Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Reviving My Review of Detention

 Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 182020
 

After all of the chaos surrounding Devotion this week, someone brought it to my attention that my review of the developers’ first game, Detention, is another one lost to time.

So just like my 25th Ward review, I’d like to revive my review of the horror game Detention!

Detention takes place in 1960s Taiwan, during the period of martial law known as the White Terror. There are notes throughout the game that provide context for the situation if you aren’t familiar with it.

You play a student who becomes trapped in the school building after everyone else evacuates due to a typhoon warning. But the storm isn’t all you need to fear, because the school has been twisted into a nightmare mirror of itself, haunted by deadly enemies.

There is no combat, so you’ll use stealth to get past enemies, including a feature where you need to hold your breath if an enemy comes close. Those sections can be pretty tense, but it’s really the disturbing imagery, unsettling atmosphere, and dark story that build up its sense of horror.

Although Detention has a 2D perspective, the rest of the core gameplay feels like a traditional survival horror game. You’ll need to explore the school to find key items and use those items to solve puzzles and open the way to new areas. The strange puzzles, surreal (and symbolic) environments that get progressively stranger as the game goes on, and the way the story gradually unfolds reminded me a lot of Silent Hill – which is part of why I enjoyed it so much.

The story is pretty interesting, too. It kept me guessing as the pieces started to come together, and I was invested in learning exactly what had happened there.

Detention is a short game, but it’s a great horror experience that fans of the genre should definitely check out.

And I hope we get to play Devotion someday.

Even More Silent Hill Reboot Rumors

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Nov 042020
 

Henry Townshend from Silent Hill 4At the start of this year, rumors of a Silent Hill reboot were rampant until Konami denied them.

Silent Hill did see a little bit of renewed life last month with the surprise release of Silent Hill 4: The Room on GOG.

(Although unfortunately it appears to still be missing the hauntings that were cut from the original PC version.)

Now the reboot rumors are in full force once again thanks to a few new sources once again claiming it’s real. First we have Robert Serrano, a business analyst who tweeted that a new Silent Hill for the PS5 will be revealed at the Game Awards.

Rely On Horror reported the claim and mentioned that it “lines up with some information [they] received a little while back.”

Although things quieted down a little bit after Konami’s denial of the rumors in March, it didn’t stop entirely, especially after Konami casually created a Silent Hill Twitter account in July for seemingly no reason except to promote the Dead By Daylight crossover. Now more sources are chiming in to say that there is Silent Hill news on the way.

It’s starting to feel more and more like a new Silent Hill game really will be announced, and I’m not sure how that makes me feel.

First, I’m still not clear on what a Silent Hill reboot would even be. A game without ties to the originals’ stories? They’ve already done that. A game that reinvents the Silent Hill lore? They’ve sort of done that with the later games, too. A reimagining of the first game? Yes, they’ve done that, too!

With a series already as fractured as Silent Hill, what does a reboot even look like?

Then of course there’s my skepticism that a new Silent Hill game will actually be good. The series wasn’t exactly in peak condition when we last saw it, and Konami hasn’t earned much good will since then.

Some of the rumors claim Konami is working directly with Sony on this project, however, which would open the door for all sorts of things – a collaboration with SIE Japan Studio to have a new Silent Hill developed by Project Siren/Team Gravity, the division created by former members of Team Silent? That would probably be the ideal announcement.

Well, the Game Awards are on December 10, so we’ll know in just over a month if the latest rumors are true. Final Fantasy XVI’s announcement really happened… maybe Silent Hill is next.

What do you think? Will the rumored Silent Hill reboot be announced?

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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