October 2019 TR - Is That A Nightmare In Your Pocket...?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Holy shit Castlevania: The Adventure is savagely bad.

Indeed. It’s almost as bad as the dialogue and weirdly echoing voice acting in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (which I started tonight). Solid game, but that voice acting...<cringe>

[Nemoide]

I started The New Addams Family Series for Game Boy Color last night. I just scratched the surface of the game and it seems like a decent enough adventure game. The graphics look really great on an actual Game Boy, but playing it on a TV via Game Boy Player is less impressive.
The game opens with a man telling Gomez that some guy bought the land the Addams house is on and that they're going to be evicted unless he can find the deed. But you play as Pugsley and are first tasked with finding oil for Wednesday's guillotine. But as you explore the house and interact with other family members, you find more things to do.

I have to say that the controls are kind of weird and unintuitive. For example, if you are presented with dialog, you advance by pressing down on the D-pad instead of A or B. It took me a bit to realize that B gives you a description of whatever you're looking at while A seems to be to either use or take an object (which usually doesn't work). I wish I had a manual, but I can't find one online anywhere. Thankfully, since it's not an action game, I'm not punished for not hitting the right button quickly.

[Sarge]

Since we've got a general horror month in combination with awful games (i.e. horrorble) over on HRG, I've got some stuff rolling on this theme. Namely, Kid Dracula. It's too bad the game is so expensive, and I'm actually puzzled why they wouldn't include it in the anniversary collection Konami recently released. It swipes a lot from the Famicom game, but also has a lot of unique stuff as well. The checkpointing is more forgiving, too. It's a very good game, and absolutely worth playing.

And yes, Castlevania: The Adventure is a bad game. It fulfills both categories for HRG this month!

[PartridgeSenpai]

Started Corpse Party this morning (finally ). Given that I'm a teacher, my disdain for sexualization of minors has only grown more vehement, and I was immediately upset with how short the skirts are (among other things), but I've decided to try and overlook that element for the time being, because otherwise there's no way I'm ever gonna play this XP

It has some queeestionable design decisions. One of the more outright questionable is that the default music volume is hilariously loud and you can barely hear the VA over it at times, in addition to the music often being really upbeat and intense when not a lot is happening and it's just generally quite poor at trying to set an atmosphere so far. The localization is also interesting/creepy at times. Interesting in how it seems a decent amount of levity was added in the localization that was not present in the original (at least judging by the VA). For example, they see a corpse and Seiko says "Are those... PEOPLE bones?!" in the English subtitles, but she says "human bones" in Japanese.

The other interesting thing is also related to the localization (I think?) in the weird character bio that they give you at the start of the game. You get a tiny room to go around in after the intro that almost looks like a de-bug room, with the 9 characters standing around in it, and inspecting each of them gives you a bio to who they are. This game has a real RPG-maker vibe to it (and I believe it was originally an app before it was a PSP game, so that kinda checks out), and knowing how these kinds of VNs work, that isn't super surprising as I imagine that info is used later to help with puzzles that will help them all stay alive. But you get to Satoshi's little sister Yuka and it says she's 14 even though she SOUNDS like she's 8 and looks very young. But it's written into her bio that she looks and acts younger than she is because she's spoiled at home, so while my gut reaction was "they bumped up the ages for the localization or the adaptation to PSP," I'm not so sure now. At any rate, I'm interested to keep going~

[Nemoide]

Started Corpse Party this morning (finally ). Given that I'm a teacher, my disdain for sexualization of minors has only grown more vehement, and I was immediately upset with how short the skirts are (among other things), but I've decided to try and overlook that element for the time being...

Yep, that's the heart of my problem with the game. I tried to overlook that element but it just gets worse and more depraved. By the end of the game, I was thoroughly grossed out and hated everything about it. I don't want to spoil the game but... prepare yourself.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Started Corpse Party this morning (finally ). Given that I'm a teacher, my disdain for sexualization of minors has only grown more vehement, and I was immediately upset with how short the skirts are (among other things), but I've decided to try and overlook that element for the time being...

Yep, that's the heart of my problem with the game. I tried to overlook that element but it just gets worse and more depraved. By the end of the game, I was thoroughly grossed out and hated everything about it. I don't want to spoil the game but... prepare yourself.

Yeah, as I continue nearing the end of Chapter 2, it's really not a problem that gets any better. The sexualization and torture porn just ramp up and really ruin the moments of genuinely tense horror and some of the writing that is genuinely interesting in how it portrays two people who know each other caught in an impossible situation. The character design isn't even very good. Their hair styles are a little different, but several of the girls look almost exactly the same, especially in the illustrated still shots. The ghost dodging action sections also really suck and are not fun at all. And that's all on top of making you watch long, unskippable cutscenes before certain game over states that you'll need to rewatch EVERY time you think you might've done the right thing to progress the plot and maybe not die this time. I'm gonna do my best to see it to the end, as I'm already this far, but it's definitely one of the worst games I've played in a while.

Edit: So I just finished Chapter 3, and I also did some research about the game in general, specifically about the original version on the PC-98. Luckily, there's a full playthrough on Youtube of the original version, and the most immediately noticable things are the lack of any kind of chapter system as well as a main cast of only 5 rather than the PSP remake's 9.

I had been under the impression that the PSP version was a port, but it's a really extensive remake (particularly with the following localization's further fairly notable changes to the text as I've been able to gather from it via the PSP game's Japanese VA). The original PC-98 version starts at the PSP version's chapter 3, nearly at its midway point. Those early added chapters were far worse offenders of torture porn-y, sexualizing writing than the chapter I just finished. Not to mention those first two chapters felt far more weirdly same-y and loosely paced in their writing. It honestly makes the whole thing even more upsetting, really. That the remake seems to have gone out of its way to sour the experience of what was originally a better, more tense horror experience

[opa]

Re: corpse party game overs

That's what made me quit. Some of the death scenes are so long and drawn out it was faster to close and restart the game than clicking through the scene. Very frustrating; especially dodging those darn ghosts.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Are all versions of Corpse Party fairly similar? I have the GOG.com version.

[Ziggy]

Holy shit Castlevania: The Adventure is savagely bad.

Indeed. It’s almost as bad as the dialogue and weirdly echoing voice acting in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (which I started tonight). Solid game, but that voice acting...<cringe>

FWIW, there's a Game Genie code to make you move faster which makes the game a lot more playable in my opinion. There's a few areas that are timed to get through, and using this code will break the difficulty in those areas, but so be it.

[noiseredux]

I've been a pretty big fan of the Resident Evil series since 1996. I say "pretty big," and what I mean is I'm actually one of those dudes who gets excited when a new RE movie comes out; I often wear an Umbrella Corporation shirt; and I tend to go gaga over these non-numbered spin-off games. As much as I love the mainline series, I find that the spin-offs tend to be more experimental in nature. These experiments can turn out good or bad, but they're always interesting to me to see what the series tries.

For some reason I never got around to playing the original Revelations. I did play the second one, however and loved it. Its episodic nature, somewhat lower difficulty, and excellent use of co-op made it the perfect RE game to actually play with my wife. And we had a blast a few years back with it. And so for a long time it's been in my mind that I need to finally get around to playing the first game.

Revelations is a lot like the second game, minus the co-op. It's still episodic. It's still very linear. And it's still kind of a throwback to the less-action more-survival horror of the early games. Because it was designed with the 3DS in mind, it's a totally solo experience. But y'know something? I'm having a really good time with it.

I say that it's "kind of" a throwback. That's because like those early games it doesn't rely heavily on shooting. Ammo is limited, so evasion is definitely helpful. But there are some big quality of life changes here - the biggest is auto-saving which I appreciate. You can tell me all day that ink ribbons heightened the horror, but as a new dad, being able to just suspend the game and not worry about losing progress is huge for me.

On that same note, it turns out that the episodic design really works in the game's favor considering my gaming time right now. It's much easier to sit down with a game like this and know that I can knock out a chunk of the campaign in 30 minutes and really feel like I've made progress.

And so I tackled Episode 1 last night. The first episode is like Jason Takes Manhattan in that it takes place MOSTLY on a boat. This deserted barge is actually an awesome setting. I really like the atmosphere. And y'know what? We could use a bit more nautical horror, don't you think?

I know that when the game was re-released on Wii U there was some disappointment about the graphics as it's basically just the 3DS game. Personally, I still think it looks damn good. And if anything, I'm amazed that this game was designed for the 3DS considering how great it looks. Playing on the Wii U tablet just makes me feel like I'm playing on an 3DS XXL, which is cool. Also, real analog sticks are obviously better than a nub.

There's also a small section that takes place on a beach where you need to research these infected zombie blob things. That part WOULD be boring if it weren't for the great setting which totally reminded me of something Lovecraftian. Sort of a reminder of how I can't play RE4 without thinking about Dagon.

Anyway, I'm early into this game - only one twelfth of the way in if the internet is to be believed. But so far, I'm super thrilled that I've finally gotten around to this one.