X-Box 360 Indie Zombie Games

Just a quick update; there are currently lots of zombie games being released for the X-Box 360 Indie games channel. Zombies 2.0, Dead Meat, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!! 1, Veks and Silence, and Zombie Mania to name just a few. I will be doing a big review of all these games together to give my impression on this welcome development.

On X-Box Live Arcade there has been a few months ago the awful Zombie Wranglers released, and this Wednesday a cool looking Zombie survival game is to be released. Once I have played through these I shall post a review.

Actual games; I have recently played to completion Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad for the 360 and Mad World for the Wii. I have got Dead Rising: Chop Till you Drop, and soon to be renting Resident Evil 5. As soon as I have experienced these I shall be posting another review.

Onto films...I have a few horrors to review. I got Cannibal Apocalypse on DVD to watch, and have watched District 9, and Dorian Grey at the cinema. Also saw Cloverfield - extremly good! So hopefully will be a busy few months for posts.

Alone in the Dark (2008) - Horror Videogame Review (X-Box 360)

My god... Alone in the Dark is awful! I picked it up at a bargain price, but wish I hadn't. It's frustrating to see the promise this game has, but that promise is too soiled.

Like the previous games in the series this is a survival horror game. The Alone in the Dark games have always been a bit crud. The last game Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare was ok, but the second half just collapsed into monotony. This game just plain collapses right away.

I cannot believe that this game was ever play tested. The controls are utterly broken, as is the games engine. First the story. The game starts off quite exciting. You are Edward Carnby, suffering amnesia and captured by a violent gang in a hotel in central New York. Something has been unleashed in the hotel, a dark evil that soon starts ripping the hotel to shreds and inadvertently freeing you from your captors. The first thirty minutes of the game is an exciting descent through the ruined hotel followed by a tremendous chase through the streets of New York as the ancient evil gives chase, smashing up roads and buildings like something out of Cloverfield.

This would have been great if not for the games dreadful flaws. Within minutes of starting the game I had managed to get completely stuck in the scenery, a reset was the only way out of this. Many times the controls just totally fail, not responding to button presses seemingly at random. For a lot of the game (am about half way through) you have a stupid A.I character getting in your way. Though a physically small and slim character there is an invisible barrier to either side of her meaning you cannot get past her if she's in your way despite there being lots of room to do so. This is very annoying when you're being attacked by a zombie (zombie type creatures are the main enemy, as well as mutant insects and rodents of various types) and a weapon is just past her.

The damage bar is really something else. You physically show injuries on your body, cuts and scrapes which have to be healed by spraying with a health spray. But the wounds are totally flat, and show over your clothes, for instance your bulky leather jacket suddenly gets a hilariously bad looking flesh wound on it looking in no way like its anything real. The tears and rips in your clothes regenerate over time, as do windows and objects dotted round the levels which is stupid.

The inventory is tripe. Your inventory is represented by the inside pockets of your coat, it is very difficult to select the item you want due to the analogue sticks terrible controls.

Fighting is horrendous. You have to use the right analogue stick to simulate the attack, it is very unresponsive, slow and cumbersome, a simple button to attack would be much preferred. Sometimes you get a driving sequence, the car controls are terrible, and it takes hardly anything for your car to flip upside down leaving you stuck until you die.

A level skip feature was put into the game, obviously as Atari realised how crap the game was and wanted people to be able to skip the bad sections (i.e.: all of it).

I cannot recommend Alone in the Dark at all, even if you saw it for free I would say avoid, it is rubbish. Even if your a huge survival horror fan avoid it! It does have zombies in it, but they are not worth suffering this crap to encounter.

SCORE:

Silent Hill (1999) - Horror Videogame Review (Playstation)

You know, I can't actually recall if I have already wrote about this game, or indeed the series, but what the hell, it's my fave survivor horror series, so here it is again; a review of Silent Hill.

While there have been some dubious entries in the Resident Evil series, the Silent Hill series has never been over-saturated (and has also resulted in quite a few ace graphic novels). There has been the weird Japanese Silent Hill visual novel game on the Game Boy Advance, and there is a remake of Silent Hill being made for the Nintendo Wii (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories), but other than that the series has remained quite pure and undiluted. With the exception of Silent Hill: The Arcade light gun that I had fun with, but had shockingly bad dialogue (that was quite fun on my only go of it though!). Anyway I digress...

Silent Hill was originally released for Playstation back in 1999. Many expected it to be a clone of successful survival horror game Resident Evil, but instead it carved it's own niche by focusing on psychological horror, rather than jump scares. The game put you in control of Harry Mason, a man desperately searching for his adopted daughter who has gotten lost in the foggy and strangely deserted town of Silent Hill. Along the way he discovers the twisted secrets of the towns past and how it links to his beloved daughter.

The game is terrifying in a way no survival horror had been up to that point. There was a great feeling of unease throughout the whole game with you never really feeling like you were safe.. The limited view, the static of Harry's radio as enemies approached, the random screams and noises in the background, haunting music, and sheer impending dread resulted in a smorgasbord of horror.

The game world is split into distinct feeling layers. Foggy Silent Hill where despite the horror things seem like they are still in the real world, then the nightmarish steel meshed totally FUBAR distorted Silent Hill that appears to be in Hell. This transforms the already creepy town into an utter terror ride. By the time you return to the foggy version of the town it feels quite like heaven, and never feels as creepy as it once was, this a feeling which sadly has never been successfully replicated in its better looking sequels.

I have felt absolute terror in just two games. Project Zero (also known as Fatal Frame) is terrifying (play it!) The other really scary game I have played is Silent Hill. I still remember the fear I had with this. I still lived with my parents at the time. They had gone away for the weekend, so I had moved my Playstation downstairs to the big family TV rather than the tiny one I had in my bedroom. It was about 01:00, I had the volume turned up really loud, and all the lights off. I had gotten to a hospital in the game in the foggy version of the town. I had explored the fog world version of this location all I could. Returning to an elevator, I noticed there was an additional button which had not been there previously. I pressed it. Upon exciting to this new floor I despaired to discover I was now in the dark nightmare version of the town rather than the relatively safe fog Silent Hill. Then I was assaulted by zombie nurses...I had to turn the frickin' game off! I just couldn't handle it, I was utterly terrified! I won't forget that ever.

The plot for Silent Hill is obscure, and there are lots of alternate endings, the game is really scary. I cannot recommend it enough. I highly doubt the Wii remake (Wii-make?) will be half as good or atmospheric. On a side note the demo for this had you fighting child monsters in the school. By the time the game got released these had been changed into much more monstrous looking beings.

SCORE:

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (2002) - Horror Video Game Review (Gamecube)

This was supposed to be the future of survival horror. Critically acclaimed at the time, and considered a cult classic now, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is unfortunately a mediocre game put on a pedestal due to the lack of competition in the genre at the time on the Gamecube. The story is heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and more specifically the master of horror H P Lovecraft.

After her grandfather's mysterious and bloody death, his niece travels to his mansion at Roade Island to try and discover who was responsible. In a hidden room she discovers a book bound in human flesh; a tome of the dead. Her grandfather had a secret interest in the occult. Each chapter of the book tells the story of various people throughout time who have encountered the book. Each level of the game is based on one of these stories, being bookended each time with the girl in the present day exploring her relatives house. As such you get to play as over a dozen different characters throughout time. From a roman centurion in 54 BC, to an amazon dancer, a medieval monk, a World War II american soldier and many more. Each time period contains a self contained story, mostly ending tragically ala' H P Lovecraft tales.

The plot itself is the games strongest point, each individual story is very well told, the best one springing to mind being an ancestor of the present day girls who discovers a hidden horrific desolate city of a past civilisation. This really felt like a version of the excellent short story 'At the Mountains of Madness' (by H P Lovecraft).

The graphics are smooth, but very bland. Considering the amazing looking Resident Evil games later showing up on the Gamecube there is no excuse for the graphics being so plain. The game was advertised as being at least twenty hours long in some previews, yet even on my first play through I had it finished in under ten (not that length of game determines a games quality!) To get the true ending you have to play through the game three times, but to tell the truth, I just couldn't be bothered to do that.

Much was made of the games sanity meter. The longer you spend around enemies in the game (mostly comprising of zombies) the more your sanity meter runs down. The lower it goes the more crazy stuff starts happening. The camera starts to shake drunkenly, a message pops up on screen saying the Gamecube's memory card has become corrupted, the game freezes and lots more random insanity occurs. This aspect of the game is kinda cool! (also aped in Metal Gear Solid 2).

Despite playing in many different periods of time, only about four different locations are used, with minor changes used to differ the look. This leads to many parts of the game becoming stale as you traverse the same locations over and over again. The characters are only physically different, and virtually all control the same. The magic system is terrible! Some parts of the game require you use spells in specific places, it can be really hard to use them in the correct spot, and I literally spent thirty minutes at one part late in the game repeatedly failing to use a spell in exactly the right spot, and then having to wait an agonisingly long time for the magic meter to slowly recharge again.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem does have an ace story though, and is very cheap nowadays, so it is worth playing, if only for the story.

SCORE:

The Final Destination (2009) - Horror Film Review

The Final Destination was my first 3D film, apart from a brief adjustment I found them to really accent the movie going experience. The glasses fitted fine other my normal glasses which was cool.

With an amazing rocking track the film starts. Flashes and images of horrific accidents are played out in x-ray vision with blood spraying out into the audience, all the while the ace music booming along. This film is torture porn for the more mainstream horror fans, each horrific death faster than the slow tortures of the Saw and Hostel franchises.

If I got one message from the film it is that life is futile, the human body is amazing fragile. You cannot escape fate, once marked for death you are one of the walking dead.

Like the previous films in the series the plot is thus; A group of people avoid a tragic accident due to one of them having a vision and saving them. Final Destination had a plane crash, Final Destination 2 had a car crash, Final Destination 3, which I didn't see I assume had a roller coaster crash. In this one a crash at a racing stadium ends with racing cars exploding and flung into the spectators. The survivors are happy to be alive, but one by one they start to die in horrific accidents, and they realise unless something is done there all going to die for cheating fate.

The plot is identical, the characters are kinda similar as well, but is still a good ride, and made me quite freaked out watching it, just how easily accidents can happen, and that everyone is marked by fate to die at a specific place. See The Final Destination! You should, it's not going to hurt your brain cells, but is a cool ride.

SCORE:

Left 4 Dead - Zombie Videogame Review (X-Box 360)

I put off buying Left 4 Dead for the longest time. Having no friends means I would have to play online with complete strangers. A game where you fight cooperatively to survive a zombie apocalypse was too big a draw, so I gave in and got the game.

The idea of the game is fantastic, just in theory it is terrible. I can see it would be utterly amazing playing cooperatively with friends, however playing online with strangers is no fun at all. Half the online people I play with are utterly silent. It's hard to work as a team when everyone is not talking. Then you get the horrible idiots which plague X-Box Live. Case in point; I tried to play a Versus mode yesterday. The team I was with were the humans first. As soon as the game started someone on my team turned round and shot me until I died, for no reason whatsoever. That's happened so many times, as has being kicked.

As far as I can tell to be the Tank equals getting kicked. I have yet had a game where upon becoming the Tank I have not briefly been voted off the game, I do not know why. I don't trash talk, I am a good player when given the chance, I help my team mates out, and don't act recklessly, yet I am always getting kicked out of games. The few fun experiences I have had with the game is late at night when more Americans play. They actually try and play the game, rather than act as if it's a free for all.

I thought I would dislike the game, and I really do, it is ruined by complete scum. I know if I was ever to play the game with friends it would be a fantastic game, but let's face it; there's more chance of Hell freezing over than that happening.

SCORE:

Devil's Child (1997) - Horror Film Review

First of all - hahahaha! Devil's Child is terrible! Heh, ok I got that out my system. This is quite a low budget supernatural thriller.

Basically a girl called Nikki is told by her mum on her mum's death bed to beware of miracles. Soon after a load of weird stuff starts happening. Her mum 'explodes in a church' as one character describes it, her work enemy is mown down by a driverless car, a dog in her apartment commits suicide, and a mysterious and attractive stranger called Alex enters her life.

The film is stupid! It does co-star the excellent Matthew Lillard (of Scream, and Thir13en Ghosts fame) though. It turns out Alex is in fact the Devil. When Nikki was a young girl she had an accident and died. Her mum made a deal with the Devil to resurrect Nikki in exchange for promising the Devil that he can father a son with her.

The film is really rushed in the last quarter. From getting pregnant to having her child takes literally about ten minutes of screen time, yet there's no indication that any time has passed at all. It seems strange Nikki would carry on living in her apartment opposite the flat of the man she is terrified of for the length of the pregnancy, especially considering she discovers earlier in the film the previous tenant of her flat was buried alive in the wall (a subplot completely abandoned later on).

The film has a good soundtrack at least, and some cool generic female fronted rock (played in the background of a hilariously bad 90's photoshoot). I got Devil's Child on DVD real cheap, so can't complain, and it was kind of funny, though unintentionally so.

SCORE:

 

Jumanji - Pure absolute terror (Horror Film Review)

I saw the 'kids' film Jumanji the other day. I can fearfully report that it is the most creepy, sick, depraved film I have seen this year! I can't believe it's only a PG! it should be a 15 at least!

I had goose bumps watching this torture porn. The basic plot is this; a young boy in the 1960's, tormented by bullies when out, and brutalised by his strict father when at home discovers a Africa themed board game called Jumanji. Him and a female friend decide to play the game. She is attacked by rabies ridden giant African bats, while the boy Parish is sucked into Hell. 30 years later a young brother and sister discover Jumanji, and inadvertently become involved with the game. They, with a freed Parish (played by Robin Williams), and a mentally impaired woman (the girl from the 60's now grown up) must travel to the very depths of Hell to close the gates, and forever lock away the nightmares they have unleashed.

The film is scary on many levels. Each roll of the dice releases another monstrosity from Jumanji. There are plagues of animals released, natural disasters, and even a deranged serial killer. All these are evil, and intent on death and destruction.

The animals are not real animals, as is shown by the special effects for them. Instead they are a mockery of gods work, vessels for demons to invade the world, and are pure evil intent on causing mayhem. Creepily intelligent, you get a stampede of Elephants and Rhinos intent on crushing people to death, psychotic monkeys armed with guns, and infestations of Killer plants and insects.

The (in)natural disasters are terrible, an indoors flood, supernaturally contained to one house nearly drowns the heroes, while a earth quake splits the house in half, intent on dragging the heroes down a chasm to Hell. The whole forces of nature are under the games Demonic control.

The films themes are quite adult. The Serial Killer (in the form of an English Explorer complete with Blunderbuss) is played by the same actor who plays the Parish kids Dad. He repeatedly tries to hunt down Parish, showing a terminator-esque terrifying determination to kill him at whatever cost to himself. It shows Parish's internal fear of his Dad, and speaks of his fear of his fathers abuse.

The board game itself 'Jumanji' is a sick depraved game. It emits a drum beat, audible only to children, and hypnotically drawing children to it. It wants to eat children's souls, feeding off their fear. However it was created, it was done only for evil reasons, a fear of which I have never felt since I received upon thinking on how this game came into existence. In a twist of irony, the only way to defeat the games evil is to play it, each roll of the dice gets you closer to defeating the game, but also opens more doors of Hell, unleashes more horrors onto the world.

It is only a fluke that the characters actually survive. The girl is fatally wounded by a poison dart spat from a flower, the boy is turned into a mutant child monkey, and the adults (Parish and the woman) are both executed by the serial killer hunter, but the lucky dice roll of the doomed Williams closes off the powers of the game and reverts the entire world back 30 years.

The ending is bone chilling. The evil game, weighed down with chains and thrown into a river and many years later washes up on a Japanese beach. The horrific tribal drums start beating, and chillingly ends with 2 young Japanese girls discovering the game as the screen fades to black and the credits roll.

A very very sick, scary film, one to watch with the lights on!

SCORE: 

The Return (2006) - Horror Film Review

I picked this up on DVD cheaply the other day. The film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as a young 24 year old woman who has been away from her home state of Texas for many years. She has stayed away for a reason, but a business deal brings her back to the state. Soon she starts having vivid hallucinations about a creepy stranger in blue jeans, and starts seeing her features change when looking in mirrors. It all seems linked to a small Texan town, and in particular a man whose wife was murdered many years previously.

The film is not in the least bit creepy, but it is a really nice film to watch. Gellar is fantastic as the kinda disturbed young woman. The plot is nothing exciting, but is brought to a satisfying conclusion without needing ridiculous twists or turns. Though nothing much happens, the film has a certain dream like quality to it.

If I was to pick a fault it would be that the chase sequences are designed to be thrilling, but are quite lame in actuality due to the plot point which leads to Gellar hiding rather than running away each chase sequence, of which there are many.

A short review, but a nice example of how much better my reviews are now!

SCORE:

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End - Review

First off; the DVD I saw was a bit bust, and as a result I was forced to skip about 4 minutes of the film, highly annoying, but I will try to avoid it affecting my review.

Wrong Turn was basically 'The Hills Have Eyes' but set in woods. It was about a bunch of inbred mutated rednecks hunting some teens. Wrong Turn 2 was released straight to DVD. It's set 4 years after the first, and stars the musical legend Henry Rollins. A 'Survivor' style gameshow is being filmed in isolated woodland. 6 contestants are competing for a prize of $100,000. The show is hosted by Rollins (as an ex army man). Pretty much straight away everyone starts getting picked off by a family of inbred cannibal mutated rednecks. The producers really chose a lame place to hold the game show, being so near to the mutants home.

To tie the film to the first one is the surviving mutant from it, now reunited with another family. The origins of the mutation is briefly discussed, but mostly the film is scene after scene of bloody deaths.

The film is entertaining if a bit thin on plot. Being straight to DVD shows with an obviously lower budget. The special effects are mostly good, though the mutants all look quite identical, rather than the unique look each mutant had in the first film. The film is quite predictable, and features the usual teen stereotypes, though the deaths are mostly quite fun to watch.

Brain dead horror, but nice in a trashy kind of way.

A Perfect Getaway (2009) - Horror Film Review

I hadn't actually seen the trailer for A Perfect Getaway at the cinema, though I had seen the trailer on TV a few times. To be honestit didn't make me particularly want to see the film, however due to lack of other options me, my sister, and her husband ended up watching it.

The film is a thriller set on an island in Hawaii. A newly married couple Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich - Resident Evil) have gone there on their honeymoon. Not long after getting to the remote, isolated island they discover via other tourists, and via the internet Cliff gets on his mobile that a newly wed couple were murdered on a nearby island by a duo, and that the murderers are predicted to have travelled to the island they are currently on. The pair meet another couple, Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina. They decide to stay with them figuring there would be safety in numbers if it did happen that the killers were on their island. However it starts to seem more and more likely by the couples odd actions and stories that Nick and Gina may not be who they seem...

The film's scenery is beautiful; lush tropical forests, beaches, and mountains make the setting a paradise. The film is shot in a really cool way, a flashback later in the film is filmed totally in black and white which works really well at separating it from the bright colours of the present. Also there are some really nifty camera pulls, plus some 24 style screen splits. The cast is quite small, the four main characters, plus a handful of secondary characters. Jovovich and Olyphant in particular show really great acting. It wasn't till near the end of the film that I realised the character Cydney was played by Jovovich, as I'm used to her naff acting (eg: the Resident Evil trilogy) so assumed it couldn't possibly be her.

The plot is quite good, and the action ramps up to a thrilling conclusion, with cool twists. A Perfect Getaway was a very unique feeling thriller, with an excellent cast, and while not really scary, the characters are interesting enough that you care what happens to them.

SCORE:

Hide and Seek - Horror Film Review

In my review of Orphan I said how it was good as it was different to the usual creepy child genre of films. Hide and Seek is a prime example of the stereotypical creepy child film.

Robert De Niro stars as the psychologist Dad of a creepy little girl. The little creepy girl is played by hollow eyed Dakota Fanning. I'm not a big fan of either of these two it has to be said.

The film starts with De Niro's wife committing suicide in the bathtub. As a result he moves with his traumatised daughter out to the country, as he sees a new location as the best way for the child to get over the tragic event. His daughter is not that nice, mostly just staring at people in her hollow eyed way and disliking her father. Soon after moving into their new house the daughter starts talking with an imaginary friend she calls 'Charlie'. She tells her father that Charlie doesn't like him, he assumes it's just her resentment of him over the suicide. Much in the way of creepy child films it soon turns out that Charlie REALLY doesn't like the Dad, causing untold misfortune to him, which starts to take a more sinister turn. The daughter insists that all that is happening is due to her imaginary friend Charlie, and that she's innocent. It leads up to the usual twist, and the last 1/5 is much like the last 1/5 of Orphan.

The film is just too long, it got really boring in places, and the end part of the film just drags on and on and on. It wasn't a bad film, just not original in the slightest. The story wasn't anything new, and it was really obvious how it was going to turn out.

See it if you must, just don't expect much more than a well filmed, nice looking bland thriller.

SCORE:

Orphan - Horror Film Review

Last Sunday I went to Cineworld and saw 'Orphan'. I really wasn't expecting anything good, as it looked just like another 'creepy child' film of which theres been so so many (The Ring, The Omen etc). The trailer wasn't particularly memorable. In my bedroom I had put up a mini poster of 'Orphan', I had resolved to take it down if the film was any worse than average. The poster is still up, the film defied my expectations and was really quite good.

The films plot concerns a seemingly happily married couple (played by Peter Sarsgaard, and Vera Farmiga) who have decided to adopt a young child after their 3rd baby was stillborn. They visit an orphanage and are delighted to find an intelligent, articulate, polite young 9 year old Russian girl (played by Isabelle Fuhrman) to adopt.

At first it seems she is a great addition to the family, but bad things start happening to people around her, and it starts to seem like there might be a more sinister side to the girl. Her previous foster family all died in a mysterious fire, which starts to seem less and less like a tragic accident. To give anymore away would spoil the film, it is definitely much better to watch not knowing what is going to happen. One of the tag lines for the film is 'you'll never guess her secret', and the secret really was an original twist which is believable within the context of the film.

The film looks fantastic, the lighting for the film is very well done. Despite being a 15 the film is quite violent and bloody. Bones get broken, blood gets spilt with really wince inducing special effects. The films tone is quite creepy, Isabelle Fuhrman is fantastic as the Russian girl. Most child actors are utterly terrible (eg: the entire child cast of the Harry Potter films) but she pulls off the role really well with fantastic acting both physical and verbal which really makes the film all the more creepy. The last section of the film is a real thrill ride.

The only problems with the film are that first of all there are too many anti-climatic scares. One memorable instance is when the mum is looking in her fridge. As she goes to shut the fridge door the music goes crazy, and you fully expect to get a cheap 'jump' scare with something leaping out at her from behind the fridge door, but instead there is nothing and the music fades. It's effective once as a trick for the audience, but it happens a number of times through the film. The last 1/4 of the film goes on a bit too long, it kept feeling like it was going to end and then carried on, so could have maybe done with some cutting.

The film is really good though, and recommended. You will be creeped!

SCORE: