Dino Crisis - Let's get a reboot!

This game is by no means, unknown. It sadly never got a sequel that played quite the same way as the original. The second game was alright but it was more action than classic survival horror. It just didn’t have the same atmosphere and the other sequel… well… let’s not talk about it because… it was bad. Dino Crisis slowly moved away from survival horror and it needs a reboot. The original game is a classic though. The game is not without its flaws but it has a fairly interesting story, a strong female lead, some amazing Dino-antagonists to fight with, and some real puzzles to solve. It’s a great survival horror game.

You play as Regina, a weapons expert who is on a mission with a small group to some research facility in order to find out why communications have been shut off. While there you discover that Dr. Kirk, a researcher long thought to be dead, is alive and somewhere on this island and he has been working with some new scary technology called “The Third Energy”. Of course, the research done by him has created dinosaurs and in your pursuit of the truth you have to deal with a T-rex, velociraptors, pterodactyls and more. These dinosaurs aren’t just re-skinned zombies either, they pose quite a challenge.

The island itself is nice to look at but you hardly get to explore it. There are a few scenes that take you to the outskirts of the facility and it’s a nice change of scenery but nothing more. Most of the game you’ll be exploring labs, administrative offices, storage warehouses and more in the building. Surprisingly, this place is designed so that these rooms never feel too repetitive. It’s pretty suspenseful as you move throughout the building trying to sneak around dinosaurs, blast them away, or use the environment in order to stop them. The way they stalk you, sprint after you or dive on you can be terrifying. The music sets the atmosphere accordingly. It is cold, often fast and building in speed. The soundtrack adds another layer to the suspense as you play through the game. Whether it’s a boss fight with the T-rex as he gnaws at you and knocks you to the floor like you are nothing, or the velocriaptors chasing you as you run for the next door, this game can scare.

The puzzles in the game do get infuriating. There are a lot of times when back tracking must be done and I had a hard time remembering where to go. Some of these puzzles are just annoying because the developer wants you to have to run back through more dinosaurs. Sometimes you have to put the pieces together or make key cards in so many different rooms that things just got overly confusing. I find myself wondering who would design an office like this! Of course, for every annoying puzzle, there are codes to crack, keys to use, and puzzles that require you to think rather than find an item. It’s actually got more interesting puzzles than the average survival horror game and I was happy when they were doing more than just having me run around the facility.

This game is a lot of fun. It’s infuriating at times but also genuinely frightening and enjoyable. I suggest any fan of survival horror to go back and play it if you feel the need for some classic PS1 era gaming. For everyone else, please, pray with me. Let’s get Dino Crisis revived and in the vein of Resident Evil 4. That sort of gameplay would fit the Dino Crisis name perfectly. Regina needs another go. Don’t let Dino Crisis 3 be the last one we get to play.

Below is a link to PS1 emulator, a ROM for the game and a link to buy it on Amazon for PC and PS1!

ePSXE

Rom Link

PS1 Amazon Link

PC Amazon Link

The Organ Trail - Retro Survival Done Right!

Growing up with Oregon Trail this game appealed a great deal to me. I was never that great at the game and it certainly didn't become my favorite game but it filled the hours at school the cafeteria and I remember playing it on one of our earliest computers at home. I think a lot of us experienced the Oregon Trail in a similar fashion but today we can relive the experience only with more of what we love! More guts, more scares, zombies and guns! The Organ Trail is a true horror survival game with an emphasis on the latter. It's available online and on Steam for only 5 dollars and even has a 20% off discount at release so please check it out. It's also worth mentioning that you can now own this game on Android, iPhone, Mac, Linux and Windows. Pretty much EVERYONE can play it at this point.

The Organ Trail has been out a while on Android, iPhone and all iOS devices. It works well with a touch screen but I had always longed for a PC version so that I can sit down and play it. The Directors Cut version released today comes with a lot of extra goodies as well making it a much more rewarding experience. There's an extra driving game, there's nearly 30 achievements, more combat upgrades and even endless mode where you can try to top your best scores driving across the zombie apocalypse wasteland.

I was a huge fan of this game already and for the price you simply can't beat it. I even emailed these guys just to let them know how happy I was with their game and they responded with the email pictured below. Tacky, I know, but it's always cool to see a developer stay in touch with their fan base.

When playing the Organ Trail you name your party members, which of course makes it harder to kill them and more interesting when they die, and you set off across the United States to the West in order to find a safe zone. Along the way you'll face random events that play like choose your own adventure stories and effect your status or that cause you to enter into a mini-game. These games range from driving through a zombie horde, where you have to consider the size and demeaning of the horde before picking how to pass through them or having you face off against a biker gang by running them off the road while they take shots at your car. These mini-games can be rewarding and give you supplies or they can ruin your supplies, hurt your people and your vehicle if you do poorly.

When you arrive at a destination there are jobs posted you can take advantage of. They range in difficulty and offer different amounts of money for how difficult they are. Most of them involve you scavenging a location, shooting at people in a building or just shooting a set number of zombies and are pretty basic but can get difficult. In order to complete these missions you'll use WASD or the arrow keys to walk around and then click and bull back on your mouse to aim and fire the gun you carry. This is how most combat it done throughout the game and how you scavenge whether it is in town or on the road.

There's people you can trade with. Sometimes an “expert” will be there, who can either fix your vehicle, sell you special goods, or teach you new combat skills to use when fighting. You can also rest up in these areas as if you had pulled the car over and made a camp. Each destination has it's own little retro art splash image which are pretty fun to see as well.

As you continue on things get more intense as your characters can contract diseases and you'll need to work hard to keep your crew fed and healthy, and your vehicle functional. You'll have to set the rations appropriately depending on what you have and start choosing who gets medical attention first. It becomes quite difficult and makes the game play very interesting. Your choices regarding missions and mini-games start to matter more as well, and it makes the game that much more addicting.

The artwork and the music in the game are just perfect as well. If you aren't into the retro look of games then you'll probably hate it but damn, they did a great job. The small pixelated landscapes work well for scavenge missions and when your friend finally turns and you have to put him down you get a zoomed in look at the morbid pixelated scene and for some reason, it's pretty damn depressing even with hardly any detail shown on the characters. The music is haunting at times, slow and dragging as your crappy old car pulls it's way across the country and quick as you scavenge and blast zombies. It does a great job creating an apocalyptic atmosphere while keeping that retro style sound.

I could rant about this game for a lot longer. I could talk about the free soundtrack that is offered online, the funny gravestones that you can set and that are set by the community, or how addicting the leader boards but the fact is you can tell if this game is for you in 1 minute. Do you mind the graphics? Did you like Oregon Trail? Are you a fan of horror? If the answer to those is yes then you are crazy not to spring on this and spend the 4 bucks. It's well worth it even just for all the cheesy tongue in cheek references to other zombie games and films.

Below are links to the game's main site and the steam page. Enjoy!

Organ Trail Homepage

Organ Trail on Steam

Shattered Haven - The Survival Horror Puzzle Game

I haven't actually played this yet but it definitely deserves a shout out. There isn't much available out there yet regarding reviews, but a survival horror puzzle game just sounds interesting. The graphics presented in the screenshots and the trailer are also pretty nice for an indie game. I am definitely interested and will be picking this up when I have some extra money to spare. If anyone has impressions on the game feel free to post them below and I'll incorporate them into this post.

Anyway, Shattered Haven is a "an environmental puzzle game about family, grit, and survival." Shattered Haven has you going up against hordes of strange zombies called "Grays". These zombies aren't the standard, shambling, mindless corpses we so often see in video games and movies, instead we have violent and decaying monsters that roam the land. Animals can transform into these creatures, people can be transformed into these monsters and they will hunt you at every corner.

You play different members of the Williams family and depending on how you do there are different endings you can unlock as you solve puzzles in the environment, and must survive the apocalypse.

The game comes packed with multiple difficulty levels, just under 100 levels, bonus objectives, a level editor and even local co-op. More games need local co-op. The game costs 10 dollars and is available for Mac and Windows on both GoG and Steam. I'll post links to the store pages below.

So check it out! Let me know what you think. I'll be purchasing it in a week when I have some spare cash. For now I'm going to play Organ Trail and try to forget about how poor I am! Hope you guys are having a good Monday.

Shattered Haven on GoG
Shattered Haven on Steam

Darkwood - Procedural Terror in the Making

One of the earliest articles I wrote on this site was about Routine and while there hadn’t been many details released about that game I was genuinely excited for a procedurally generated horror game. It just seems like a great idea and while you’d have to do some tricks to keep the atmosphere going and the scares up it’d be a fantastic game if you could and today we really do have the tech to do so. Darkwood aims to be that game and it also looks like more than just a standard zombie game. Before I continue and get all excited let me just say this is based on a trailer and the information that has been released so far, not any actual play impressions.

Darkwood is a top down game set in one of the darkest, moodiest worlds I’ve seen. The graphics are nearly black and white at times as your character moves through the woods and into the environments. It is a dark game and the moody atmosphere really creates a great world. The games sound design is also in the right place judging from the trailer as we hear off key music played, thunder and lightning and a plethora of ambient sounds as you move through the world and take action.

In the trailer we also see a strange demented man playing piano who hands you a card with a creature on it and tells you that he saw him by the generator. Of course, once the power is out, you are forced to go there. Once the generator is fixed there is the sound of breaking glass in the house and you have to rush back to find what had attacked and check on the guy playing piano. This was more silent hill than it was another Project Zomboid and I loved the look of it, being more of a Silent Hill guy myself.

The game shows a lot of the features that Project Zomboid had. It has some basic crafting, some simple point and click combat with limited resources (hence the survival) and seems to have some sort of mission system that will hopefully keep things interested. The website also adds features such as peramdeath, unforgiving gameplay, an RPG system and exploration that actually satisfies. So far, it looks like this will play as a “Silent Hill” to Zomboids “Resident Evil” tune.

Below is a link to their website and green light page so you can check them out, vote them up and hopefully get us playing this bad boy in no time!

The Game Site

The Greenlight Page

Clock Tower: A Trip to Italy

 The Clock Tower trilogy has been moderately successful however it still seems that many people have overlooked them. Particularly the first one. While Clock Tower 3 seems to have gotten more attention because it was on play station 2 and played more like a traditional survival horror game instead of a point and click adventure these games are still a very interesting piece of survival horror history. The roots of the series take us back to 1995 when it premiered in Japan and was known as “The First Fear”. A year later the sequel would come out and simply be titled “Clock Tower”. It would also get a US release this time.

The Clock Tower original game is loosely based on Phenomena, an awesome 70's horror film made by Dario Argento, who also created the horror classic Suspiria. I played this game using ROMS that happened to have decent translations and have to say it was great. They really captured the atmosphere of the classic Argento films with everything from the way the house looked and the music to the way the the parts outside the house appear. Argento has always had a very striking visual style and has always had a liking to school girls and large sprawling estates. Clock Tower is all about these things.

In the game you play Jennifer Simpson and you come from an orphanage. You are escorted with friends from the orphanage by your newly adopted mother named Mary Barrows. She is an extremely wealthy eccentric woman who lives in this mansion simply known as “The Clock Tower”, due to the large clock tower on the grounds. Shortly after arriving Mary and the other girls disappear and you are left to your own devices to find out what happened to them.

An interesting thing to note about the game is that the way you play it is not traditional. It is, at heart, a point and click adventure game. You go around the house and start searching rooms for items that can be used to solve puzzles elsewhere. You keep going from room to room interacting with objects, examining things and collecting items. As time goes on you'll start to see some scary things happen and most of them will make your character panic and then you move on. Sometimes though, it'll be the “scissor man” busting into the room. This monstrous man with large scissors wants to kill you and you have to run and hide from him. You enter panic mode and have to click quickly in order to run away or sometimes even try to counter the assailant.

The game has many different endings, some of which connect to Clock Tower 2 and some of which contradict the events of the second game. These endings are unlocked depending on what actions you take throughout the game and a couple of them can happen extremely early. There is one where you find keys and simply jump in the car and leave without trying to save anyone or find any resolution to the events in the house.

It's not a traditional survival horror but if you are a fan of 70's horror films, Dario Argento, point and click games, survival horror or anything like that then this game is definitely worth a shot. Below are links to the roms and program needed to run them.

Here is the rom 

Here is a nice emulator "Zsnes"