Week of 06 Oct 2024
“Where are you hiding?”
Achievements Earned In:
- Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM
- Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper
- REVEIL
- Frightence
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
- Garten of Banban 2
- Evil Inside
- Remorse: The List
First up for this week in Spooky Theme Month was Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM, one of the delisted games I own that I haven’t gotten around to until now. Being about ghosts and such in a Malaysian apartment complex fits perfectly with the type of games I’m playing this season, so why not? It’s VERY short and painfully easy, mostly involving just walking around and talking to residents. The art style is the standout here, which looks like paper-craft and being akin to something like Paper Mario. Otherwise, it’s too short to really make the characters too interesting, and the horror elements are restricted to a few jumpscares and a running section. But, still, it was neat and easy! This would have been my least favorite of the games I’ve played this month so far… But that came later in the week.
Achievements unlocked: 20 (+20) | Completed
I mean, if you ask nicely, maybe.
Monday’s game was another very short game, and, while definitely the most jank title I played this week, Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper had its charms. For this one, you’re given a handful of small zones to explore and your goal is to search them all for a list of items your friend hiding in a treehouse needs to fend off the titular kidnapper, who is also prowling each area looking for you. The items themselves are easy enough to find, but you often need other secondary items to access them in some light puzzle elements. But it’s all quite easy and the whole affair is only an hour or so to obtain all the achievements. In fact, you don’t even have to reach the end of the game to obtain them all, though it’s only an additional few minutes to reach the actual end after the final achievement becomes obtainable. There’s also apparently a sequel, but we’ll see if I get around to it.
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completed
Hey, Mister Adult Bunny Mask Guy... maybe cool it?
Tuesday brought me to the circus-themed spooks of REVEIL, and this has been a standout of these games so far. It’s a first-person “walking simulator” type game, but while the gameplay itself was pretty boring I found the story and visuals in this one to be the real draw. It’s… so interesting. And I sadly can’t really say why because it is a MASSIVE spoiler and has to be experienced without knowing. Completion-wise, this required a little more effort than the other games I’ve been playing, as there are numerous collectibles in each chapter, a couple stealth sections, and five different endings to see, though for that latter one you luckily only have to play the final checkpoint in the final chapter to access them all. Probably the most annoying part of the entire game was a collectible in some muddy grass that was really hard to locate, but that’s about as “bad” as this got. Definitely recommend this one!
Achievements unlocked: 27 (+27) | Completed
I'm sure this sunny and abandoned circus couldn't possibly get spooky.
And back to the easy garbage with Wednesday’s Frightence, which is a surprising 14GB and takes only 30 minutes or so to finish up, so you at least know it’s pretty! This is very much a haunted house game, and as you traverse a spooky apartment building you are beset by plenty of jumpscares and creepy things. There’s no combat or any way to really lose or fail, and very few things to even interact with. The few things you can mess with all give missable achievements, so all-in-all a very simple and straightforward completion, especially with a guide since there is little in the way of guidance in-game.
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completed
Everyone knows you should always label your blackmail.
I’ve been struggling a bit with motivation and mental wellness lately, so I’ve only had it in me to do my spooky game for the day, then shut down for the rest of the night. But, I had a little perk up midway through the week and figured I’d finally start working on the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night add-on that got released a few months back. It’s apparently in reference to Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, which is evident quickly in the gameplay. It LOOKS like Bloodstained proper, but controls and plays like an old NES game which is… a choice, I guess. The way to proceed through the game can also be more than a little esoteric (crouch in front of this unmarked grave to open a passage… sure?) like those old games. I only made it to the first boss before it got too late in the evening, and the guide I’m following lays out the ideal route to make it through the entire add-on, but I failed to return the rest of the week. Hopefully I get back to it soon!
Achievements unlocked: 47 (+2) | Completion: 82%
Thursday brought the Poppy’s Playtime wannabe Garten of Banban 2, and you may be asking why I skipped the first game. Well, it’s marked as a “demo” on Xbox, meaning it’s without achievements. So… yeah, why would I ever play it? From where you start in this game, it looks like we squished some big green monster, and that seems like enough setup. You’re running through a facility dealing with mascots that want to harm you in various ways, though I never picked up if they’re robots or monsters or what. This would have been another hour-long deal, but I soon realized the hard way that the collectibles achievement is “glitched” in some way. The jury seems out on the actual reason, but it took me three playthroughs to finally get the collectibles achievement to pop. If I had to guess, it has something to do with dying, so that final playthrough was a no-death run. Take that as you may, but I’m happy to be done with this. Tedious.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completed
Oh, hey there, Slow Seline. Whatcha... smiling about?
So far this month, worst game I’ve played goes to Friday’s Evil Inside, the epitome of a walking simulator and P.T. ripoff. You walk through a hallway, spooky things happen, you go through the basement, and continue the cycle again. Now and then something changes, like the lights are red or there’s blood on the floor, but otherwise it’s pretty dull and straight-foward. It doesn’t even look good! All-in-all there’s very little to say and was also the shortest game I’ve played during October.
Achievements unlocked: 24 (+24) | Completed
Okay, who stuck all these Spirit Halloween decorations everywhere?
After a lovely tea party brunch date, it was time for Saturday’s game. Since I had far more time to actually play something, I decided to pick a title with a completion time longer than a couple hours. One game that caught my eye before the weekend was Remorse: The List, if only because one of its long-broken achievements had been fixed. This meant no one had finished it yet, so why not try and get on the TA leaderboards while also doing another possibly good spooky game? The influences of this one was pretty apparent almost immediately: this is Hungarian Silent Hill. Like, you even fight guys that look like the red pyramid thing, but with a… cardboard box on their head instead. You’d think that’s a stretch, but in the unlockable developer museum post-game there’s a metal pyramid from Silent Hill displayed next to one of these box-heads, so… yeah. Anyway, the game is actually pretty tough, but sadly this is mostly due to the poor combat mechanics. There’s even an enemy (that I took to calling “nightcrawler”) that, after three playthroughs, I could never find a way to avoid or dodge their attacks without getting hit unless you fill it with lead. This stands out because most of the other enemy monsters can be avoided easily enough by just keeping to a brisk walk. As for those playthroughs, you have to complete the game on each difficulty individually since you don’t unlock the proceeding difficulty until you play the prior. Actually, that’s where the broken achievement was, as no one could even unlock Nightmare yet even though the achievement was present.
For my first playthrough, I decided to go with the “good” ending, and grab all the weapons and collectibles. Easy enough, but I also went with going for the “no healing” achievement, too, and that’s where most of the frustration came from. As I stated before, there is a common enemy that will often manage to hit you very quickly unless you use your valuable gun ammo for it. It was a lot of clearing and area, save, and proceed. If you take (too much) damage, just reload and try again. I wouldn’t suggest trying to just run past enemies, since you often have to retread through areas and if there were monsters left behind they’ll be crowded around your entrance when you spawn in, almost guaranteeing some damage. To further add to the frustration, there are again no written guides anywhere for this game and I often had to stumble around to figure out what to do. The best I had was an outline of the path I should take thanks to a collectible guide I found (alongside a puzzle guide). For this particular playthrough, it’s nice that once you enter the final area of the game it makes a checkpoint (the only one in the game) where if you die you respawn with full health! So, that’s your goal to reach without healing safely.
Second playthrough was on Hard, but also the speedrun achievement now that I knew what to do which expediates the entire game quite a bit. I still used some of the methods from my “no healing” playthrough for this one to keep my medkits up, reloading if I took too much damage or used too much ammo, but overall it was not too bad (though one section ticked me off pretty badly). According to the stats screen, it was about 01:40 to finish this run. That led to my Nightmare playthrough, and I was pretty nervous. I had gotten pretty low on supplies on Hard, and really struggled against the monsters, so this is gonna be so much harder, right? Well… no. Actually, I don’t know if it’s broken or glitched but Nightmare actually had fewer enemies than Hard did, and the only real changes I found was the heling items heal for less and a handful of ammo spawns were removed. That’s it. In fact, I found this so much easier that I as I neared the final section of the game I was about 20 minutes faster than the previous one! I’m sure the end boss will be just as easy as he has been… unless the “nightmare” part of this removes the infinite ammo present in the other difficulties…
Achievements unlocked: 15 (+15) | Completion: 88%
They never name these monsters, but I definitely called this one "Hawk Tuah".
Highest ratio: 5.15
Remorse: Hard (Remorse: The List)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
The Farm (Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper)
The Abduction (Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper)
The Lair by Night (Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper)
The Lair (Horror Tale 1: Kidnapper)
Wake up (REVEIL)
Scared Janitor (Frightence)
Punching In (Garten of Banban 2)
Inside of Evil Inside (Evil Inside)
First Enhancement (Remorse: The List)
