I sleep now!

Holy crap this has been a crazy month! First a bunch of stuff happened at work, then I got on some planes and flew around the country, then I came back and got in my car and drove all over Northern California, then I moved all of my belongings to a new place, and now I am getting ready for a trip to Japan. All of this has occurred within a 3 week span, and I’m exhausted!

Not exhausted enough to stop thinking about horror games, however. It seems that the database is in dire need of attention. It is missing a crapload of new games like F.E.A.R. and The Darkness, as well as old standards that really should be added (yeah, yeah, Dino Crisis, I know). It also contains a bunch of games that have been cancelled or otherwise changed since I added them. I hope to revamp the contents of the database again soon to bring it up to date.

This site has also been the target of a couple of very annoying spam bots. I’ve made it a little more difficult to post on this site: you now need to prove that you are not a robot by entering some text in the post dialog. It’s a simple solution and seems pretty effective.

So, in leu of any real horror game material at the moment, I’m going to instead recommend to you a few books that I have enjoyed recently. 999 is one of the best horror short-story collections I have ever read. I particularly liked the Gene Wolfe and Joyce Carol Oats stories, but there are a large number of other gems as well. I am also right in the middle of The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, which has served as a great introduction to this author. I’ve not read Lovecraft much before, and reading his works now is interesting because it is clear that he has had a significant influence on modern American horror. The stories all follow a similar pattern and the mechanics of each tale seem almost cliché, but I think that they feel that way because his works have been copied so much since they were written, not because they were cliché when they were written. Finally, though not strictly a horror film, Paprika is the best animated movie I have seen in a very long time. It is sort of an anime version of postmodern Japanese surrealism–think Haruki Murakami.

What have you been reading/playing/watching?

9 thoughts on “I sleep now!

  1. Well I’ve been playing through the Legacy of Kain series…not really horror but they still do offer a decent plot. I’ll have to check out that book and movie. They look pretty promising. Good luck with everything.

  2. http://lahermandaddelacafeina.com
    Maybe you con solve me this riddle: How the hell is it that the Dino Crisis games qualify as “horror”? Just because of the gameplay mechanics? Really, I never understood that.

    Clive Barker’s Undying, for example, has -gameplay wise- much more in common with, say, Wolfenstein 3D than with any survival/horror game, but it’s about ten hundred thousand times more genuinely “horror” than all the Dino Crisis games stack on top of one another. If you ask me, Undying has way more right to be considered survival/horror than any of the Dino Crisis titles.

    Damn they piss me off >:(

  3. http://www.amazon.com/Nightwatch-Ewan-McGregor/dp/B00004Z4SG/ref
    Well im a frequent reader of this site and it seems to be a bit of a slow time for Horror titles. I myself have been meaning to read some Lovecraft for a while but have been distracted by a book on Genghis Khan.

    Anyhow, last night i watched a film called Nightwatch called Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte and Patricia Arquette. It’s a horror film about a student who gets implicated in a series of murders. However, it is anythign but a simple slasher film and plays up to the lonelyness of working alone at night in a hospital. I would reccomend it for a few buck as it concentrates on the psychological appeal of working alone but the fear it induces. Worth checking out.

    anyhow, i was wondering if there is any more news on Silent Hill Origins….i got a PSP and have been looking forward to it for a while. do you reckon it will be substantially innovative in terms of the plot of the series? Personally I love the ambiguity of the first Silent Hill game as much as the horror elements.

    Anyhow, keep up the good work!

  4. I’ve been playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, the grain filter is making me blind, but I love the game. Altered States is kind of a horror/sci-fi movie that’s worth checking out.

    I think I’ll try that Lovecraft book, and that sucks about your job man, and thanks for the help and this site of pertinent info

  5. Dino Crisis (at least, the first one; haven’t played the second and the third is rubbish) uses arguably the same scare methods as the original Resident Evil, only with dinosaurs in place of zombies. In that sense, it could just as easily be considered survival horror.

    And the only reason Undying isn’t mentioned on this site is simply because Chris doesn’t cover PC titles. Refer to ‘Omissions’ on the left hand bar.

  6. Reading – The Big Sleep

    Watching – The Adventures of Pete and Pete (season 2)

    Playing – Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (I’m not a Star Wars fan, but there’s been great games from it…this one has really dated now. Ha!)

  7. http://deadpoolstrikesback.blogspot.com
    Here in Greece it is too hot at the moment to even think about videogaming. Last couple of days was like 43 degrees celcius and at each peak was 2-3 more degrees. Last movie I watched was “Brick” on DVD. It is a noir film at heart with the twist that it takes place in a high school environment.

    Thoroughly enjoyed it.

    As for gaming I still havent found the courage to start Fatal Frame 2 and thus play the only game of the series that has evaded my gaming prowess…

    Oh well, there is always tomorrow:)

  8. Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world is my favourite book, Haruki Murikami is an absolute genius. I had no idea that Satoshi Kon had another film coming out, perfect blue is possibly the best film ever witnessed by man.

    Funny you should mention Lovecraft too actualy because i’ve just started to read ‘The doom that came to saranath’ again, i was inspired to read it after starting to play ‘Eternal darkness’ for the first time, it reeks of Lovecraft’s influence, the older gods, the loose grip on reality, the paranoia you get sitting on your own in front of the screen, it’s fantastic.

    Sorry to hear about the whole job situation, it’s good that they kept you all on and you weren’t just made redundant though. If things are sorted and you work your way up the ladder, you could use your power to hire a certain QA tester named Ian who just so happpens to be brilliant at his job.

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