The game is the "spiritual successor" to Blue Stinger in that it's a horror game and it's by the same director, but it shares nothing with that one other than some cameo appearances You play as Eriko Christy who has just finished giving a commencement speech or something about how her fucked-up horror addict dad used to torment her by rigging the house up with traps and automatronic monsters. Just after the speech, Eriko's three best high school friends run to her with tickets with their names on them, to a new horror-themed amusement park called Illbleed. Apparently they've been challenged to spend a night at the theme park for a reward of 100 million dollars. Eriko initially refuses to go, but her buds are extremely Dumb and have no suspicions about getting a bunch of tickets with their names on them out of nowhere along with offers of millions of dollers, and insist on going. Of course, 3 days later they're missing, so Eriko heads over to illbleed to see if she can find her friends or something.
The game's mechanics are pretty unique. There's a hub area at the outset of the park where you can buy items, save, and switch between characters (once you rescue Eriko's friends.) The park is divided into different levels, which take the form of attractions ... a haunted house. Each level is tricked out with traps and has a Crazy B-rate deformed boss that you'll eventually make your way to. You start out by finding something called a Horror monitor which let's you go into first person view and identify suspicious objects in your field of view. Potential traps can be marked which essentially disables them, but doing so takes adrenaline of which you have only a very limited supply till you upgrade so you can't just go around marking every object that pops up. once you have built up erico with surgery's all your stats will skyrocket. To help you differentiate between traps and harmless objects you have four sense meters that are always active at the top of the screen - sight, smell, sound and sixth sense. When these start going off, you're nearing a trap.
Anyway props to all you who already comprehended that. Now you may or may not have heard of this game and maby even heard some arrant articles and some good but im here to tell you this is by far one of the most innovative intelligent and might i say ingenuous completely underrated survival games out there and to top it off the lead protagonist erico is totally hot and gets naked. (gotta have nudity in b-rate horror) Why? Well this game is different with all the classics which we have all come to grow and love such as resident evil and silent hill in this game you play erico a sweet nice girl with the inability to get scared that right she never gets scared why you ask?
Well her father is a sick and twisted man who gets his rocks off by scaring the living bleep out of people and especially his only offspring. Infact he is so obssed with this fact that he went as far to create an entire theme park based entirely on scaring the crap out of you. this game loves to joke and it's meant to be like a drive in old school 80's b rate horror movie where it is supposed to be corny and completely out there most do not seem to get this point and decide to say this game is not scary and it sucks. Well i got news for you it does exactly what it's going for and i promise if you give it a chance and play though you will not leave disheartened but instead thinking why have i not play this game and why don't I own a Sega dreamcast?
In this game there is six levels. Each level is its own b rate movie created by Mr. renolds himself, the owner of the park and your goal well of course is to make it though alive but also much more. In this game instead of just picking locks, shooting, and saving you have many more things to pay attention to like... ways to die. You have a heart rate which you need to keep down, you can bleed to death which you need badges for, and you can even die of shock which enters the horror monitor and nifty little item which requires stamina, each time you use your horror monitor your stamina goes down in which you need an injection neddle to fill up which you can buy at your local bloody Mary before each movie in each level there are traps that are hidden every where which are detected by sight sound and smell and sixth sense (as mentioned above) each one has its own meaning.
I will not give it away but you open your monitor and it detects items weapons and danger which you can use this device to disarm all the traps there is also a time limit in each level and at the end you are scored on how well you do based on time ,how many traps you disarm, how much health you have. how much stamina you have left and in the end it all rounds out and depending how well you do depends on how much money you will get. There are also in level hospitals where you can heal yourself and upgrade which requires both money and certain item's that you will obtain while exploring. They kinda look like resident evil test tubes just much bigger.
Final thoughts
I'm not saying this game is perfect and truthfully it will most likely be a hit or miss for you but....
You may just walk away loving this game. You may walk away wishing you have saved your time really that's how these games tend to work but one thing i will guarantee is an unique experience. if you're looking for something different from the traditional resident evil style stuff out there and are a big B-rate horror fan you really can't go wrong. This is part of what made the dreamcast so special and with all the re-hashed crap that's spilled on to gamer's over and over why not give this a try. You never know you may just walk away with a big shit eating grin
