A few weeks ago I completed Alan Wake, and I’ve just now gotten around to posting a review. It’s a good game, though it doesn’t try very hard to be scary and it’s a little conflicted about how it wants you to play, there’s really a lot to like. I was particularly interested in the […]
This is the fourth (and final) post in a series of posts about Deadly Premonition. You should read the first, second, and third entries first. THE OTHERWORLD I really like how Deadly Premonition deals with the Otherworld, a label I am borrowing from the Silent Hill series to describe an alternate reality, infested with zombies […]
This is part three of a series of posts about Deadly Premonition. You should read part 1 and part 2 first. PROBLEMS, REAL AND IMAGINED Most of the technical issues with Deadly Premonition are not true problems, just systems that seem to be too simple compared to the modern state of the art. The textures […]
This is part two of a series of articles about Deadly Premonition. You should read Part 1 first. THREE KEY SUCCESSES The August 2010 issue of Game Developer magazine has a lengthy post-mortem review of Deadly Premonition, written by SWERY (the game’s director) and several other staff of Access Games. The developers select five areas […]
I’ve been quiet for a while. I can legitimately blame this on work, and travel, and more work, but there is also another reason: Deadly Premonition took me a while to beat, and it’s taken me even longer to start to wrap my head around. I have a lot to say about Deadly Premonition, but […]
¥980 is about $10 right now. That is to say, it’s not very much money. It’s particularly cheap for a DVD containing “over 120 minutes of astonishing horror footage.” And yet, that’s exactly what 本当にあった 恐怖の心霊・都市伝説DVD BOX (“Absolutely Real Scary Ghosts and Urban Legends DVD BOX”) offers at that price. I was more than a […]
I finished Heavy Rain last week. Despite director David Cage’s insistence to the contrary, Heavy Rain isn’t really a horror game. It’s a thriller, or maybe mystery-suspense; if it were a film, it would live in an adjacent, but clearly separate section from the horror flicks. So, being a not-horror game, I’m not going to […]
I finally finished Silent Hill Homecoming this evening and posted a review. It’s not a bad game, and it’s more like classic Silent Hill than anything released since 2003, but a few key derivations from the formula damaged the experience for me. Still, it’s a positive sign that the series is moving forward (evidenced more […]
Today I have posted a review of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which I urge you to go read forthwith. My work-related horror game slump continues, and to tell you the truth, I haven’t actually played Shattered Memories yet. Instead, this review is written by one of my best friends, Casey Richardson. Casey is an authority […]
I finished Cursed Mountain this evening after two marathon play sessions this week. My new years resolution is to pick up the pace when it comes to completing games this year, and first on my list was the game about Buddhist ghosts in Tibet. The game is good but it needs another two months of […]