifth one for some unexplainable reason) and the franchise puttered out with the final iteration, not making much money and finally dying out (after seven movies). During it's heyday, however, Konami (yes, the guys that brought us Silent Hill) thought to produce a horror game based on the movie. Set between Saw and Saw II, you play as Danny Glover's character from the first game as Jigsaw tries to convince him to overcome his obsession with finding him by forcing Danny Glover to go through a bunch of traps and kill a lot of people. So yeah, it's like the movies. 

A lot of the areas in Saw remind me quite a bit of the Silent Hill games

What might amaze you, however, is that for a movie-tie in game based on progressively awful movies, Saw the game is actually...pretty good. It isn't going to blow you away or anything, but for those who like old-school style horror games (read: the ones that aren't secretly third person shooters like what Resident Evil has become and Dead Space) this is really worth looking into.

The game is a linear path forward, with many obstacles put in the environment to kill you. In fact, aside from the crazed enemies, the environments themselves are your biggest chance for death. Opening doors has a random chance a shotgun trap will be attached (which means you have to quickly press a button or else your head gets blown off). You have bare feet, so if you run blindly into darkness you might step on glass and lose health. Keys are often convenient placed in toilets full of dirty syringes, and so on. Again, if you are familiar with the Saw movies this is all old-hat, but even if you are the game keeps you on your toes with the constant danger that lurks around every corner.

Let's talk about the enemies and combat first, since it's easily the worst part of the game. 

Something really bad will happen to this guy if you don't solve the puzzle fast enough

The combat reminds me a good bit of old survival horror games. Unlike those games, the main character in Saw is controlled with normal third-person controls (meaning he doesn't move like a tank). Like those old games, however, combat is a horrid affair. Basically all you can do is swing whatever weapon you have and hope for the best. Enemies can easily get you stuck staggered and keep hitting you until you are dead without you having much hope for retaliation. You can often do this to them as well, but considering they like to gang up on you (and your weapons break)...it usually can end poorly. As a bonus, you have a shotgun collar on your neck (as do most enemies), so if you don't kill the person fast enough it'll go off and blow your head away. Awesome.

Combat is clunky and generally awful, regardless of difficulty. It honestly feels more like luck than actual skill. This sense of helplessness in the face of bad controls I guess ramps up the tension and makes you feel weak and vulnerable, but I don't think that was actually part of the plan. Luckily this game only has a moderate amount of combat, with most of your time spent exploring, dodging traps, and solving puzzles. 

Hope you like puzzles that involve rotating things, because there's a lot of them

Saw only has a few different puzzle types, which is my biggest complaint against the puzzles. Most involve rotating stuff to line up other stuff...actually that might be all of the puzzles. Lockpicking is also rotating stuff to line up other stuff now that I think about it...hey! Konami, you tricked me! I was going to say that the puzzles were actually pretty good, but now I don't know if I can!

Well, they are alright, then. Wait, there's a puzzle that involves sliding stuff, so they aren't all rotating. Um, wait, where was I? Oh yes, the puzzles. They are actually difficult, which is great, and since most of them will involve somebody dying if you screw up (either yourself or a person in a rather grotesque contraption) it ramps up the tension immensely. As far as puzzles go, they are basic but brain-teasy, though one of the last ones is literally just "Memory" done on tv monitors. I guess they ran out of ideas at that point (or got tired of recycling the same ones over and over).

Point: Saw has puzzles. They are good, but lack in variety. Luckily the game is short so you only get sick of them about an hour before the end.

It does a good job staying true to the creepy aesthetics set by the movies

That's about it for how Saw works. Basically your goal is often to get into a room where Jigsaw has imprisoned an innocent person on a horrible, body-shredding trap (your guy never seems to mind the fact that he's killing a bunch of people just to get in and save one, but whatever). Then you solve a puzzle to free them, get shuffled down to the next area and repeat. It's all very liner and while there is a little variety to the areas (you go to a boiler room, a crematorium, etc.) it's all still indoors in the same place so everything starts looking identical after a while. Which again pushes the fact that Saw starts strong and then putters down quickly.

One of my favorite bits, however, is you can sometimes see rooms with the aftermath of other Saw victims after they've failed their traps, with the grisly results. It's super creepy and horrifying and helps set the mood. Again (I'm saying this a lot in this review), this game is really loyal to it's creepy and often horrific source material, and I can get behind that.

The game looks good but not great

The sound design in this game is top notch, with the original voice actor for Jigsaw coming back to record the numerous television recordings that pop up to taunt you frequently. The sound design is also excellent, using lots of silence (like the Silent Hill games) to set the mood and make it so any sudden noise is jarring and startling. During specific scenes music from the movies play, and I've always felt the Saw movies had excellent, creepy soundtracks so we'll take it.

It's a pity the graphics don't match up. All the screenshots you are seeing here are from the PC version, which has better textures and higher resolution (and it still looks just "ok"). The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions look a fair amount worse, running at lower resolutions and sporting muddy textures and bad texture popin. I think the problem really lies in the art design, which succeeds when you are in an area that's been "Jigsawed" (with the green TVs, traps, etc). But during most of the game where you are running down the same bland hallways, everything just sort of meshes together. It's uninspired, and hurts the game a lot. 

It also has some really good audio logs ala Bioshock, which up the creepiness factor

As it stands, Saw is...surprisingly unoffensive. It doesn't pioneer any ground but it doesn't make any massive mistakes either. And while a lot of it is both repetitive and frustrating, I genuinely wanted to see it through til the end, and enjoyed playing it while I was at it. If you are a fan of the movies, go get some taste. But before you do that, you should probably check this game out anyway. It's short, so a weekend rent is probably your best bet, but if you can get it for under $10 you probably won't turn away unsatisfied.

So as it stands, two out of five stars. If you love the Saw movies, tack another two stars on there. If you hate them, subtract two. But if you are neutral but enjoy horror games, you might want to consider this overlooked game. At least until the next Silent Hill game comes out. 

Alan Wake

The Short


Pros
- Action/horror in the vein of Resident Evil 4 
- Stars Alan Wake, a horror writer, which is an original protagonist for a video game
- Alan Wake provides story-like narration throughout that helps set the tone and mood
- Excellent fog and lighting effects, dark forests look creepy and foreboding
- Has some genuinely interesting and weird twists in the story
- Controls are smooth and easy to pick up and play
- Voice acting is excellent
- Serious "Twin Peaks" or "Twilight Zone" vibe from this
- Breaks it up into "episodes" (like Alone in the Dark) which further pushes the "TV Show" aesthetic

Cons
- Graphics are serviceable but character models (especially faces) look pretty bad
- Insane amounts of product placements: expect to take calls on your Verizon phone and keep picking up Energizer batteries for your flashlight
- "Manuscript pages" that you find have some pretty dense, awful writing it it
- For all the gushing Alan Wake does over Stephen King, they do a poor job emulating his excellent writing style
- Meaning: the dialogue between characters is good, the narration/manuscripts/etc. is very thick. Alan needed an editor because this was obviously a rough draft
- Battles start out fun but quickly get repetitive
- Doesn't offer much in terms of varying vistas: you get mostly shadowy forests and...more shadowy forests
- Ending is a horrid cliffhanger designed to sell their DLC
- For being touted as a horror/thriller game, there is nothing scary in the entire game of Alan Wake

Welcome to Bright Falls. Alan's tweed jacket and under-hoodie aren't ready for this

The Long

Alan Wake is a compelling game with a massive development time. Like Too Human or Duke Nukem Forever, this game has been in limbo for an eternity, shifting iterations and believed to be long-dead many a time. Created by Remedy, the guys who did the first two Max Payne games, Alan Wake is (as it says on the box) a "psychological thriller." But is this love-letter to horror writers (specifically Stephen King) mixed with a weird homage to shows like Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone really worth looking into? Well...you'd better stay "A-Wake" for this review. Get it? Ha!

Alan Wake's premise is actually pretty cool. Alan is an international bestseller of horror novels (though based on the box and his actual writing he's less Stephen King and more James Patterson) who has had a serious wave of writer's block for the past two years. In an attempt to get the creative juices flowing, Alan takes a trip to the town of Bright Falls, a rural, densely forested town on an island. Unfortunately for Alan, stuff is about to get weird as he awakens to find his wife gone, half the town turned into weird beasties, and pages for an apparently unpublished manuscript that he doesn't remember writing floating around town, describing exactly what is going on. When did Alan write this? Will he be able to survive his own horror story?

If this sounds like a cool premise, it is, but the downer is that it isn't executed with much care. The story itself is pretty generic for about 90% of the game (evil dark creature lived in the lake-house Alan rented from some gypsy women, its turning the townsfolk and other inanimate objects into black darkness creatures, shoot stuff until the game ends) until it gets to the end, where it goes completely bananas and tries to pull off about six plot twists at once while failing, and then tries to also leave an open-ending (which also doesn't work). Apparently the DLC (which you have to buy, of course) that takes place immediately after the ending of Alan Wake explains a little of it, but I got one of them and it just made more unanswered questions rather than tell me what the crap was going on. For a game that so heavily pushes the "Alan is a great writer, this is his story" throughout, you'd think they'd have maybe hired an actual writer or maybe some editors to fix their own, crappy story. Or maybe it was just a rough draft. 

"'About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire...' Hey! I didn't write this!"

The actual game of Alan Wake is a standard third-person shooter affair with a slight twist. See, most of the good-natured, salt-of-the-earth people of Bright Falls have turned into crazy dark zombie people, and the darkness doesn't discriminate between living creatures and, say, tractors, so those are after Alan too. In order to defeat these monstrosities you have to first focus your flashlight on them with a high powered beam (which apparently drains the batteries like crazy; you have to constantly be pumping Energizers into them in order to stay alive) until the darkness pops off them, and then you blast them with bullets. Alan, aside from being a mediocre writer, also apparently knows how to handle any firearm with excellent proficiency, meaning the shooting controls are tight and he can also walk and shoot at the same time (take that, Resident Evil 5! Your zombie-killing specialist was just outdone by John Grisham!). He also has a nifty dodge that can be used if melee enemies get too close, resulting in a rad but oddly out-of-place slow-motion duck that looks more goofy than realistic. As it stands the controls are serviceable, the shooting is tight, and enemies seem to take just the right amount of time to go down.

The problem is that there is next to no enemy variety. Aside from the few random teleporting inanimate objects (which can be killed by just using the light, no bullets required) you basically just shoot tons of similarly looking darkness dudes for the entire course of the game. It never mixes up this formula, and while it's fun and sort of intense for the first dozen, when I was gunning down darkness lumberjack #496 I started wondering why these jerks kept blocking me from the rest of the story. Alan gets a better flashlight, better guns, etc. but it all seems redundant because all that means is the game will just throw more guys at you at once. He also gets flash-bang grenades that apparently only affect zombies and not people (since Alan doesn't get stunned by them) which are good "nukes" but seem unnecessary. You are always just fighting little people-beasties, and they never get particularly difficult.

Despite the graphics not being exceptional, they do good with the little things. It's just too bad they use the same little things over and over again. 

This is probably Alan Wake's biggest flaw: it's repetitive. Which also shows in its locals: you spend about 80% of the game wandering through a dark, foggy forest path, glancing around you to make sure Taken (aka the zombies) aren't coming at you from behind some trees, shining your light all about frantically, etc. There are so many freaking foggy forests in this game. Yeah, I get that he's in forest-land USA based on the setting, but couldn't we have mixed it up a bit? You visit a sort-of trailer park at the beginning; why couldn't we go through there after it's been dark? Or more farms? (though it does have a lot of farms, too) Or...anything?

There are a few unique places, like a mental health hospital and a sort of "cabin" district, and you do get to walk through the town after it's been made "evil," but most of the game is shooting the same Taken people in the same-looking forest. Dull.

Running to safe points while being ambushed is pretty intense, and they use light well in this game

Graphically, Alan Wake does some things really well and others just ok. The aforementioned foggy forests do look quite good, and what Alan Wake lacks in technical prowess it makes up in setting and sticking to a theme. Light looks especially great, with the red/orange flares from the flare gun that billow up illuminated smoke looking damned impressive, even after the tenth one. Everything with the light looks exceptional (as would be expected, since light plays such a key role in this game), from how your beam darts across the tops of cornfields or sticks on some fog close to you. That part of the game is great.

The not so great part is when you start looking close. Textures are generally bland, with side objects such as rocks and walls looking pretty crappy if you get up close to them (though usually they are layered by both darkness and fog, so I guess it's sort of forgivable). Characters are modeled ok but their faces look horrid, with the lips hardly ever matching the voices and the whole thing looking stilted. Again, it wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't been banking so much on their story, but when your script isn't very great, your story's ending makes no sense, and your means of presenting it (the graphics) are choppy at best, you have a problem.

The flares still look cool, and look cooler after they've hit

The game has lots of little things that are close to being great but just barely don't make it. Alan's narration over the whole thing is a great touch and is very well voiced, but I really wish they'd actually read the ham-fisted dialogue that he's spouting off. Similarly, the manuscript pages you find blowing in the eternal forests read equally thick and bloated. It's like somebody thought a bunch of similes and over-description was all one needed to write a good book, while completely missing how to apply these tools to actually write something good. The fact you have to constantly reload your flashlight is annoying but makes sense gameplay-wise, but why the heck are all the batteries Energizer branded, and lying all over a forest? The collectables, the coffee thermoses, are also just lying in the woods. Does Alan drink those when he picks them up? No wonder he's seeing zombies; he's on some sort of weird trip. The Verizon phone placement is also obnoxious, but it anything on disc is easily trumped by one of the first lines in the DLC (where a character calls you and literally asks "Can you hear me now?"). Rampant product placement is annoying but forgivable if it makes sense. Here, it's just stupid. 

Which sort of brings me to my last point: Alan Wake is a "thriller" game that isn't particularly thrilling, scary, horrific, or otherwise. You might have guessed that with it's "T for Teen" rating they couldn't exactly get away with gore-based horror, but plenty of games and movies have been classified in the "teen" rating and still pulled off some pretty serious scares (The Ring comes to mind). Because Alan is such an excellent shot and everything is layered with that corny narration, the game comes off more as silly rather than scary. And yeah, there are lots of dudes coming at you at times, but I never had that white-knuckle, nail-biting mixture of dread and tension that was so persistent in games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space, which Alan Wake clearly is trying to emulate. You come for the story, wade through the quagmire-ific gameplay to the next plot point, and then the game ends. There is no horror here. 

I've also never seen an author have cardboard cutouts made of himself to push his books. Vain much, Alan?

As it stands, Alan Wake does well on its aesthetic, even if it misses the mark of being a "psychological thriller." The story is compelling despite it's stupid, obnoxious ending, and while the shooting is good there is just far too much of it. It's hard to take a polarizing stance in either direction with Alan Wake: I can't hate it because it still is a very solid game at its core, and I can't love it because it does so many little things wrong. If you are into third-person shooters and love foggy woods and want to see a rather unique take on familiar genre trappings, you could do a lot worse than Alan Wake. But if you were expecting a "psychological thriller" several years in the making, you might want to wait for the paperback. I mean the sequel. Or something. That joke didn't work.

You can grab the game pretty easily for $10-15, which if you are interested is a decent enough price to jump right in. Just know what you are and aren't getting, lower your expectations a bit, and you'll probably do fine. This game also recently came out on PC, which includes all the DLC, and considering the graphics are a bit better (and it supports 3D cards) I'd consider that the optimum way to play, if you can get a controller hooked up.

Three out of five stars, Alan. You didn't write a bestseller, but at least you pulled out of the midlist. 

Week in Review for 2/19/2012 - Horror Week

It's time for another week in review! This last week I burned through 10 terrible games, shoving the total up to 67. I didn't get through all my terrible games, though (I still have 9 up for grabs on the Xbox 360 alone) but I think I covered most of them. I have enough left for another terrible games week should I feel so inclined, but for now it's back to business as usual.

And business as usual is that this week will (probably) be Horror Games Week! Yes, I'm going to burn through all the horror (not horrible) games I can think of, including every Silent Hill game (except Origins, which I never played), the Saw game, Clock Tower, The Suffering, and more. I love horror games, so I have plenty to choose from, including ones that are just sort of horror (Left 4 Dead, Dead Island) but still could technically count.

I'm currently playing Saint's Row The Third pretty seriously on the modern gaming side, and I'm deciding what game I want to play through on the retro side. I'm considering doing yet another Super Mario RPG playthrough, but it's also been a very long time since I've beaten Final Fantasy II/IV, so maybe that will be worth some time. I also need to finish Final Fantasy XIII, where on the Xbox I got to the exact same spot I gave up on the PS3 version and then gave up again. I'm going to really try to push forward, though. It's starting to turn into a game, finally.

Anyway, here's this week's horrible games with their respective reviews.

Fable III - 1 / 5 Stars
CastleQuest - 1 / 5 Stars
Too Human - 1 / 5 Stars
Bad Dudes - 1 / 5 Stars
Crackdown 2 - 1 / 5 Stars
TMNT: Turtles in Time Reshelled - 0 / 5 Stars
Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley - 2 / 5 Stars
Dead Space Ignition - 0 / 5 Stars
Ninety-Nine Nights - 1 / 5 Stars
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - 2 / 5 Stars

That's it from me this week! Have a killer week!