Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Tacoma

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  9 Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 222018
 

Who told me Tacoma was a horror game?

Oh well, exploring an abandoned space station to investigate a mysterious incident is a creepy enough premise to count.

(On that note, a lot of the non-horror games we end up looking at in October tend to be “creepy” rather than exactly “spooky.” Maybe I should have called this Celebrating All Things Creepy.)

I had my doubts about Tacoma, because I didn’t enjoy Gone Home. I found the ending disappointing and the love story less-than-stellar. Fortunately, Tacoma proved to be a pleasant surprise.

Aboard the space station, you tap into its AR digital recordings, which essentially let you see moments of the crew’s activity actually unfold. These recordings included multiple points of additional AR information you could grab, and you could restart, rewind, or fast forward each recording as you pleased.

This is a really cool way to handle that sort of storytelling. I enjoyed following characters through a given recording and then rewinding to see what the other characters were doing at the same time.

It’s a short game, taking me about 2 and a half hours to play, but that’s enough time to learn about the crew, their relationship, and the incident, leaving you invested in the outcome as the station’s final recordings play out. It ended up being much less creepy than I expected – I’d call it a science fiction story rather than sci-fi horror – but it was an enjoyable experience.

I enjoyed it so much more than Gone Home, I’m baffled as to why it got lower review scores. Walking sim? Sure, but one with a good story and a neat method of storytelling. At least it sounds like Fullbright is still developing games, because if their next game is like Tacoma, I’ll definitely give it a try.

What did you think of Tacoma?

Celebrating All Things Spooky 2018 – Top 5 Upcoming Horror Games

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Video Games  9 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 192018
 

In 2014, we looked at 5 upcoming survival horror games. Three were released, one was cancelled, and poor Routine is still in limbo.

In 2017, we took a look at 5 more horror (not exclusively survival horror) games. Only one of them is out, to mixed reviews, but the other four remain promising.

So while Allison Road, Call of Cthulhu, the Resident Evil 2 remake, and Moons of Madness are definitely still horror games I have my eye on, let’s take a look at 5 more upcoming horror games.

Honorable Mention: Luigi’s Mansion 3

First off, an honorable mention. I can’t really include Luigi’s Mansion 3 on a list of horror games, but it certainly fits the spooky theme of this month, so it deserves to be named. Here’s hoping we learn more about it soon… and that it’s structured like the original Luigi’s Mansion rather than Dark Moon.

Now, onto the list proper.

5. Man of Medan

Somewhere, deep in the dark depths of games that haven’t even made it to my backlog yet but that I want to play someday, you’ll find Until Dawn. So when the developers announced a new horror game, I was intrigued.

Man of Medan is the first in a series of short cinematic horror games called The Dark Pictures. It’s based on an actual legend about a ghost ship, and the first trailer was intriguing. I’m looking forward to learning more about this game. It’s due out in 2019 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

4. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient

I definitely want to play the Corpse Party series someday… as soon as I figure out which entries to play, since there are remakes and re-releases with different content… (Is the 3DS game the definitive version of the original?)

Moving on from that, however, we have a new entry finally making its way west this year for the PC. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient is apparently being released chapter-by-chapter in Japan and isn’t complete yet, but the English version will ship with Chapter 1 and Extra Chapter 1 (which is what is currently available in Japan).

I’m not sure how I feel about the episodic-style release, but the Corpse Party games have always struck me as an interesting horror series that I need to just play already.

3. World of Horror

A retro horror RPG inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Junji Ito? Yes, you have my attention.

World of Horror features turn-based combat, branching stories, and what appears to be investigation-style gameplay. It also mentions roguelite elements, which isn’t my favorite thing, but I’ll give it a chance for something like this. Between its inspirations and unique aesthetic, it looks promising.

Check out the announcement trailer here. World of Horror is coming to the PC, Switch, and PS4 in 2019.

2. Observation

Not to be confused with the horror game Observer (a mistake I nearly made while writing up this post), Observation is a game planned to release in spring 2019 for the PC and PS4 from the developers of Stories Untold. The player will control an AI on a space station after a mysterious event leaves only one member of the crew on board.

I reviewed Stories Untold for MonsterVine and enjoyed it, so I was excited to hear they had a new game coming out. Now, Observation is described a “thriller” rather than a horror game, but the reveal trailer is creepy enough that I think we can count it.

And that brings us to my most-anticipated of these five horror games…

1. Devotion

When the horror game Detention came out on the Switch, I reviewed it for Nintendo Chit Chat and fell in love with its atmosphere, exploration-based gameplay, and puzzles. Despite the lack of combat, it had the survival horror mechanics I love.

(Detention is one of the games you could win by leaving comments on my blog this month.)

This year, the developers announced Devotion, a first-person horror game. All that’s available so far is a short teaser, without platforms or a release window announced yet, but I enjoyed Detention enough to already be excited for Devotion.

Conclusion

Those are my latest top 5 upcoming horror games, but I’m sure I missed some. What horror games are you looking forward to the most? Which of these do you want to play? Let me know in the comments.

Celebrating All Things Spooky – Slender: The Arrival

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  8 Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 122018
 

When the free horror game Slender came out, I joined countless other horror fans in searching the creepy woods for eight pages while avoiding Slenderman.

But by the time Slender: The Arrival came out, I was starting to get tired of the helpless protagonist style of horror, and I never played my copy. This year, I decided to change that.

Slender: The Arrival is partly a sequel to the first game, but it’s largely the original concept expanded into a full survival horror game.

Collecting eight pages in the forest is only one of the levels, and while the basic mechanics (running from Slenderman as fast as possible while your screen distorts) remain the same, it also has new enemies and gameplay.

Some sections still involve the basic structure of searching a large area for objects while enemies stalk you, but a few involve finding keys, opening new areas, etc.

You play a young woman named Lauren, who goes to visit her friend Kate. Kate is missing, and Lauren sets out to find her.

The story is all right. It’s nothing special, just taking the idea of Slenderman and expanding it into a little story about people who got mixed up with him. I appreciated how it included flashback chapters to flesh out the overall story, but nothing about the plot itself really grabbed my attention.

Still, it kept the thrill of being pursued by an entity you have no defense against. And while it’s a little thing, I always loved the way the drumbeat acts as an ominous signal that Slenderman is after you.

Slender: The Arrival didn’t stand out to me a lot in either gameplay or story, but maybe it’s just not quite my style of horror. What do you think?

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