OH HAUNTING GROUND <3<3<3
Hey guys!
Fair warning: what follows is an overly detailed love letter to my favorite game of all time. Flailing starts now.
Anyone ever heard of a little game called Haunting Ground? If you've known me for more than... a couple months, give or take, the answer is almost certainly yes, even if it's just in passing. Oh that game. I love it so much. Haunting Ground is a Japanese survival horror game from 2005. Survival horror? Let me translate. You run around as a blonde chick with enormous tits trying to keep various creepers from killing you, raping you, touching you in funny places, impregnating you, ripping out your vagina, etc. A dog named Hewie saves your ass on multiple occasions. IT'S FRIKKIN' AWESOME.
Haunting Ground was released as Demento in Japan. It was made by Capcom, so it's a bit like the Clock Tower series, and is for the PS2.
Characters:
Fiona Belli-- Fiona Belli is the protagonist. She's eighteen years old, and... probably Italian? Fuck if I know, but the names seem Italian enough. She has enormous tits. Probably about half of the Haunting Ground videos you can find on youtube will involve Fiona's tits and their size and/or jiggle physics. Fuck yes. It's a classy game like that.
Fiona isn't actually that bad. She can be a bit of an idiot (really Fiona? You're gonna run past the WALL
COVERED IN AXES AND SPEARS AND SHIT and not TAKE A WEAPON?), but when it comes down to it, she's a normal teenaged girl who's been thrown into a situation she never could have expected. One feature of the game, panic mode, is quite realistic. If Fiona takes too much damage or is chased for too long, the screen starts getting blurry and the movements turn jerky. Eventually, unless you calm her down, she'll enter what Breaugh and I have named full-blown panic mode: Fiona runs uncontrollably, and you have to try to steer her away from the walls. Put any of us in that situation, we're probably in panic mode too! To use a quote from a walkthrough that Breaugh and I cite quite a bit, “panic mode is a bitch.”
Hewie-- Hewie is just. Hewie is a darling. Hewie is a joy. Hewie is just. Play this game, and you'll join me in saying “OMG HEW-HEW ILU SO MUUUUUUUCH!” Hewie is a white German Shepherd that Fiona rescues. He's just... he's amazing. If you're kind to him and train him (praise him for obeying, scold him for ignoring you, etc.), he'll be the greatest thing ever. He can find hidden items, he can find ways through puzzles, and, most importantly of all, HE KICKS SOME FUCKIN' ENEMY ASS! He just. He just. He will LEAP on an enemy and growl and bite them and blood will fly and just HE KICKS SO MUCH ASS. The one problem is his tendency to ADD right when the enemy has you in a death-grip, leading to a game-over screen while you scream “HEWIE WHY WHY WHY I TOLD YOU TO ATTACK HEWIE WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?” Also, be warned. Though it's kind of funny to kick Hewie, and though you WILL do it once or twice by mistake... do it too much and he will START TO ATTACK YOUR ASS. /THE REST OF YOU.
Debilitas-- Debilitas is your first stalker. He is, put simply enough, a big retarded man-child. He's adorable, once you get over the creepiness. He thinks Fiona is a doll. That's it. He just wants a hug from dolly. He ACTUALLY CALLS YOU DOLLY. IS SO CUTE. Problem is, these hugs involve cracking your spine. Best to avoid him, really.
Daniella-- Oh Daniella. She... okay. Let me try to explain this. Daniella is a homunculus (homuncula? Ide?) who is unable to taste, or experience pain or pleasure. So she wants to take Fiona's Azoth, which... Azoth... it's... I guess it's Fiona's... magical life-force/vagina? IDE? Daniella has awesomely sketch moments of making grabby motions at Fiona's vagina while Fiona is sleeping and other lesbian-ish moments. It's practically canon. And she has a great rant about Fiona “luring the men into your filthy body again and again” and “you are allowed to do this because you are a precious, precious little princess” or something like that... she just. She's fantastic.
Riccardo-- Riccardo... okay. He wants Fiona's Azoth so he can impregnate her with himself. Just... don't even. It'll never make complete sense. Ever. At first he has a gun that he likes smacking against his other hand. Later he uses something on Fiona so he's invisible to her... and then ditches the gun. Having rendered himself INVISIBLE... he ditches the gun. IDE. Oh, and in hard mode everyone has a different costume, and Riccardo gets fabulous ruby sandals. I just. Yes.
Lorenzo-- There are three versions of Lorenzo Belli.
Old Lorenzo-- Old Lorenzo is just. Okay first of all, in hard mode he has purple skin. Fuck yes. But he's old and creepy, with a voice full of phlegm. He's just... spectacularly creepy. In his big introduction cut scene, the one where he finally stops hanging out in the shadows as it were, he ditches his wheelchair and starts pulling himself around on the floor after Fiona. His legs and torso just drag, but he scuttles around on his arms like a crab. At first, it's absolutely traumatizing. Once you realize how hilarious it is to beat him into unconsciousness over and over so you can steal items from him... nsm.
Young Lorenzo-- Yum. NGL, kinda sexy. A magnificent bastard if ever there was, Young Lorenzo has gorgeous hair, an amazing body, a fabulous man-skirt, and a wonderful evil laugh. He's cocky. He knows he's evil and he LOVES it. He stands around clapping sarcastically and praising you for your attempts to evade him, then pops out, grabs you, and just... death. Fortunately, you manage to knock him into a PIT OF LAVA! IN THE HOUSE! YAAAAAAY!
Flaming Lorenzo (Lorenzo, Lord of Fire)-- He... is on fire. And he screams. Yep.
Ugo-- Fiona's father. Dead. Mildly important.
Ayla-- Fiona's mother. Dead. Appears in a flashback. Appears to have tits, if possible, larger than her daughter's.
Gameplay
Sometimes it's fun to kick the enemy until they give you items, but this isn't a fighting game. Your goal is to survive. When you're being chased, hide in the shower, hide under the bed, hide in the closet, crouch down in the shadows, equip Fairy Earrings and stand still so you'll turn invisible... HIDE. RUN AND HIDE.
Story
Spoilers abound, obviously. And... it's confusing anyways. Years ago Lorenzo cloned himself, and made Ugo and Riccardo. Ugo got Azoth. Riccardo did not. Ugo ran off, shacked up with Ayla, and they had Fiona, who inherited the Azoth. So Riccardo staged a car crash, murdered Ugo after that didn't quite work out, and kidnapped Fiona. She wakes up at Belli Castle. First Debilitas decides she's his dolly, and chases her. Then she rescues Hewie from being tied up and he becomes her friend. Debilitas keeps chasing. Eventually, Fiona solves a puzzle with moonlight and mirrors to unlock a door and gets to the chapel. Debilitas pops up there, and she either kicks him to death or drops a chandelier on his head, which he survives. If he survives, and you've beaten the game once, he can give you the key to the gate, and the game can end right then.
Otherwise, Daniella... cooks some soup, and Fiona gets sick. Daniella can't taste anything. So Daniella goes to Fiona's room and almost molests her. Daniella sees her reflection in the window, which she can't stand, so she bashes her head against the window until it breaks, and takes a huge shard of glass from it as her weapon-- kind of badass, right? Fiona runs, Daniella chases, and now we're shut in a different part of the castle. Daniella keeps chasing, but sometimes she wanders off to clean shit, and you can go talk to her. You're safe because “it's cleaning time, miss.” Then there's some nonsense with mandrakes and a crypt with a dancing golem and releasing a skeleton's spirit and a creepy merry-go-round room... anyways, Fiona eventually gets Daniella in a room where she constructs a huge mirror on the floor. Daniella sees her reflection and screams, and the glass ceiling shatters, freeing women everywhere from the oppression of sanity and a huge shard of glass falls down and, in a scene honest to god labeled “Shish-kebab” in the secret room, impales Daniella right between the boobs. Daniella favors us with one last beautifully creepy smile, and it's bye-bye lesbian maid.
Now you meet Riccardo. He's a creeper. You met him before, but only for a sec while he shouted at Debilitas. Oh and one time he played the piano upstairs. He's yeah. So Riccardo... basically he chases you over the other half of the mansion part of the castle where you were for Daniella, but you can still go in Daniella's area too. So basically you end up running out into the woods, and he shoots Hewie, and here's the bad ending. Well either way it all ends up with a dramatic scene on a cliff where Riccardo reveals himself as Ugo's clone/sort of like Fiona's daddy but his face is weird and cracked. Fiona faints and somehow avoids falling off of the cliff or suffering head trauma from falling on rocks. IDEK.
If you've been mean to Hewie, this is the bad ending, and Riccardo manages to impregnate Fiona with himself, and you end on a REALLY creepy scene of Fiona laughing brokenly as she sits, pregnant, in an armchair. If Hew Hew loves you (and I mean... you pretty much have to TRY to get the bad ending), he'll wake you up and you get out of your cell before you get preggers. You're in a whole new area now, the water tower, and Riccardo... is invisible. To Fiona, but not to Hewie. Just... run with it. So basically you need to get a bridge to stick out over the lake so you can get away. There's some fun business with pulling levers to make the upper floors accessible, and an insanely pointless but kind of fun puzzle in an astronomy-type room, and eventually you kill Riccardo and make the bridge. Yaaaaay! In hard mode, you see a pretty gay scene of Old Lorenzo crawling across the bridge to suck Riccardo's Azoth out through his mouth or something. IDE. It's the closest we get to slash, sadly.
So you cross the bridge to the House of the Sun (IDE. I didn't name it.), and meet Old Lorenzo. You realize he HASN'T been helping you out of the goodness of his heart (DUUUUUH), and he flops out of his wheelchair to chase you. At this point, it's really fun to repeatedly sic Hewie on him and kick him until he drops items. It's important to keep doing this until he drops the Magist Medallion, because that's just an amazingly good item. Anywho, eventually you lure Old Lorenzo onto a conveyor belt and he gets squooshed. Yaaaay!
Then Young Lorenzo... well there's a cut scene where Middle-Aged Lorenzo shows up (I'm not even kidding. That's his name in the secret room.) and turns into Young Lorenzo, so... IDK? But then you run around in this one room while Young Lorenzo laughs, and then through this maze while he laughs, and if he shows up he's terrifyingly good at killing you, but he doesn't really show up that much, and then you realize the weird reddish mark on Fiona's back that Breaugh and I call the magical hickey is somehow a key to get out of the house so you run to get the caduceus to open the door and I HAVE NO IDEA EITHER but then there's a boss fight and you push Young Lorenzo into a pit of lava.
Before I introduce the final boss, let me explain. You just pushed Young Lorenzo into a pit of lava. A PIT. OF LAVA. A PIT OF MFING LAVA. LAVA. LAVA. LAVA! YOU PUSHED HIM INTO A PIT OF LAVA, AND FLAMES SHOT UP TO THE CEILING LIKE HE WAS MADE OF GASOLINE, AND... A FUCKING PIT OF LAVA!
So Fiona and Hewie walk away! Oh thank god, she's safe!
A flaming, skeletal hand pops up to grip the edge of the PIT OF LAVA. It's...
Flaming Lorenzo, a.k.a. Lorenzo Lord of Fire. I shit you not. For such a great game, ngl guys, it has a rather disappointing boss-- but the lulz will come fast and hard, much like a penis. A flaming skeleton staggers after you, screaming. You run. Earthquakes occur and, if you don't kneel, knock you over, wasting time. A statue falls towards you-- you stand there like a dumbass and watch as it falls because GODDAMMIT FIONA YOU'RE AN IDIOT IN THE CUTSCENES! You finally manage to push the statue off. You run into another room. This whole time, if Flaming Lorenzo manages to touch you... you're dead. One-hit KO. But... just manage to outrun him and you're set.
Now either Fiona let Debilitas live and they share a friendly little moment where he's no longer a threat before she and Hewie leave, or she killed him and Fiona and Hewie leave, and you get to think about the fact that you killed a retarded man-child for no good reason.
You brute.
Enemies
Er... okay, your main enemies are Debilitas, Daniella, Riccardo and the three Lorenzos. Other than that, we have...
Luminescents-- blue balls of light that float around. If they hit you, they make a noise that attracts the pursuer of the moment, and they send Fiona into varying states of panic. To evade? Close a fucking door. So serious.
Homunculi-- they... I use the term “enemy” loosely. They're humanoid blobs. They hang out moaning weirdly. One keeps licking the floor. One keeps hitting his head against the wall. I just... yeah. But there's one who, if you kick him enough times, he knocks you to the floor. The bigger reason I dislike them is because they kill the music, which I'll explain in a bit.
Failures-- Imagine a fat baby made of raw, fatty bacon. Now add high-pitched shrieking. Now make it glomp your legs unless you kick it first or have Hewie kill it. Now make it even weirder. There you go.
Music
The music... guys, the music is one of the most important features of this game, no joke. For one thing, it's just fuckin' good. Really creepy, really sets you on edge, really well done. But here's the thing. The music is your friend. Each enemy has three songs. One just plays during the boss fight for that particular stalker. One is the normal background theme for that part of the game. But if you're walking around, say, in Daniella's area, and you hear the eerie music die out rather suddenly... your heart will stop, guys. Stop Fiona walking and watch her. She hunches over a bit and starts looking around nervously. Sometimes you're lucky. Sometimes you're just near a Homunculus, or maybe a Luminescent just appeared. If you hear footsteps though, you run like hell. Because in just a second, Daniella's chase music will start playing. Daniella's is particularly good, kind of an eerie frantic techno goth feel. Now would be the time to run run run, fight, make it to a hiding spot and pray you haven't used it enough times that they're onto it (which can be as little as the second use), or duck into a puzzle room that you've yet to solve. They're safe.
Seriously, guys. Breaugh, back me up on this. You start playing Haunting Ground, any time during the day you hear dead silence, your pulse will quicken and you'll start feeling twitchy. You hear a footstep, or something that sounds like a footstep, after that silence, oh dear god. It lasts for at least a day or two after playing it, I swear-- you're just that subconsciously focused on listening for that silence.
Some of the background themes have little pauses in them, too, so until you get used to them you keep thinking it's the silence when it's not. EVIL.
Costumes
One of the really fun things about this game? Costumes. As I said, when you play in hard mode, everyone had different costumes, but that's just Daniella's dress turning red or Old Lorenzo's skin turning purple (AWESOME.) Fiona and Hewie can change costumes once you've beaten the game once. You unlock the costumes for different things.
Fiona
Normal outfit A-- Short skirt, low top, pretty nifty boots, ponytail. I like it. It's a cute look.
Normal outfit B-- same, but with bare feet and loose hair. Wooooo.
Under the scalpel-- what you're in when you wake up in the water tower. Basic cream-colored hospital gown, cut scantily, covered in stains, with bare feet and loose hair. It's a pretty nicely done look, actually, really creepy but not gross.
Texas cowgirl-- what do you think? Panties and bra, leather boots and chaps, a feather dangling from loose hair, cowboy hat hanging from her neck. Fiona's armed with a rather useless pistol instead of kicking, and her bra really ought to have broken by now, her boobs are so enormous.
Illegal in some states-- slutty BDSM theme. Black leather cut very scantily, but with a really nice collar situation. Fiona is armed with a riding crop instead of kicking.
Fiona the frog-- FIONA THE FROG. I. I. SHE'S DRESSED AS A FROG. WHEN YOU TELL HER TO CROUCH, SHE SITS LIKE A FROG INSTEAD. SHE... I JUST. SO ADORABLE. I JUST. I JUST. FIONA THE FROG. <3
Hewie
White German Shepherd-- HEWIE! :D He's a... white... German Shepherd. >> Yep.
German Shepherd-- looking like a normal German Shepherd. This outfit also makes Hewie stronger, but harder to train.
Stuffed toy-- AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! HEWIE LOOKING LIKE A GIANT PLUSHIE! I JUST! <3 AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! To earn this outfit you have to beat hard mode. In hard mode, Hewie can DIE. D: But once you've beaten it once, you can put him in this outfit, which makes him immune to death! Yay!
The Secret Room
Once you beat the game once, you can enter the secret room from the title menu. It's the room where the game really begins, but with a different soundtrack, and you can watch all of the cut-scenes, listen to all the background music, look at all the costumes, look at concept art, play a mini-game Breaugh and I are still trying to understand the point of... all sorts of fun stuff. Always worth a look, especially to check out the cut-scenes you never triggered. Also contains the list of titles. You get one title per play-through. Maybe you had an A relationship with Hewie, you get a title. Or you get one if you abused Hewie. There's a title for a game that's less than three hours (we made it at something like 2:59:07), or one that's over twenty hours or something (just leave the PS2 running!). All sorts of fun titles, and one place the game gets plenty of replay value. (Once you get all the titles, fans have made up challenges online, like playing with the sound turned off, or not using any items, or using a certain costume in hard mode, or stuff like that.)
Clocks
CLOCKS, GUYS. CLOCKS. YOU SAVE AT CLOCKS. JUST. YES. THE SOUND OF A CLOCK IS SOOTHING, BECAUSE IT MEANS SAVEPOINT. SAVE WHENEVER YOU CAN. SAVE SAVE SAVE.
IN SUMMARY
Haunting Ground really is my favorite game of all time. The story's a little ridiculous, and I still don't totally get what the fuck Azoth is, but who cares? It's got great gameplay, awesome enemies, a really well done creepy atmosphere, and it's overall just a fuckton of fun to play.
WARNING: Do not play at night by yourself. Is bad idea.