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).