Dead Rising 2

Ever since clapping eyes on the rather amusing spectacle of a man trying to beat down zombies using the roulette wheel, our interest in another tongue in cheek horror fest was set in stone. Now that the world has become familiar with a leather wearing, motorbike riding hero, well, that’s guaranteed success, isn’t it? This funny scary game gets even better: our recent hands on access means such optimism can be based on something other than what the lead character wears, Sweet!

The armory with Chuck will be dealing out the smackies yet again proves varied beyond the point of being reasonable. Besides boring items like machine guns, and other ones that make the experience feel like the Cluedo, like lead pipes and plain old kitchen knives, there are a few… slightly more unusual options. Fortune City being a gambler’s paradise and all, paraphernalia such as roulette wheels and craps rakes are a must, the former as a generic large blunt object; the latter as a hooked club. Various wheelchairs dot the gaming floor, theoretically to cater for elderly guests, but, in the event of zombies Armageddon, they can be used to scoop up standing zombies, crashing into further ones along the way and clearing a path for you. Oh, and simply to beat things, over the head with, should the desire arise.

Clive Barker’s Jericho

Jericho follows the travails of the deceased Cap’n Devin Ross and his band of black ops psychics, sent to a desert ruin to deal with The Fristborn, an ultimate Evil mistakenly created by that interfering devil, God, before be made man (this is all gospel, honest). You have to fight your way back through the areas of history that makes up his prison, flipping between the team’s members using Devil psychic possession abilities.

Each team member has their own psychic powers and familiar weapons set (each with configurable guns). Delgado has the Chaingun and fire demon, Black has the sniper rifle and telekinetic bullet control and so on, all of which are satisfying solid to use. But when the undead enemies might be singularly well designed, no one could suggest they are scary, and the liner format of this scary game progress through the ruined city of Al Khali, plus the immortality of the squad (having two chaps who can resurrect in the team at a time is very useful), means you are never truly afraid.

Agreed, initially, you might be concerned by the speed at which your team mates get killed, but don’t worry as there’s only two or three times when you will really be challenged to keep them alive. Even the boss battles (impressive though the design is) are never tough as long as you concentrate on resurrecting your team mates.

Ju-On: The Grudge

The premise of the game sticks closely to that of the film series. A cure, the titular grudge, is unleashed on a series of unwittingly ‘tagged’ victims after the grisly murder of a Japanese housewife. The unlucky Yamada family is exposed to the curse after Erika loses her dog in an abandoned warehouse. In exploring its shadowy corners, she makes herself the next candidate for the dead housewife’s ire, and as soon as Erika returns home to her family they are all embroiled in the grim spell.

Thus the game plays out in a series of episodes involving each member of the family. The first sees Erika traipsing through abandoned workshops and storerooms in an attempt to find her wandering Labrador. No prizes for guessing its fate. With only a feeble torch for company, the atmosphere is certainly cloying and foreboding. In fact, it’s barely possible to see anything at all. The occasional light flickers to creepy effect, while items show up with a glint. Indeed, these abandoned environments are littered with items. The number of batteries, which increase the longevity of your torch’s beam (in effect your life bar), scattered about the floor would surely be enough to power a small town. Keys are strewn about the place too, making for little challenge; it is one of the most annoying scary games I have ever seen on Wii.

Conan

We can’t ignore it: Conan is an obvious God of War clone. From the gory combat to the cineractives to the magic and upgrade system to the topless buxom babes, this is one hell of a scary game and screams God Of war. As heavenly Sword proved, that’s far from a bad thing. After all, limitations are the sincerest form of flattery, they say; besides, God of War III is not play a similar game in the interim?

Conan does a pretty good job if it, too, all while remaining faithful to author Robert E.Howard’s Conan universe. Don’t think of Conan as the Governator (though, funnily enouh, amove called the “Camel Punch” pays homage to a scene in the film Conan the Barbarian). In this game, you are young, brash Conan who slaughters in his way across Hyborea to reclaim pieces of his armor from an evil wizard.

As you eviscerate hordes of enemies and gain new abilities, you start to feel like a bad ass throughout the relatively short (sub six hour) adventure, which is exactly the feeling a Conan game should evoke; but this adventure, much like the barbarian himself, has its share of rough edges, both in terms of graphics and the gameplay, and that hurts the overall experience. The characters in the cut scenes using the in-game engine, for example, don’t look especially next-gen (certainly not when compared to the likes of Heavenly Sword, but it also looks rough in general).

American Werewolf In London

Ask anyone why this John Landis comedy werewolf horror is rated so highly and you will meet with a flurry or reasons, and probably some scorn for daring to query the quality too. The effects are amazing!, they will cry. It’s so funny!, they will shout. It’s the best werewolf movie of all time!, they will claim. So what? We whisper.

The special effects are, of course, extremely good. Given the limitations of both the movie’s budget and the year the film was made, the transformation scene that sits so firmly in the hearts and minds of genre fans still impress. But it doesn’t convince. It’s a stellar technical achievement but that’s different to an effect that doesn’t impede on the suspension of disbelief. Of course, you can’t criticize the creators for such marvelous work, but you can certainly disagree with those who maintain that this is still most convincing werewolf transformation ever.

The humor, too, hasn’t aged brilliantly, but unlike the effects this aspects was never state of the art anyway. The parodic, B movie tone the tale of the transforming tourist strikes was never particularly smart or new. Indeed it genuinely doesn’t offer much more than an episode of The Simpsons TreeHouse of Horror, and this isn’t helped by some rather stupid skits and limited performances.

Drag Me To Hell

Commercially it’s hard to make a case for Hollywood horror being in bad shape. The J-horror remakes and gornography that have dominated screens for the past decade still do the sort of numbers the execs want them to, meaning there is likely to be another ten Saw movies before mainstream audiences get bored. Creatively, however, it’s a different matter. Thankfully, though, with the very enjoyable Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi has returned to the genre has made his name with, wrestling the steering wheel away from the blinkered fat cats and performing the cinematic equivalent of a U-turn.

An unashamed throwback to the tongue, in cheek scare fests of the Seventies and Eighties, Drag Me To Hell is very much a deliberate antidote to the grim, straight faced muck of recent years. It has jumps, twists, shocks, and most importantly, it has real personality. The story of a young loan officer who is cursed by a rejected customer shifts along at a wicked pace and although there isn’t an ounce of it that isn’t in some way derivative, it feels entirely refreshing.

There are, however, niggles. Justin long’s character, for instance, is fairly pointless and the performance fruitless. The final twist too, is one of that can be seen from the inside of a buried coffin. And let’s not forget that horror grew out of the Eighties through necessity. Fun through it may be, there are inherent limitations to the template, and more often not it feels like little more than a particularly good episode of the Twilight Zone.

Sword Of Dracula

This is the weirdest Dracula movie I have ever seen but also the most intriguing Dracula movie. A swat like team goes into the vampire and puts a vampire to death in the mountains of Colorado. They are in search of the big fish the head of vampires, Dracula. They come to know that the Dracula lies in a castle which is cannot be seen with naked eye, and there are some weird blood creatures probably dogs to guard it. When eventually Ronnie, the captain of the team, and the team gets hold of Dracula and imprisons him in special containers, with holy water surrounding it. Until the two fallen angels return to Earth and creates a catastrophic situation. In this dire situation Ronnie is left with no option but to get aid from her arch enemy and makes a deal with them.

The movie is packed with tons of interesting situations where you cannot wait for the next moment for instance when Dallas is taken over by the ex-Angels and the fight sequels are also satisfying. This movie is highly recommended. Vampires have been put in a pretty innovative way unlike the usual blood sucking vampires who go for pretty girls and all that.