{"id":7547,"date":"2009-10-31T08:50:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T14:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dreamdawn.com\/sh\/post_view.php?index=7547"},"modified":"2009-10-31T08:50:03","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T14:50:03","slug":"happy-halloween-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=7547","title":{"rendered":"Happy Halloween + Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"wp-caption alignright size-200\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"img\/frontpage\/kitty_halloween.jpg\" width=\"200\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s just not the same.<\/p><\/div>As you&#8217;ve probably noticed I&#8217;ve had a hard time lately keeping up with this blog.  Actually, the problem is that I just haven&#8217;t had much time to play games, and without games as input it&#8217;s pretty hard to generate consistent output.  Right now I&#8217;m sitting in a hotel in Sapporo on the end of a business trip; work has been so hectic lately that by the time I get home, eat dinner, put the kid to bed, and am ready to play games, my first inclination is to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s <i>Halloween<\/i> for crying out loud.  I can&#8217;t pass up a post on Halloween.  Plus, there&#8217;s a ton of info that&#8217;s come up in the last several months that I meant to post about and just never got to it.  So, in lieu of real content, here&#8217;s a summary of some of the noteworthy horror-goings-on that have happened lately.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.frictionalgames.com\/\">Frictional Games<\/a>, the awesome guys behind the Penumbra series, have been <a href=\"http:\/\/frictionalgames.blogspot.com\/\">blogging about horror games<\/a> since June.  Readers of this site will find a lot to enjoy there, so check it out.\n<li> The <i>Saw<\/i> game is out.  Though the reviewers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metacritic.com\/games\/platforms\/xbox360\/saw\">panned it<\/a> it&#8217;s certainly a horror game and I should add it to the database.\n<li> If you&#8217;ve never played the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fasco-csc.com\/index_e.php\">Crimson Room series<\/a> you are missing out.  And now you can play them on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.jp\/&#12469;&#12463;&#12475;&#12473;-13305281-&#12463;&#12522;&#12512;&#12478;&#12531;&#12539;&#12523;&#12540;&#12512;-&#12522;&#12496;&#12540;&#12473;\/dp\/B001GAQFRK\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=videogames&#038;qid=1256998971&#038;sr=8-1\">PSP<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.jp\/&#12469;&#12463;&#12475;&#12473;-13305881-SuperLite2500-&#12463;&#12522;&#12512;&#12478;&#12531;&#12539;&#12523;&#12540;&#12512;\/dp\/B000XRNF9I\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&#038;s=videogames&#038;qid=1256998971&#038;sr=8-4\">DS<\/a>.  Since I think I committed to including handheld games this year, that makes these candidates for the Quest.  The horror aspect of these games is probably debatable, as it&#8217;s all discreet and suggestive, but I think that they&#8217;re probably a good fit.\n<li> Speaking of hand-held horror, <i>Nanashi no Geemu: Me<\/i> has been out here in Japan for a few months and looks pretty good.  Goddamn I need to find some time to play all these games.\n<li> McFarland Publishing was kind enough to send me a free copy of a new book on horror games, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Horror-Video-Games-Essays-Fusion\/dp\/0786441976\/\">Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play<\/a> to review.  I was somewhat surprised to see myself listed as a source for a couple of the articles.  The editor, Bernard Perron, is the same guy who organized the Thinking After Dark conference that I attended earlier this year in Montreal.  The text looks pretty good but I haven&#8217;t had a chance to sit down and read it carefully.  I&#8217;ll post a full review when I have had more time to read it.\n<li> <i>Dead Space: Extraction<\/i> is out and got <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metacritic.com\/games\/platforms\/wii\/deadspaceextraction\">pretty good reviews<\/a>.  It&#8217;s a light gun game so it&#8217;s not a fit for the Quest, but it looks like a lot of fun nonetheless.  I also have a copy of <i>Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles<\/i> that I need to get to at some point.\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here in Japan Halloween pretty much means lots of orange and black decorations on store windows and a sudden abundance of jack-o-lantern flower pots for sale.  Horror is a summer genre here, so while this country loves horror media and produces a lot of highly scary stuff, Halloween just isn&#8217;t the same.  So here&#8217;s hoping that you guys are enjoying the holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you&#8217;ve probably noticed I&#8217;ve had a hard time lately keeping up with this blog. Actually, the problem is that I just haven&#8217;t had much time to play games, and without games as input it&#8217;s pretty hard to generate consistent output. Right now I&#8217;m sitting in a hotel in Sapporo on the end of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}