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.

Pokémon Was Always Accessible

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 172018
 

Okay, today was supposed to be another horror post… but my copy of Claire: Extended Cut started crashing and I decided I wasn’t enjoying it quite enough to work around the crashes.

Instead, let’s talk about a Pokémon topic that’s been confusing me lately.

First off, I have nothing against the idea behind Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee! Pokémon GO attracted many new fans, and creating a game to bridge Pokémon GO and the mainline series makes sense.

Create a Pokémon game that is similar to traditional games in the series, but with simplified mechanics and connections to GO, and use that to ease Pokémon GO players into the series to be ready for the next traditional entry. Will it work? I don’t know, but I understand the reasoning.

I’m more concerned about the fact that Pokémon X/Y and Pokémon Sun/Moon also simplified certain aspects.

Both were more linear than past Pokémon games, and Sun/Moon in particular carefully guided the player along. They felt simpler and easier. They lacked the more complex dungeons and challenges. And these were mainline Pokémon games, so who’s to say the 2019 game won’t be like that?

Whenever these concerns are mentioned, or when the Pokémon Let’s Go games are criticized, people using defend these changes by saying:

  • It’s a game for kids.
  • New players might be scared off by the complexity.
  • They need to be accessible games.

And all of that is fine, except… we’re talking about Pokémon! It was always a kids’ series, and it was always accessible.

People have started acting like the first few generations of Pokémon games were dense, hardcore RPGs that kids and new players couldn’t possibly understand. Where did this idea come from? Kids played the old Pokémon games. They had more challenge and complexity than the newer ones, but they were never ultra-challenging games.

So why act now like Pokémon suddenly needs to be simplified for the sake of kids?

I’m hardly a hardcore Pokémon player. I don’t play competitively, I never complete the Pokédex, and I rarely worry about the more in-depths elements like EVs and IVs and whatever else. But the recent games have lacked some of the challenge and sense of exploration and discovery that I enjoyed, and I hope the 2019 game is different.

What do you think? Could kids today understand the old Pokémon games? Are these changes actually being made for adults, with kids being the excuse? Was old-school Pokémon actually a tough, inaccessible RPG series after all and I’m just crazy?

And how do you think the 2019 Pokémon game will compare to past entries?

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