Murdered: Soul Suspect

A long long time ago on the DS there was a game called Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.  It was a puzzle game about a guy who had been killed but remained in the real world as a ghost and the player had to solve his own murder.  Murdered: Soul Suspect, despite its silly name has a similar premise and that got me excited and while I personally enjoyed the game, I feel that it was lacking.

The story follows a detective called Ronan who in his younger years was a bit of a criminal.  Thanks to some forging of paperwork from his brother he managed to get a job with the police and put his life back on track.  Ronan is working the case of a serial killer in the city of Salem (yeah, I know) and at the very start of the game he is thrown out of a 3 story window and then shot to death by the killer himself.  Ronan however lingers in the real world as a ghost which pisses him off because he was hoping to join his dead wife but he can't do that until he resolves his business with the serial killer he's been after for so long.

Gameplay in Murdered: Soul Suspect has you exploring environments, looking for clues and picking up other collectable crap that fleshes out the back story as well as Ronan's character.  Every area is about the same.  You watch a cutscene, find a bunch of clues, watch another cutscene and then progress to the next area.  Between areas there are a few side quests to do but they feel a bit pointless and don't really reward you with anything.  As you look for clues there's some kind of badge ranking system but as far as I'm aware it doesn't actually have any bearing on anything.  I've not looked it up but I'm pretty sure there aren't a multitude of endings you can get by playing the game in certain ways.

The one part of this game that pissed me off was the demons.  Demons are these sausage looking things that spawn usually when you're trying to escape an area or progress to some key plot element.  The idea is that if they see you they will chase you and suck your soul until you die.  You can hide inside these spirit things if you get caught and escaping the demons is not hard at all.  If you can sneak up behind them you can execute them and most of the demons are so easy to execute that they serve as nothing more than a minor annoyance rather than anything else.  I guess they were put in to build tension but the effect falls flat.

There are many aspects to this game like the demons and the aforementioned badge system that makes the game feel like a lot of shit was cut.  Like they had plans to do some much more with various parts of the designed but had to drop it for time constraints or whatever.

That said, I did enjoy Soul Suspect but I'd find it hard to recommend to another person.  It's story, while predictable and a bit silly kept me interested enough for me to play it through to the end and I did like Ronan as a character.  There are a number of little niggles regarding the plot and the mechanics of the ghost world but that's just a case of me reading way too much into things.  If you can grab it on a sale, I'd say go for it, it's not that long and it'll kill a few lazy afternoons.  It doesn't quite stack up to Ghost Trick but good enough for now.

Dreadout

A long while ago I tried a demo of a game called Dreadout

Well the full game has finally been released and thanks to the Steam Halloween sale I was able to nab a copy and give the full version a whirl. 

If you can't be arsed to watch the video or if I didn't mention it, Dreadout is a horror game based on Indonesian ghost stories so if nothing else we have quite a unique setting.  I've played plenty of horror games based on Japanese folk tales or the more American style of horror of something terrible trying to cut you into little bits, but I know fuck all about Indonesian folk stories and ghosts so that alone was enough to draw me in.

The game starts out with a group of high school students and their teaching getting lost somewhere in Indonesia where they stumble across some kind of deserted town.  The curious school kids run inside to explore and eventually come across an old school.  The silent protagonist and her friend stay outside while her buddies go exploring and when they return one person's gone missing.  Upon reentering to search, ghostly shit starts happening and the game begins for real.

Before I talk about the game play I HAVE to talk about the graphics because they suck to a degree that is actually shocking.  If you have ever seen any games on the Xbox Live Arcade indie thing, it LOOKS like that.  The characters just look fucking weird when moving and the environments look like something from an early PS2 game or worse.  I'm aware it's a small indie developer working with what they can but they are terrible to the point where even someone like me, who cares very little for fancy graphics, had to raise and eyebrow and say "oh god".

The best way to describe Dreadout would be poor mans Project Zero (Fatal Frame).  You walk around the school, solve puzzles and every so often you'll encounter a ghost which you must photo to death with your camera phone.  At lost of the ghosts, however, won't die with camera power alone and you must solve a little puzzle or 2 to figure out how to off them once and for all.  The camera is also used for a number of puzzles so it's a little more than just a weapon to fend of the nasties.

Combat is a big problem in this game though because it sucks a massive dick.  There isn't much "real" combat as such and most ghosts are easy enough to stun away or flat out kill just by keeping a good distance and snapping when the little damage indicator comes up.  There is one boss fight though which takes the absolute piss and almost ruins everything.  The boss fight involves you being stuck in a small room with a ghost that you can't see without the camera being readied and once it takes a certain amount of damage it starts to frenzy.  When it's mad, you have exactly ONE chance to snap it for damage otherwise it will stun lock you to death and there is fuck all you can do about it.

This leads to the games next big problem which is death.  When you die, you don't get a simple game over or anything like that, you get sent to limbo.  Limbo is a black screen with a big white thing at the other end that you run into in order to revive.  The first time you die, the white thing is really close but each subsequent death makes it move further and further away.  This becomes a pain 2 or 3 deaths in because you just want to try the fucking boss again but now you have to wait so that the developer can give you tips for things you already know or thank you for buying the game, which they could have fucking done in the credits.  It's just obnoxious.

The other complaint I have about this game is that it's too fucking short.  I was expecting a little more since a great deal of time passed between the demo and the final release and the two are totally different.  Granted, the second act of the game is being provided as a free update but the game is like £15 on Steam and for a title this short and budget looking, £15 is a little steep.

To sum up, disappointment is what I feel for Dreadout.  The Indonesian folklore setting was enough to get me excited for the game back when the demo and the demo was fun enough for me to want to buy the full thing.  The full game however, is a mess of shitty puzzles and shitty combat and only takes a couple hours (if that) to beat.  That said, I'm still looking forward to act 2 because I'm hoping that they will learn from the mistakes of this one and make the next act much better.

I can't recommend Dreadout while act 1 is still the only thing available since it's pricy for what it is, a bit crap and very short.  If you see it in a steam sale for 75% off or something, absolutely grab it but until then you can play any of the much better horror games on Steam. 

Kuime [喰女]

I know I don't usually do posts about movies but this one was just SO DAMN GOOD that I feel like I have to write something.  Information about this movie is extremely hard to come by on the internet and any sites that do have any entries only have a vague couple of lines and a cast list.

Kuime is a Japanese supernatural horror movie about an actor who is filming some kind of Samurai type looking movie thing.  As far as I understood it he was the main character and his girlfriend was playing the lead female role.  It becomes apparent very early on in the movie that the relationship between our two main characters is not a good one and after filming he's going off and fucking around with another member of the cast.  It's from here that all the weird ghostly shit starts happening and stuff gets all kinds of crazy but if I try and outline any more of the plot I'm worried I might spoil something.

So last night I went to the cinema to see this movie and the majority of the film is spent watching the characters act out this traditional samurai drama thing and then a couple of scary things happen and the movie ends.  When the credits started to roll and the lights in the theatre got brighter our initial reaction was "what the fuck was that?!" Not because the movie was bad but because we had absolutely no clue what had just happened on screen.

Nothing made any goddamn sense to us.  Sure, it was a cool horror movie but it seemed like one of the most non-nonsensical movies ever with all these weird disconnected things happening between a movie production and a haunting.  But then it clicked for one of us and after doing some research I realised that Kuime might just be one of the best horror movies I've ever seen in my goddamn life.

The movie production that is being filmed in the movie is for an old Japanese ghost story called Yotsuya Kaidan.  Yotsuya Kaidan is a story from 1825 about betrayal, murder and ghostly revenge and once you understand that it's not just "some samurai drama" then all the strange shit going on in the movie makes a hell of a lot more sense.  Some understanding of how Japanese ghosts work may also be required to fully "get" the film, but once you do and everything clicks you can truly appreciate it for just how great it is.

I do understand how that last paragraph makes me sound.  It makes me sound like I'm saying "oooh, look at how much *I* understand about Japanese culture and stuff! fnar fnar fnar"  which is not how I want to sound but if I try and go into more detail I'm going to spoil everything and I don't want that.  You just need to see the damn thing first and then you'll understand what I'm getting at.

The only other problem with this film is the language.  I'd say my Japanese is pretty good but a lot of the time people are talking in ye' olde Japanese which makes things a little hard to follow at times.  Even the two native Japanese speakers I saw the movie with came out commenting on just how hard the language was so once again, I'm not trying to show off, shit is genuinely tough to understand.

It's kind of a shame though because I know that if any western critics get a hold of this movie they aren't going to like it.  When people watch a movie they just want to relax and watch a fucking movie.  They don't want to have to take a history lesson and a 1800s Japanese Language course just to enjoy a film.  I just happen to be really into Japanese ghost stories and folk tales so looking all this stuff up and having the movie fall into place for me was an absolute joy.

Kuime is not for everyone but if you like Japanese supernatural horror movies and you're willing to clue yourself in a little bit then it's absolutely fantastic.

Tau's 10 Minutes of Yaroze! Blitter Boy!

Well, here is another episode of the old Net Yaroze stuff.  This time we have Blitter Boy Operation: Monster Hall, enjoy!

Dreadout Demo (With Video)

First of all watch the video of me playing the Demo

Right, now to discuss some of my thoughts.

First of all, I was really impressed by the graphics, it looks real slick considering that we're dealing with an indie developed horror game.  The last indie developed horror game I played was Lone Survivor and that had fucking pixel art, so it's nice to see a small developer going the extra mile with the graphics.

Mechanically it works very well, the controls are nice and slick and easy to figure out without looking at the tutorial.  Basically if you have played a game on the PC ever, you will instantly be able to figure out how to control your character.

The puzzles in this game I both enjoy, but have sort of a problem with.  For example there is a bit near the start of the video where I get stuck for a short while because I wasn't able to figure out right away that I had to walk through the wall.  One thing I am glad about is that the game didn't tell me what to do, it let me work it out for myself.  That said I feel what it should have done is maybe made the hole in the wall pop out a bit, like having vines growing out from around the edges or something to indicate that it's something you can walk through.

The other problem I had, puzzle wise, was the candles.  There is an edit where I wasted a shit ton of time trying to figure out what to do, and this is because I think the objective was badly put forward.  What I was doing was trying to use my camera to light the other candles.  I was clicking around, pressing buttons on my keyboard to try and activate the flash and all sorts of shit.  I was even convinced at one point that there was something in the sky I had to snap in order to make the puzzle work.  At the end of the day it wasn't a puzzle, it was trying to make me go back and fight some enemies.

You see the problem is that a blue border pops up when you get near the candles, which means something important is there, so I was convinced for a long time that the key to those candles was in that area.  You could argue that the music was an indication of something being there that I had to go kill, but I thought the music was playing because of the big hangy dude.  If they had just played a sound of something crawling out of one of the nearby graves or ANYTHING.

Finally, is it scary?  Well to me, no, not really, but the potential is there.  The scene with the ghost facing the wall in the room was quite effective as you can probably tell from my reaction in the video, but I find there is no tension in the combat music when you fight the dudes in the graveyard.  The dudes are slow and crap, probably because they are there to teach you about combat, but the sound design for these encounters is a little weak.  Take Silent Hill for example, where the monsters sound truly horrible and the music that plays does a good job of making you panic. 

It's a good demo worth checking out and there is the potential for something really good here I think,  With it just being a demo and no release date in sight, I'm hoping that they will be able to put out a finish product that will rock our socks and fill our pants with large volumes of wee.