October Together Retro: Golden Age of Survival Horror

[noiseredux]

We re-watched Stay Alive over the weekend. Y'all seen that one? It's hilariously bad b-movie but Sophia Bush! It's about a survival horror game that if you die in the game, you die the same way in real life. Basically a mix of Final Destination, The Ring, and... video games. Oh, and Elizabeth Bathory. It's interesting because they talk about actual specific games (Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 4) rather than made up games. Oh and Malcom in the Middle calls the ghosts "punk ass bitch motherfuckers" while wearing an upside-down visor. Just see it once. It's worth it for the lulz.

I've been much busier this month than expected, but I did make some more RE progress. Trying to think - I guess the big thing was that I killed the plant. I always thought that section was cool. I did hit one good jump scare. There was a part where some zombies crash through windows in one of the hallways. Totally forgot about that and just wasn't expecting it (like the dogs), so I jumped. What else? Oh that stupid knight armor puzzle. I feel like that one is totally trial and error. I can't remember ever figuring out how you'd really KNOW which order to push them in. After getting gassed twice, I decided I'm too old for this shit and just looked it up. Also crimson-heads suck and I'm getting low on kerosene. Anyway, if memory serves I'm getting fairly close to the snake boss soon.

[Ack]

I loaded up my SH3 game today and have more of the goofy unlocks than I predicted, like the Unlimited Machine Gun, some outfits, the Magical Girl transformation outfit, etc. I might replay SH3 too since I can knock that one out in mere hours, probably even faster if I play with some of the unlockables just for fun.

Oh man, SH3 has so many unlockables. Do you have the following:

Silver Pipe
Gold Pipe
Beam Saber
Sexy Beam
Flamethrower
Silencer
Health Bar
Extreme Mode 1-10
Bullet Multiplier x5

If not, you've got more to unlock!

I liked Fatal Frame cerebrally more than I did mechanically. That is to say the experience was more interesting than its moment to moment execution.

That's a pretty good description of Fatal Frame. It's clunky and problematic, but there is a lot to its approach to horror that I find commendable. Did you ever pause the game and see the bloody hand prints?

[Exhuminator]

Sexy Beam

Euphemism?

Did you ever pause the game and see the bloody hand prints?

Nope, I didn't know about that Easter egg. I found some bloody child sized hand prints on some of the walls of the mansion though. There were a fair amount of subtle things like that, which you could only find by going into camera mode and just looking around.

[Ack]

Ha, the Sexy Beam is a variation on the Heather Beam you can unlock. Heather shoots lasers from her eyes. If you use the weird Japanese superhero costume, the Heather Beam becomes the Sexy Beam, complete with Heather declaring, "Sexy Beam" whenever you use it.

[MrPopo]

Isn't it "Se-ku-shi bee-mu"?

[stickem]

We re-watched Stay Alive over the weekend. Y'all seen that one? It's hilariously bad b-movie but Sophia Bush! It's about a survival horror game that if you die in the game, you die the same way in real life. Basically a mix of Final Destination, The Ring, and... video games. Oh, and Elizabeth Bathory. It's interesting because they talk about actual specific games (Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 4) rather than made up games. Oh and Malcom in the Middle calls the ghosts "punk ass bitch motherfuckers" while wearing an upside-down visor. Just see it once. It's worth it for the lulz.

I've been much busier this month than expected, but I did make some more RE progress. Trying to think - I guess the big thing was that I killed the plant. I always thought that section was cool. I did hit one good jump scare. There was a part where some zombies crash through windows in one of the hallways. Totally forgot about that and just wasn't expecting it (like the dogs), so I jumped. What else? Oh that stupid knight armor puzzle. I feel like that one is totally trial and error. I can't remember ever figuring out how you'd really KNOW which order to push them in. After getting gassed twice, I decided I'm too old for this shit and just looked it up. Also crimson-heads suck and I'm getting low on kerosene. Anyway, if memory serves I'm getting fairly close to the snake boss soon.

Stay alive was a fun movie to watch and i wouldn't have minded playing that game back in the day lol. it has the same problem that alot of pg13 horror movies have , decent 3/4 of the way in, stupid ending. would have been better if the whole bloody marry legend was left out. then you have malcom in the middle guy acting like jamie kennedy throughout the movie.

[Ziggy]

We re-watched Stay Alive over the weekend. Y'all seen that one? It's hilariously bad b-movie but Sophia Bush! It's about a survival horror game that if you die in the game, you die the same way in real life. Basically a mix of Final Destination, The Ring, and... video games. Oh, and Elizabeth Bathory. It's interesting because they talk about actual specific games (Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 4) rather than made up games. Oh and Malcom in the Middle calls the ghosts "punk ass bitch motherfuckers" while wearing an upside-down visor. Just see it once. It's worth it for the lulz.

Stay alive was a fun movie to watch and i wouldn't have minded playing that game back in the day lol. it has the same problem that alot of pg13 horror movies have , decent 3/4 of the way in, stupid ending. would have been better if the whole bloody marry legend was left out. then you have malcom in the middle guy acting like jamie kennedy throughout the movie.

Oh, man! I was actually just trying to remember the name of this movie! I wouldn't have even caught it from the description if you didn't mention "Malcolm in the MIddle guy" lol. I saw this in the theater with a friend that I use to always go see bad movies with.

House of the Dead came out around the same time. Anyone remember that one?

[noiseredux]

House of the Dead is super fun.

[pierrot]

Sexy Beam

Euphemism?

Speaking of which, I found a tape in the residential sector of the Big Table, in Deep Fear, that was titled, "Sexual Body." When I went to play the tape in the small theater in the same sector, it ended up being a video of some kind of presentation on the Sea Fox (the submarine). Rats!

Also, I totally forgot that I have Silent Hill 3. Would it be completely crazy to play SH 3 without having played either of the first two?


I put in a fair amount of time with Deep Fear again last night, and it's growing on me a bit. It's entirely derivative of the original Resident Evil, but with a splash of Parasite Eve, with the enemies, and Doctor Grace's assessment of how to combat against the "virus." (Spoiler alert, it has to do with other viruses, which is a hell of a lot better than the crazy mitochondria bullshit Parasite Eve buried itself in.) This game kind of feels like it missed its window of opportunity, though. It would have been more in direct competition with Resident Evil 2, and Parasite Eve, but it feels like it was the answer to the first Resident Evil, like they just forgot to release it two years earlier. I mean, I'm pretty convinced that the voice director played clips of Barry Burton for all the "actors," and just said, 'Do it like this, but a tiny bit worse.' I tend to focus more on the Japanese subtitles, but every now and again, I just have to stop and ask myself, 'What the hell did he just say?'

Anyway, I'm still on the first disc, but I have to imagine I'm getting close to disc 2. I made it through the MI area, after getting back from the Sea Fox. The game got me pretty good with a jump scare in the Junk Area, too: I was just running along through a hallway, because most of the time, there are audio cues that something is in the room as soon as it stops loading, but it totally silent in this hallway, until I was about halfway through it, and dude just drops out of the sealing almost right on top of me. I just took the hit, and ran around him, though, since I didn't need to go back there at all.

When I got to the residential sector, I met this pretty cool lady with a shotgun, who was looking for her pet bulldog. I found the bulldog with the power of hamburgers. She left a key for me, to the shotgun vault, in the storage room. I need to get back to the CCD Area, but she let me know that I need to torch the wiring for the door, before I can repair it (which makes all kinds of sense), and that I can find a torch in the other area (the DA Area, maybe-- I don't recall what the other major corporation funding this place was called). Some of the enemies at this point, like the dogs, are a serious pain in the ass to fight. They jump around like grasshoppers, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned how terrible aiming is in this. Ammo isn't very limited in this game, though. There's a bunch of storage lockers around, and going to any one of them allows me to fill up every weapon I have to max, as many times as I want to trek back to it.

Side note: There's a character in the earlier portion of the game, named "Mookie," and as a New Englander, who isn't much of a baseball fan, but follows sports enough to know a lot of the current Red Sox roster, I had never heard of anyone named Mookie, before Mookie Betts. I did not realize that there was also a Mookie Wilson who played for the Mets, and hit the ground ball that went through Bill Buckner's legs, in the 1986 World Series. Anyway, at least one of the writers must have been a fairly big fan of the MLB, since Mookie, in Deep Fear, is a huge Yankees fan (wrong New York team, but whatever), and basically only ever talks about baseball, and the 1996 World Series.

Also kind of interesting, is that there's actually a fair amount of African American representation in the game, and so far there haven't been any offensive stereotypes attached to them (a rarity for Japan). However, the MIT graduate, who designed the Big Table, has the absolute worst "gay" affects to his speech. It was the nineties--.

[Xeogred]

Also, I totally forgot that I have Silent Hill 3. Would it be completely crazy to play SH 3 without having played either of the first two?

I get that SH1 isn't going to be love at first sight for most, but SH1 and SH3 are directly connected. Heather (SH3's main) is Harry's daughter. SH3 expands further on the cult plot points and it's amazing to see SH1's hellscape Otherworld fully realized in SH3's engine.

SH2 is completely self contained, as is SH4 which started off as a non-SH related project so it's incredibly different.

I say give SH1 a shot but if it doesn't gel with you, yeah just check out the others and don't worry too much about it. Even SH3 is ultimately pretty self contained in the end but your experience might be a little enhanced if you know some SH1 context before going into it.

I loaded up my SH3 game today and have more of the goofy unlocks than I predicted, like the Unlimited Machine Gun, some outfits, the Magical Girl transformation outfit, etc. I might replay SH3 too since I can knock that one out in mere hours, probably even faster if I play with some of the unlockables just for fun.

Oh man, SH3 has so many unlockables. Do you have the following:

Silver Pipe
Gold Pipe
Beam Saber
Sexy Beam
Flamethrower
Silencer
Health Bar
Extreme Mode 1-10
Bullet Multiplier x5

If not, you've got more to unlock!

I saw some of these like Bullet Multiplier in the Extra Options, I think some of these weapons you can only get later at some points and don't start with them so I'm not sure. I'll keep playing my NG+ files though and probably continue to unlock things. The Beam Saber would be a lot of fun. Since I have the Magical Girl outfit, maybe I have some of the beam powers.