What Did We Play Yesterday?

I finished Corpse Party and I am completely satisfied with the experience. I loved the game, I liked the true ending a lot, and I feel like the Chapter 5 wrong/alternate endings are set up in an organic way, so most players will naturally hit a few wrong ends before getting the finale. Playing the extra chapters after the true end might have been a mistake; they're not very interesting post-finale. But I feel comfortable leaving the remaining cheevs for a subsequent playthrough.

There is a bit of a ? regarding the principal's apparent sudden personality change and I don't know if this is addressed later in the series. But I feel like CP presents a very good unresolved ending in the grand horror style. The game does a good job of gradually revealing subsequent layers of horror. Heavenly Host doesn't just kill you in gruesome ways. It doesn't just make you suffer the pain of death for all eternity. It literally erases you from existence.

CP does suffer from "let's split up syndrome," which kind of passes when it's a situation where one person is apparently under the influence of the school and behaving irrationally, but makes zero sense when otherwise rational characters decide to split up to "cover more ground" in a constantly-changing space where, once someone is out of sight, you may NEVER see them again.

The Steam extra chapters are kinda hit-or-miss. I only have the first two. The Gentleman chapter was a completely unrelated fetch quest that seemed pretty pointless and rote, but I liked having an extra scene in Meeting of the Minds, especially since we don't get much information about Morishige in this game and he's kinda mysterious. I understand he gets more development later.

My main issue, post-Corpse Party, is what the hell do I play next? Having played CP on the heels of Mad Father, I know I have to be strategic about this. Otherwise, I end up with a disaster scenario like playing LTTP, then Ocarnia of Time, and following up with Zelda II. I have a few more RPGM/Wolf/ish horror games to try, but I know this will be the pinnacle of my RPGM-like Horror experience.

As with Yume Nikki, I became interested in the development history and the fan culture surrounding these games. The series is somewhat convoluted release-wise. The original game has been ported and remade numerous times and different versions have different content.

The original game was released in 1996 as an entry in a game development contest. The Corpse Party: NewChapter/Corpse Party: Blood Covered remakes were next, followed by Corpse Party: Blood Covered... Repeated Fear. The Steam game is a Corpse Party: Blood Covered variant.

The second game is Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, and the third is Corpse Party: Blood Drive. The latest game, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, is incomplete and has not been translated into English. There's a romcom spin-off. Then there are the fangames. The Memories of Fear team has translated a number of the Japanese PC releases into English.

I'm a little annoyed that I need a Vita to finish the series (that's two more notches for the Vita) and a 3DS for the definitive version of the original game. But considering it took about two decades to get an official English version on PC, I'm extremely happy to have witnessed the hot mess that is Seiko Shinohara and the English localization:

Corpse Party is good, creepy fun the way God intended.

Ugh it's so good.

It's all atmosphere, writing, and details (the nametags, the notes, everything). The game makes good use of audio. I wish more games utilized audio this way.

It's creepy as shit. Due to the technical limitations, there are no jump scares. There are a few slow-moving chasers but the player character is equally slow, so that provides a sense of urgency. My only issue with the Steam version is the controller joystick is slightly off, but the D-pad works fine.

There are 5 chapters with 33 endings and 84 victim name tags to collect. I feel bad about triggering some of the wrong ends, because they're horrible and I like the characters. So it's like... okay, if I touch this ghost I get a wrong end. ...Ok... ...ok... ok, gonna touch the ghost. ...Any second now, gonna touch the ghost...

I've been trying to find a compromise between playing nonstop and possibly traumatizing myself versus taking a break and playing something fluffy in-between, but. Ugh. ugh it's good

Mad Father by Sen, translated by vgperson, is a classic indie horror game. I played the freeware version, but I enjoyed it so much I'd like to play the Steam version, which has updated graphics and extra puzzles.

This game is a great intro to the genre. Aya loves her father and pretends not to know that he is doing unsavory things in his basement laboratory. One night a curse descends on the household, and as she makes her way through the labyrinthine house to save her father she is confronted by his sins--often face to face. It has four endings and about two hours playtime.

Witch's House scared the bejeezus out of me, I found the chasers incredibly unnerving, but Mad Father was just good creepy fun with occasional startle. There is one fast chaser but it didn't rattle me too much (well, maybe a little, it took a few tries to get past her). Maybe I've played enough of these games to build up a tolerance to jumpscares and chasers. I consider myself a thorough player, but I only found about half the gems (needed to unlock the secret ending) so I clearly missed some things.

Well, I got sucked into the Wolf RPG black hole again.

I have a love/hate relationship with Wolf and RPG Maker mystery and horror games. I love how creative, creepy, and weird these games can be, but I dislike some of the horror conventions, like jumpscares, chasers, and crucifixions. Crucifixions in video games always give me Xenogears flashbacks.

I've treated the Wolf RPG Engine and RPG Maker as interchangeable in the past. Even though they're different engines they are often used to create the same type of game. Wolf RPG was never translated into English and is generally less finicky than RPGM, which sometimes requires a bit of tinkering. I recently realized some of the most memorable games I've ever played were made with these engines.

For instance, the most interesting game I have ever played is Patty and Mr. Miles. Hands-down, the weirdest game I've ever played is Mogeko Castle, which has more crucifixions than you can shake a stick at. And since "bizzaro indie" is something I routinely seek out, that's saying something.

A few games are now on Steam, including LiEat and Mad Father (the freeware original versions are still online). LiEat is a three-game fantasy mystery series about a young dragon who eats lies. It's a really cute series, but it's 'talk to everyone until you find what you need' exploratory with no puzzles. I've been putting off Mad Father because I'm an adult who is not frightened by tilebased top-down RPGs that have fast-moving sprites honestly why would anyone be scared by that haha aha a.

*eyes glaze over thinking about the Witch's House*

GOTY, I'm calling it.

Nier: Automata is a hack-n-slash open-world RPG with bullet hell elements. There are four things this game does really well.

#1 - genre blending It's brilliant how the camera shifts, changing from an over-the-shoulder hack-n-slash to a sidescroller to an arena shooter to bullet hell. The dungeons present lots of examples of good camera/distance changes, the forest castle's labyrinthine halls and library is probably the best example.

#2 - accessibility NA's easy mode is amazing. The player can equip auto-chips and the game plays for you--attacks, evasion, weapon changes, auto-heals, etc. The AI is solid and it's fun to play this way, especially if you've been slaughtered a million times by a boss and you just want to get it over with.

NA also has an unlockable trophy shop, which allows players to purchase achievements end-game. This provides a great alternative for the grindier achievements.

#3 - layered narrative and multiple endings NA has 26 endings, 5 of which are main endings that give the full picture. Many of the side-endings are throwaway endings triggered by dying prematurely or running away from a battle or an emergency situation. During the three main routes you switch between various character perspectives. I feel like some parts are a little samey, due to the nature of the first two routes, but at the same time I found the game so fun to play I didn't mind. The final main ending goes full meta, the closest thing I've played recently might be Undertale. Which ties into the next part.

#4 - clever use of meta NA incorporates game menus and the like into the actual game experience. You should always take the game literally. If someone says they're recording something, they're actually recording. I don't want to say much more about it, but I've described this sort of thing in the past as "game design for gamers," there's an assumption that the player is familiar with genre conventions and will be surprised or pleased by certain types of subversions.

More blah blah: The Big Reveals aren't surprising for people familiar with SF tropes but I felt they did a good job of telling character stories and parceling/withholding information and there are some really interesting ambiguities. (**)

The game attempts to be exploratory and on-rails at the same time. It works for the most part. Occasionally I will inexplicably find myself unable to jump up a hillside or pass through an android-sized hole, but the game does a good job of allowing exploration while keeping the player from wandering into areas where they might get stuck.

There is a privacy issue related to the networking feature. When you die your corpse is labelled with both your in-game name and your Steam name (or ID, I'm not sure which). Networking allows you to collect the bodies of fallen players, which results in HP, money, and a temporary stat boost. On death, players are allowed to leave a message on their corpse a la Dark Souls. This is not free-form, you have a list of things to pick from.

Performance wise, there's weird framing on 1920x1080 full screen, which doesn't bother me enough to fix. My main issues with PC port + controller are mechanical. Opening chests is a little wonky, I think because there is an "outward" animation (B2 kicks open the chest) and therefore the player has to within a somewhat narrow range to activate it. There is some chicanery with ladders. I got 'trapped' in an abandoned building for about 10 minutes because of tricky camera angles, which really sucked.

I didn't have framerate issues until late in the game due to the sheer volume of projectiles. I had one crash I cannot explain. Otherwise, performance has been good.

I've done a full main story playthrough, minus a few cheevos that I'd like to pick up next time. I'm tempted to start the next PT now, but I've found I can get a little burnt-out on open world games if I don't intersperse other types.