All posts by Darklaharl

Spooky Month: Spooky’s House of Jumpscares

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OMG She’s so Cute!!!!….wait…aahhhhhhh

Spooky’s House of Jumpscares a game by Lag Studios originally realeased on July 28th of 2015, is a horror game where your goal is to make it through Spooky’s house, all 1000 rooms. The game starts out to innocently, the first few monsters are just pop out monsters on sticks but as you get deeper and deeper into the house things just get scarier and scarier. A good example is the faceless monster chasing you, or the killer deer.

Spooky’s is a fun little game, it can be unsettling at certian parts but I definetly recommend you give it a try, get it now on Steam for about $12 bucks or wait and see if it goes on sale in the near future.

Spooky Factor: Super Cute Spooky, but then very spooky

Spooky Month: Dead Space Series

Dead Space is an old game now, not that old mind you it came out just last generation for Xbox 360 and PS3 almost 8 years ago.

One of my all time favorite franchises, Dead Space follows Isaac Clark as he accompanies some other unimportant people as they try to help the planetcracker  starship USG Ishimura. When they arrive they find the ship dark and empty, but as soon as they turn the lights on all hell breaks loose. The first and second game are the best of the 3 as they were not as action based as the 3rd one turned out to be. Dead Space had a lot to offer in terms of story, where did the zombie like Necromorphs come from? Why are they here? What does the marker have to do with it all? The cliff hanger ending of Dead Space 3 will leave you wanting more, I know it did for me.

One of the spookiest things I can remember from this game was not even in the game itself (that I can remember) it was this trailer that had a woman singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, to this day every time I hear this song it sends shivers down my spine check it out below. Play the trailer and the game in the dark with headphones if you dare!

Don’t be afraid to check out the extended series, there are several books, some comics, and 2 animated movies. I liked all of these things, some less but I still recommend them.

Spooky Factor: Hold on to your dookie, its going to get spooky!

Have you played the Dead Space games? Did you like them? Let me know in the comments!

Spooky Month- Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack

 

Gyo is an interesting horror manga by Junji Ito one of my favorite horror manga writers. The manga revolves around Tadashi and his girlfriend Kaori as they try to escape the horror that comes from the ocean, but today I am here to talk to you about the OVA that was made based on this Manga.

The OVA was modified from the manga in this version Kaori is the protagonist where she used to be the dueteragonist. Kaori is on vacation with 2 of her friends when they are attacked by a shark on land! After defeating it they find out that many fish on some sort of contraption are walking on land and generally being a nuesence, they are also spreading a horrible stench which people describe as the scent of death. Things get horrifying when people start being infected with whatever is affecting the fish.

I will tell you that the OVA is not as scary as the manga can be, I think the art style just doesn’t do it justice in an animation. I recommend reading the manga over watching the OVA if you can, but either way check it out and let me know what you think in the comments!

Spooky Factor: Hold on to your dooky, it gets pretty spooky

Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs Review

Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs, or Tokyo Twilight: SG for short, is an Adventure game turn based strategy game about ghost hunting . This game is actually an updated version of another game which means this updated version of the game has extra features  the original version didn’t have. Unfortunately, I did not play that game so this review comes from a new-to-the-series perspective.

Visuals
Unlike other Story/Adventure games Tokyo Twilight: SG has moving sprites of the characters. It’s something I’m not used to and was odd at first, but as I got used to it, I felt that they were actually pretty neat. The backgrounds, though, are a different matter. They aren’t interactive; it’s just a background. Finally, the turn based part of the game is nothing to look at its just tiles and symbols which, admittedly, was kinda of confusing to look at.

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Story
The story opens with the protagonist transferring to a new school and running into the class president, her friend, the to-be CEO of Gatekeepers (the Ghost hunters), and one of the employees who happens to be a classmate. After a tour with the class president, things quickly escalate into you helping exercise a ghost! Quite a quick move towards the action. So as not to spoil too much, thats all I will say on the story, but overall it was very enjoyable it is definitely the strong point of Tokyo Twilight: GS.

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Audio
I was not very impressed with the audio of this game. If you stay on a “page” or battle for too long, the music just gets repetitive, but that’s OK  because you can always turn it down; you won’t miss out on anything. The only time I didn’t have the game on silent was when I got to a new area just to hear the new music that might be playing.

 

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Gameplay
The game play was actually pretty hard when it came down to the turn based part of the game. I feel like the battle system was not explained too well and when I was finally given the reigns I found myself really confused. All the game told me was, “Try to anticipate the ghost’s movements.” Really helpful, game! Once I got used to it, I was able to play a little better, but it only really got harder. Outside of battle was even more confusing. There was no explanation, at all, about what the choice wheels meant or did. I had to guess a lot at first and learn from there. There are 2 wheels. The first wheel had an emotion: Love, Friendship, Anger, Sadness, Anxiety. The second wheel had a sense: Taste, Hearing, Touch, Smell, Sight. Combining these resulted in odd reactions from people. For example, the first thing I did was choose touch and love, which just resulted in me trying to touch a character I hardly knew much to that characters disgust. I had no idea what I was doing at first, it could have been explained a little at least, rather than not at all.

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Verdict
Despite its short comings I really enjoyed Tokyo Twilight: SG, the story had me hooked even if the battles were so hard that I had to do some of them more than once. If you have not played Tokyo Twilight then I say play the 2016 version instead, unless you want to find out what the differences are between that one and Special Gigs.

Think you will try it? Let us know in the comments!

Spooky Month: CarnEvil

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Remember arcades? I think it would be pretty neat to know how much money those things took from me throughout my life. My guess is over 200 dollars.

CarnEvil is a game from the 90’s, it came out on Halloween of 1998 and was developed/published by the now defunct Midway games. The game is a railway shooter played with shotguns, the story revolves around an urban legend from Iowa, a fake one I believe.

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Anyway the protagonist is on a ghost tour and he gets off to test the legend, the legend states that if a golden token is inserted into the jester’s mouth on top of the tombstone of Ludwig von Tökkentäkker, a ringmaster buried in the cemetery, a haunted amusement park will rise from the earth. Long story short, it turns out to be true and he must survive by killing the 4 main bosses of the amusement park: Evil Marie (a take on bloody Mary?), Krampus (Santa’s Evil counter part), Junior (A giant baby), and The ringmaster himself. Once the bosses are all killed the game ends with the protagonist and one other survivor left.

The game play is your standard rail way shooter, you don’t move by yourself and you don’t move until you’ve cleared the current screen of enemies. Considering this is an arcade game, its difficulty is pretty high, expect to lose a lot of quarters. The graphics have aged quite a bit, they don’t hold up to today’s standards but that’s to be expected nothing from the 90’s holds up today.

Did you ever play CarnEvil? if you haven’t and ever find it you should give it a try, its one of my favorite arcade games.

Spooky Factor: Only spooky if you’re a baby