Howdy, folks. The article turned out to be quite huge, so without further ado, I present you 10 video games that, on the one hand, are well suited for one particular evening in late October, and on the other hand, they are no less pleasant to stick to at any other time of the year. This selection is arranged in a completely random order and without any rating system: the goal was to find a dozen not the most famous, but diverse games so that everyone could choose something new to suit their taste. Go.
1. Savage Halloween
Initially, I planned to write an article specifically about this game, but it occurred to me that writing so extensively about an arcade game with two screensavers is too much. Therefore, I will limit myself to a couple of paragraphs.
So, Savage Halloween is a shoot’em up from three people from Brazil who hide behind the name of the studio 2ndBoss, and this is their second game after Biolab Wars, which, in fact, was a pen test. Compared to Biolab Wars, progress is obvious: Fernando Rodriguez has clearly improved his skills in Unity, and the game consistently holds up to 60 frames (Biolab Wars sometimes drops to 30 for some reason). Abdel De Oliveira made even more cool sprites and backdrops. And Roberto Chapolin wrote really great music, which even wants to be saved somewhere separate from the game. And one playthrough lasts about 2-3 hours, compared to the short half-hour Biolab Wars – in short, all three clearly did not sit idly by and developed their talents and skills. My respect.
Compared to genre classics like Contra, Savage Halloween is wildly light. The characters are very durable, and you can click Continue enough times. Plus, there is an opportunity to restart the level, regaining all the lost lives. Even the bosses are not very difficult, even for a casual player like me: on the second attempt, I completed the entire game, from the first level to the last boss. To be honest, I just liked it. If you are a grandmaster of shoot’em ups, then it is very likely that the game will seem too simple to you. Although… It has a Hardcore mode that I personally haven’t even tried. Because, as it was said, my person is having fun and on normal difficulty.
There was no Hardcore mode in Biolab Wars. And yet, oddly enough, there was no way to complete the game together. Fortunately, this moment was also fixed in Savage Halloween, and very successfully. The cooperative game is quite optimized, and only one boss can be broken if one of the players stands behind him.
What I remember:
● Three characters, each with their own parameters of speed, health and jump height – this is quite rare in such arcades, but here it is, and at the same time it feels balanced. The weakest character turns out to be almost the most interesting, because he can fly and has a special attack that restores health – and you can heal an ally.
● Being able to play as a werewolf is a very rare thing, and to be honest, it was in search of playable werewolves that I found this game.
● Stupid underwater bug: If a character dies, the game forgets that the player is underwater. Strangely enough, the bug disappears if you restart the level: something in the code clicks, and Savage Halloween begins to remember that we are diving and prescribe the character correctly after death. Therefore, if you have reached the underwater level, it is better to restart it immediately, because there is nothing more pleasant than to die before the very end, catch a bug and lose the opportunity to leave the level, which will force you to restart one way or another.
● After sitting down with a friend to play together and completing the game completely, we immediately changed the characters and began to play the game a second time. Savage Halloween is definitely addictive and not boring.
● And then we also took turns going through Biolab Wars.
2. Clock Tower 3
Japanese horror from the notorious Capcom. It was released exclusively on PlayStation 2, so in order to try it out, you need to download an emulator. Fortunately, PCSX2 is currently optimized to such an extent that there should be no difficulties with this.
At first glance, everything looks pretty standard: we play as a little defenseless girl named Alice. She suddenly somehow falls into the 20th century, in which she has to run away from a maniac with a huge sledgehammer, who has just killed another little defenseless girl named May in front of our eyes. It would seem that everything is damn trivial. An unexpected twist occurs after about an hour of the game: Alice suddenly gets tired of running away from a maniac, she grabs a magic bow that came from nowhere and, under the control of the player, sends the fed-up opponent to hell.
It turns out that Alice does come from a hereditary family of magical girls. As soon as the female members of her family turn 15, they officially become Ruder (this does not translate), and the direct duty of the Ruder is to travel through time and space in order to do justice to all sorts of assholes with sledgehammers. As far as I understand, we are transported specifically to the moment of the most terrible of their murders, although, probably, this is already my personal fantasy. And maniacs, by the way, are also not exactly maniacs, but slightly supernatural creatures possessed by some kind of Entities. In short, the devil will break your leg in another Japanese plot, but it looks cool and plays scary.
It leaves literally indelible impressions. After playing Clock Tower 3, I wanted to try out the previous games in the series, but it quickly became clear that they had nothing to do with anything. The previous Clock Towers are point-and-click, while in the third part you can fully run in all three dimensions. And the plot of Clock Tower 3 is on its own. So I haven’t tried anything but the third part, and should I?
What I remember:
● Capcom invited professional director Kinji Fukasaka, the one who shot, for example, the famous Battle Royale, specifically to work on cutscenes. So, the cutscenes came out simply incomparable. They’re so brutal that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would envy them. And you really have time to empathize with the victims of a maniac.
● It becomes all the more pleasant when the game finally shows us how many people the maniac has ruined, how many years of boiling cauldron are in store for him, and suggests that we finally send him to the devil.And even his victims, we manage to help, even after their death.
● In short, your Clock Tower 3 is a very unusual piece, very skillfully mixing several extremely different genres. And, oddly enough, the magical girl looks quite appropriate against the backdrop of all the bombed-out Londons of the Second World War, the gray walls of medieval castles and gloomy dungeons. And even an anime super-punch in battles with maniacs leaves behind only the most pleasant sensations. Judgement!
3. Haunting Ground
It is impossible not to mention this game, because it was Haunting Ground that critics dubbed the spiritual heir of the Clock Tower series in general and specifically Clock Tower 3 in particular. And although Capcom itself has never stated anything like this, the similarities between the gameplay of Clock Tower 3 and the Haunting Ground are obvious.
From the good news: the main character’s panic now looks just fine. Fiona moves very naturally, much more naturally than Alice. Controlling a panicking Fiona is really difficult, and if you hit any cabinet or table, she will surely fall and crawl across the floor, causing the player to panic. All these natural movements are here because Capcom recorded the actions of each game character from a real actor, and even Huey the doggie was recorded from a real dog.
Unfortunately, despite the successful use of motion capture costumes, Kinji Fukasaku was no longer the director, and therefore the cutscenes in the Haunting Ground look much less impressive than in Clock Tower 3. The variety of locations is also gone: we will roam the whole game in the same castle. Yes, the developers tried to make our journey a little less monotonous: we are in the courtyard, then we are in the dungeons, then some mines, then some gardens… And yet, the difference between a bombed-out London and an abandoned hospital from Clock Tower 3 is still not there.: No matter how you look at it, the lock remains the lock.
We are still allowed to pile on annoying pursuers, but in this regard, the Haunting Ground has become much closer to the typical modern horror: unlike Alice, Fiona does not want to grab a magic bow, shoot the enemies in their crooked faces and bring down the wrath of the Lord anime-style on them. Fiona, of course, has some items in her inventory that allow her not to remain completely defenseless, but everything looks much less epic.
And as for the items, it’s better to find some manual on the local alchemy machine right away. It is frankly difficult to understand which medallions are needed for what and how to get this or that item. By the way, the minigame itself for creating new items is literally infuriating: personally, I slowed down the game with the emulator settings – otherwise it didn’t bring me any pleasure. In addition to alchemy, it is generally useful to know where certain earrings are lying and how to get them – again, I advise you to look for a passage describing all this. And yes, one more nuance: for some reason, we have items in our inventory that are basically useless. For example, onions. It can be given to Huey, but it only lowers doggo’s health and worsens his attitude towards the player. There’s only one question: why the hell would I add onions to the game?
Not to say that the Haunting Ground turned out to be bad: It’s quite a strong horror movie. But I think he’s doomed to be in the shadow of his much more interesting predecessor. Which is ironic, because, apparently, I’m the only one who thinks so. The fact is that it is the Haunting Ground that has gained cult status, and it is called an unnoticed masterpiece and a hidden diamond on the Internet from time to time. I have no idea why that is. I think Clock Tower 3 turned out to be much more unusual and original.
And yes, like Clock Tower 3, the Haunting Ground was only released on PlayStation 2.
What I remember:
● Doggo Huey is our main weapon, the most interesting mechanics in the game, and just a very good boy. Without a doubt, Haunting Ground is the only game that tries to invest so thoroughly in the relationship between a human and a dog. There’s even the possibility of training a dog; to be honest, I’m not sure how well all these mechanics really work, but they kind of do, and playing ball with Huey from time to time is just fun. And the fact that playing ball makes the dog more curious and trains him to find objects for you more often is secondary.
● Nasty interfering glowing balls are flying. They don’t do anything useful, they just increase the level of panic and make a loud sound, attracting everyone who wants to kill us to our location. Clock Tower 3 also had similar mechanics in the form of moths, but somehow it wasn’t that annoying. In the Haunting Ground, these stupid visps are naturally infuriating, especially at the end of the game, when they start to spawn five at a time, tightly blocking the entire passage.
● Lots of costumes, cutscenes, and sometimes even entire game mechanics that are blocked from replaying, in the best traditions of Kapcom Resident Evil. To open suit 1, you need to get ending A, To open suit 3, you need to get ending C… “Fuck you,” I decided, and I just downloaded a save in which everything is already open. I advise you to do the same.
● The ability to die just by looking through a hole in the wall.
● The opportunity to escape from the castle in the middle of the passage, leaving the villain villainously shouting “Fiona!!” Into the air.
4. Sang-Froid: Tales Of Werewolves
As they said in the movie Big Money: “Do you like dogs?”
Yes, I love dogs. That’s why I’ve been thinking for a very long time about whether I should even play Sang-Froid. After all, all the way we will destroy hordes of wolves, which, apparently, serve the devil. Although the Brothers Grimm assured me that wolves are God’s animals…
In the end, I decided to try Sang-Froid anyway and, I must say, I was extremely pleased. And this is considering that this game is nothing more than tower defense, and I don’t really like this genre. So, Sang-Froid is without a doubt the best of all the tower defenses I’ve played.This interactive video is shot down extremely tightly, it does not let you get bored for a second, and the role-playing elements screwed to the main gameplay work with a bang. The following fact can best describe my impressions: Sang-Froid is the only tower defense that I have completed twice, once for each of the characters.
The characters here are the brothers Jack and Joseph. Playing as a weaker Jack turned out to be much more interesting, but at the same time much more difficult. In fact, they have a radically different approach: Joseph works with melee weapons, while for Jack the main thing is firearms. And the most important nuance is that when playing for Jack, traps play a much bigger role, since the firearms here are not AK-47s, but ancient, slowly reloading muskets. And you have to set traps so that too many enemies don’t get past them at the same time: Joseph and his axe can handle two or three creatures at once, but Jack will have problems. In general, if you plan to play the game only once, I would advise you to choose Jack right away – it feels much sharper this way, and it doesn’t make much sense to play as Joseph to get your hands full.
What I remember:
● A truly divine soundtrack composed entirely of folk songs and motifs.
● The relatively unusual aesthetic of the Canadian Western, which includes the Indians of North America and creatures from their mythology.
● Great video from the Stranded Orange channel:
What I didn’t remember:
● The plot. Probably, there is one, but, oddly enough, of all the games included in our list today, I completely and completely forgot the plot of Sang-Froid. Which indicates one thing: the main thing in this game is definitely the gameplay, and the plot here is about the same as in an action movie with Van Damme. There will definitely be no deep philosophical moments in Sang-Froid, such as a conversation with a bartender in Hong Kong from Deus Ex or a dialogue with the ZAX supercomputer from the first Fallout. The only thing I remember for sure is that at the end there was a promise for a sequel, which never happened.
● And here it is worth mentioning the following: the creators of Sang-Froid are an indie studio called Artifice. They only have two games, and Tales Of Werewolves is the first of them. The second one was released in 2015, and, it would seem, after 10 years, nothing is worth waiting for. However, just this year, a demo of the game Legends Of The Round Table by Artifice suddenly appeared. The new retelling of the Legend of King Arthur looks really cool, which at the same time gives us hope for the continuation of the Sang-Froid story.
SangFroid: Tales of Werewolves @ Steam
5. They Bleed Pixels
Surprisingly, I remember even the plot of this game much better than the plot of Sang-Froid. The message here is that something is wrong at some school for small, defenseless girls. Students are given all sorts of books suspiciously reminiscent of the Necronomicon, which is why little girls turn into riblers and crablers. Or is our heroine just dreaming? But then why are dreams so clearly connected to each other? And why is she less of a person and more of a crab in every dream? And finally, why does the ill-fated book appear next to her again every morning?..
They Bleed Pixels is a platformer, and platformers are a genre that I love, perhaps, just a little more than tower defense. The plot of the platformer has to be extremely good to make me jump on all kinds of surfaces from point A to point B. And the story that They Bleed Pixels tells us is really good. We are presented with a good Lovecraft horror film that works as solidly as the Lovecraft universe can work within the strict framework of the simplest 2D jump rope.
But still, the plot is not a masterpiece. No, They Bleed Pixels is a big exception: it’s probably the only platformer that has been able to drag me through the process itself. I’ll tell you straight out: This is by far the best game of its genre that I have ever tried. The management here is like this… soft, natural. Jumping on walls is literally a pleasure. And it’s much more fun to kill enemies here and there than any turtles from Mario. Although they are some kind of obscure blots, the way the heroine impales them over and over again on thorns looks pretty brutal, but it feels one hundred percent.
My only complaint about the game is its ending. I really wish it was a little clearer. It’s like it’s not very clear exactly how the whole game ended.
What I remember:
● Amazing electronic soundtrack from DJ FINISH HIM. Specifically, the YABACHIBAHN track is generally something incomparable.
● The only platformer that I went through completely, collecting all the pages and what else was there, without cheats and guides – it was so nice to play Them Bleed Pixels, even repeating the same level over and over again.
● Very cool art that can be opened in the gallery. Well, or just get into the folder with the game and look at them there – that’s also possible.
● The Spooky Squid Games studio consists of two people, who were joined by a third after They Bleed Pixels. The three of them made another game, the last one at the moment, called Russian Subway Dogs. The soundtrack was written, suddenly, by Coins, who, a few years before the release of Russian Subway Dogs, received a well-deserved moment of fame thanks to the fabulous mixtape Daft Science, which combined Daft Punk and the Beastie Boys into one whole. In short, Russian Subway Dogs is another awesome arcade game that isn’t very Halloween-like, but I just can’t help but recommend it.
The sequel will be tomorrow. Happy Halloween!
