Siren

Also known as: Forbidden Siren
Platforms: PS2
Release Date: 2003-11-06
Regions: USA Japan Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★★★
Extremely innovative–and extremely difficult–entry into the horror game hall of fame. A masterpiece for those who can muscle their way through it.

Siren is a really interesting game. It is quite clearly survival horror, and yet it is unlike any other horror game I’ve ever seen. The visual style is very similar to the Silent Hill series, and though the story was written by two of the original Silent Hill team members, Siren is nothing like Silent Hill.

The story is straightforward at the beginning. Something is very wrong in the small mountain village of Hanuda. The waters have all run red and the residents of the town seem to have turned into zombie versions of their former selves. A small group of people, mostly unarmed, must try to make it out of the village alive. As the game progresses, the story is told in small, out-of-order snippets, leaving it up to the player to put the pieces together.

In Siren you will play as a variety of characters, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. The characters in Siren are well developed through in-game dialog, cut scenes, and information found throughout the game. Some characters have weapons, but most do not. Some don’t even have flashlights. And all the characters in the game are in the process of slowly turning into zombies themselves, and it’s particularly disturbing to be attacked by a character you recently were able to control.

But slowly turning into a zombie does have its advantages. First of all, your characters can heal just by standing around (there are no health items or life bars in the game). This is a good thing, because all of the characters are regular joes who can only take a few hits before dying. The other advantage is that each character can “tune in” on shibito (Siren’s word for their rather special type of zombie) in the area and see through their eyes.

This leads us to the central gameplay mechanic in Siren: sneaking. The characters in the game are far too weak to take out all the shibito, and even if they could the shibito come back to life after a few minutes. So the only course of action is to sneak through each level, distracting the zombies by making noise and looking through their eyes to find blind spots. Often you will have to lead another character through a level, which makes the experience even more difficult: not only do you have to stay hidden from the shibito, you have to make sure that the person who is following you is out of danger.

Siren is a hard game. It’s by far the most difficult horror game I’ve ever played through, and it’s probably in the top 5 difficult games of any genre that I’ve played. Like all sneaking games, Siren requires a lot of patience. Unlike Solid Snake or Sam Fisher, the characters in Siren are defenseless when they are caught. So each level requires that you look at the map, look through the eyes of the shibito, plan a route and pick blind spots to hide in. But sneaking deftly won’t be enough: to play Siren you must be thinking on your feet, as most of the puzzles are not your standard “find the key to the single locked door” fair. And when you do get into combat, you still need to concentrate if you hope to win; combat is methodical and all about getting the timing down, and it takes quite a while to get the hang of it.

Siren is so hard that it can be very frustrating. It seems to be very repetitive as well: you’ll play the same levels more than once, and you play through the same areas with different characters many, many times. However, what one must understand before attempting Siren is that none of these design choices were made hapazardly; they were all chosen with the upmost care by the game’s designers. In fact, playing through the same areas over and over is absolute requirement for this game, as each time through you will learn new places to hide and get a better idea of the topology of the map. And repeating the same missions is part of a grander level unlocking scheme, which opens up a whole new dimension to the game about 4 or 5 hours in. I wrote about my initial frustration with the game several months back, and followed that post up with my revised opinion once I got a bit further in.

Speaking of play time, Siren is a long game. It is very very long for this genre, and pretty long for games in general. Survival Horror games tend to be pretty short (Resident Evil games usually clock in at about 12 hours, Silent Hill is close to 9 hours, and Clock Tower 3 is a measly 5), but Siren is an exception. Though the game time on my save file says 20 hours 31 minutes, this is actually much less than the total time I spent on the game. Playing off and on, typically about 6 hours a week, Siren took me just under seven months to complete. That insanely long play time is rivaled only by a few never-ending games, like Animal Crossing. I went out of my way to complete Siren 100% (though I still didn’t do the time attack mode or the puzzle game that I unlocked), beating every mission and getting every item in the game. It was very hard, and it took a very long time, and I played the same levels over and over again, but it was absolutely worth it.

Siren is a scary game. It’s a totally different kind of tension than the feeling created by most Survival Horror games. Hiding behind a wall as a shibito passes by can be heart attack-inducing, and I found while playing through the game that I needed to periodically remind myself to breath. The level of tension is high and constant, which makes the game easily the scariest game I have ever played.

I’ve talked a lot about how Siren feels, and I’d like to touch briefly on the execution. The controls are solid, though somewhat cryptic. Many reviews have lamented the menu system that Siren uses for investigating and manipulating objects in the game, and I’ll agree that it’s slightly obtuse. The graphics are very good, and the texture quality in particular is fabulous. Like Silent Hill 2, Siren uses a lot of darkness and fog to make its world look scary, but the style works very well. The sound in Siren is absolutely phenomenal: there is no music in the game, but the background blend of sounds that can be heard while playing is exceptionally well done. The voice acting is a little weak, but it didn’t ruin the game for me. The shibito make horrible, horrible sounds as well (heavy breathing, laughing, crying, etc), which really adds to the terror invoked by the game.

The biggest problem with Siren is that it has all these awesome new and innovative ideas, and it doesn’t do enough to communicate them to the player. A lot of the frustration in this game comes from simply not understanding the rules, and once the rules are mastered the game feels a lot better. I wanted to give Siren a rating of about 9.5, but the frustration brought on simply by not being told enough by the game reduced the score.

Here’s what I wish somebody had told me before I started playing Siren:

  • Don’t let the first level turn you off. It’s by far the worst level in the game. It gets much better.
  • Investigate EVERYTHING. If your character comments on something, hit triangle to bring up the menu and see if there is any interaction to be had. Even if something looks like useless background, investigate it.
  • Turn your flashlight off. The game is amazingly dark, so pump the brightness on your TV up. The shibito can see you from further away if your light is on.
  • Since each game area is used for multiple missions with multiple goals, a lot of the areas have stuff in them that isn’t relevant the first time through. If you think you see a clear path to the end but are troubled that you seem to be skipping half the level, don’t worry about it. The clear path is usually correct, and in future missions you’ll have plenty of time to traverse the rest of the level.
  • Just because you can see yourself through the eyes of a shibito doesn’t mean that the shibito himself realizes you are there. The shibito can see in the dark much better than you can, but they have a limited awareness. Once you get the hang of how far each shibito can really see, you can pick out much better hiding places. This works both ways, though. Occasionally you will encounter a shibito that has exceptionally good eyesight (like a sniper), and he may be able to see you even though you don’t appear to be visible when looking through his eyes. Beware.
  • Don’t worry about using a FAQ on this game. It’s so freaking hard that you have to be pretty hardcore to complete it without a FAQ, esp. if you want to get all the items.
  • Avoid combat whenever possible. You will suck at combat, trust me. It’s much safer to sneak.

So, in closing, I am extremely impressed with Siren on almost every level. It’s amazingly innovative, it is a blast to play, and the chill factor is through the roof. However, I have to warn perspective purchasers that this game will not hold your hand, and it will not help you out when you get stuck. It’s very, very hard and very demanding, and the developers rarely go out of their way to make the rules of the game crystal clear. But if you are the type who really enjoys heart-stopping suspense and tension, and if you have a lot of patience, I have absolutely no qualms recommending Siren as one of the best Survival Horror games ever made.

The Suffering

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, PC
Release Date: 2004-03-08
Regions: USA Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★★☆
Action-centric horror done right; The Suffering is an excellent American response to the Japanese genre heavyweights.

The Suffering is very much an American response to the Japanese horror formula. The game has clearly been influenced by the likes of Devil May Cry and Silent Hill 2, but the developers have gone out of their way to break many horror traditions and mix a healthy dose of action into a traditionally slow-paced genre.

Torque is the latest addition to death row at Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate

Island. Convicted of killing his wife and two children, Torque himself cannot remember the details of the event, and isn’t sure if he is innocent or guilty. It turns out that Carnate Island is a very bad place with a very bad history (everything is wrong with the place, short of being an ancient Indian burial ground), and as Torque arrives things pretty much go to hell. Torque must now battle his way off the island while struggling to remember what really happened to his family.

The Suffering plays like every first-person shooter on a console ever, except that it’s third person (actually, you can play the whole game from the first person perspective if you choose). The dual analog sticks are used for rotation of the camera and movement, and the triggers are used for jumping, firing, and reloading. The control scheme is simple enough, as you rarely need to do much other than move and shoot. There is a targeting reticle, and the game is nice about locking on to enemies once you start shooting at them. I’m terrible at console FPS games because I usually grapple with the controls, but The Suffering was easy and consistent. Though there are a few legitimate puzzles in the game, the amount of puzzle solving in The Suffering is much lower than in most other horror games. Many puzzles are optional, and simply save you from having to battle it out with yet more monsters if you complete them.

The level design in The Suffering is where the game really starts to depart from its Japanese counterparts. The game starts out in Abbot Penitentiary but eventually moves through several other locations, including some very nicely rendered outdoor environments. The prison is by far the scariest of all the locations in the game, but the other areas are still well realized. In typical FPS style, The Suffering rewards players to go out of their way to explore their environments. If you look around even a little bit, you’ll find enough ammo and health to last for the entire game. In keeping with FPS-norms, you are also allowed to save your progress anywhere at any time.

The design of the levels is in The Suffering supplemented by the excellent character design. Though Torque himself is somewhat boring (the typical FPS hero: silent and personality-less), the other characters he meets throughout the adventure are complex and interesting. The voice acting and script is top-notch (though the level of profanity is so excessive it sometimes seems purposeless), which adds a lot to the game experience. The size of the cast is also impressive, and each character has a distinct personality.

The monster design is also quite good. The Suffering is fundamentally about a very bad place manifesting itself, and the monsters designs reflect that philosophy. In addition to looking damn cool and avoiding the zombie pitfall, the monsters in The Suffering also manage to reflect the story: each represents a method of execution used at some point in the prison’s history. The Slayer monsters are by far the coolest looking and best-realized; these spiderly humanoids have had their forearms and calves replaced with blades, and their heads must be held on with an armature because they lack necks. Seeing the monsters move is also a treat, as the animation for them has a lot of personality and style in it (the Slayers, for example, drag their blades along the ground and kick up sparks as they advance on you).

One of the coolest things about The Suffering is that the environment feels alive. Non-interactive cut scenes rarely occur, but there is plenty of story and dialog delivered through interactions with various characters while the game is running (if you shoot someone as they are in the middle of telling you were to go next, they fall over and die and you are on your own). Environmental interaction in The Suffering isn’t limited to dialog either; you’ll often see humans and monsters fighting, or catch a glimpse of some unfortunate prison guard meeting a grisly demise. As you move throughout the various levels, the interactive environments help make it feel like you are not a lone man out to save the world, but a guy with a gun in the middle of a much larger event.

The Suffering was designed to give the player a lot of choices when it comes to this sort of interaction: you can follow a guy offering help or shoot him, choose to free an imprisoned guard or leave him. The levels are designed such that helping some people will allow you to avoid large fights (the NPCs often know shortcuts), but sometimes NPCs will lead you into battles as well. The outcome of the story changes depending on how you make decisions regarding the other characters of the game (that is, you generally always have a choice to kill them or help them), and the levels appear to be balanced such that neither route is easier or harder. The morality system in The Suffering is quite well done, and the story revolving around the protagonist’s blackouts and lack of memory keep the system from feeling awkward.

Speaking of the story line, it is pretty well done. Most of the plot concerns the history of Carnate Island and of Torque himself, but the lush script also helps the narrative remain strong on the events occurring in the game as you play. The story forces the player to question the difference between the evil humans that Torque encounters and the monsters themselves, and uses the aggressive relationship between guards and inmates as a basis for a lot of interesting character development. Since the game is very linear, the story line unfolds at the same pace as the game itself, which feels very natural.

Not everything is peechy-keen in The Suffering, however. The first problem is one of play balancing. The difficulty level is quite low (on Normal Mode, anyway) throughout the game, but every once and a while there will be level segments that require a massive jump in skill to complete. For example, I played the first few hours without dying until I reached a particular section that took me about 25 tries to complete. The same thing happened again few hours later: I’d sailed through the game without trouble until I reached a particular section and became stuck for several hours. The end boss was also difficult to understand (though easy to complete, once the trick was clear). While these balancing missteps are infrequent, they mar the overall quality of the game.

There are other problems, too. As the game progresses, the number of bugs that pop up increases rather dramatically. Most of these problems are collision detection or AI issues, but occasionally you will run into something that requires a restart from a save. Late in the game, for example, an NPC character and I were in the middle of a large fire fight. We got separated, but I could still hear him talking so I knew that he was alive. When the fight ended, the NPC was nowhere to be found. Since the game rewards you for keeping these people alive (and since I needed him to tell me what the heck I should do next), him being gone was a problem. I could hear him talking, but after searching the area I was stumped. Eventually I found him standing by himself on a road that was really, really far away from the location of the fight. I don’t know how he got out there, but if I hadn’t been able to find him I probably would have had to restart from a previous save. Immediately following this segment of the level, the game actually crashed after playing a cut scene, so I had to play the fire fight again anyway (note that this was the only time that the game crashed for me). While most of the bugs in The Suffering are not show-stoppers, they are a bit annoying and can add to the frustration level of the game.

Finally, while The Suffering as a whole lot of fun as an action game, it isn’t very scary. It certainly has its moments (especially in the Prison), and the developers have done an excellent job of creating a scary environment and mood. But Torque is never really in danger because he is a bad-ass who can pop a cap in anything that he might encounter. There are a few pop-out-of-the-dark heart stoppers to be found, but Torque’s prowess as a killing machine prevents the rest of the ambience and the monsters themselves as coming off as particularly scary. And unlike some other horror games, there is little increased tension invoked when the player must switch to a weaker weapon, as all the weapons seem equally powerful. I played most of the game with the dual pistols, as I enjoyed using them and I didn’t see much advantage to the other weapons Torque finds later in the game.

One more note about the play experience: the developers are not kidding about the M for Mature rating The Suffering sports. In addition to rather gratuitous swearing, The Suffering is extremely violent and bloody. If you are the type of player who might not enjoy this level of violence, I suggest you avoid the game.

Overall, The Suffering is a fun, adrenaline-filled, and intelligent game. It is very clearly a reaction to the typically slow pace of Japanese horror games, so if you thought Resident Evil needed fewer keys and more shooting, The Suffering is the game for you. As horror, the game comes off a little weaker than some other horror titles, but this is mostly because the developers have made a conscious decision to make the protagonist an unstoppable killing machine instead of a regular, underpowered Joe. But even without being scary, The Suffering is a lot of fun, and sports some of the best character and level design available in this genre. It’s also a unique blend of third- and first-person game play, and stands out amongst other games in this genre for its innovative approach.

Ghost Hunter

Platforms: PS2
Release Date: 2003-12-05
Regions: USA Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★★☆
A light-hearted shooter dressed up as horror that’s more fun than it should be.

I expected Ghosthunter to be a pretty terrible game. The design of the main character was boring (goatees usually equate to angst and generic rage), the title seemed uninspired, and the back of the box made the game look like a shooter with some horror trappings. Still, some of the monster designs were fairly unique and the art looked quite nice, so I thought I’d give the game a chance.

So it was somewhat surprising to find out that Ghosthunter is actually a pretty fun game. It’s not rocket science and it’s not very scary, but you can tell that the developers put it together with a lot of care. It’s clear that this project was somebody’s baby, and though it’s got its share of flaws, the vision of that anonymous developer is enough to carry the title (most of the time, anyway). Ghosthunter is a shooter with horror trappings, but it’s done with enough skill that I was happy to play it though.

Ghosthunter is probably the best Ghostbusters game on the market. It is as if the developers wanted nothing more but to make a Ghostbusters game, but lacking the rights to the Ghostbusters brand, settled for something extraordinarily similar. The protagonist in Ghosthunter, the awkwardly-named Lazarus Jones, is clearly modeled after Peter Venkman, Bill Murray’s character in the original Ghostbusters film: he’s sort of a loser who bumbles his way through events that he is unprepared for, wisecracking all the way. The combat system involves shooting ghosts until they’ve weakened them and then capturing them with a trap so that they can be stored in a large round containment unit in the basement of an old building. It’s quite common to see developers try to model movie games after other, non-licensed titles, but it’s rarer to see a non-licensed game stick so closely to a well-known brand’s formula.

That said, Ghosthunter mostly works as a half-scary half-humorous shooter. It isn’t really the type of game to burden itself with a comprehensible plot or deep characters, but there are a large number of cut scenes and the dialog isn’t half bad. There are a few occasions where the plot makes so little sense that the game is actually harmed, including the last two hours of play (the ending is something of a disaster). But most of the time, the crazy antics of the main character and the people he meets are acceptable because of the title’s rather light-hearted approach. As with old-school games, Jones visits a variety of unrelated world that each have some sort of theme (swamp, school, junkyard, prison, etc), and in each of these places he gets the opportunity to extinguish new foes and make new jokes at their expense. The story serves to tie these events together (very loosely) and the action just good enough that the paper-thin plot is easy to ignore.

Speaking of action, Ghosthunter passes the time in two basic ways: shooting ghosts and exploring levels. The shooting system follows the Western 3rd-person-console-shooter standard: left analog stick to move the player, right analog stick to focus the crosshairs, L1 to shoot. Ghosthunter requires the player to go in and out of gun mode when shooting, causing the camera to focus on the target and preventing the player from moving quickly while firing. If you’ve played The Suffering or its ilk, you know what to expect. There are several kinds of guns to choose from, but as in many shooters like this, it’s difficult to tell which weapons are the most powerful. You will probably pick a weapon and stick with it throughout most of the game.

The shooting mechanics are pretty solid. Fighting groups of enemies that can shoot projectile attacks can be annoying because when in shooting mode your field of view is dramatically reduced. It’s also difficult to tell when enemies are invulnerable. Shooting bad guys produces health and ammo, which is cool until you run out and realize that there is no other way to acquire health or shells. I played the last several hours of the game with very little health, which was really annoying. Though this is a horror game, all the regular guns that you would expect in a shooter (the unlimited but weak handgun, the sniper rifle, the shotgun, etc) are present, and each weapon has a level where it is particularly applicable. In order to defeat enemies you must throw a trap at them (a metal disc that flies like a frisbee and sticks on ghosts), which is a nice addition but doesn’t significantly alter the strategy. Overall, the shooting system in Ghosthunter is pretty good, if extremely run-of-the-mill.

Other than shooting, a lot of time in Ghosthunter is spent exploring levels. Most levels in the game are linear affairs with a small amount of back tracking and a few simple puzzles. The puzzles themselves range from easy-and-fun to annoyingly-obfuscated (more on that in a bit), but they serve as a nice change of pace between heavy action sequences. One of the coolest ideas in Ghosthunter is the Astral mechanic: in certain levels, Jones is able to summon Astral, a ghostly woman who has somehow bound herself to his being. As Astral, the player can fly through the air, under water, and into other places that would be unreachable on foot. Astral has a few skills that allow her to influence the world, such as opening doors and throwing switches, and these abilities are used to create traversal puzzles. The Astral sections are great because they give the player a rest from shooting and allow him to explore the environment in detail.

The levels themselves in Ghosthunter are extremely well-realized. This game has every whiz-bang graphics feature ever, from inverse kinematics on Jones’s legs to environment mapped water to shadows and particle effects. And if you don’t know what any of those things are, you will hardly notice them at all. Suffice to say that the game looks pretty good and some of the artwork, especially the level and character artwork, is of very high quality. The art style lends itself to characters that are slightly more cartoonish than you might expect, but that in turn keeps the art looking fresh and interesting. There were several times during the game when I stopped and looked around at the scenery because it was just so damn cool.

The monsters are also pretty cool. Being a Ghostbusters clone, Ghosthunter has chosen to make almost all of its antagonists ghosts, and then make them look like whatever crazy manifestation they like. The results are pretty good: the game plays host to some of the most original and interesting enemy designs I’ve seen in a long while. One of my favorite enemies is a girl who carries a teddy bear before changing into a giant, deformed teddy bear that carries the husk of the girl around. A few of the enemies are pretty lame (the ghost cops and the sniper dudes must have been done by the intern), and a couple of the monsters are damaged by the need to be transparent, but most of the enemies in Ghosthunter are very well designed and animated. I’d say that along with the level art, the monster designs are one of the strongest parts of this game.

Where Ghosthunter breaks down is in the area of player communication. Far too often I found myself in a large area with nothing to do and nowhere else to go. Too many times the solution to a puzzle seemed obvious but proved difficult because of some implementation glitch. There were many, many places where a checkpoint occurs before a long, unskippable cut scene that leads into a difficult, multi-stage boss fight. There are a lot of points in the game where only one action can be performed to progress and that action isn’t obvious at all. Furthermore, the levels get worse as the game wears on, and the last few levels are a disaster of unfocused goals, sprawling, open-ended levels, and miscommunicated rules (it’s pretty clear that the development team ran out of time, as these levels lack the level of polish found earlier in the game). Though I expect all games to have a few points of frustration like this, Ghosthunter had way more than its fair share.

Another knock against the game is that the controls are too complicated. After putting the game down for a week, I would constantly have to go back to the manual to remind myself of how to use the goggles, how to turn on the flashlight, or even how to switch weapons. The context-sensitive action button seems like a good idea, but it loses a lot of its power because every single wall in the game pops up an icon letting the player know that if they push action they can hug the wall. Not only is the wall hug an entirely useless move, the constant appearance of the action button makes it difficult to tell when other, useful actions might show up while traversing the level.

Finally, there’s just nothing going on in the Ghosthunter levels. The levels are so well modeled and textured that I had a great urge to explore them in detail, but I was disappointed to find nothing at all off the main path. There are quite a number of areas that can be safely skipped, but if you enjoy exploring and wish to visit them, you’ll find that there’s really nothing to be found. Game content only exists along the main play path, and stepping off the track means that you’ll be wandering around in a well-crafted but barren landscape.

Ghosthunter is a better game than I was expecting, but it’s still not anything that is going to change the world any time soon. I found it to be a solid shooter with extremely nice art, high quality monster designs, and a few too many frustrating moments. It makes a pretty decent stab at humor and thankfully doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it doesn’t suffer from rookie mistakes or bugs. It is also clear that Ghosthunter is the result of somebody’s vision, and it’s is kind of neat to see that vision carried to its conclusion. With all of its flaws and successes, Ghosthunter turns out to be a very by-the-books third person shooter with the occasional surprise.

The Thing

Also known as: Yuusei Kara no Buutai X: Episode II
Platforms: PS2, Xbox, PC
Release Date: 2002-08-21
Regions: USA Japan Europe
Chris’s Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Clock Tower 3

Platforms: PS2
Release Date: 2003-03-19
Regions: USA Japan Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★★☆
A solid, if simple, exercise in hide-and-seek scares and fantasy horror.

Clock Tower 3 represents a departure from the Clock Tower formula. The previous three games (two on Playstation 1 and the one on SNES) all relied on point-and-click control schemes and complex event chains. Clock Tower 3 discards the cursor interface, opting for a more conventional scheme that places the player in direct control over the protagonist. Unlike the previous games, Clock Tower 3 also introduces boss fights and a variety of sub-missions.

Most of these changes were probably caused by a change in developer. While the previous Clock Tower games were developed by Human Entertainment and published by ASCII, Clock Tower 3 was developed by SunSoft and published by Capcom. The change in developer seems to have been beneficial, as the entire game is far more polished than previous incarnations.

Despite all the changes, the basic gameplay elements of the Clock Tower series have been preserved. The main character is a young female who must explore the surrounding area and avoid a prowling, unkillable monster. As in Clock Tower 2, the lead character is named Alyssa. As in previous games, Alyssa is unable to fight off her attackers; her only option is to run and hide. In this version the developers have given Alyssa a slightly stronger arsenal: by collecting special items she may turn invisible for a short time or temporarily stop her assailant. Most of the game is spent exploring various locations and trying to avoid the resident monster.

SunSoft has also added sub-quests involving appeasing ghosts of people killed by the monster. These sub-quests are interesting, but they do not really add much to the game. In fact, many of them can be skipped without consequence.

The monster designs are very cool. Alyssa faces a total of six monsters over the course of the game, each with different powers and attributes. All of the monsters are suitably freaky, and their appearance can be genuinely startling. When Alyssa encounters a monster, she must try to run and hide. As the monster gains on her, Alyssa’s “panic bar” will rise. If it becomes completely full, Alyssa goes into panic mode, where she can be killed with a single hit. In panic mode, the screen is distorted and Alyssa becomes more difficult to control. Other than being hit during panic mode, Alyssa cannot die outside of a boss fight.

At the end of each section, Alyssa must face the section’s monster in a boss fight. This mode is entirely new to the series. Both Alyssa and the monster are given life bars, and Alyssa must fight using a magical bow are arrow set that she suddenly becomes able to wield. The fighting seems simplistic, but there is actually a bit of depth and strategy involved in charging up shots and using special arrows. However, the fighting mechanics are never adequately explained, so it is difficult to utilize Alyssa’s full abilities until very late in the game (there were a couple of moves that I only learned about during the final boss fight). Even so, the boss fights are fairly easy and provide a nice break from the exploratory gameplay. However, the end boss is not well balanced: while most boss battles can be won on the first or second attempt, the end boss took me close to 15 attempts to complete. Even worse, the battle is mostly a war of attrition, and winning boils down to executing the same move over and over with impeccable timing. Most of the boss battles do not suffer from this problem, and in general I found them to be quite enjoyable.

Though the mechanics of Clock Tower 3 are simple, the are far from perfect. The biggest problem is that the resident monster can burst in on Alyssa at any time, and since Alyssa cannot fight your only choice is to run and hide. Other games effectively separate combat from exploration, but in Clock Tower 3 the combat constantly interferes with the traversal of the levels. Throughout the game I found myself wishing I could just look around and forget about the monster. Unfortunately, most of the game is spent fleeing the various villains rather than actually exploring.

The control scheme is simple, but the movement controls themselves feel a bit too twitchy. During some boss fights, moving around is more difficult than necessary because of odd camera angles. Alyssa is able to run (her default method of movement), walk, crouch, and crawl. The control scheme will comfortable for anyone who has played a third-person horror game before, but a bit of care must be taken not to send Alyssa sprawling in the wrong direction.

The story in Clock Tower 3 is interesting enough, but the presentation swings wildly from extraordinarily violent to sappy and trite. For example, in the first chapter Alyssa witnesses a 12-year old girl’s slaughter at the hands of a mallet-wielding madman. The depiction of her death is explicit and gruesome. However, when the madman is finally bested, the ghost of the girl happily floats up to Heaven in a campy sequence reminiscent of the ending of the movie Ghost. It is as if the developers could not decide if they wanted their audience to feel scared or emotionally fulfilled.

Though Clock Tower 3 is quite short (I finished it the first time through in under 5 hours), the game is well paced and does not need to be any longer. The game play lacks enough depth to sustain a longer game, and the game seems to end right when you want it to.

The story is shown through a series of very well animated cut scenes. Some of the cut scenes are pre-rendered, but most of them take place within the game engine. The graphics engine itself is very high quality, and Clock Tower 3 sports some excellent visuals. I found the art style for the environments to be a little bland, but the enemy design is excellent. Overall, Clock Tower 3 is quite a good looking game.

Clock Tower 3 is a nice break from the various Resident Evil and Silent Hill clones. It’s mostly well executed and fun to play. The game is definitely more fun than its predecessors, though it is also far less innovative. Overall, the annoying points of the game are not enough to really ruin the experience. If you are looking for something new, give Clock Tower 3 a try.

Silent Hill 2

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, PC
Release Date: 2002-12-03
Regions: USA Japan Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★★★

Fatal Frame

Also known as: Rei Zero, Project Zero
Platforms: PS2, Xbox
Release Date: 2002-03-06
Regions: USA Japan Europe
Chris’s Rating: ★★☆☆
Innovative combat mechanics and fantastic art direction makes for one of the best games in the horror genre.

While there have been innumerable Resident Evil knock-offs, Silent Hill showed us that correctly executed atmospherics can make a terrifying game without relying on the RE formula. Fatal Frame follows in the footsteps of Silent Hill by providing a very creepy setting and story while forgoing complicated item puzzles.

Miku, a young high-school girl, enters the abandoned Himuro Mansion looking for her brother, who disappeared a few days before. She quickly becomes trapped in the dilapidated house, and begins to realize that she is not alone.

Though Fatal Frame is set in present-day Japan, the atmosphere and storyline draw heavily on traditional Japanese ideas of ghosts and hauntings. Throughout the game Miku comes across “regular” cultural icons that seem frightening in the story’s creepy context: Hina dolls, kimono rooms, traditional Japanese instruments, samurai armor, etc. The game does a very good job of creating a convincing world, and those familiar with Japanese culture will get an additional kick out of some of the rooms. Like Silent Hill, navigation is performed with the use of a flashlight. Most of the game you’ll spend moving Miku around and fighting the ghosts that inhabit the house.

Fatal Frame’s combat system is where the game really departs from the genre norm. Rather than wielding a variety of guns or bludgeons, Miku is armed only with an antique camera. Switching to the camera causes the game to go into a first-person mode, and all combat is performed through the lens of the camera. While this system seems awkward at first, it turns out to be quite fun as the game progresses. The camera can be powered up by acquiring different types of film, and special abilities may be added via collectable spirit stones. The camera is also used to solve puzzles and advance the plot: often ghosts or symbols that cannot be seen with the naked eye are visible through the lens.

The graphics in Fatal Frame are quite good. The ghosts look very neat, the environments are well detailed, and the game employs a few nifty tricks such as grainy black and white rendering.

Though Fatal Frame is quite well done, there are a few minor problems. First of all, the voice acting is often delivered with such a lack of emotion that one cannot help but laugh. Secondly, the combat becomes tedious toward the end of the game: the system itself is not at fault, but the ghosts become very cheap, often suddenly appearing directly behind you. These complaints are fairly minor, however, and do not degrade very significantly.

Overall, Fatal Frame is a great example of atmospherics done right. The puzzles are all fairly easy, but since most of them do not revolve around bringing certain items to specific points, they are a nice change. The combat system, while innovative, is not perfect, but it is certainly good enough to keep the game fun. The story is sufficiently scary, and there is some incentive to replay the game. While Fatal Frame is not a masterpiece, it is still one of the best titles in the survival horror genre.