Operation Backlog Completion 2024

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Death Mark

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  1 Response »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 312020
 

Happy Halloween!

It’s time for a special Halloween Celebrating All Things Spooky review with a look at Spirit Hunter: Death Mark.

(That link goes to the Switch version, but it’s also available for PC, PS4, and Vita.)

Death Mark puts you in the shoes of a man with amnesia who has a strange mark on his arm… a mark that he learns heralds the bearer’s upcoming death due to being cursed by a spirit. He soon joins forces with other Mark Bearers to track down and defeat the spirits that cursed them.

It is a combination of a visual novel and an adventure game, and in some way it reminds me of Ace Attorney – if Ace Attorney had battles against deadly spirits instead of trials.

In each chapter, you investigate a haunted location with a partner. You usually get to choose your partner from 2 or 3 characters, and different characters have different skills or knowledge that can come in handy. You search locations for clues and items that can help you proceed.

Occasionally you’re placed in a deadly situation where you need to use the knowledge you’ve obtained to choose the correct answers and survive.

Then there are the battles against the spirits, in which you and your partner must use items on each turn. Once again, you’ll need to have paid attention to the clues along the way to know which items to use to survive (and which to use for the best outcome, which involves putting the spirit to rest instead of destroying it).

The story is pretty interesting, and each chapter has its own dark story as you learn about the spirit. Aside from those narrative horror aspects, Death Mark also does a great job with little unsettling touches as you explore, such as having a ghost visible while you pan your flashlight over a certain area yet disappear when you look again.

Navigating between areas was a little odd at times, but overall I found Spirit Hunter: Death Mark to be an enjoyable game and a great way to end this year’s spooky season. So if you enjoy this sort of game, be sure to check out Death Mark!

(I’m not entirely done with spooky games yet for the year, though, because I have Bloodborne in progress.)

I’ll be looking forward to playing the second game in the series at some point as well. That’s it for Celebrating All Things Spooky 2020! You have the rest of today to leave comments for the contest and get my horror novellas on sale, and stay tuned for the upcoming announcement of the contest winners.

Happy Halloween!

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Never Apart

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  No Responses »
Oct 302020
 

Never Apart is a free horror game recommended to me by a friend as being Silent Hill 4 by way of PT. So of course, with a recommendation like that, I had to take a look.

It is a short horror game created for a 48-hour game jam in which the theme was “even apart, we make a great team.” In Never Apart, you are trapped in the repeating halls of an apartment building as radio broadcasts talk about a serial killer named Darren Bar.

I never played PT thanks to not having a PS4 before it was removed from the store, but Never Apart was inspired by PT and can be considered a “PT clone” based on the descriptions people give.

Meanwhile, I can see where the Silent Hill 4 comparison came from, because the basic story of the serial killer has a definite Silent Hill 4 vibe.

Now, you don’t actually do a lot in the game. It’s basically a walking sim with some jump scares and spooky moments, but it does a decent job of building up a spooky atmosphere in spite of that. It also tells an original story despite its clear inspirations, and there are some nice creepy parts. On the other hand, this is probably the shortest game we’ve looked at this year, clocking in at around 15 minutes or so to complete.

Never Apart is a very short horror game, but for a free game made in 48 hours, it’s not bad at all. I’d be interested in seeing what the developer could do with a longer game someday, whether an expansion of this concept or something entirely new.

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Celebrating All Things Spooky: Resident Evil 7

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 282020
 

Three years after its release, I’ve finally played Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

(I’d actually intended for this to be my first spooky game of the season, but due to some computer issues and other factors, it ended up being pushed to near the end.)

When I started the game, I had my doubts. It didn’t feel much like a Resident Evil game at all.

Fortunately, it does end up feeling like Resident Evil once you get through the beginning, at least in terms of gameplay.

Although you play from a first-person perspective and it begins with a section that emphasizes stealth and sneaking around a persistent stalker enemy, it isn’t too long before you reach an area with several locks doors, keys to find, and puzzles to solve – all the things I look for in a survival horror game.

Resident Evil 7 definitely brought the series back to survival horror, and having played the Resident Evil 2 remake, I can see just how much the two have in common despite initially feeling very different.

So when it comes to survival horror, Resident Evil 7 left me satisfied. Keys, puzzles, inventory management, it has it all… and some pretty deadly enemies to face off against, too.

On the other hand, the tone is very different than the rest of the series (although I’d argue Resident Evil lost a consistent tone around Resident Evil 4, if not earlier). You play Ethan, a man who receives a message from his missing wife asking him to come get her. Once he arrives, he finds himself trapped by a family of murderous psychopaths who have decided to make him the latest addition to their little group.

There are monsters and infections, but the major antagonists are infected humans who stalk you around the game’s locations and taunt you. It just doesn’t feel like Resident Evil.

For most of the game, that is. While you might spend most of it wondering why this is Resident Evil and not a new survival horror IP, the connection is established late in the game, and I actually really liked how it finally established itself as part of the series.

Overall, I enjoyed Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and I see why people saw it as Resident Evil’s triumphant return to survival horror. If Resident Evil Village ends up feeling like this, I wouldn’t mind that. I haven’t played the DLC yet, but I intend to look into them. What did you think of Resident Evil 7?

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