Operation Backlog Completion 2026

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?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Lone Survivor

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Oct 082018
 

Last week, I started up Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut, intending to finally play this indie horror game I’ve heard so many positive things about.

Then I took one look at the resolution and realized it wasn’t going to work. Fortunately, Lone Survivor is a cross-buy game, so I also have it on the Vita. I switched to the smaller screen and started playing this weekend.

I have a tendency to compare survival horror games to Silent Hill too often, but in this case, it really applies.

Lone Survivor was clearly inspired by the Silent Hill series, from the sound effects to the aesthetic to the environments). While Silent Hill 2 feels like the biggest inspiration, the way your apartment functions as a safe haven where you go to save also reminded me of Silent Hill 4, which I appreciated.

Anyway, Lone Survivor begins with you in an apartment building in the midst of some sort of zombie-esque epidemic. You resolve to escape and begin searching for a way out.

Monsters, locked doors, and plenty of other obstacles are in your way. In true survival horror fashion, you’ll need to use a combination of stealth and your limited ammo to get past monsters, use items to solve puzzles, and find keys to unlock doors.

It also includes mechanics based around hunger and sleep, but not to the point where it will take you out of the gameplay. Food items satisfy your hunter and restore health (although there’s no visible health meter), and eventually you can take food back to your apartment to cook it for greater health benefits. I liked that. As for sleep, sleeping also saves your game, and there are pills that will affect your need for sleep.

Even though it’s 2D and navigation is a bit odd at times, the gameplay really feels like a traditional survival horror game.

Now, what about the story? That’s… hard to say. I think it’s going for a symbolic/psychological type of story like Silent Hill 2, and I enjoyed interacting with some of the characters, but I ended Lone Survivor without a good grasp on what happened. It’s that sort of vague, ambiguous storytelling that just leaves you going, “Huh.”

But despite my usual preferences for story-driven games, I’m not as concerned about it when it comes to games like this. Lone Survivor is only a few hours long, but I enjoyed it as a sort of bite-sized Silent Hill experience.

Celebrating All Things Spooky – Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 032018
 

I loved Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

It was terrifying, atmospheric, and Lovecraftian, and it told a delightfully disturbing story.

Despite loving it so much, it took me until this year to finally get around to playing its sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. This is mainly because A Machine for Pigs was made by the developers of Dear Esther, which I didn’t enjoy at all.

But this year, I decided to kick off the Halloween season by finally playing A Machine for Pigs.

A Machine for Pigs is very different from The Dark Descent. The Dark Descent focused a lot on survival, with the constant danger of darkness and your limited supply of light, the sanity effects, and the general sense that a monster could force you to flee at any moment.

Its sequel is more linear and focused on storytelling. You still play a character with amnesia exploring a mysterious location, but the exploration is more of a straightforward journey from one area to the next as the story unfolds through notes and flashbacks.

I felt like I’d played this style of game before, which unfortunately made some of the story elements predictable.

Click for A Machine for Pigs spoilers
The protagonist wakes up wondering where his children are, while their ghostly voices beckon him into the depths. I would have considered it a surprise twist if they weren’t dead.

And the nature of the machine / the protagonist doing terrible things in the past felt pretty routine for this sort of story.

However, the storytelling itself was pretty solid. It built up a grim, disturbing atmosphere and it didn’t shy away from the gruesome details. And while some aspects were predictable, other parts went in unusual directions. I enjoyed the slight links to The Dark Descent.

I also liked the industrial, steampunk-esque setting. It worked well for the game’s story.

The weakest part of the narrative was probably the children. You start the game looking for your missing children, and the reason the protagonist keeps pressing on into the depths of the facility despite all the horror is to find them. But they’re barely featured in the flashbacks, so I didn’t feel the compelling emotional pull to search for them.

Click for A Machine for Pigs spoilers
Them being obviously dead didn’t help. It just made it sadder to read every journal update from Mandus about how he had to keep moving forward to find them.

But I did enjoy the horror as it unfolded.

In terms of gameplay, A Machine for Pigs wasn’t as scary as its predecessor, although it did have a few good scares and some intense moments. I also missed the level of interactivity the original had. Everything fits together into this game’s more linear focus on telling its story.

I’m glad I finally played Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, but I don’t think it will leave the same lasting impression on me that The Dark Descent did.

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