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.

F.3.A.R

I've not QUITE finished it yet, I'm getting very close but I'm having a brain fart and don't know what to talk about so I'm just going to talk about it now.  Before I start talking about the game itself I just want to say that the title of this game is really fucking dumb.  One, because replacing the E with a 3 is something that only a 14 year old Counter Strike player would think is cool and two, because its not fucking scary.

Here is where I would try to outline the plot but I'm only going to skim over it very briefly because I'm so mad about how misleading the name is.  Basically you play as Point Man (from the first game) or his brother than you capped to stop Sada...no sorry, Sama....no sorry again, Alma from giving birth to ghost babies after she raped the main character from the second game.

Now F.E.A.R 1 was trying pretty hard to be a horror game.  It had the spooky set pieces, lots of areas where there wouldn't be any music playing, a little bit of misdirection here and there as to whats an enemy and what's a spooky hallucination.  It failed, really hard, but it tried and I can commend the effort.  F.E.A.R 2 was a lot more action oriented but the attempts at horror were still there, again, complete failure, but you can tell someone tried at the very least.  F.£.A.R just dropped the horror thing almost entirely and it just became Call of Duty.  They should have called it Call of Jumpscare or L.O.U.D or something.  They do little sections where spooky cultist men will come after you and there's blood on the walls or they'll have a twitchy beast jump out at you but 98% of this game is just shooting dudes in the face with a machine gun.  What's hilarious is I had a friend come over and he saw me playing it and he was like "Are you playing CoD m8?". 

That's not to say that it's a bad game, by any stretch.  The shooting is fun, Point Mans slo-mo mechanic is still satisfying, they now let you play as the brother if you like doing magic shenanigans instead of shooting, it's a generally well made game with a lot of polish.  Just that title is one of the most misleading things in the history of all games.  Still, it's only £13 on Steam and for what you get it's pretty good so if you like your FPS games definitely check it out, just don't expect to get any actual horror out of it, is all.

Universal Studio Japan Horror Night 2016

I recently took a day off work to check out the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan and while it wasn't Resident Evil themed this year I thought I'd still say a few words on the thing.  I would just like to point out before I start talking about the Halloween night is that the true winners for scariest park attraction were the roller coasters.  I have a fear of heights so while these things weren't making me lose any sleep, those roller coasters more than made up for my yearly dose of Halloween Horror.

The first event that I went to as part of the evening was the Chucky Horror Factory.  This was a sort of standard walk through horror house, lots of jump scares and dudes in costumes screaming at you as you turn around corners.  Nothing special, not particularly freaky but I thought that, and this is true for all the horror houses, the props and effects were pretty well done.

After that we checked out the Japanese horror house which was called Tatari

This was a another haunted house which was apparently cursed and full of evil dolls that wanted you dead.  We were organized into groups of six and made to hold a rope as we proceeded through the area with a bunch of randoms.  The person at the front of the queue was given a little piece of paper at the start and we were told to place it on a thing to get rid of the curse in the house.  From there there was lots of spooky rooms filled with dolls and people jumping out and begging for their lives before they got dragged back into the set to be killed off.  I feel like I've already seen this kind of thing before playing Fatal Frame but it wasn't bad by any means.

From there we we went into the Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street houses which were similar to Tatari in the way you had a hold a rope with a bunch of randoms and walk through the area only this time they were themed on their respective movies.  Out of those 2 the Exorcist attraction was significantly better because the set was a bit creepier, the scares were more efficiently set up and there was a little bit of interactivity with the visitors as one guy had to flick water on the girl in the bed.

What's weird is that all these attractions are given a sort of scariness rating.  Tatari was rated 5/5 and Elm Street/Exorcist was given a 4/5.  However, in my opinion the best attraction they had was the Sadako (The Ring) horror show which was only rated 1/5.

This took place in the building they use for the Terminator 2 show and starts out much the same with with a representative from Cyberdyne trying to give a presentation about how cool all their futuristic shit is.  Of course the presentation gets taken over by Sadako and things start to get all fucked up.  What made this superior to the horror houses, at least in my opinion, is because it's a sort of sit down show type thing there's less of a reliance on jump scares and a bit more work was spent on building atmosphere.  After Sadako there was a similar performance based on a series of books/movies called School Horror Stories or 学校の怪談

This was a "4D" thing where the chairs go up and down and the seat in front of you spits water at you when someone gets their shit wrecked on screen.  Not incredibly scary but still pretty entertaining to watch although the horror in this series seems to be a lot more in your face than Japanese horror usually is.  There was one other event that we missed in the Harry Potter area called Death Eater Attack which we missed but according to a friend of mine who caught it said it was highly entertaining.

If you're looking for a genuinely scary experience then Universal is probably not the best place to go but it's still an entertaining day out.  From my experience of living in Japan for a while, the Japanese are a little sensitive to horror themes and I was having more fun at the reaction of the people in the attractions with us than actually being scared of anything myself.  Still, it was a lot of fun and I'd probably do it again next year!

Sadako Vs Kayako

So recently I saw the recently released Sadako Vs Kayako, a Japanese movie that's been getting a lot of hype behind it.  Remember way back in 2003 when we got Freddy Vs Jason?  Well this is like the Japanese version of that only Freddy Vs Jason was kind of crap and Sadako Vs Kayako is fucking AWESOME.  Just in case you aren't familiar with these names, Sadako is the ghost from the very well known "Ring" movie and Kayako is the big nasty from "Ju-On" or "The Grudge"

The hype campaign for this movie has been pretty big in Japan.  There's been posters, leaflets, the obvious things like trailers and other content but some of the publicity stuff has been a little strange.  For example, there's an instagram account called Kayako With Toshio which pictures the evil duo from The Grudge in rather mundane settings such as seeing Toshio off to school or having noodles.

https://www.instagram.com/kayakowithtoshio/?hl=en

Even stranger than that was a TV segment during a baseball game where the two characters were put on the field to face off in a spot of batting and pitching.

Strange hype aside though, the movie is actually fucking incredible which is something I didn't think I'd be saying about it going in.  I expected yet another shitty, cliche Japanese horror movie in the same vein as something like Gekijourei but banking on the popularity of the two evil ghost characters.  But instead I got a fantastically fucking stupid yet awesome beyond words cross over movie ever with some genuinely unsettling moments in between.

One thing you have to understand about Japanese horror movies, especially of this kind, are very formulaic.  Usually they are stories about a curse or some kind of rumor going around, then the hero gets cursed and some fucked up shit happens.  Following that, they find someone who is super knowledgeable about said curse and they proceed to enact some insane plan in order to remove the evil ghost from the persons life.  It's not a bad formula but it's so played out at this point that when a new movie does it the only thing you can really gamble on is if its going to be a happy ending or an everyone dies ending and everything before that you could predict like the worlds best clairvoyant.

However, while Sadako Vs Kayako does this for it's first half, once it gets it's boring shit out of the way it flies completely off the rails into insanity.  Luckily, the stupid shit that goes down after the movies half way mark isn't the kind of stupid shit that makes you sigh and rolls your eyes but it's the sort of awesome stupid shit that has you holding back cheers of joy, sort of similar to the reaction you have when watching an Expendables movie.  I can't do it justice without heavy spoilers but please, do yourself a favor and go watch this movie, you won't regret it for one second.

I think most people, like me, weren't expecting a lot from this movie so it ends up being a pleasant surprise.  Don't take it too seriously and just sit back and enjoy the roller coaster of retardation that is Sadako Vs Kayako.