Access Games' Deadly Premonition not only sounds a lot like Silent Hill, it also looks like it as well, with a bit of Fatal Frame thrown in for good measure. The game centers on FBI agent Francis York Morgan. investigating a murder in a small town. As the story progresses he unravels layers of mystery surrounding the place and its people. The game's action sequences will allow players the chance to choose between slipping by enemies unnoticed or running in guns blazing and fists flying.

"Ignition Entertainment has done an incredible job finding and targeting each game's primary audience and we could not be more excited to team up with them to publish Deadly Premonition," said Hidetaka Suehiro, Director, Access Games. "We've developed the graphic styling and game play of Deadly Premonition to uniquely trigger the suspenseful emotions in every player. We promise an astounding ending if you can meet the challenge to solve the mystery and make it there!"

Even the marketing quotes sound like Silent Hill! Check out the first teaser trailer below, or visit the game's official website for more info.

Cursed Mountain is a survival horror game for the Wii about a mountaineer searching for his lost brother. It looks creepy and seems to involve a lot of flailing based on Producer Marin Gazzari's playthrough shown in the video. Don't be too skeptical of the motion controls, though — if a bunch of mountaineering zombies suddenly jumped you on a frozen clifftop, wouldn't you start flailing?

I love zombies as much as the next girl, but I've got to say I'm more curious about how religious beliefs are addressed in the game. The video doesn't actually say that the main character, Eric Simmons, is Buddhist, so I wonder how our hero will or will not buy into the mythology that drives the plot.

Cursed Mountain doesn't have a definite release date, but supposedly it'll hit shelves this year. Check out the website for more eerie music and other points of interest.

Cursed Mountain: Exclusive Story & Mythical Behind the Scenes HD [GameTrailers]

In Resident Evil 5, Chris Redfield returns, no longer a member of STARS, but as a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, traveling to the fictional African nation of Kijuju to investigate the origins of the zombifying virus.

With wide-open settings and a partner in tow, can this latest iteration stay the horror survival course and deliver a fun and frightening experience?

Loved
Graphics: Visually, this is one of the most stunning games I've played to date. It's not just that the graphics are so high-resolution, so painstakingly detailed, but that they paint a vivid image of a real world setting. More impressive still are the cut-scenes which play like movies, beefing up the already laudable visual fidelity of the game.

Codependency: Resident Evil 5's use of a partner makes everything more tense. You suddenly feel responsible not just for your own survival but your partner's. You need to heal her when she's down, call for help when you get pinned, trade weapons, ammo, everything. It adds extra edge to an already sharp experience.

Early Tension: Initially I was disappointed to find that the game seems to lack any big scares. No dog-through-the-window moments that so ingrained the first title in my memories. But as I played through the game, I came to realize that those haunted house moments are cheap scares. Instead Capcom takes a more adult, more sophisticated approach to delivering thrills. And while it lasts, for about the first half of the game, it is indeed thrilling.

Interactive Cut Scenes: There are several times in the game when the highly-polished, gripping cut-scenes become interactive battles. These battles tightly weave together the artistry of one and the action-button mashing of the other to create some of the game's most memorable moments.

Boss Fights: What I like best about this game's boss battles is that they're so diverse. Spread through the game's six chapters are enemies functioning as cleverly disguised puzzles, enormous, awe-inspiring creatures requiring wearing down and, in my favorite, a culminating battle worthy of the franchise.

Level Design: Often, survival horror games rely too heavily on the obvious settings: darkened rooms, empty homes, abandoned hospitals. While those locations help tap into the natural fears of gamers, they also lead to generic scares than are more reactive than psychological. Resident Evil 5 delivers its suspense and scares across a broad range of settings which, while perhaps push the game too far away from its roots, still provides an eclectic mix of tightly constructed levels.

Cooperative: While online cooperative Resident Evil 5 can have the occasional hiccup, the ability to drop into a game, either online or on the same couch, makes this a fun and occasionally frightening group experience.

Hated
Less Tomb Raider, More Silent Hill: About halfway through the game, Resident Evil 5 seems to undergo a sudden and dramatic metamorphosis, dropping all pretense of being a survival horror title and unmasking itself as an action shooter title. There are moments this late into the game that feel more like a solid, enjoyable Tomb Raider or Uncharted: Drake's Fortune style experience than the horror action many fans will be expecting.

Drop the Anchor: I've grown to accept, perhaps embrace, the fact that you can't move once you aim a firearm in Resident Evil 5. I know it sticks to the game's history—and, more importantly, police and military often lock into position before firing off a few rounds. So I'm OK with that. But knife fights? Knife fights are fluid things that are often more about positioning and movement than the cutting motion. Unfortunately, in Resident Evil 5 these potentially strategic melee moments turn into zombie piñata, with gamers patiently waiting for a bad guy to walk into their cutting radius. The situation, not the controls should be the thing rooting you to one spot.

Load Screens: The loading screens, especially early on in the game, are plentiful. Sometimes they make you sit about reading Resident Evil history for as long as you end up playing before hitting another load point. The issue seems to go away as the game progresses, but it never completely leaves the game.

Resident Evil 5 is a game straddling two genres, the obvious and mostly successful attempt by Capcom to make the title once more relevant to a broader and more mainstream audience. Judging by Resident Evil 5, I think the next iteration will be more like Uncharted than Silent Hill. While that could be a disappointment for some, I think that if handled properly a genuinely scary adventure game could be better than a horror survival title that squeezes out shallow, undeserving frights.

As it stands, Resident Evil 5 is a game that slowly winds the tension up from section beginning to end, missing several obvious and easy opportunities to be genuinely scary, instead opting for a persistent and growing feeling of suspense, one that seems to be approaching dread but never actually arrives.

It's this wait for a second shoe to drop that wears at the gamer and deliver a fear much more robust and meaningful than what has come before in survival horror games.

It's unfortunate that that shoe never drops and instead the game retreats into action and shooting to wrap up what could have been an exceptional thriller.

Despite my qualms and hand-wringing over what type of game Resident Evil 5 is, one thing is clear, it's fun. From beginning to end, this latest Resident Evil delivers a riveting and intense experience well worth the time spent playing it.

Resident Evil 5 was developed and published by Capcom for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and released on March 13. Retails for $59.95 USD. Played campaign to completion on Xbox 360 tested online coop mode on Playstation 3.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

What the screens actually do is give us a look at Cursed Mountain's expansive scale and some of the unique enemies you'll come across on your journey to find your lost brother, who mysteriously disappeared atop the sacred Mount Chomolonzo in the Hiimalayas. The game combines man's struggle against nature with man's struggle against the supernatural in such a way as my 9th grade English teacher would have been very proud that I had noticed.

This isn't just your average survival horror game. It's survival horror...on a mountain. Now imagine the movie trailer guy saying that. Chills, right?

DEEP SILVER REVEALS NEW BONE-CHILLING CURSED MOUNTAIN SCREENSHOTS
HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. – Jan. 22, 2009 – Deep Silver today released new screenshots for Cursed Mountain, an upcoming survival horror game developed exclusively for Wii™. These new images highlight the scale of environment, eerie Himalayan setting and the terrifying enemies players will face, including a boss and angry spirits.

In Cursed Mountain, players take on the role of Eric Simmons, an expert mountaineer who climbs Chomolonzo, a sacred mountain in the Himalayas, to unravel the mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of his brother. Reminding the players of how far they’ve come – and how far they’ve yet to go – the entire mountain can be seen at all times. As they climb, the mountain itself becomes an enemy – prone to the travails of altitude sickness and oxygen deprivation, players may not be able to tell the difference between real enemies and hallucinations.

Taking full advantage of Wii’s motion-sensitive controls, as well as the rumble features and embedded speaker in the Wii Remote™, Cursed Mountain looks to create an immersive horror experience set against the backdrop of the haunting atmosphere of the Himalayas.

Cursed Mountain will be available exclusively for Wii in 2009.

Eurogamer
Motes of dust drift lazily in the air, mist curls up from ominous shafts, flickers of light illuminate skittering shapes in the distance. Isaac's protective suit (which you can upgrade throughout the game) is a curiously old-fashioned mixture of textile and brass, with weave and rivets clearly visible as you prowl the darkness from over his shoulder. The textures don't always keep their detail at close range, but considering the frame rate is rock solid and there's absolutely no screen tearing that seems like a minor compromise. This level of technical polish holds true on both 360 and PS3 versions, you'll be pleased to hear.

VideoGamer.com
Dismemberment works wonderfully well in Dead Space, and you'll at times find yourself playing with it just to see what you can do. Eventually Isaac gains access to a time-slowing stasis ability, as well as a Gravity Gun-style kinesis ability. By combining these abilities you're able to control the crowds (which, by the way, can get very crowded) and often conserve fire by turning the Necromorph's weapons against them: Stasis one Necromorph, tear off it's claw, use kinesis to drag it towards you, then remove the rest of its limbs with its own arm.

IGN
The unsettling nature of the world is heightened by the fact that there is no specific HUD to speak of — Isaac's health is presented on his back, his ammunition is holographically projected above the gun, and incoming transmissions that he receives pop up in front of his face. Even checking his inventory is pulled up via holograms, and it is done in real time, meaning that a Necromorph can come crawling through the floor or leap from a vent behind you and strike you at any time. Because you're never removed from the action, you feel much more immersed in the world...

GameDaily
Combat is visceral and intense. Necromorphs pop up from grates, explode through walls and reanimate dead bodies. Since the best way to slaughter these abominations is to slice off their limbs (a head shot may or may not kill them) you'll engage in a vicious ballet of blood, severed body parts and assorted gore. Combine that with Isaac's ability to stomp on corpses, one of our guilty pleasures, as well as use melee attacks, and Dead Space has its share of disgusting moments.

GameSpy
Integrating some nice variety into one game while maintaining its decidedly action-oriented dynamics, Dead Space is appealing across a wide cross-section of gameplay styles. Wrap an engrossing plot that is a veritable warren of intermingling themes around this and you've got a game that is basically a guaranteed experience. Dead Space is a solid realization of several of our favorite gameplay mechanics in a way that we've only seen in blockbusters like BioShock, Half-Life and Resident Evil 4. Its quality is undeniable and we have no reservation in recommending its potent mix of panic-inducing plotline, furious action and deep customization.

Sounds like the beginning of a beautifully terrifying franchise.

"The game is scary," Kuchera says definitively. "You're having a good time, and then BAM! Something happens and you jump out of your seat."

You folks know me, I've been sweet on Dead Space for a while now, but I am not sure I can bring myself to play it in pitch black darkness. I blame my timidity on a conspiracy in my childhood involving Steven Spielberg, who made Poltergeist, Jack Valenti, the MPAA chief who rated it PG when Spielberg bitched and moaned about an R; and my father, for encouraging me to watch it, giving me insomnia for a week solid and turning every slightly scary flick since then into a pants-shitting experience.

I'll play Dead Space between 11 am and 3 pm, thank you. With someone else running the controller, so I can yell "No! Not in there! Don't go in there!" and actually have the character on the screen take my advice.

Is Dead Space Scary? Yes. [Ars Technica]

You’re picking your way through the destitute skeleton of an abandoned building. All around you, decaying, discarded décor reminds you that people lived and worked here once, just as it prompts you to wonder what happened to them. Strange noises and crawling damp seep through the rotted walls.

Your backpack is stuffed with cryptic objects you inexplicably picked up in your exploration – unsettling to look at and obscure in their application, they somehow hold the solutions to the puzzles that impede your progress, if only you can figure them out.

It’s dark, you’ve got a weak flashlight, a short knife, maybe a length of steel pipe you picked up along your way. And you have a sinking feeling that at the end of the next corridor, death is lurking in the shape of a shambling, deformed monster. But you press on through the dispassionate madness, driven by unraveling mysteries and the unresolved ghosts of your own past.

This is survival horror – does it still exist?

The Origins
Though it’s widely held that 1992 PC title Alone in the Dark laid the groundwork for the way video games treat horror, it was the original Resident Evil that cemented the formula on consoles in particular. The saga of Raccoon City began in 1996, when an entire generation of gamers became invested in the adventures of the Redfield siblings, the sordid Umbrella Corporation, and the S.T.A.R.S special forces. Hallmarked by the moan of soulless zombies, mysterious puzzles in an abandoned mansion, and occasional leap-out-of-your-goddamn-skin moments, it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d want to play late at night by yourself.

The original Silent Hill arrived in 1999. Like Resident Evil, it sent the player wandering through eerily deserted locales dismantling black-blooded flesh sacks, but Silent Hill’s hallmark was true psychological horror – the eponymous town cloaked in white fog, through increasingly detailed iterations of the series, became a fairly clear allusion to the protagonist’s personal Hell, and players could draw metaphors through each phase of the game to the often sordid history of the game’s characters.

Resident Evil, Silent Hill and the Fatal Frame series, which takes a particularly Japanese cultural approach to the survival horror formula, could perhaps be called the “triple crown” of survival horror in video games, and along with Clock Tower, Haunting Ground and Siren, each of which put a distinctive spin on the core genre, set in stone the way we chase fear on a video game console.

Don’t Fight, Just Run!
Titles like these all have distinct differences, of course, but they all tend to have a few traits in common. First, they largely de-prioritize combat mechanics, favoring challenging the player through elements like on-location puzzles, mazelike game areas, using the environment itself against enemies, and even fleeing and hiding instead of direct combat. The Fatal Frame series eschews actual hand-to-hand fighting, characterized by its use of a camera to banish the game’s ghosts; Haunting Ground avoids the issue entirely, creating effective, vaguely perverted fear by casting the player as an exposed, vulnerable girl who must hide while training her dog to defend herself.
Though the inability to directly confront monsters in an effective way ended up enhancing the fear factor for these games, it wasn’t likely an entirely deliberate design decision – technology in the nineties didn’t allow for multiple kinds of mechanics in one game the way we see today. Back then, a game couldn’t easily have an enormous, interactive environment, an inventory-dependent puzzle system, and really good third-person character behavior and still have a sophisticated combat engine on top of it.

In other words, the only games we had in which the fighting worked well were games in which fighting was the main event. But Silent Hill became a critical and commercial success in spite of decidedly unwieldy combat mechanics – fans didn’t play it for the creature-bashing, they played it for the creep factor, perhaps demonstrating to the industry that games didn’t need combat to be great, and paving the way for other clever, primarily psychological action titles.
Among its peers, though, Resident Evil was arguably the most successful in terms of combat mechanics, at least in contrast to Silent Hill. Though it wouldn’t have held up when compared to, say, Western first-person shooters or action titles as far as how fluidly the player could become a killing machine, it was always largely competent, and the arsenal of available weapons increased with each successive installment of the storied series.

If fighting mechanics remain the weak spot in survival horror, it makes sense that developers would want to evolve them, and again, it makes sense that Resident Evil’d be the one to perfect its combat controls as the years went on. The widely-acclaimed Resident Evil 4 has been called one of the best all-around games of all time, hailed in large part for its good looks and brilliant controls. The action comes fast and messy, and it’s outright joyful to play as agile, powerful Leon bringing the wet, snap-popping hurt to a legion of eerily lifelike viral Ganados.
And by all early accounts, Resident Evil 5 will just refine that formula even more. Through all of its pre-release critical checkpoints RE5 has excelled. It looks awesome. It hasn’t messed much with RE4’s practically perfect controls. It brings the zombie-bashing into a new (if somewhat controversial) arena. It adds partner AI!
Wait, partner AI? Whatever happened to alone in the dark?

You Call This Survival Horror?
When you watch Chris Redfield (who over the years has apparently been lifting a lot of weights) charge through an open village with the camera over his brawny shoulder, toting heavy arms with his tough-sexy partner Sheva by his side, it ought to make you thrill with anticipation for what could be the next great action game.
But it also ought to make you wonder – is this really survival horror?
Electronic Arts’ upcoming space splatterhouse Dead Space says it’s “survival horror” too. Now, it looks like a good game, to be sure, and it also looks like it’ll be quite scary. But with a focus on real-time, non-stop action (literally – you can’t use a pause menu) and design that producer Chuck Beaver says is inspired by Half-Life 2, it has few touchstones to survival horror as we know it. “Person all alone in creepy area surrounded by swarms of bad guys” does not a survival horror game make – that’s just a basic tenet in nearly all video games. By that definition, hell, even Super Mario Bros. is survival horror.

So whatever happened to our imperfect, psychologically damaged heroes, our creepy little doll rooms, our feeble switchblades, our crawling dread? And why have they been replaced by gun-toting professionals and space marine types – as if gaming needed any more space marines?

How We Lost Our Way
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the video game industry has become big business in a way that perhaps it hadn’t yet approached in the early and mid-‘90s. These days, whenever you’d like to know why too many games just “follow the leader” instead of innovating, whenever you’d like to know why your favorite kooky series got canned – and, in this case, when we’d like to know why a beloved niche went mainstream, there’s a simple, two-word answer that means a lot to game company investors but very little to us: Risk management.

Games with big budgets need to make a lot of money; that’s not greed, that’s fiscal responsibility. So when planning a project slate, publishers look around and see that the big sellers are Gears of War and Halo — they look at the high performance of RE4 and consider the heavy weapon apocalypse to be the direction that consumers want to go. And to some extent, it is – these titles are shining examples of excellent game design. But faced with these prevailing trends, most publishers will feel the need to see highly detailed gunplay and cover mechanics implemented into the games they greenlight, believing it’s a recipe for success – even for games that have historically thrived on other strengths.

The other reason is somewhat more complex. Those beloved survival horror franchises came into prominence at a time when Japanese design and aesthetic sensibilities largely dominated the console market. The very titles that have helped shift Western development to the forefront – the aforementioned Gears, Halo and Half-Life among a good many others – have also brought Western cultural values about action, fear and horror to the fore, where previously the Japanese approach defined the genre.

East Versus West
Resident Evil is said to be born from a Japanese horror movie, “Sweet Home” (which was actually based on an NES game of the same name). Although “Sweet Home” itself took its inspiration in turn from several Western movies, it nonetheless carries with it the strong hallmark of the way Japanese culture treats horror – and that distinctly Japanese fear factor is what made Konami’s Silent Hill, Tecmo’s Fatal Frame, and Sony Japan’s Siren what they are.

The West and the East have distinctly different approaches to creating fear in entertainment media, uniquely rooted in their respective cultural histories. Though it’s doubtless had numerous influences from Western films and games – we mentioned Alone in the Dark, for example – the Japanese aesthetic for survival horror video games relies heavily on ghosts, ritual, and the unseen. This results in a fear environment that is primarily psychological, contrasted with a Western approach that is more visceral and action-oriented. Think American slasher fics versus Japanese haunting films for a basic example.

So as Western game design shifts to become the dominant paradigm, it makes sense that action and gore has begun to supersede psychological dread as the primary catalyst in what we call survival horror. Resident Evil creator Capcom is, of course, a Japanese company, but Capcom in particular has been tenaciously successful in learning to balance the needs and interests of a Western audience with a Japanese one, arguably even targeting Western consumers primarily over Japanese audiences with its major releases in recent years.

Going Back To Our Roots
But longtime survival horror fans recognize that there’s a distinct loss happening for the genre as the complexities of Japanese fear aesthetics begin to take a back seat. While Resident Evil’s shift to a more Western-style action series has been a more gradual, comprehensible transition, by contrast the Silent Hill series has remained largely unadulterated. That’s why news that California-based Double Helix would be developing the fifth Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: Homecoming, raised alarm for many series stalwarts, who worried that American developers might not be able to retain the distinctly Japanese spirit of the series.

But perhaps a collaboration between Japanese IP and modern, Western design talent is a key way forward for survival horror. While the Japanese fear aesthetics I’ve lauded here have resulted in games that take a subtler, more thought-provoking approach to the genre, they can also feel a little surreal and disjointed. The strength of Silent Hill 2 was the fact that its gameplay and environmental elements subtly pointed the way to some dreadful truths about “hero” James Sunderland’s sundered mind and deeds — but aside from its problematic combat, its weakness was that it sprawled thematically, leaving many loose ends, unanswered questions, unclear conclusions and unrelated elements.
Japanese horror idealizes the unanswered questions; Western horror wants clearer explanations for motivations, behavior and symbols. Perhaps the Silent Hill series might have attained still more widespread appeal if it had, to be blunt, made just a little more sense – and if the combat design had been just a little bit better, while still stopping short of becoming a pure-action title where the player felt powerful.

But what if collaborations such as the one between Double Helix and Konami can bring us the best of both worlds?

There’s Hope!
Such partnerships can merge the established conventions forged around popular franchises originating in the East with the forward-thinking, proven Western recipes for strong design that current trends seem to favor, thus helping historically niche franchises find broader global success – which could mean that survival horror as we once knew it might see a renaissance.

Silent Hill: Homecoming will be seen as the test of this merger between two worlds. And while I’ll leave the reviewing here to my Kotaku colleagues, I’ve spent hours upon hours over the last few days playing it for my Variety Magazine review, and I’ll just say that in my opinion, it passes the test with flying colors. Yes, Silent Hill fans, you will be happy.

Here’s hoping it forges the start of a return to familiar form for survival horror — real survival horror.
If you’re interested in reading more on this subject, I recommend the following links:
Chris’ Guide To Japanese Horror: Chris maintains an extensive database on the survival horror game genre and has done a great deal of writing and research on it, and in this article he gives a succinct explanation of some key hallmarks of Japanese horror, how it differs from Western horror and how it has influenced entertainment.

History of Resident Evil: Writers Justin Speer and Cliff O’Neill go in-depth on the genesis and evolution of Capcom’s baby.
Sweet Home at Wikipedia: Wikipedia article on the Sweet Home game and film with relevant links.

Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, freelances and reviews often for a variety of outlets including Variety and Paste, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.

Here at E3, we chatted with Dead Space senior producer Chuck Beaver and asked him about creating fear in such an action-heavy, fast-paced environment. Many of the standard-setters for survival horror — think Silent Hill and the earlier Resident Evil games — used atmosphere, environment and careful pacing to terrify players. But Beaver's got some very specific tactics planned for Dead Space:

I'm the sort that when an enemy leaps out and terrifies me, I reflexively mash my pause button. Not only does it give me a little break to calm down, but it lets me check my health, ammo and other stats (anyone else do this?). I will not, said Beaver, be able to hide behind my pause menu anymore. Everything in Dead Space happens in real-time.

"It keeps it live," he said. "So if you don't have your shit together, you're going to be in trouble."

This extends beyond the game mechanics themselves into Dead Space's narrative structure — there are no game-stopping cutscenes or scripted events, Beaver told us, in an effort to present a continually-flowing game experience. Beaver cited the "divine design"of Half-Life 2 as an inspiration for this. The overall intention is to tell the story without having to stop the gameplay in order to do so.

Although Beaver said the team studied horror films like The Thing and Alien for inspiration, films like these, he said, use certain visual auditory structures to create fear in a way that can become predictable. Aside from the continual focus on real-time, uninterrupted action, Dead Space relies on depriving the player of any predictive cues they can use to know when the scary stuff's going to happen. As a horror title, he explained, a key strength is that the actions and events are specifically designed to be unpredictable.

I asked Beaver if he had one area of uncertainty with this title, and that's where he and I talked about the difficult task of having to create a survival-horror title in an era that favors in-your-face shooting mechanics. Though Dead Space is very action-intensive, Beaver hopes that people don't see a shooter when they look at it — he's aiming for the middle ground where favored and current game mechanics meet environmental storytelling and psychological fear and suspense.

eToychest was kind enough to point this out to me and since I can let no Rule of Rose material slip through my grasp, I am logging it here with mad glee. This video documents a bit of movement and a boss fight, and talks about various dog functions and the overall mechanic of the game.

The reviewer says the dog is used primarily for locating objects and solving puzzles, generally with a "find" command with which you can match keys to locks and so on. The beast helps in combat by distracting critters so Jennifer can run, but doesn't appear to inflict or absorb damage.

It also looks like combat is not a big part of the game at all, and in fact is to be mostly avoided. I've heard reports of frustration from people who got their hands on a review copy that boss fights are annoying, due to the three-strikes-you're-dead feature. I usually don't mind low character health or even one-shot kills (remember Bushido Blade? That game was sweet.), so I don't think it'll be insurmountable.

Overall, the game is reputedly more along the lines of an old-school adventure game than a survival horror, the difference being the focus on the combat that survival horror usually entails. I will definitely be picking this up, but any review I give will be late because I'll be getting it the same time everyone else does. But my review will have a lot more literary references, of that much you can be sure. Eliza Gauger

more here [eToychest]

There's some new Rule of Rose stuff over on MTV's game site, Overdrive (which runs like complete crap on OSX Firefox), and it's completely without context. Who's talking in the clip with the broom goblins? The subtitles don't seem to correspond with anything. The music is pretty, but extremely repetitive. A lot of it is inappropriate for the variety of scenes it's laid over.

Basic gameplay doesn't seem all that great, or at least not much of an improvement. It could be that combat is not a big part of the game so what we're seeing here is a rare event.

Do pay heed to the character animations in the cutscenes, which look fairly good. I especially liked the way the villain's fingers fluttered when she put her hand on the fat girl's head.

Although it looks like once again, the main character is the blandest in the game. Her expressions are very toned down, and her face and posture are extremely restrained. I'm guessing that player characters are the ones subjected to the greatest amount of committee review, and have all their edges worn smooth by the time they're put onscreen. What a shame.

I believe Rule of Rose comes out next week, and I'll definitely be picking it up. After all, I'm in this for the steampunk lolitas and the fishblimp, not the broom goblins. Or the dog. Eliza Gauger

New Rule of Rose stuff on MTV Overdrive [MTV, thanks GayGamer]

Destructoid points us to the official Rule of Rose site, which officially went live back on the 18th. Seems like everyone missed it, as everyone has missed most of their pre-release milestones. They are sneaky, those spooky schoolgirls.

The site includes a story synopsis, some brief words about the dev company, a trailer, links to a preview played by AceGamez, a wallpaper based on the blackboard-themed inventory menu from the game, and accompanying icons.

My biggest objection at this point is the hairdo of the main character. It's just a big blonde blob. More suited for Patsy Stone than an adorable del. Eliza Gauger

Rule of Rose Official Site [thanks Destructoid]

Earlier today, I posted an interview with Resident Evil 4 producer in which he made some cryptic comments about earlier, discarded versions of RE4. Kotakuite Eric was kind enough to write in, pointing out a YouTube video of one of them, before the direction changed to a more action-oriented game.

Although it looks as maddening as every other non-RE4 Biohazard game to play, I have to admit — I'm slightly saddened this one was released. Although controls look cludgy, it certainly creeps me right the heck out.

And that mysterious Hooked Man? After the jump, courtesy of Kotakuite Ho Yin. Hey, Leon — you can't defeat diaphonous spectres with bullets, chump. Florian Eckhardt

One thing I haven't really been clear on is what Rule of Rose is actually about. The plot synopses I've seen are all vague and full of innuendo.

I've been able to piece together that much of the game takes place onboard an airship or something description, probably the fishblimp we see in screenshots and trailers. And there's a wicked cabal of cute little girls, who are called the Aristrocracy of the Red Crayon.

Our heroine, little blonde Jennifer, arrives in this group somehow and immediately becomes the whipping girl. I assume the game is a sort of Lord of the Flies in petticoats.

Siliconera just posted a rundown of the characters in Rule of Rose, complete with little portraits.

Jennifer

The main character of the game. An unlucky, helpless and timid girl who's dragged into an alarming world. She's doomed to face unimaginable hardship with her companion Brown. To find a way out of this nightmare, she's forced to obey the ridiculous rules of the Aristocrats of the Red Crayon.

I like "Aristocracy" better. Eliza Gauger

The Characters of Rule of Rose [Siliconera]
Interview with Atlus about Rule of Rose [Siliconera]

Now taking speculative comments about what that...thingy...is, in the last shot. It looks like a flying robo-whale. Eliza gauger

Online magazine the Escapist reassures us that as long as we understand genre, scary games cannot hurt us and in fact, will make us happy:

Genre pleasure, that warm feeling you get when you see a dead hooker on the ground, is our reward for breaking free of our social constraints in an exercise in fantasy.

The article goes on to focus on survival horror, but I dwell on the GTA reference: this is the crux of the games-are-bad-for-children argument, and was my point about the little girl who loved GTA: the responsibility for protecting children from evil influences lies with parents, who are the only ones who possess the power of genre education.

It's not enough to point at the screen and tell them that what they're seeing is not real (but it's a very good start). You have to explain why, give examples, and make sure they know that entertainment relies on exaggeration.

GTA is fun because it's ridiculous, and allows you to do things you would never actually do. This last bit is important: the very thick, dark line between make-believe and the actual living of life. Give them the context with which to understand this assertion, and do it early.

When a child understands the difference, they're mature enough to play with the big boys. Eliza gauger

Pleasurable Genres [the Escapist, via Digg]

So we're excited to see a new Alone in the Dark has been announced. Alone in the Dark is not only the grandaddy of survivor horror, but one of the earliest Lovecraftian games out there, as well as a truly excellent film by cinematic artist Uwe Boll. Ha ha ha. No, just kidding on that last one... like you, we wish someone would plunge syringes full of ebola right into Uwe Boll's eyeballs.

Few details are available, except that it will take place in Central Park (?) and Edward Carnby will be back. Excellent news. Let's see if the new Alone in the Dark can take back the survival horror crown from Resident Evil 4 and the Silent Hill series.

The Return of Alone in the Dark [1UP]