It's Spooktober! What are you playing?

Games
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Haven’t been playing much of anything, but my friends and I have consistently done a themed list the past few Octobers and this year’s is folk horror. I haven’t been fully keeping up but i have the next few days off work so I’m hoping to catch up. The lists are always hit or miss due to trying to keep with the theme, but there’s definitely been some stand outs this year.

Impetigore was a new one for me. I was familiar with Joko Anwar’s name because my partner and I watched Gundala last year on a whim and it was a fun time, mostly for having actually well shot fight sequences. Impetigore is a very different movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it especially given that it has multiple plot points that revolve around shadow puppetry/gamelan music.

The other stand out so far is Viy which is the first (and likely only) horror movie produced in the Soviet Union. It is an adaptation of a Gogol short story and is a blast of a time imo, at least for something produced in 1967.

On the games side of things, I am hoping to check out the new Phasmophobia maps/updates because that game is still a blast when you play with a close group of friends. Especially when one of them is always conveniently the person who has to run back to the truck for just one more thing.

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Spooky season for me is loading up LOTRO and running around a haunted hobbit hole under Bag End getting spooked by cardboard goblins.

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I have, don’t ask how, found a copy of Rule of Rose on my Steam Deck. I’m going to check that out.

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Well, I started the month playing a lot of State of Decay 2, i seem to come back to it every October, have a blast for a few days and then grow incredibly bored with it. It’s not a bad game and I always have fun play sessions, but its repetitiveness can really wear thin. I might revisit it again this month…

Other than that I fired up Zombi U on my Wii U and while only under 2 hours in I think I’m really enjoying it. I also have Castlevania, Castlevania 3, and Circle of the Moon in rotation on the Wii U as well. I’ve never been able to beat Castlevania 1 or 3 but I always have fun hopping into those games. Circle of the Moon is just a solid metroidvania game.

The Criterion Channel has a bunch of Spooky Halloween film runs happening now, even the Universal monster movies! I watched the 1931 Dracula (classic) and The Black Cat so far, and of course highly recommend both. There’s also a vampire movie and an 80s horror movie playlist that are really fun, even if what I’ve watched of those are not the best. Michael Mann’s The Keep is something, great visuals, but what a convoluted and kind of dull horror movie. Fascination is pretty decent, it’s super horny but the horror elements are pretty weak. Isle of the Dead from 1945 stars Boris Karloff and is definitely a low budget studio affair. Pretty sets for the most part and some good acting, but its a dull “people talking in rooms” movie that really doesn’t pay off.

So much more to check out, and so little October left!

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Yep that’s my general experience with the game lol. I play it nonstop for about a week and complete a run then go “why did I do this” and then don’t touch it for about 6 months and repeat when I remember it has a horde mode.

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I’ve played another couple of spooky games for this, the spookiest of months! Earlier last week I finished Than Trung, a Vietnamese horror game I found going through my Steam discovery queue. It was good! It feels very inspired by PT, as it has you walking through the same small area to complete tasks, while little events and jump scares happen. The jump scares come at you pretty frequently early on, and the returns diminish pretty quickly. The opening sequence has you walking up and down a hall over and over, with very little interaction, and jump scares galore, as a way to show you how bad the haunting you will be resolving is. It may have been better served by ratcheting up the dread slowly, and then paying it off with one big jump scare. The game does find a groove though! The meat of the experience has fewer jump scares and more creepy little puzzles. It’s not the best game I’ve played this Spooktober, but I’m glad I played it!

Also, Than Trung has a fully modeled PS5, with the logo and everything! It’s connected to a TV with an only slightly blurred screenshot of the PS5 UI. You can tell what specific games were on the console! I mean, maybe they got permission, but it struck me as a brash choice!

Anyways, yesterday I completed the 2015 remake of White Day: a Labyrinth Named School. It was really exceptional! The game was developed by a Korean studio, who are revisiting a game they made back in 2001 by the same name. (Think Pathologic 2, not the Demon’s Souls remake). You play as a high school student who found his crush’s diary in the schoolyard, and is returning to the school at night to return it to her locker. Sneaks and spooks ensue as you avoid the aggressive and violent night janitor and come across the distressingly numerous ghosts of students and teachers who died on campus. In gameplay, it feels like a precursor to Alien: Isolation. You sneak through the empty halls of a place that was designed to service hundreds of people, solving puzzles as you avoid an omnipresent, intelligent enemy. White Day’s evil janitor may not have as advanced AI as the Xenomorph does, but I got the same rush of adrenaline running and hiding from both.

The ghosts in the game were all really great too. For the most part they seem very of their time. 2001 was near the peak of J-Horror, and the ghosts in this game sure look the part. There’s lots of long black hair covering pallid faces and unnatural movements. It’s great! I love that stuff! What’s really exceptional about them is that with only a few exceptions, these ghosts aren’t enemies. They’re mostly there for mood setting and to keep you on your toes. Along with the excellent sound design and music they create a deeply creepy and at times repulsive atmosphere. It rules! There were times when the deeply unsettling music along with the rattling windows and footsteps without a clear source had built up so much dread that when I finally did see something, I let go of my mouse and covered my face with my hands in sheer horror! I haven’t seen vibes this terrible in a game since Fatal Frame 2!

So, yeah, White Day is the first game this Spooktober to make it into my personal horror game hall of fame! Though I doubt it will be alone long, as what I’ve played of Yume Nikki so far has been really incredible.

On the film side of Spooktober, I watched Tetsuo the Iron Man. It was definitely the most fucked up episode of a Tokusatsu show that I’ve ever seen! 10/10! I’m not sure I’d be able to stomach watching it again, but I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

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Tetsuo rules so hard. Genuine punk energy to that movie. That final line is so impossibly good it lends gravity to the hyperactive nightmare you just witnessed.

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I haven’t really played anything spooky since finishing The Sinking City (unless Monkey Island 1 and 2 count? The Ghost Pirate/Zombie Pirate LeChuck…). I remembered yesterday I was halfway through Wolfenstein: The Old Blood a couple months ago so maybe I’ll go back to that, the most supernatural - albeit most flawed - of the modern Wolfensteins.

For films, I’ve been updating a list on Letterboxd as I go. Some highlights:

  • Encounters of the Spooky Kind & Mr. Vampire were unexpected delights of Hong Kong comedy-action cinema with hopping vampire/jiangshi themes.
  • C.H.U.D. was way better than I thought it would be, making me think of mid-to-high-tier John Carpenter rather than the total B-movie I was anticipating.
  • Speaking of Carpenter, there aren’t many of his films I haven’t seen now and the majority of the ones I have left to go are his… less beloved works. So it was awesome seeing Prince of Darkness for the first time and finding out that I loved it.
  • Revisited some practical effects-heavy '80s camp and both Little Shop of Horrors and Beetlejuice remain excellent.

I think tonight we’re going to watch Horror Express, after reading a review that made me do the Vince McMahon meme: “Peter Cushing… and Christopher Lee… fight a Thing-like monster on the Trans-Siberian… and Telly Savalas shows up as a Cossack?”

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I am not personally playing Bloodborne but this brief little vid from SunhiLegend has some seriously powerful Spooky Season vibes

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What finished the RE3 remake and moving right along to The Quarry.

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When I first visited up here, I left a PS2, two controllers, and a copy of Silent Hill 1. We lost that for a bit, got more controllers, and then a memory card. Then we found the old ones.

Long story short, I’m gonna playing an old PS1 copy of Silent Hill with my husband. He’s gonna guide me through the map so we get the full story.

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I should dust off my PS3 and play my PSN copy of the original Silent Hill. Still annoyed Sony hasn’t put in the effort to make that stuff just work on the PS5. Hell, I’d even pay again.

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My spooky season games are primarily physical, with time devoted to getting the steampunk horrror miniatures wargame Malifaux, the newly published second edition of John Company a game of economic horror in my mind, and some time with the second edition of the Urban Shadows TTRPG.

Digitally, I guess The Last Spell has a slight horror vibe, but I am not very drawn to horror games. I will be checking out some of the mystery recommendations in this thread, and may play Norco if I have time to do so.

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Posted about this a bit in the regular “now playing” thread, but I’ve been locked in the gristley embrace of the OG Dead Space for a few days.

I popped the Xbox version in to just remind myself of how the game opened and ended up putting 5 hours into it. Very curious about the more horror-forward direction the remake is taking because Dead Space 08 is not a dark or foreboding game in many ways. I think there’s something almost bold about having enemies this off-putting be so visible and legible to the player. Silent Hill gets a lot of mileage out of not encouraging the player to look too closely at its monsters, but Dead Space really wants you to see all that crazy flesh. I find myself breathless and ready for whatever is coming at me next after each encounter, rather than licking my wounds or hoping that the game will cool it on the combat for a while.

Special shout out to how incredible this game looks. Even on the Xbox version with its lower resolution (more of a help than a hindrance to this game’s vibe tbh), Dead Space 08 has distinct aesthetic to the rest of the series. It does a tremendous job of making each section of the ship feel different yet cohesive, and the way it uses light is singular. I adore the sickly orange glow of the technology on the Ishimura, and when you get onto the seemingly exposed Bridge the flat grey moonlight that bathes the area is just awesome. Dead Space 2 is still a looker but it does not have the same spartan, inhospitable feel of the first game.

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I went back to wrap up my Wolfenstein: The Old Blood run (I’d been inspired to revisit The New Order a few months ago after going back to listen to an old Waypoint spoilercast, rolled straight into The Old Blood, but didn’t get around to finishing it). I think New Order and New Colossus set such high bars that this little standalone expansion gets understandably short shrift, but it has a lot of the same foundations that make those other games work, and the supernatural elements in the second half make it a good fit for the season.

Final boss sucks, though.

Next, blatantly prompted by the announcement of that Silent Hill game from dev No Code, I decided to get around to playing Stories Untold that has been sitting in my Steam library for years from some sale or other (tip: it’s currently on sale on PSN, but as it relies heavily on both typing and point and click elements I have no idea how it plays on console).

Up front, I love this kind of “mixed media” game. It makes me think of stuff like Inscryption, Quadrilateral Cowboy, and a bunch of Zachtronics games. Text adventures blending with point and click manipulation of old technology, flicking through user manuals to work out how to solve puzzles. Brilliant. It’s also super atmospheric (though I wish it didn’t rely on so many flashing lights, which are so aggressive it had me wondering about photoepilepsy and I’m rarely bothered by that kind of effect).

Didn’t really dig the overall conclusion (the “it’s all processing the guilt of drunk driving” was… not really what I expected or wanted) but getting there was definitely worthwhile. I’m curious about playing Observation at some point. Different people seem to prefer Stories Untold and Observation but either way lots of people seem excited by what they might do with Silent Hill. At the very least my interest has been piqued.

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woof I forgot about that ending… definitely the weakest part of that game. fwiw I enjoyed both Stories Untold and Observation about equally

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I played Stories Untold last October on PS5 and and it plays like a dream! For the text portions it gives you a pretty generous selection of words to build commands out of, the list is large enough that I never felt railroaded and the sense of stumbling into surprise discoveries is still there. The rest of the game felt great to play as well, but yeah that ending… the actual play of it is fun but its just a totally unneeded / unwanted narrative swing. I’m playing Observation this year and while I like it so far it definitely feels a bit clunkier to play on console. That works for the kind of tech you’re dealing with I think, but theres also a bit of dissonance between the very slow pace of interacting with the game and what feels like its a fairly fast paced narrative. I’ll finish it up this week and give final thoughts then.

Wrapping back to Bloodborne, I ended up playing a few more days after my last post and got up and through the Rom fight. I don’t have much to add to my previous thoughts, but put succinctly this game remains the inverse of my Dark Souls experiences. There I loved the minute to minute exploration and would tolerate the boss fights, where as Bloodborne has some of the best boss fights I’ve ever played but the exploration hasn’t appealed. I’ve been on a break from the game for about a week and will def go back to it if I feel the draw, but might just move on to DS3, we’ll see.

Finally, I’ve also been playing Wytchwood! Its a crafting based game where you play as a witch working to pay off a debt by punishing nasty folk and maybe helping people along the way. Its a beautiful game and the writing is top notch, largely evoking a tone of folktales with some genuinely good humor mixed in. The ‘time-to-crafting’ itself is well balanced with your base items abundant and quick to regenerate and none of the recipes requiring real grinding. As the game moves forward its also wise about not always having a solution be just a more complicated recipe; midgame some main quests are shorter and built around more basic recipes, and one puzzle so far had no crafting at all. Its a really solid, well paced, spooky-but-not-scary game.

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Oh that’s interesting. I was wondering if you had to use the console’s virtual keyboard which feels like it would be a nightmare! One of my few complaints in terms of gameplay was that occasionally I’d run into the classic text adventure problem of being unable to figure out what prompts it was demanding so actually having a list would probably have smoothed that over.

I’d definitely like to hear your thoughts on Observation when you’re done.

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The Quarry was exactly the campy fun I was hoping it would be, although I feel like the last half of the story is rushed. You get introduced to new people who are, at least with my choices, brushed aside almost immediately before they can become actual characters. Also, and this is going to be excruciating for me to say, but I feel like Supermassive could learn from David Cage and present you with a decision tree at the end and let you resume from any branch. It’s a 11ish hour game and if you can only select a chapter to resume from after you’ve beaten the game and you can only do it ONCE. Resume from that point and you’re locked in until the credits roll again. Given the number of important early decisions or missable collectibles that’s really annoying if you want to get the whole thing. I started a replay to collect all the evidence and tarot cards and I biffed a qte from chapter five and now I have to either play all the way to the end just to restart from this exact chapter or give up. That sucks. I might just speedrun everyone dying to get to restart sooner, but I’m probably just putting it down.

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Yeah, its funny its so good at solving that problem l I hadn’t even considered that on PC the game use an actual text parser haha. It even injects a bit of low level meta anxiety / horror at the end of the game. When you receive a drink while navigating the farewell party the verb ‘drink’ appears in your menu of words. At this point you can intuit where the story is going and the word hangs there like an intrusive thought, especially as you try to work out how to advance the story and whether you have to engage with every word in your list.

I finished up Observation last night and and it rips, a solid iteration on the ideas from Stories Untold and a good story in its own right. I’d def suggest turning up camera speed in the options as that solved the tension I was feeling early on between gameplay and story pacing and just made it more fun to explore and experiment overall. As I said in my first post that game play is often kind of clunky feeling, but in a way that I love and serves the story. If Stories Untold is about human interaction with machines, than Observation is about machine interaction with humans with all the alien awkwardness that implies. But yeah, maybe most importantly I think this game has a much stronger story and strikes a much better balance with its ending, giving the player enough info and character work for the arc of the story to feel satisfying, while leaving other aspects more open to interpretation.

I also finished up Wytchwood and it was such a fun, cozy game. Not much to add from what I said last time but the game does remain fun and well written throughout and I would def recommend it for anyone looking for a chill autumnal game.

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