Poll on favorite horror games
Over at Jill Sandwich, Stacie Ponder is asking gamers to send her lists of their "ten favorite horror-based video games." I'm not well-played in horror, so here's my odd list of choices:
Clock Tower: The Super Famicom one. It's a horror movie on a cart, several things done superbly, particularly given 16-bit constraints - the multiple endings based on criteria the player had to infer through simple curiosity; the many nods to genre tropes; the successful attempt at Argento atmosphere; the real fear brought to clicking on nearly anything. That damn car ending.
Resident Evil: The original; I haven't yet played the Gamecube version. The first Doberman window, the first time you learned to check for that pool of blood before walking by a corpse. Just hearing those opening cello strains gets the blood pumping.
Deadly Premonition: Despite that ending, it's 95% of the way one of the smartest deconstructions of video games out there, with a murderer's row of inventive, engaging characters. And the flash-forward, "don't want to die" zombies are a genuinely disturbing take on an overused enemy.
Maniac Mansion: Yeah, I know. It's more madcap teen adventure, but the maniac mansion's got a mummy in the shower and a blue-skinned doctor who wants to suck out a cheerleader's brains and an evil meteor in the basement. It's a humorous "horror-based video game," but when you look at it, Illbleed isn't exactly a serious take on horror, either.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest: Obligatory note: it's damn impossible to complete this game without an FAQ due to certain unintuitive item uses, yes. The landscape, though, is convincingly cold and dead, and the abandoned village with the lone yet completely calm old woman near the end and the vacant, ruined castle with the dreamy, moving-at-half-speed sorta-scrolling were genuinely atmospheric.
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse: This, on the other hand, is a splendid marriage of gameplay and production values and needs no defending.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: Almost done with it after finally coming to it this year! But everyone's right: this is a classic, a genuinely vast and inventive game, and I doubt I'll see a better Metroidvania.
Illbleed: Pity that sequel didn't work out (well, other than the fact that it was because a man died), as I would've liked to have seen its unique gameplay system in a polished state. But its imaginative insanity is a bold gift to the world, and, like Deadly Premonition (though not to that title's degree), it's a downright smart deconstruction of the medium if you pay attention.
D2: Gorgeous mess of a game; CW seems to chalk up its loose ends and lack of restraint in its message to the director's mental health issues during its production, but to me, they smack of time constraints, grand ideas that weren't given the chance to be fully implemented. It only every so often hits the fences, but I'm so glad it always swung. I still like the loneliness of wandering from cabin to cabin in a desolate yet oddly cozy world of snow, and the game's boss designs were at once uniquely artistic and disturbing - the first boss's introduction; the "angel". (Xilo is a hall-of-fame WTF, however.)
Animamundi: Everyone's gonna go "what?!" when they see the name and "WHAT!?!?" when they find out what it is. It can't escape my admiration, though, due to its high-quality translation and sheer breadth of story.
Almost made the list:
5 Days a Stranger/Trilby's Notes: Both games are effective tributes to the Sierra era, genuinely disturbing, with good puzzle design. 5 Days, though, is too juvenile at points and has too many logical loopholes, and Trilby, as polished as it is, is too depressing and schlocky to hold a real piece of my heart.
Again: Tried to justify it, but as creepy as walking about the character's visions of past crime scenes can be, it's a mystery/thriller, not horror.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Nothing wrong with it, it's indeed a great game, but it recycles from previous entries heavily, and there's enough Castlevania on the list as it is.
Hugo's House of Horrors: Not really. But I considered it.
.
Clock Tower: The Super Famicom one. It's a horror movie on a cart, several things done superbly, particularly given 16-bit constraints - the multiple endings based on criteria the player had to infer through simple curiosity; the many nods to genre tropes; the successful attempt at Argento atmosphere; the real fear brought to clicking on nearly anything. That damn car ending.
Resident Evil: The original; I haven't yet played the Gamecube version. The first Doberman window, the first time you learned to check for that pool of blood before walking by a corpse. Just hearing those opening cello strains gets the blood pumping.
Deadly Premonition: Despite that ending, it's 95% of the way one of the smartest deconstructions of video games out there, with a murderer's row of inventive, engaging characters. And the flash-forward, "don't want to die" zombies are a genuinely disturbing take on an overused enemy.
Maniac Mansion: Yeah, I know. It's more madcap teen adventure, but the maniac mansion's got a mummy in the shower and a blue-skinned doctor who wants to suck out a cheerleader's brains and an evil meteor in the basement. It's a humorous "horror-based video game," but when you look at it, Illbleed isn't exactly a serious take on horror, either.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest: Obligatory note: it's damn impossible to complete this game without an FAQ due to certain unintuitive item uses, yes. The landscape, though, is convincingly cold and dead, and the abandoned village with the lone yet completely calm old woman near the end and the vacant, ruined castle with the dreamy, moving-at-half-speed sorta-scrolling were genuinely atmospheric.
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse: This, on the other hand, is a splendid marriage of gameplay and production values and needs no defending.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: Almost done with it after finally coming to it this year! But everyone's right: this is a classic, a genuinely vast and inventive game, and I doubt I'll see a better Metroidvania.
Illbleed: Pity that sequel didn't work out (well, other than the fact that it was because a man died), as I would've liked to have seen its unique gameplay system in a polished state. But its imaginative insanity is a bold gift to the world, and, like Deadly Premonition (though not to that title's degree), it's a downright smart deconstruction of the medium if you pay attention.
D2: Gorgeous mess of a game; CW seems to chalk up its loose ends and lack of restraint in its message to the director's mental health issues during its production, but to me, they smack of time constraints, grand ideas that weren't given the chance to be fully implemented. It only every so often hits the fences, but I'm so glad it always swung. I still like the loneliness of wandering from cabin to cabin in a desolate yet oddly cozy world of snow, and the game's boss designs were at once uniquely artistic and disturbing - the first boss's introduction; the "angel". (Xilo is a hall-of-fame WTF, however.)
Animamundi: Everyone's gonna go "what?!" when they see the name and "WHAT!?!?" when they find out what it is. It can't escape my admiration, though, due to its high-quality translation and sheer breadth of story.
Almost made the list:
5 Days a Stranger/Trilby's Notes: Both games are effective tributes to the Sierra era, genuinely disturbing, with good puzzle design. 5 Days, though, is too juvenile at points and has too many logical loopholes, and Trilby, as polished as it is, is too depressing and schlocky to hold a real piece of my heart.
Again: Tried to justify it, but as creepy as walking about the character's visions of past crime scenes can be, it's a mystery/thriller, not horror.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Nothing wrong with it, it's indeed a great game, but it recycles from previous entries heavily, and there's enough Castlevania on the list as it is.
Hugo's House of Horrors: Not really. But I considered it.
.