Onimusha 2 is Insane

 

I'm a big fan of the first Onimusha game.  To sum it up in a pithy, not quite accurate way for anyone who’s never played it, it’s essentially classic Resident Evil but with samurai.  It’s one of those games that I return to at least once a year or so to take up the blade as Samanosuke and show the demons of Gifu Castle what for.  Despite my deep love for the first game though, I have extremely limited experience with the sequels.  I played 2 and 3 briefly at launch, never beat them and then largely forgot about them.  I briefly watched the final moments of Oni 3 in a video game bar a few years ago but I was off my face drunk and not really paying attention so I can’t tell you anything outside of “Jean Reno was there” and you can tell that from the box.  

So recently I decided to make a change to this lapse in my gaming experience and I sat my ass down and played through Onimusha 2 and I did not quite get the experience I was expecting at all.  I hesitate to call the game “bad” per se, but maybe I’ll sink as low as “weird and annoying” 

Right out of the gate, from the moment you hit start the vibes are just off.  Onimusha 1 was a different beast compared to Resident Evil but the DNA was still there.  The horror elements didn't really hit with the fantastical designs and stilted English voice work but an effort was being made.  Oni 2 kicks off with an honest to goodness anime OP but with the vibes of a period drama shown on Japanese tv at 1pm for the housewives circa 1995.  This vibe sticks throughout the whole game with an extremely corny and forced romantic sub plot which is occasionally broken up when it remembers what it’s supposed to be a sequel to.  

The weirdness continues as you are greeted with a gold counter on your menu and the ability to gift items to a number of side characters, which by itself is fine but what makes it weird is that you are totally locked out of the system about 2 hours in.  My 6000 gold from the start of the game sat in my inventory untouched until Nobunaga ate shit at the end.  The other thing is that neglecting this system, because I thought I could engage with it later, completely FUCKED my play through.  I found Onimusha 2 to be brutally difficult, something I wasn’t expecting considering the first game is a free clear.  The ending stats showed me, however, that my neglect for the friendship system locked about half the game out for me which is cool from a replayability standpoint but bad from a first play stress standpoint.  I struggled HARD with the final boss due to a lack of healing resources, a lack I would not have had if the ninja could have opened the trick chests or having extra scenes which I assume would have had more meds and herbs.  

Despite the easily missable game systems, the moment to moment sword play was great.  Basically the same as Oni 1 but the enemies in this game are actually sort of threatening and not just piñatas full of exp to farm as I run from one boss to another.  That said though, the bosses are insufferably shit, feeling mostly unfair rather than posing any kind of interesting challenge.  The worst being the weird pig woman with the umbrella who has attacks that I swear cannot be blocked and does insane damage unless you’ve been pumping your armor and completely ignoring your damage output.  The final form of the final boss also just drops the sword play to turn into a boss fight from Sin and Punishment (N64) but with bad controls which was certainly something I wasn’t wanting or enjoying 

The cutscenes are where things get really unhinged though.  I want to call the English voice work terrible but it’s SO bad that I have to wonder if it’s actually being done on purpose and if that’s true I have to wonder why this game is being treated as such a joke.  The game as many laugh out loud “what the fuck?!” moments that need to be seen to be appreciated such as any scene with the foppish umbrella haircut demon swordsman.  Introduced as what I thought as comic relief, harasses you until the end of the game as a main antagonist where you then have a climactic duel with him in the penultimate area.  The one that got the biggest laugh out of me is when Nobunaga’s first form goes down and he shoots some orbs into a slot machine that spins and then turns into an elephant.  Not a sentence I thought I’d be able to write about Onimusha of all things.  I hate that cliche gag of “were they high when they made this?!” But SOMETHING was being abused in both the writing room and the office of the people making the cutscenes, I’m sure of it.

Overall, I like 2 significantly less than 1.  That said though, I’m excited to go and revisit it now equipped with the hindsight of a first play through.  The weirdness of the presentation is something I don’t think I’ll ever get over but I’ll be interested to replay and re-evaluate in about a year.  Watch this space 

Pathetic Imitations

 I've put some real stinkers on this years horror marathon playlist and one of them that really stood out for having a particular odor was FOBIAL: St Dinfna Hotel.  I'm not going to spend this blog post going into the details of just specifically how terrible it was, that's another post for another time, but not only was it a bad game, it was also a pathetic imitation of something much better.

We live in an age where remakes and remasters seem to be all the rage, constantly barraged with updated versions of shit from games past and when those aren't being shoved into our faces by developers and publishers there are constant talks of what "deserves" a remake (whatever that means) and what "needs" a remake.  Pathetic discourse for pathetic people who have buried deep into their comfort zones and built nuclear bunkers so that they don't have to suffer the torment of playing something new or from an unfamiliar IP.

But one thing we don't seem to pay much attention to is the imitators, the weird malformed cousin of the remaster.  Not part of a well established thing but copying the well established thing closely enough that the people will still clap their hands together like seals and fork out the money for it.  It happens a lot in the indie sphere with a great many games cribbing from things like Zelda, Metroid or even just copying whatever big indie game came out in the last six months.  If I had a dollar for every Vampire Survivor clone that exists then I'd probably have enough money to pay off the rest of my mortgage.  Again, a post for another time but I do feel the indie scene does have a bit of a creativity problem going on.  

Not that this ALWAYS results in terrible bullshit.  Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia springs to mind with it being just a straight up, slightly weebier, clone of Shin Megami Tensei 1+2 but clearly done by someone with a lot of love and passion for the older MegaTen games so the imitation feels sincere.  Not a quick way to make a fast dollar off two established franchises with a fan game but someone who clearly likes Touhou a fair bit making a game in a style that we don't get anymore just because they like it so much.  Go check that game out, it's pretty fukken neato.  

I suppose you would call it a tribute, rather than an imitation

But then there's FOBIA: St Dinfna Hotel, a pathetic attempt to make money off the fact that Resident Evil 7 exists by a studio of inept, creatively bankrupt morons.  Everything about that game from the graphics to the UI to the gameplay feels like a cheap knockoff of what RE7 was doing.  The very epitome of the "we have Resident Evil 7" at home meme that you see so often around the internet.  Unlike the Touhou game, it seems to have been made by not only cynical idiots out to make a quick buck from the back of another IP, but also a group of people who have ONLY played RE7 and literally nothing else. I will, for now, refrain from going into massive detail but FOBIA is the exact kind of game to cause veins to pop in heads with just how hollow it is and it's just one of many offenders that have popped up thanks to platforms like Steam and Itch.

Another, slightly less (but only slightly) offensive example is one I'm currently playing at time of writing called Hollowbody.  A game that at first glance looks like it might be doing its own thing and then quickly devolves into a particularly shallow Silent Hill clone that isn't so much bad as it is just painfully boring.  Usually I say that boring games are worse than bad games because at least anger is an emotion and art should be there to illicit emotions but there's something especially grating about a developer that copies another games format so closely only to still make the interactive equivalent of wallpaper paste.  A group of people who played Silent Hill 2 exactly once, followed it up with a single viewing of 28 Weeks Later and then churned out a low effort game because those two things made money, so surely that will too.  It's pathetic to see developers engaging in this trash behaviour and its even more pathetic to see consumers giving it the thumbs up in a steam review.

Being inspired by another person or studios work can lead to some really great things.  Some Lost in Vivos, some Okami's, some fuckin Undertale type shit but making those kind of games requires not only love for the thing you're imitating, but love for the medium itself.  The two games I talked about here are just recent examples of a problem that has existed since the dawn of games, but I'm begging just a few more indie devs to maybe try at least a little harder.  Play a little more widely, go experience some things that aren't games, draw from many things to make something cool instead of just copying the flavor of the month to try and line your pockets.  Steam is already full of shit, stop adding to it

Black Summer: How not to do a Zombie show

 

Since becoming a father I have spent a great deal of time doing laps of my living room while rocking the baby for naps and the like.  During that time, since I can't play games quite as much as I'd like, I've been catching up with my watch list on Netflix and Amazon and I've seen some good shit.  Better Call Saul, Peaky Blinders (except season 6 that shit was anus), Everything Everywhere All At Once, Juni Ito: Maniac, all in all it's been a pretty good time.  But then I decided to fire up a zombie series called Black Summer and holy moly, this isn't just the worst thing I've watched while on baby duty, it's maybe one of the worst things I've seen just in general.

First broadcast via Netflix in 2019 and apparently some kind of spinoff of some other crap sounding show called Z Nation, Black Summer follows a bunch of characters as they try to survive their way through a zombie apocolypse in order to get to some kind of sports stadium where apparently it's safe.  I'm currently half way through the first season of the show and it's pissing me off to such a degree that I can't help but come here to complain about it.

The premise is you're average zombie survival affair.  Survivors and zombies and assholes for your standard issue "are you humans the real monsters after all?!" nonsense that comes with most zombie media but that's fine, I was pretty much expecting it to be that way going in.  What I wasn't expecting is for the writing of the show to be THIS fucking horrendous on all fronts.  You could legitimately use this show in a course for aspiring film students on what not to do when making a horror show.

Each episode consists of your standard zombie fare where characters go to a place, get fucked somehow and then try to survive but the problem with Black Summer is that the characters seem to be sometimes just willfully fucking themselves or just opting to be immensely fucking stupid at all times.  For example there's one part where they end up in a school which has been overrun by murderous teenagers.  That setup in itself is kind of stupid but there is a scene where a standoff happens, one guy has a gun train on a group of kids, they have a gun pointed back at them and a hostage.  The hostage in question is deaf so there's a bit of an exchange and they agree to let him go in exchange for their gun.  The leader of the teens passes his gun to a small boy and says "shoot him if he moves" while they make the change but the hostage in question is deaf, so he starts to walk where the small boy just blasts him in the back, killing him.  At this point the boys start to flee and they just let them fucking go.  The characters were going on in the previous episode about how they needed weapons and these kids clearly have weapons and just killed your friend and instead of gunning them down and taking their shit they just let them go.  This is then proceeded by the dumbest zombie chase of all time where characters just opt to leave doors wide open for the rage zombie to chase them through and make the shittest attempts I have ever seen in this type of media to block his path.  These are fast rage zombies by the way and their ability to tank bullets seems to be based on how  "tense" the scene needs to be rather than having any sort of consistent rules. 

Speaking of inconsistent rules, in the same episode there is another character who is running away from a zombie, again in the dumbest way imaginable who has a very clearly fucked up right hand.  It's covered in blood and after escaping the zombie he tries to start a car and has to clumsily reach over to the ignition with his left hand because his right is unusable.  These scene ends with him finding a mostly untouched supermarket after escaping the zombie where it then shows a title card and then he's walking around the store completely fucking healed.  I would have been willing to accept that he found some medical supplies either in a back room or in the asiles of the store and patched himself up off camera but there's no bandage or any evidence of that kind of thing at all.  It's like the entire sequence of him getting injured was written way after the fact OR, and given how stupid the show is I'm assuming this to be the case, they fucking forgot.  The lack of attention to any kind of detail or consistency just makes the entire production feel lazy. 

What's worse is that zombie features are such a well trodden road that the rules are basically written for you and barely any effort has to be put in for this kind of thing.  Hell, even games like Resident Evil were getting this shit right in 1996.  In RE1 the characters split up because they don't know what they are getting into and they are trained soldiers, in RE2 they get split up by unfortunate circumstance and in Black Summer they split up as if that idiot gas from Cabin in the Woods is just part of the air in that region of America.  When you're show can be compared to original Resident Evil and RE comes out on top as being the more intelligently put together piece of media, you have a BIG problem.

It's the exact issue I had with that stupid fucking movie called A Quiet Place.  Where all the "tension" of the show is generated by characters being stupid rather than any kind of clever scenario writing.  Despite pissing me off greatly I'm going to finish both seasons and if it magically gets better I'll come back and write a big apology to it but I imagine that it's only going to get worse from here.  It got cancelled after 2 seasons anyway so the chance of it getting any better is 0%

The Last of Us Part 1 Is Pointless (and stupid)

 

Oh boy here we fucking go again. 

I remember when The Last of Us: Remastered came out on PS4 and I had all sorts of nasty things to say about that because is there anything more obviously money grubbing than "remastering" a game only a year after the release of the inital version?  Well history does like to repeat itself as yet another lazy cash grab from the hacks at Naughty Dog, who haven't done anything other than bottom of the barrel, shallow dross since the early 2000s I might add, are doing yet ANOTHER version of the first Last of Us game.

See, there is nothing inherently wrong with a remastering of a game as evidenced by the release of Resident Evil on the Gamecube. 

 When this came out it was cool to see because there was a 6 year gap between the release of the original and this one and in that time there were HUGE leaps in graphical tech and game play conventions.  We went from the game having cereal box people walking around on low poly pre-renders to models that actually looked like people walking around some really high detail environments.  On top of that the game was changed up a little with some additional mechanics, new areas and new bosses and a few other things.  When this came out it was absolutely incredible to play.

The problem with The Last of Us Part 1 is that even though there is technically a bigger year gap (9 years) the tech hasn't jumped up quite as dramatically as it had back then and game play conventions have become a homogenised mess that even the PS3 version back then was very much playing into.  If what I've read about the game is true also there is no extra content or nothing particularly special about it so it's literally a case of throwing it into an up-res machine, spitting it out and charging $70 for it.  It's disgraceful, lazy bullshit and the fact that anyone is even remotely excited for absolutely boggles my mind.  

If I'm being really honest, if a company MUST wallow in their back catalogue I'd rather they remake a game entirely rather than just remaster it and slap a new price tag on it.

For example I'm much more a fan of something like the Final Fantasy VII Remake because is's basically an entirely new game.  The good thing about a remake over a remaster is that it's not really a replacement for the original game and therefore feels like almost an entirely new experience.  If I want to go back to my 3 disc semi-turn based RPG with Duplo people on the PS1 then I can pop that game into my PS1 and enjoy that.  Then if I want to play a stealth-sequel retelling of those events with real time combat and modern graphics, I can play that and now both the old and new retain equal value. The same thing goes for the Resi 2 Remake.  If I want to enjoy some classic zombie murdering with tank controls, RE2 is right there for me to enjoy and if I want the same thing but a bit more modern then I can fire up the remake and enjoy both the game and the ugliest 3D burger ever produced by an artist ever made.

If The Last of Us Part 1 had waited, let's say, 10 more years to come out.  When the first game was nothing more than a memory in some old mans mind and then he could re-live that memory in 2032 turbo-graphic-o-vision then I wouldnt mind.  If the game had been added too, or reworked in some way akin to REMake then I also wouldnt have minded.  But as it stands The Last of Us Part 1 seems like a soulless, lazy, cash grab pile of bullshit because Naughty Dog KNOW they can milk your comfort zone to cash and they are willing to do it, as hard as possible, with absolutely no remorse

Shameful bullshit

Sweet Home

 

Sweet Home for the NES has quite the bit of buzz surrounding it with it being a sort of inspiration for the Resident Evil franchise and finally I got to play it.  This is not to be confused with the recently released Sweet Home TV series on Netflix which is a Korean drama about a monster based post apocalypse, I made that mistake when looking through my listings but more on that another day.  

Sweet Home is an RPG about a group of people going into a haunted mansion to try and un-haunt it.  To do so you must solve a bunch of puzzles and fight a bunch of monsters gaining strength through levels along the way so you can exorcise the big bast ghost at the end.  It's a NES game for fucks sake, the plot isn't that involved.

What is quite involved however is the gameplay.  At the start of the game you have 5 characters, all of which you can name yourself.  Each one of those 5 characters has an item that is specific to them.  For example one guy has a lighter for opening paths, one guy has a medkit for curing ailments and one gal has a key for opening locked doors.  On top of that each character gets 2 free inventory slots and a weapon slot so managing equipment and puzzle McGuffins/healing is an integral part of the gameplay.  But, to make things just a little more intense, the game features perma-death.  So if one of your guys falls in battle, they are GONE, for good.  You won't find yourself stuck because the game provides regular versions of the character specific items so you can progress, but if that happens you are two inventory slots down, a weaker party AND you have to manage your shit even more meticulously than before.

The puzzles Sweet Home range from insultingly obvious to so obtuse I have no idea how the fuck you are supposed to solve them without a guide.  There's one bit in particular where you have to use the look command on a fountain and on the second or third try the fountain starts spurting blood which changes a thing for progression.  What I imagine most people do there is look at it once, decide it doesn't do anything and then get stuck for HOURS until they look at a guide and find out they have to spam the look command a few more times for it to work.

Overall though Sweet Home is a pretty good game and you can see the little aspects of it that were lifted for Resident Evil, almost like looking at the rings on an old tree stump.  The inventory, the way items are managed (identical to RE0 pretty much) and even the little animation that plays when you unlock a door for the first time.  Yeah, it's got some jank to it but it's not that long either so go give it a try. 

Universal Studios Japan 2019 Halloween Roundup

If you've been following the Twitter (@Taurinensis) account you'll know that I've just returned from a trip to Osaka after going to see the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan(a while ago now actually since I got delayed posting this) .  I've talked about these nights before on the blog so this time I'm going to just give a quick roundup of all the attractions I saw this year.

Space Fantasy The Ride: Black Hole

Space Fantasy is one of the roller coasters at USJ and puts riders in a rotating car that will twist as the coaster falls and turns.  Usually the ride is all cutesy but entering it during the Halloween event gives you some kind of story with a scientist that is using a black hole to open a dimensional rift or something.  The ride itself is just Space Fantasy but with all the lights turned off.  The exact same ride only this time you can't see shit and there's a voice in the background saying stuff like "Ha ha! I have you now!" and stuff like that.  Maybe if you had never been on the ride before and had no idea what was coming it might be exciting but otherwise it was just kind of "meh"

Area 51

A walk through "horror maze" that was hosted inside the Backdraft ride.  Starts with a guy coming out telling you that there's an alien invasion and that you have to escape through a forest only for him to be gunned down by some woman who then informs you he's been taken over by an alien parasite and now you have to escape to their base at the end.  Interestingly, only half the backdraft ride is used and you get taken out of a back door for the "maze" part of the attraction which has alien dudes following you around the place.  When you get to the base it turns out that it's been completely overrun and you move through alien infested corridors to the exit.  At the end you mash a bunch of buttons with some randos on a panel and save the earth.  Not bad but even it's attempts at jump scares were kind of weak although this is probably by design since the maze opened early in the morning.

Cult of Chucky

A similar walk through horror house to Area 51 but with the intensity ramped up a little bit since it didn't open until the evening, standard fare.

Blood Legend

Blood Legend was a short horror movie in the same "4D" theatre that they host that Shrek show in, 4D being the gimmick of seats moving around and blasting air at you when certain things on screen happen.  The show starts by recanting the legend of actual serial killer Elizabeth Bathory and then plays a movie about two girls who are on holiday in Hungry.  The two girls end up visiting her estate under the impression its some kind of museum and then get chased around a bit.  Fairly standard stuff but I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Bathory is the main villain in Castlevania Bloodlines although I might be mistaken

Biohazard: The Extreme

This was the attraction in particular that I went all the way to Osaka for.  Before you can ride the thing you have to go get a ticket to book a time slot and what I was surprised to see is that there was a "Leon Route" and a "Claire Route" and then whole thing was very clearly styled after the Resident Evil 2 remake.  We did both routes on this trip starting with Leon.  Once again, it's just a standard haunted house type affair but seeing all the scenes from Resident Evil 2 remade for the attraction was kind of cool.  There's a few zombies stomping around that jump at you as you walk through but eventually you get stopped by a staff member who warns you about a creature that's sensitive to sound so you have to be quiet.  You are then led down a corridor with a Licker in it and once out you come to a corridor with a big glass window in it.  This is where the two routes are different as Mr X comes out on one end and then either Leon or Claire will pop out of the other, yell at you to escape and then have a little tussle with the big lad.  You go through some more rooms with some more monsters until you get told that your going to have to fight whatever is chasing you and you are led into a room with a bunch of light(?) guns.  You grab one and start blasting and the enemy on screen which changes depending on which character you are.  I think you can beat it and escape but both times we did it the group didn't do enough damage so it popped up during our escape sequence and we got a "You have died" message.  All in all, a good bit of fanwank if your familiar with Resident Evil but my wife also seemed to enjoy it a fair bit and she doesn't know anything about the series

It may be a little on the pricy side but the Halloween night at Universal is a pretty good time.  I'll probably go again next year when they have more Resi goodness for me.

Game Idea: Survival Horror Surgery

So I’ve been watching a guy on YouTube recently who goes by the name of NakeyJakey. He’s one of those sort of analysis, video essay channels and the guy who hosts it is very funny, just search up his name and check him out. On his channel he has a series of videos called “Games that should bang” where he talks about two games that have ideas in them that he thinks would work well together. So while I was at work spacing out into my monitor on my slow day I had my own games that should bang idea and I’d like to share it with you. 

Survival Horror is getting a bit of time in the spotlight as of late with the success of the remake of Resident Evil 2 and its well deserved since it’s an extremely good remake. One genre however that doesn’t get enough love is the surgery simulator. Surgeon Simulator on PC gave people a fair bit of entertainment but the true king of the genre is Trauma Center. 

Trauma Center is a game where you play as a surgeon and it starts out fairly mundane but at the end of the game you’re fighting super parasites, diffusing bombs and fighting global bio terrorism, it’s great. It was originally released for the DS but had some great entries on the Wii and one on the Wii U, if you can get your hands on them you should absolutely try them out. 

So how do you get a game out of a survival horror and an action puzzle surgery game? Well if we imagine it as if Trauma Center and Resident Evil has a cross over game, I imagine it as a sort of maybe open world games where S.TA.R.S accompanied by Derek Stiles would go into an infected area where they might be a person or group of people infected with T, G, Las Plagas, I dunno and you have to uninfect them. You’d either have to escort the doctor, the sick or clear out an area Resi 4, 5, RE2make style and then round of the mission with a Trauma Center style surgery sequence. As you go you’d have to find samples to do medical research into cures or vaccines to stay ahead of whatever the threat was and maybe other parties would be attacking or trying to steal from your home base. There could even be big RE style bosses where instead of having a big glowing fuck me eye on their shoulder, you’d have to stun them and then get them under the knife in a sort of tag battle type deal. 

To be honest the idea is probably shit, I’m no developer, but I just want to see more games like Trauma Center and if there was some wacky cross over with something that has a plot (very loosely) based in pharmaceutical science it might work quite well. Feel free to steal the idea and make it not shit, just gimme an Easter egg somewhere in the game

Gaming Is The Best Platform For Horror

So as you may know, I'm a big fan of the horror genre.  Doesn't matter if it's a horror book, movie, game or whatever, if it's horror I want to at least check it out.  However out of all the mediums that the genre of horror can come in I feel that video gaming is the best way for it to delivered.

That's not to say that the other mediums aren't fit for horror.  A good horror story in the hands of a talented author like Steven King or Koji Suzuki can do a fantastic job of freaking you out.  Koji Suzuki is a particularly good example for this because video games of Ring suck massive ass and the imagery that my head conjured up for the cursed tape based on his descriptions in the novel did a much better job of making me feel uneasy than the movies depiction of it.  There are also TONS of great horror movies, way too many to even attempt to list off.  I have a friend and every time we go drinking together we talk for HOURS about different horror movies each time.

But gaming though, gaming is special.  It takes all these things like these mediums have, the writing, visuals, music etc and makes YOU actively be a part of it.  You're the one that has to fight for survival and brave the nightmares ahead.  You can watch a movie like Friday the 13th where you can just watch someone run away from the murderous killer or you can play a game like Amnesia where YOU have to run away from the monster lurking in the shadows.  If you play something like Silent Hill you can all the excellent parts from the other mediums AND you have the horror compounded by the fact that you are the one that has to navigate your hero though.  You're not just a passive observer in the terror, you're right there experiencing it with the character.

Also because gaming is an interactive medium it can use this to its advantage to further enhance the fear that you feel.  Resident Evil did this early on by turning the games save system against you.  In most games you just save as much as you want but in RE if you didn't have an Ink Ribbon then tough shit, and your first time through you never knew when you were going to get your next spool.  Fatal Frame does it by forcing the player to get right up in the grill of the ghosts that you're fighting.  Not only that, if you want to really succeed at the combat, you have to wait until right before it's going to hit you.  Amnesia did it by making the player freak out if they were to stare at the creature for too long.  It's not like a movie where someone might say "Don't look at that thing you'll go mad" and you just have to sit there going "wow I sure hope he doesn't look at that creature", the responsibility for the characters sanity is entirely on you.

All this said though, I'd much rather have an excellently crafted horror novel or a well made horror movie over a mediocre or shit horror game.  I'd much rather have a copy of Nightmares and Dreamscapes in my hand or The Shining on my TV rather than some shit like The Evil Within or Outlast.  But when a horror game does get it just right it really is unforgettable.

Silly Gaming Habits

The great thing about gaming is that if a small group of people play a game then they'll usually play it in slightly different ways.  Weather it's going stealth or guns blazing in Deus Ex, genocide or pacifist in a game like Undertale or even something as simple as party selection in an RPG, everyone experiences a game in a slightly different way.

That said, there's a couple of weird habits that I have when playing games that I think are shared between quite a large number of players no matter what your play style is.  So because I'm feeling a bit lazy today here's a numbered list of weird habits I have while gaming 

1) Item Hoarding 

This is a bad gaming habit that I feel A LOT of people have.  Probably the most prevalent when playing a survival horror game but present in all genres.  Let's say your playing Resident Evil and you find a sick grenade launcher and a handful of grenade rounds.  That's going to come in handy for when you fight a boss or come across one of those Hunters right? Fuck no! What if you need it for later?! That constant worry that if you blow through all your cool shit now you'll make the next part an almost impossible struggle.  

What this results in is you getting to the end of the game with stacks full of all the best shit and the credits roll with all the cool stuff rotting in a box or at the bottom of your pockets.  This is disgustingly true for almost every RPG I've played.  I end up killing the big bad guy and he goes down in a ball of flame while my inventory spills over with max heals and other useful crap that I never used "just in case".  Even know as I play Dark Souls 3 I have so much ember I could probably use 3 in all the remaining boss fights and still have some left over but there's something in the back of my mind that just won't let me use them.  

2) Rounded Item Numbers 

This one is extra stupid because it doesn't affect ANYTHING but if I don't do it I get a deep feeling of disgust for myself.  

Let's say you're playing an RPG and you come across a town.  You go to the shop and they are selling  potions.  You look into your inventory, you're carrying like 63 of the things and you haven't needed to pop one in a LONG time.  Well that doesn't matter because now you HAVE to buy two more to make that 65 or you ain't ever leaving this town.  In extreme cases even 65 is no good, and you'll either have to buy 7 more to make it 70 

I knew one guy with such an extreme case of this that when playing Final Fantasy 1 together I tried to leave a town with 19 potions in my inventory and he violently wrestled the controller off me to backtrack into town to buy 1 more because "it's just not right".  Never fuck with a man and his supply numbers 

3) Multiple Saving
I feel that this habit comes from the same part of the brain that's responsible for making you horde items.  You've finished a session in whatever you're playing and you go to save.  You hit save and you watch it until the "save complete" sign comes up.  Then you reach for the power button but you stop dead right before you push it....."did I just save?"  So you sit back down and do it again and this process can repeat a number of times before you're fully convinced that your progress has been properly recorded.

This creates an extra layer of mental torture when you play a game that doesn't have traditional saving and just auto saves everywhere.  You see the little icon for the save and you turn off the system but you just can't trust it.  You spend the whole day wondering if it really did save and it eats at your sanity until you get home only to realise that everything was totally fine.  I've had situations where I've turned off a game like that, only to return to the console about 5 minutes later and powered it back on again JUST to make sure.

4) 100%ism
Now if you're the kind of person who buys only one game, completes it fully and then trades it in then congratulations you're some kind of mutant that needs to be captured and tested upon by the government and also this point doesn't apply to you.

Many however suffer from the dreaded backlog.  Games sitting on a shelf or in an online library just waiting to be played but you can't yet because you've not finished the X amount of other games that came before it.  A backlog is made worse if you're the kind of person who's obsessed with seeing a little 100% marker or getting the platinum achievement or whatever for whatever game you buy.

Personally, my backlog is so huge that I can't bring myself to even consider buying certain games because I know that if I start playing it my backlog will never progress or, even worse, I'll never get around to playing it.  Breath of the Wild is a great example of this since I really want to own my own copy of it but I know that I'll chase that 100% so obsessively that the hundreds of games in my steam library alone will continue to sit, unplayed, for god knows how long.

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These are the ones that plague my life but if you have any other weird ticks or habits when it comes to your gaming let me know in a comment! 

A Change of Plan (Resident Evil Marathon)

Last Saturday I did my Resident Evil "marathon" and quite frankly the whole thing was a disgusting failure.  I tried my best but I didn't even get to the end of Resident Evil 2 before sadly logging off and going to drown my sorrows in alcoholic beverages at a bar near my house.

There's no real excuse for it other than the fact that I have become complete shit at these games.  I grossly over estimated my own skill and memory while grossly under estimating the overall difficulty of these titles.  From a donation stand point I'd say the thing was a success though, there were a number of donators who gave generously despite my failures and a decent amount of money was raised at the end of the day.  I still have cash donations to calculate and transfer so I'll save the end amount for a tweet.

However, I'm down but certainly not out.  As a way to make it up for all the people who donated for this thing to happen, the "marathon" will continue but instead of being done all at once it will be spread over multiple normal streams.  The twitch channel will now be showing nothing but Resident Evil games all the way up to RE0.  That means you'll get to see Resi 6 and 0 for free.  I might try and juggle it with some Final Fantasy 9 as well but the core focus will be on Resident Evil games for the foreseeable future.

Once again thanks for the donation and hopefully the next marathon won't fail as hard.

Resident Evil Marathon! Dates and Details

A while ago the donation incentive for the Resident Evil marathon got met and now that we're finally into October it seems appropriate to finally get around to doing this thing!

Right now the date for the marathon will be the 22nd October and there is no real set time for when it will end.  The idea is that I will be playing Resident Evil's 1-4 back to back on Stream.  This event however is the fist event I'm doing with a sort of stretch incentive.  If another £100 is raised before the end of Resident Evil 4 then I'll add Resident Evil 5 to that list.  If another £200 is raised after that, I'll suffer through the shitfest that is RE6 and then if another £300 is raised after that then we can get Resident Evil 0.  So if you want to see one extra good Resi you're going to have to donate for two shit ones first!

I'll also see into adding prizes for donators just so you guys have a little extra incentive to add those extra games to the list!  Keep the 22nd in your calendar because it should be a laugh riot!

Not Dead

If you've been paying attention then you may have realized there hasn't actually been all that much content recently.  This is due to a mix of a number of things for example my work is currently in it's busiest season of the year and due to this I come home every evening as a worn out husk in no condition to even be standing up let alone writing articles.  Also Pokemon Go came out in Japan which has eaten up a quite frankly embarrassing amount of my time but that's something we'll talk about later.  These were the two big reasons but other things have prevented me from really doing anything more than the occasional stream.

I thought I'd touch base with this short article because a lack of content is a sure fire way for the Alzheimer's Society to get no money and we don't want that.  Luckily, the lack of posting DOESN'T mean that things haven't been going through my head in regards for stuff to do once I find time and energy.

For example, the Ozma donation incentive for the Final Fantasy 9 stream was met so you can be sure that I'll be suffering my way through hours of chocobo hot and cold in order to bring you that epic battle.  Also the Resident Evil marathon where I play the first 4 games in the series back to back has also been met and as mentioned in a previous post the stretch goals to extend that to 5, 6 and 0 have been now added to the donation page too!

The other piece of good news is that in Japan there's a holiday known as Obon coming up, which means that I essentially have a week of bugger all to do outside of gaming and the occasional bit of cooking for the missus.  This means I'll be able to catch up with my shit and HOPEFULLY have a daily stream of content to you guys once more!

Thanks for the understanding and continued support! 

Euro Truck Marathon Roundup and Resident Evil Marathon!

Well it happened and this time it was much more successful!  I actually made it through the entire 24 hour period, with a spot of drunk driving and there was even some other fun stuff like a blindfolded drive which I plan to upload as soon as I have the energy to scour my way through the footage for the section on twitch.

Anyway this is just a quick post to tell you that roughly £282 was raised for the Alzheimer's Society.  About £50 of that money was donated in cash in Japanese Yen so I'm just waiting for my credit card month to tick over before putting that into the charity but that should get done in about a week or so if all things go to plan.

I'd just like to give huge thank yous to all of those to dropped into the stream and watched and to the people who donated during the marathon!  You guys are awesome!

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

A few days ago the incentive for the Resident Evil marathon was met!  This means I'll be playing Resident Evils 1,2,3 and 4 back to back on Stream.  I'm also planning on adding a sort of stretch donation incentive to add 5, 6 and 0 to the mix so if those get met I'll be playing those too!

I've not got a date ready for that yet so watch this space but as of right now I'm hoping I can shoot for October and make it some kind of Halloween event.  Keep an eye on the blog for more info and the incentives page to see those stretch goals!

[Mediasplat] Biohazard 2: The Escape

So recently I went down to Osaka and checked out the Biohazard 2: The Escape event being held at Universal Studios Japan!  I wrote about the experience over at Mediasplat so click the link below and check it out!

https://mediasplat.net/identity-gaming-biohazard-2-the-escape/

No spoilers though, I don't want to get in trouble

Item Hoarding: The Dumbest Habit

There's a lot of weird habits that you gain when you play video games for long enough.  Both in and out of game, an enthusiast may have some kind of habit that some may find to be a little OCD or a bit strange.  Like my biggest weird thing is keeping a spreadsheet of all the games I've beaten since 2011 and how many times I've beaten them.  I dunno why I do that shit but I find it sort of enjoyable to see that list get bigger and bigger over time.

Anyway, one habit that almost all gamers have is item hoarding and when you take a minute to think it's a really weird habit to have.  What I mean by this is you'll be playing a game and you'll be getting things like ammo or supplies but you'll be doing everything in your power to NOT use them.  The game is giving you these things for the express purpose of using them to give you a better chance against whatever enemies there are but someone who suffers from video game item hoarding syndrome will stubbornly not use it at all, even up to and after the final battle.

Resident Evil 4 is a good example of this.  I might buy a Shotgun or find a bunch of ammo or grenades and shit and how do I try to kill all the enemies?  1 bullet to the head, round house kick followed by knife slashes until they stop moving, rinse and repeat as often as possible.  It's not even like ammo is hard to come by in RE4, it's more like I'm hard wired to use as little resources as possible. 

This habit isn't just exclusive to one genre either, I find myself doing it in almost every game imaginable.  In FPS games, especially classic ones, I'll be using the shitty pistol or melee combat as much as possible so I don't have to use my big guns with the scarce ammo.  RPGs?  All those full healing items will sit in my inventory for the entire game and never see any use even during the final battle.  Survival Horror? Better run away from everything because those bullets and healing ain't going anywhere. 

These things are designed to help me through the game, designed to make my life easier but I stubbornly decide not to.  It's led to many a moment where I'll waste a great amount of time on a boss or section of a game just because I'm so worried about whats after that I'm trying to save my good shit until I really REALLY need it.  It's a dumb habit that I'm sure that I'll never shake for as long as I game.

What Happened To Resident Evil

Resident Evil is one of those series that, among many others, has fallen almost completely into the trash.  This is a shame because despite its absolutely retarded plot and writing, they were amazing games.  

Resident Evil, released initially in 1996 in Japan under the title Biohazard, was the game that arguably put survival horror on the map.  You played as one of the members from S.T.A.R.S, a crack team sent to investigate some bullshit but things quickly go bad and you find yourself trapped in a zombie infested mansion. 

Resources like health, ammo and even saving items were limited so it was all very tense.  Once you progressed and even more horrible creatures started to stalk the mansion things got really frightening, at least the first time round. 

The game later spawned 3 sequels and a prequel that were great and a whole bunch more that aren't so great.  It all started to go downhill with Resident Evil 4 

Now don't get me wrong, RE4 was  great but it caused a shift in the series and arguably the genre that turned it to complete shit.  

The intensity of the first 3 games was gone and we were left with more of an action game with bombastic set pieces rather than a survival horror game.  They still made an effort to keep it at least a little horror but with RE 5 onward it's like they just gave up 

Now we are left with mediocre action games and a series of shit movies.  The originals have been ported and remade out the ass so it's easy to go back but I can't help but feel it's a shame that we will probably never get that old survival horror that we started with ever again 

Why Did Horror Get So Loud?

The Evil Within
Any Resident Evil after 4
Silent Hill Downpour
Alone in the Dark (new one)
Dying Light (maybe)
Outlast

What do these games and many others have in common?  Well of course, they are all horror games but they are also all very loud, frenetic and not very scary.  The game that inspired this post in particular was The Evil Within and my experience with Dying Light is a little limited but the point still stands.

So think way back to the days of Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  These were the big motherfuckers that made survival horror popular.  There were similar games such as Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark that did the whole horror thing too but I didn't know too many people who were even aware of those games back in the day.

What all these games had in common was that in order to put their horror forward they would try to build atmosphere.  A lot of this was achieved in the audio design, especially for Silent Hill and it was effective.  There are a lot of moments in a game like Resident Evil where the soundtrack is completely cut and all you have is a quiet room, some distant shuffling and an occasional moan.  That shit was effective for building tension as to what was round the next corner.  When shit got real the music would pick up and help generate that sense of panicked fear rather than the more subtle tense fear to be found in other parts of the game.

But it seems that the genre has lost that sense of subtlety and it suffers as a result.  I'm not saying that something like Resident Evil 4 is bad but it's not scary anymore.  When I play games like Silent Hill, old Resident Evil and Project Zero, there is still a little bit of uneasiness that creeps in and that adds to the enjoyment.

Silent Hill Downpour is probably one of the best examples of this.  Old Silent Hill builds up a shit ton of creepy atmosphere then hits you with the panicky stuff in the world shift.  However even when in the nightmare you'll find a room or a section where the panic lets up for a while but the horror still lasts because you know what's behind that door that you need to go through for your next key item.  Silent Hill 2 was an exception to this because the whole game is just drenched in that heavy, oppressive atmosphere that actually makes it quite uncomfortable to play.  It speaks volumes about the developers talent that they can make a game like that but still have it be enjoyable to the point where people want to keep on going.

Silent Hill Downpour on the other hand is all in your face all the time.  It tries to build the atmosphere with it's big empty streets but for the most part, that is just what they are and are therefore uninteresting or scary.  When the world shifts into the nightmare, the whole thing is over designed, too well lit and in certain sections looks more like something out of Alice: Madness Returns than a Silent Hill game.  It's the same for The Evil Within.  The game never lets up and after a while it becomes tiresome.

Imagine if you came home one day and one of your friends jumps out from around the corner in a dark room in a big scary mask and screams at you.  Of course you're going to jump and be a little frightened right?  But then imagine that instead of stopping he just keeps screaming and rolling around on the floor after you have turned on the lights, it would just be ridiculous.

That about sums up new horror games for me.  A cheap prank that goes on way too long and gets very old very fast

Less Zombies Please

I'm so sick of fucking Zombies, why are there so many god damn Zombie games?!

Zombies have been a pretty important part of gaming, a lot of great games have zombies in them.  From Resident Evil on PS1 to Dead Rising 3 for our next gen systems, Zombies have been a big part of our gaming lives for a long long time.  However, it's starting to get to the point where I'm sick of seeing the fucking things.  I DARE you to go on Steam and count the number of cheap indie games that are about zombies, the number is fucking staggering.

I refuse to believe that there is a single developer around right now who could do something new or interesting with zombies.  I'm not saying that developers aren't talented enough or anything like that, but there's only so much you can do with a zombie.  Make em slow, make em fast, make 'em transform in the night time etc etc.  it's all been done multiple times.

There's so many fucking zombie games that if I wanted to do a special blog segment on games with zombies in it, I could take about a different title every day for over a year EASILY.  There are A LOT of fucking goddamn zombie games and it's now gotten to the point where whenever I see one I just roll my eyes.

I think the games industry needs some kind of new fixation to make games about.  There are plenty of other things that one could make a game about that are way more interesting than zombies.  There are so many countries that have really cool and interesting folk tales about various monsters and things that go bump in the night that would make for a really cool game idea. 

Like check this bastard out, it's called a Baku and it's some kind of Japanese spirit thingy that eats dreams.  I mean you could make a game along the lines of some guy who's stuck inside his own dream world as it gets devoured by a Baku and he has to find a way to beat it or die.  I'd play the shit out of a game like that and I'm sure someone who's better at making games than I am could come up with a better idea.

So drop the zombies and use your imagination a bit will ya?

Silent Hill

It's kind of criminal that I've not made this post sooner.  All the speed runs I do, all the time I've spent talking about the latest entries in the series and how shit they are.  Hell, I've even talked about the fucking PLAY NOVEL more than I have the actual game, so it's about time Silent Hill got some love.

I picked the PAL box art for the post picture because the American box art is shit.  Even the Japanese box art is better and that's just a tile wall with a little bit of blood on it.

Silent Hill is one of those games that basically everyone with even a passing interest in the medium of video games is aware of.  It's one of the big grand daddies of the horror genre and is famous for being WAY scarier than any of the other survival horror games.  Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark and all that stuff were kind of scary, but Silent Hill was the first instance I ever saw anyone put down a controller and be like "whoa man, this shit..."

The plot involves Harry Mason on his quest through Silent Hill to rescue his daughter.  Not too long after the game starts you get caught up in all sorts of shit involving demons, shifts into a nightmare and a satanic cult.  I'm not going to go into any length about the story because there are people who have dedicated significant amount of time picking apart this games wonderful plot and if I did it in this post it would be way WAYYYYY too fucking long.

The game uses the old tank control scheme that games like Resident Evil used, except it was a little more developed.  For example, readying your weapon didn't lock you to the floor and you were free to maneuver with your gun drawn or big fuck off pipe ready to swing.  This made melee combat an actual option whereas other games in the genre, locking yourself in place to slice at something was guaranteed death for the player.

The game also had a ton of replay value since there was a few secret weapons to unlock and an extra ending to be acquired upon fulfilling certain conditions in a New Game +.  The game also had 4 normal endings so that's at least 5 playthroughs where you will end up with something different after the final boss has been toppled. 

I mean, I could talk about this game for fucking hours, it's just that good.  If I tried to go through every single goddamn thing that I enjoyed about Silent Hill then this post would be really goddamn long and I don't think anyone wants to read thousands of words of gush.   So instead, just go and play the fucking thing.  Dig it out of a closet, borrow it off a friend, buy it off PSN, I don't care how you play it just fucking play it.  The new Silent Hill games are all shit so if you've never experienced it before and you want to see just how strong a start this series had, get on it ASAP.

Silent Hill's 1,2 and 3 are THE BEST horror games to date, bar none, fight me.

Just in case, if you're interested in seeing my current fastest speed run (39:39 IGT) then the video is below.

Japan Escape Games

Escape the room games like the one featured on the top of this post have been a thing for a good while.  Most of them are made in flash and they are the kind of games that I can never be bothered to spend much time with because I'd rather be playing something....not flash.

Anyway thanks to my wife and her friends I was introduced to some REAL escape type games being hosted around Japan by a company called Scrap (http://realdgame.jp/). 

The idea is simple, there is some kind of plot laid out before all the attendees at the start of the event, then people must solve a number of puzzles and reach the end within a set time limit.  The one we went to was being hosted at a place called Monkey Park near Nagoya

The thing was laid out over the whole park and the first puzzle presented was a cryptic display of where all the other puzzles were.  There were 4 big puzzles in all which had a number of smaller puzzles inside them that you had to figure out in order to get the answer to progress to the next section.  We were also given a 70 minute time limit to get everything done so if you can't do it in that time then tough shit, game over.

The first few puzzles were laughably easy but by the time you reach stage 3 things start to get complicated and me and my group were stumped.  We weren't the only ones though as the vast majority of people attending the event had to take the walk of shame back to their seats at the start when the timer was done.  The winners were paraded out and applauded but you would be surprised at just how few people it was in comparison to the number of attendees.

The problem isn't so much the puzzles themselves, given enough time to think over them I think anyone could work them out but park navigation and time limit make things extremely difficult.  Also a lot of the puzzles require a pretty decent knowledge of Japanese, so if you're a visiting tourist looking for a fun day out then maybe this isn't quite for you.   It's also a little expensive (around 4000 yen for a ticket) but if you can get a decent group of friends together for it then it's a really enjoyable way to spend an evening.

At the end of the event I was given a pamphlet for all upcoming escape games hosted by the same company.  Right slap in the middle of the thing was an advert for a Biohazard (Resident Evil) themed escape game going down at some point in Osaka's Universal Studios theme park.  I absolutely plan to attend that and I'll try and take some non-spoilerific pictures when I do.