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crimeculturepodcast · 3 years ago

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Hispanic/Latino horror movies

In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, this week we talked about horror movies out of Latin American and Spanish speaking countries. There were some we couldn’t get to so here is the full list:

Spain

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 89%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory.

Description: “Set during the last years of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone is a Spanish gothic horror movie that follows Carlos, a young orphan boy who is deposited at Santa Lucia School among several other children who have been displaced by the conflict. Though he finds friends in the professor and the head mistress, he is plagued by a wandering spirit with a link to the violent caretaker's secret past.”

Trivia: The movie, which he wrote in college and was in development for 16 years, is strongly inspired by Del Toro’s personal memories, especially his relationship with his uncle, who supposedly came back as a ghost. It is also included among the "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider. Although filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, this film is set in the Spanish countryside (largely filmed in Madrid) that’s why it’s on the Spanish list. The Devil’s Backbone has all of the impactful elements of spirituality, horror, and the supernatural that come up again and again in Del Toro’s work. This film has been referred to as the “brother film” of one of Del Toro’s best known works, Pan’s Labyrinth.

[REC] (2007)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 82%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Plunging viewers into the nightmarish hellscape of an apartment complex under siege, [Rec] proves that found footage can still be used as an effective delivery mechanism for sparse, economic horror.

Description: “Late-night TV host Angela and her cinematographer are following the fire service on a call to an apartment building, but the Spanish police seal off the building after an old woman is infected by a virus which gives her inhuman strength.”

Trivia: The movie was filmed chronologically in real locations (no sets were built for the movie). The actor’s were never given the script in its entirety and didn’t know what was going to happen to their characters until the day of filming. The movie is also a big inspiration for the horror survival game Outlast.

Considered The Blair Witch Project of zombie movies, REC had a lot of competition in the found footage style (it came out the same year as George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the first Paranormal Activity movie). It more than holds its own among them, so much so that an American remake called Quarantine came out the next year. Director Jaume Balagueró keeps the movie disturbingly real and doesn’t fall prey to jump scare after jump scare.

Veronica (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.2/10

Critics Consensus: A scarily effective horror outing, Veronica proves it doesn't take fancy or exotic ingredients to craft skin-crawling genre thrills.

Description: “During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl and her friends want to summon the spirit of the girl's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.”

Trivia: Based on the true story of 18-year-old Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro. I won’t go too far into it because we may do an episode on it in the future but if you want spoilers, watch the movie (if you dare).

Directed by Paco Plaza (same as REC), the possession theme is done over and over again in horror but this movie is a terrifying and fresh take.

The Bar (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 55%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 6.3/10

Description: “In bustling downtown Madrid, a loud gunshot and two mysterious deaths trap a motley assortment of common urbanites in a decrepit central bar, while paranoia and suspicion force the terrified regulars to turn on each other.”

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, it’s labeled as a horror-comedy. You can watch it on Netflix.

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) - Tells the story of a happy couple, two English tourists who decide to vacation on a secluded island in the Mediterranean. There they discover – almost too late- that the island has been taken over by a group of murderous children.

The Baby’s Room (2006) - Featured on Six Films to Keep You Awake at Night. A new family renovates and moves into a grand old house. Nervous first-time mom installs a baby monitor but hears mysterious sounds on the other side. Once they install a high-tech video baby monitor, what they see chills them to the bone.

Sleep Tight (2011) - Apartment concierge Cesar is a miserable person who believes he was born without the ability to be happy. His self-appointed task is to make life hell for everyone around him, a mission in which he has great success. It has big home invasion/stalker vibes.

Timecrimes (2007) - A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. It sounds like a “Happy Death Day” type of plot (but proceeding it by a decade).

Thesis (1996) - Angela is doing her thesis on the effect of violence in the media when she discovers a snuff film. This discovery leads her down a dark path where she must confront her greatest fears and question everybody around her.

Witching and Bitching (2013) - One article I read said it perfectly, “What Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and What We Do in the Shadows did for vampires, Witching & Bitching essentially did for the cinematic depiction of witches, albeit on a less visible scale.” Great pick if you’re looking for something a bit more lighthearted.

Mexico

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 91%

Google Score: 90%

IMDb: 8.2/10

Critics Consensus: Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable.

Description: After the Allies invade Nazi-occupied Europe, a sadistic captain sends a troop of Spanish soldiers to flush out rebels,bringing his new wife and her daughter along on his exploits. While his family resides in the countryside, he leads his men on a murderous rampage, much of which is witnessed by his step daughter. In an effort to escape her reality she plunges into Pan's Labyrinth, a mystical world at the border of her own.

Trivia: Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film. Del Toro also repeatedly refused offers from Hollywood producers, in spite of being offered double the budget, provided the film was made in English. He didn't want any compromise in the storyline to suit the "market needs" (he even did the English subtitles himself). The film received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival and in 2007, it became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars. It’s another on the list "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider with The Devil’s Backbone. It was on more than 130 top 10 lists in 2006. It is also the 5th highest grossing foreign language film in the US.

The Similars (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.9/10

Critics Consensus: A smart homage to genre filmmaking, The Similars is a fun and frightening film that balances socio-political issues with aplomb.

Description: A monstrous, once-in-a-lifetime thunderstorm strands passengers in a remote bus station outside Mexico City in 1968. As they listen to the radio, they realized that the storm has spread all over the world. As they look at each other, they also realize that everyone’s faces are slowly changing, and not for the better.

Trivia: The film used make-up and special effects techniques never before done in Mexico. Director Isaac Ezban was influenced by B-movies of the 50s and 60s as well as TV shows and movies like “The Twilight Zone”, “The Thing”, and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

We Are What We Are (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%

Audience Score: 48%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 5.7/10

Critics Consensus: We Are What We Are is elevated horror that combines family drama and social politics, with plenty of gore on top.

Description: After a family patriarch dies, his survivors are tasked with continuing the rigid family rituals that involve hunting meat, preparing it for consumption, and eating it. The “meat” in question is human flesh, since they’re a family of cannibals. With two detectives hot on their tail, the family of cannibals strains to maintain their family traditions in a modern urban environment.

There was an English language remake in 2013 (86% on Rotten Tomatoes) with Wyatt Russell and Odeya Rush (Lady Bird, Dumplin’, and Goosebumps)

We Are The Flesh (2016) - A joint French-Mexican production released in Spanish as Somos la carne, this post-apocalyptic nightmare involves a brother and sister who roam the land desperately seeking food until a kindly old man takes them in under the condition that they help him renovate an abandoned building. Oh, and they also have to have sex with one another while he watches. And after he breaks their will by getting them to do that, he makes them do all sorts of other things. This film was one of only four in Mexico to receive a “D” rating—which is reserved for subject matter that is considered extremely disturbing and/or pornographic.

The Witch’s Mirror (1962) - An abusive and cheating husband kills his wife so that he can be with his mistress. The woman’s godmother was a witch who originally tried casting a spell on a mirror to protect her from domestic violence, but the spell failed. Still, she is able to bring the woman back from the grave, and the two witches set out to destroy the evil woman-beater.

Here Comes The Devil (2012) - A married couple lose their children while on a family trip near some caves in Tijuana. The kids eventually reappear without explanation, but it becomes clear that they are not who they used to be, that something terrifying has changed them.

Chile

Downhill (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 60%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 43%

IMDb: 3.5/10

Description: Deeply upset by the passing of his best friend, a professional BMX rider accepts to partake in a race in Chile. Everything goes as planned until he stumbles upon a man who is infected by a mysterious virus and becomes the target of local assassins.

Trivia: Filmed in 13 days

Post Mortem (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 61%

Google Score: 70%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, an employee at a Morgue’s recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Aftershock (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes: 39%

Audience Score: 24%

Google Score: 61%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Critics Consensus: Aftershock hints at an inventive twist on horror tropes, but ultimately settles for another round of mind-numbing depravity that may alternately bore and revolt all but the most ardent gore enthusiasts.

Description: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.

Trivia: Horror icon Eli Roth wrote and stars in this film.

To Kill A Man (2014) - An attack on his daughter leads a mild-mannered family man to take revenge on the vicious street thugs who have tormented him and his family for a long time.

Columbia

Out Of The Dark (2014) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 24%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: A family moves to Colombia to take over the operation of a manufacturing plant, soon they learn their new home is haunted.

Trivia: Starring Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You, Dexter) and Scott Speedman (The Strangers, You)

The Squad (2011)

Audience Score: 53%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: After a secret military base ceases all communications, an anti-guerrilla commando unit is sent to the mountainous location to discover what exactly happened. The squad expects to discover that the base was attacked and taken over by guerrilla units, but instead find only a lone woman wrapped in chains.

Trivia: In one scene where the actors are shooting guns, one actor accidentally picked up a real gun instead of the prop and fired a real shot (no one was hurt).

Cord (2015) - On a post-apocalyptic world of never-ending winter, a sparse cast of outsiders live underground. Due to their unsanitary conditions, sexual contact has become dangerous. Masturbation has become the paradigm of sexual experience and an array of low-tech devices with this purpose has come into existence. In this bleak reality, a dealer of such machines a sex addict make a deal: she will allow him to experiment new devices on her body in exchange of pleasure. Soon however, their relationship goes out of control.

The Hidden Face (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 86%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Description: Shattered by the unexpected news of their irreversible break-up, an aspiring orchestra conductor is puzzled by his girlfriend's mysterious and seemingly inexplicable case of disappearance. But, can he look beyond the facts?

Trivia: There is a Turkish version of this movie and a 2013 remake out of India called “Murder 3”

At The End Of The Spectra (2006)

Google Score: 83%

IMDb: 6/10

Description: A young woman who has become agoraphobic due to a traumatic incident is holed up in her apartment, she begins to suffer from hallucinations, paranoia and an obsessive neighbour.

Trivia: There is a Mexican remake called “Devil Inside” and there were once rumors of an American remake starring Nicole Kidman but that’s the end of that.

Uruguay

The Silent House (La Casa Muda) (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Audience Score: 37%

Google Score: 63%

IMDb: 5.4/10

Critics Consensus: Shot in a single take, The Silent House may be a gimmick movie, but it's one that's enough to sustain dread and tension throughout.

Description: A girl becomes trapped inside a house and becomes unable to contact the outside world as supernatural forces haunt it.

Trivia: The plot is supposedly based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. With a budget of just six thousand dollars, it was filmed using a handheld high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II), 2 handheld lamps, and a couple of lightbulbs over a time period of just four days. The claim that the movie was filmed in one continuous take are suspect. The Mark II camera can only record up to 15 minutes of continuous video at a time. Uruguay's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Monos (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 85%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: As visually splendid as it is thought-provoking, Monos takes an unsettling look at human nature whose grim insights leave a lingering impact.

Description: On a faraway mountaintop, eight teenaged guerillas with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow. Playing games and initiating cult-like rituals, the children run amok in the jungle and disaster strikes when the hostage tries to escape.

Trivia: Moises Arias (Hannah Montana) and Julianne Nicholson (I, Tonya, August: Osage County) most of the other actors had never acted before. The movie draws inspiration from Lord of the Flies. Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. It was selected as the official Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Peru

The Entity (2015)

Google Score: 66%

IMDb: 4.3/10

Description: A group of students decide to study 'reaction videos' and are led toward an old film, hidden in the archive room of a cemetery. It appears that everybody who has witnessed the film has met an untimely demise under suspicious circumstances. When the students view the footage, they discover first hand, what the demonic spirit is capable of. Fulfilling the ancient curse of a woman cruelly killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

Trivia: The Entity has been billed as Peru's first 3D horror film and to have been loosely based on true stories. Review websites Flickering Myth and Nerdly commented that the movie suffered from being too overly familiar to pre-existing works (Blair Witch, The Ring).

The Vanished Elephant (2014)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 88%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Crime novelist Edo remains obsessed with what happened to his fiancee Celia after she disappeared during an earthquake. When an enigmatic woman brings him photos that may help him solve the mystery, he senses he is being drawn into a dangerous game.

The Secret Of Evil (2014)

Google Score: 65%

IMDb: 5/10

Description: Video footage depicting a supernatural encounter is all that remains of a filmmaker and his crew who disappeared while exploring a haunted house.

When Two Worlds Collide (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Audience Score: 69%

Google Score: 93%

IMDb: 7.6/10

Description: An indigenous environmental activist takes on the large businesses that are destroying the Amazon.

El Vientre (2014)

Google Score: 81%

IMDb: 6.1/10

Description: Silvia, a beautiful 45-year-old widow, is obsessed with having a child and finds in attractive but naive Mercedes the perfect candidate to bear it. Silvia kindly offers her a job and a room in her house, and then manipulates her into seducing a young man named Jaime. They soon fall in love and Mercedes becomes pregnant. Silvia will do anything in her power to keep the baby, even if it means leaving a couple of bodies behind.

Argentina

Terrified (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 77%

Audience Score: 65%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Paranormal researchers investigate strange events in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

Luciferina (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

Audience Score: 25%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 4.6/10

Description: Natalia is a nineteen-year-old novice who reluctantly returns home to say goodbye to her dying father. However, when she meets up with her sister and her friends, she decides instead to travel the jungle in search of mystical plant.

Francesca (2015)

Audience Score: 67%

Google Score: 73%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: Two detectives track a serial killer who has been targeting the impure. To catch him, they'll have to solve the case of a girl who went missing 15 years ago.

Cold Sweat (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Audience Score:

Google Score: 58%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: The movie follows Román, who stumbles upon his ex-girlfriend Jackie, who has somehow gotten caught up in a torture cult run by two sadistic, old men. The aging political radicals have managed to put Jackie’s life in incredible danger. But when Román and his friend try to help Jackie out of her confines, the elderly psychos prove to be more than meets the eye.

Penumbra (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Audience Score: 26%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.5/10

Description: A woman desperate to find a tenant for her decrepit apartment apparently finds the perfect candidate, unaware of a sinister plot involving an imminent eclipse.

Venezuela

The House At The End of Time (2013)

Rotten Tomatoes: None

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 91%

IMDb: 6.8/10

Description: Dulce encounters apparitions in her house and unleashes a terrible prophecy. Thirty years later, Dulce, now an old woman, returns to unravel the mystery that has terrorized her for years.

Trivia: Winner of the Audience Award at Gävle Horror Film Festival 2016 (Sweden). Not only is it Venezuela’s highest-grossing horror film, it’s also the most distributed film from the country. By August 2016 it was announced that the American studio New Line Cinema acquired the rights of the film to make a remake for the American public. Hidalgo is still at the wheel so its chances of success are high.

Ecuador

Cronicas (2004)

Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Audience Score: 77%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: An unsettling and absorbing cautionary tale with John Leguizamo playing an unscrupulous TV reporter who uses the medium to further his own goals.

Description: Reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) goes to a jail in Ecuador to interview Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar, Narcos, Narnia), a hit-and-run driver whose crime incited a riot. After Cepeda tells him he knows where a murderer called the Monster of Babahoyo buried a young female victim, Bonilla posts bail in the hopes that he'll learn more about the crime. Bonilla finds the girl's body, but, as he nears the scoop of his career, it looks as if Cepeda might be withholding some key details.

Trivia: Inspired by a true story? As well as being both a Cannes and TIFF favourite, Cronicas is the official submission of Ecuador for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category of the 77th Academy Awards in 2005, it was produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) This is John Leguizamo’s first film in Spanish. He said he felt awkward talking in Spanish while acting, like he didn't know the language.

English Language Horror

The Silent House (2011) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 43%

Audience Score:

Google Score: 72%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Critics Consensus: Silent House is more technically proficient and ambitious than most fright-fests, but it also suffers from a disappointing payoff.

Description: Sarah is working with her father and uncle to renovate an old family home to prepare it for sale. Long vacant, the house has no utilities, forcing the trio to rely on battery-operated lanterns to light their way. Sarah becomes separated from her relatives and soon finds she is trapped inside the cabin, with no contact with the outside world. Panic turns to real terror as the young woman experiences events that become increasingly ominous.

Trivia: Elizabeth Olsen (Wandavision) The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. Contrary to the marketing's claim that the film was shot in one uninterrupted take, the entire movie was actually shot to mimic one continuous real-time take, with no cuts from start to finish, as a result the time span of the film's plot is exactly 86 minutes. It was shot in roughly 10 minute segments then carefully edited to hide the cuts.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) - This along with the rest of the Dead series are the work of George A. Romero, whose father is from Cuba.

Ash vs. Evil Dead - I love the Evil Dead movies and although this series wasn’t perfect (I’m sure die-hard fans will say it's far from it), I still think it kept to the heart of the main story. Bruce Campbell is obviously perfect and the addition of Lucy Lawless is amazing, it’s really Puerto Rican actor Ray Santiago that steals the show.

The Others (2001) - Directed by globally renowned Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, The Others starring Nicole Kidman is a Spanish gothic horror movie that combines elements of the supernatural, psychological, and mystical. It focuses on the strange events that occur at the estate of a woman and her young children, plagued by spirits in the aftermath of WWII. It has the distinction of being the only English-language Spanish movie to be given the Best Film Award at Spain's national film awards, the Goyas. In total, the movie has seven Goya Awards, including for Best Director. Although it might not read as particularly “Spanish,” it was produced, written and filmed all in Spain, shooting in Cantabria, Northern Spain and Madrid.

#Crime Culture #podcast #crime #true crime #murder #tcc #true crime podcast #pop culture #episode 198 #hispanic horror #latino horror #spanish horror #hispanic heritage month #horror #horror movies #spanish language horror #movies to watch

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bonerhitler · 8 years ago

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Three bad games that are good

You know what's always interesting? Bad, but creative games. I don't just mean the disappointing big-name affairs like your bioware blah-fests or no man's whatevers. I mean games that set out to do something unique or new but whether it's because they're done by small-time studios, unpopular names or just never got the attention and budget they deserved they didn't come out quite how they deserved to. So, that being said I'm going to talk about three titles from three different consoles that were objectively bad games in varying ways, but in other ways were completely awesome and I feel the world desperately needs more games like them.

1. Drakengard. Better known as the prequel to Nier (which was the prequel to Nier: Automata, because lets face it the first Nier wasn't even that popular at the time of its release), Drakengard is a deeply, deeply flawed game featuring dull, repetetive “Dynasty Warriors” style gameplay, muddy graphics prominently displaying a pallete of reds, browns and greys and a soundtrack resembling a symphony stuck in a tornado. Sounds like a real treat, doesn't it? That's not even the worst of it. You see, the game had a special malevolent spite for completionists. Anyone who wanted all of the endings had to be prepared to not only play through the game like four-odd times, they had to do all kinds of arbitrary and esoteric things to unlock a variety of weapons as getting all of them was required. Some of them had requirements as obtuse as standing still in a specific room for over a minute, and then guessing where the item spawned in the map. So what could possibly be redeeming about this game?

Well, it was interesting. Without getting too much into my love for Yoko Taro and his games, especially since it's a pre-Nier game, it's main character is set up as an exploration of what kind of horrific monster a person would have to be to fit the role of your typical ~warriors type game protagonist. Rolling into a battlefield, slaughtering hundreds and taking off to the next one. So you play as Caim, a psychopath who cares about nothing, not the world nor the war at hand, beyond his personal goal of saving his sister and doesn't especially care who or what gets destroyed along the way. You pick up a motley crew of party members along this trip including an even more unstable woman who eats children, a blind pedophile who acts as the group's moral compass and an immortal child who's only there because he has a minor beef with the main antagonist over who their parents loved more. The characters aren't functional people, there's no ~destiny~ guiding the main character to save the world or anything. It's just a story about one bloody minded jerk who goes from point A to point B doing the only thing he knows to do; kill.

The game is graphic and the plot goes completely off the rails halfway through and every ending beyond the first one just gets more and more unhinged. Someone playing the game for their first time could be told, in complete detail, exactly what the final ending of the game is and without any prior knowledge of the game and its developer, probably wouldn't believe the would-be spoiler fiend. It's an unpredictable ride and I tentatively recommend it to anyone who can look past the utter trainwreck the actual game is to see the juicy morsel of weirdness it is inside.

2. Deadly Premonition. All internet memes and flavor of the month youtube popularity aside, I love Deadly Premonition. I love it right down to it's wanna-be Twin Peaks soul. You can see the game's budget while you play, but the game is just oozing with charm and a certain detailed heart to it that makes it really feel like it was a labor of love as if the developer, SWERY, really wanted to make the game and tell the story even if the game its self had to be cobbled together. The gameplay is dated, featuring classic survival-horror style tank controls and floaty third-person over the shoulder aiming it feels like a poorer version of Resident Evil 4 except with actual melee weapons instead of just the combat knife. Visually the game is extremely dated. It came out on the 360 and looks like it could have been an early Xbox or even mid-PS2 game. Textures are often just straight up photos of things applied to models, or otherwise just generic tessellations applied to landscape you're not supposed to look at, while the animations are incredibly limited and the same few are used for almost every situation through the entire game for every character. I could keep going on, but I think I've nailed it. The game looks, and feels, like it's several generations out of date and hasn't aged well. It felt out of date when it was first released.

However the sound track is amazing, at least if you're not off-put by the limited number of tracks, the voice acting is pretty decent and the writing is great. The plot, however, is where the game really shines. It's a fairly predictable murder mystery wrapped in survival horror trappings. You play as Agent Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent who can apparently see Shadows, weird ghost/zombie-like creatures, and sets out to investigate the murder of a young girl in a small town out in the woods called Greenvale. The game tries very hard to be Twin Peaks. Early beta screenshots and videos of the game were almost literally Twin Peaks. It's probably the best deliberately twin-peaksy game I've ever played because it feels like SWERY got it, and ultimately rather than just doing the Twin Peaks thing, he put his own spin on the whole thing.

I could go on more, I want to. But it's very hard to talk about this game's plot without spoiling it, and that is arguably it's strongest and weakest point. You can't really replay it. Once you know the story and solve the mystery, there's nothing really driving it. There's no particular reason to replay it. But it -is- a very nice self contained tale and for that, I love it.

As a final note I'd like to say avoid the ports. The 360 version is the “best” version available, the least buggy and most complete. The PS3 port introduced a ton of strange new bugs and removed a lot of neat visual features and the PC version is borderline unplayable with the number of crashes and other issues.

3. Illbleed. Here's a game a lot of people might not have heard about before. Or maybe you have, I don't know what's popular on the internet anymore. Illbleed was a survival horror game on the dreamcast. Or at least it wore the costume of a survival horror game, in reality it was a complete and loving mockery of everything Survival Horror typically stood for at the time. The game whole heartedly embraced all of the weirdness about horror games of the decade and rolled around in it like a dog just gleefully rolling in its own feces. The game took place in a giant haunted house themed amusement park and your characters wore goggles that let them mark traps at the cost of energy. If you spotted a trap, nothing happened and you gained energy back. If you failed to mark one, you'd get a goofy jump scare and your character would incur a health penalty. If any of your stats got too high or too low you would die. If you ran out of energy and were unable to mark traps, you would get hit too much and die. Illbleed was a mockery of horror games that expected you not to panic and rush through an area, but to slowly and methodically crawl through an area and predict where obstacles would be. You were expected to avoid the surprising and quote-unquote scary elements by diffusing them and even the characters were largely in on the joke in knowing it was all a fake trip through an amusement park.

The biggest downside to this game, is also it's biggest upside. It's hilarious, it doesn't take it -or its genre- seriously. It was, however, advertised as a serious horror game and it's all too easy to see why people didn't like it. Frankly, I would love to see Illbleed make a return as a port on Steam.

#nerdshit #Deadly Premonition is awesome #Illbleed is legit my favorite horror game #Yoko Taro is my hero

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virginieboesus · 7 years ago

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PSX Review – Resident Evil: Survivor

I’ve been a fan of the Resident Evil series ever since I played the original game round a friend’s house on his PSX. We must have only been 8 years old at the time, so naturally, we didn’t let his parents know what we were playing… However, it was such a brilliant experience, with the adrenaline rush that accompanied so much of the game (especially that corridor, if you know what I mean). I loved it so much that I saved up my pocket money and bought it off my friend, since I’d never be able to get it in an actual shop.

Since then, I’ve played almost of all of the Resident Evil games, including the likes of Resident Evil Gaiden (which was horrible) and the Resident Evil Outbreak series (you can read my review of the first of those games here). I even forced myself through Resident Evil 5 and 6… But, there was one game that stuck in my mind, for all the wrong reasons – Resident Evil: Survivor. Released on the 27th of January, 2000, I got the game as a birthday gift one day after my birthday. I was so excited to play it, as the idea of it seemed amazing. Resident Evil: Survivor is a first-person shooter Resident Evil game with an original side story, which sounds brilliant on paper. However, when I actually played it, it just didn’t click with me. I did finish it, but it felt more like a chore than something fun and exciting.

I didn’t touch the game again after that, letting it collect dust. However, it has been 18 years since then and a lot has changed, myself included. So, what did I think of Resident Evil: Survivor when I went back to play it again? Let’s find out!

Storyline

Right, so as mentioned previously, Resident Evil: Survivor is a side story to the main Resident Evil games. It takes place after the end of Resident Evil and features a brand new set of characters. You play as a man who has suffered from amnesia, having survived a helicopter crash just outside of a township, owned by the Umbrella Corporation. With the entire place infested with zombies and other biological weapons created by Umbrella, you have to both escape alive and figure out who you are.

Now, despite the amnesia angle cliche, that does sound like an intriguing premise to a Survival Horror game. However, as you progress through the game you quickly realise that it is lacking the depth of other Resident Evil games. For example, the backstory you can learn about the Spencer Mansion from the first Resident Evil, or the history of Police Chief Irons in Resident Evil 2, really add to the overall plot. These extra subplots just make everything all the more terrifying and creepy. With Resident Evil: Survivor, nothing really comes close to this, sadly.

The game’s plot twist revolves entirely around the main character’s identity and really doesn’t feel like a shock or surprise at all. On top of this, the actual events of the game don’t really offer much to expand on the world, honestly feeling more like a fan fiction that an actual, canon storyline. Oddly enough, it is amazingly close to a short story I wrote at school in 1998, which was a fan fiction about Claire Redfield from Resident Evil 2.

The story had at least some potential to be different and unique, adding to the mystery of Umbrella or the horrors of their experiments. But in the end, it just felt like something thrown together as quickly as possible, so that the developers could claim there was a plot to this game.

Gameplay

Considering that Resident Evil: Survivor was a first-person Survival Horror shooter, I remember expecting a lot from the game. I’d been playing Medal of Honor a lot and was actually starting to like FPS games. However, one key thing to note is that Resident Evil: Survivor isn’t a standard FPS – it is a light gun game, through and through. This meant that, if you didn’t own a light gun, playing with the controller was a pig, to say the least.

In typical Resident Evil fashion, you had to hold one button to take aim, which would bring up a targeting reticle on the screen. From there, you had to move the reticle around the screen with the D-Pad or Analogue Stick to actually aim at your enemies. This made shooting very tedious and slow, which just ended up making the gameplay feel frustrating.

Even if you do have a light gun, whilst aiming is easier, movement suffers considerably. In order to move around the game world, you have to shoot off screen to move and use the side buttons to turn. This feels very clunky. Oh, and if you have the US version of the game, you actually don’t get the option to use a light gun, as it was removed from that version of the game entirely. On top of this, the Survival Horror aspect of the game died a lot once you realised that you have infinite ammunition for the handguns.

Graphics

Resident Evil: Survivor uses the same enemy models as Resident Evil 2, which were really quite good for the time that game was released. However, it is important to note that Resident Evil 2 was released in January 1998, a full two years before Resident Evil: Survivor. As such, when Survivor did come out, it felt somewhat outdated in terms of visuals. This was only compounded by the fact that you were now looking at two-year-old zombie models up close and personal.

Even the character animations during cutscenes felt out of touch with game design for the time, still using the same engine as the older Resident Evil games.

That’s not to say that the graphics were horrible. As mentioned earlier, they were recycled from Resident Evil 2, which looked awesome at the time it was released. The problem for Resident Evil: Survivor was that two full years (almost to the day) had gone by and there didn’t seem to be any improvement or progress to the graphical design at all. The fact that you are now looking at these graphics in the first person really didn’t help either.

And That’s All Folks

Overall, Resident Evil: Survivor had the potential to be a great side story game, like the Resident Evil Outbreak series. However, due to clunky gameplay and a cliche story that doesn’t offer anything of any real interest, it feels more like a cheap cash-in to just get more sales from the Resident Evil name.

Every series has that one bad apple in it and whilst most people these days will say that Resident Evil 5 or 6 fits that idea, they are at least enjoyable in some capacity. However, Resident Evil: Survivor is just such a dull, boring and frustrating game. If you’re trying to get a full collection of the franchise, then pick this one up. If not, then I would recommend avoiding it like you would the T-Virus itself.

from More Design Curation https://www.16bitdad.com/psx-review-resident-evil-survivor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=psx-review-resident-evil-survivor source https://smartstartblogging.tumblr.com/post/172842412450

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