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Games I’ll Potentially Play This Halloween

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When I was bored at work earlier today I realized my only obligation on Halloween this year is school, and that’s only until noon. Seeing how I live in a rural area and I don’t get trick-or-treaters, I’ll have the rest of the evening to myself, and probably some friends. Naturally, I began concocting a list of Halloween related games I could potentially play.

The first on my list, and one I will definitely play is Batman: Arkham City. Primarily because Calender Man hinted that I should visit him on Halloween, but also because dressing up as a superhero is commonplace on Halloween.

Bloodrayne. Maybe it’s time to revisit Bloodrayne: Betrayal.

Castlevania. I’ll probably have nothing better to do on Halloween so I might as well play a game in this great series and slay Dracula.

Condemned: Criminal Origins. A really good game.

Costume Quest. I actually don’t have this, but it’s onlya download away. This role-playing game came out last October and features a group of children trick-or treating. A solid title from the well-regarded studio Double Fine Productions.

Dracula Unleashed. Or perhaps any other “spooky” game on the Sega CD like Night Trap, Mansion of the Hidden Souls, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. I’ve always wanted to play this game and this is the perfect excuse to pick it up.

Fester’s Quest. This NES game has players controlling Uncle Fester from the TV show The Addams Family. Scary indeed.

Geist. This poor GameCube first-person shooter might just be at the right place at the right time this Halloween.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies. More ghosts?

Illbleed. This Dreamcast game seems really strange.

Juggernaut. Speaking of strange, this PlayStation adventure game is off the charts.

Left 4 Dead. What list of Halloween related video games would be complete without Left 4 Dead, or any other game featuring zombies.

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Playing the full-motion video Sega CD game would remind of my youth in the 1990s, and it’d be the perfect excuse to write about one of my favorite Sega CD games.

Overblood. This Resident Evil clone has a soft spot in my heart, just like another spooky PlayStation video game: Space Griffon VF-9.

Resident Evil. Any game from this survival-horror series would be right at home on Halloween.

Shadowgate. A spooky point-and-click adventure game perhaps?

The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror. I received this poor Game Boy Color platformer for my birthday one year and never progressed far in it.

The Thing. I did just see the new movie.

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. One of my favorite levels from this game was a horror themed mansion.

Honorable Mentions:

Alone in the Dark
Darkstalkers
Dead Head Fred
Death Jr. 
Friday the 13th
House of the Dead
The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge/The Pumpkin King
Zombies Ate My Neighbors 

Anyone else planning something similar? What titles did I forget about?

In Between Posts

In Between Posts, October 16, 2011

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Not much to report today. My girlfriend and I got around to nearly completing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure, like one stage and a Gannondorf battle away from completing it, but no dice. I also put in plenty of hours into Front Mission and I’m still sticking with it surprisingly. That’s kind of it. We had to house/dog sit for her grandparents so I was away from my home for the majority of the week, but I did get some time in with a few demos.

We went to the movies last night and watched The Thing. It’s a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing. I’ve developed a crush on the film primarily because of the 2002 video game, which I reviewed earlier in my blog, here. The new film serves as a prequel and it was okay. It was quite similar to the 1982 movie, playing out in the exact same way, but it was still suspenseful.

The night before that we went to the opera. It was my first time going and it was very cool. Most of the patrons were sharply dressed and the venue was packed. We went to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and watched their presentation of The Barber of Seville. It was sung in Italian and it was difficult to see the subtitles from where we were, but it was easy to keep up after reading a synopsis. The show was pretty funny with some modern day references thrown in occasionally and the actors were terrific, fantastic singing. The orchestra was awesome too; many of the songs were familiar so I’ve probably heard them in Looney Tunes cartoons.

So that’s some of the fun I had last week. I also worked my tail off for school, taking two exams and making progress on a large project for Accounting Information Systems, and that’s what I’m going to work on now. I guess I did have a lot to report.

PlayStation 2, Reviews, Xbox

The Thing – Review

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I originally wrote this February 2, and intended for it to go on a blog but couldn’t decide if I just wanted to post it to Giant Bomb or create my own blog. Since I’ve created this blog, I’ll go ahead and post it now since I never did. It’s short and little on details, but it’ll fit.

The theatrical poster for The Thing.

So I just beat The Thing and I’d like to talk about it; I don’t want to review it as it is very outdated by today’s standards. I began playing the PS2 version and started on medium. However, about a third of the way into it, I had no health packs and found it too frustrating to continue. I decided to restart and to buy the Xbox version considering it would look nicer (I don’t have a PS3) and in the hopes I’d prefer the position of the analog sticks. I decided to start on easy instead of medium and it was still a toughie but I managed to beat it. I should also note the reason I decided to play it was to play along with Rebel FM’s Game Club of it; now onto the actual game.

The game is a third-person squad based shooter, but a large portion of the game is spent alone. There is a trust/fear mechanic between you and your teammates and I really liked it but found it to be pretty binary in most cases and ultimately not as cool as it could’ve been. Your teammates are useful and in some cases necessary but man, they sure are flaky. They are however very lethal. The enemies can be a hassle, especially the little things (think head crabs), but taking a concept from the movie to destroy the larger things with fire was cool and varied the combat. I found the game to be very frustrating and contemplated quitting it more than once.

Just going back to a game like this after “adapting” to the game’s of recent memory was hard. Much of the game, you need to die to figure out how to progress and then execute whatever must be done near perfectly. Pretty much every one of the bosses was cheap and required multiple attempts just to figure out if what I was doing was working. Finally much of the game I spent with less than half health, just struggling to get by. The story takes place a little bit after the movie; which had an ending perfect for the spirit of the movie, and not necessarily implying any need for continuation. The story in the game was pretty vague and low on details but there were many references to the movie and I really enjoyed them. Overall I found the game to be very frustrating and lost my cool a lot, but found a few things to like in the game.