Blog, Blog, Bloq

 Watching through the Friday the 13th franchise and playing some of the Silent Hill 2 Remake has gotten me thinking more on the idea of remakes and reboots. This is because with movies you have many different avenues to access films whether that be physically or digitally. Like, I found a sealed DVD copy of The Matrix at a shop for super cheap. But this does not apply to games. You may have to scour multiple digital storefronts to access a specific title or even shell out loads of money for an original physical copy. That is not even taking into account the process of emulation. An alternative that does not properly serve many people.  This is because emulation runs an imperfect experience. Creating new glitches on top of needing to work with your PC setup. As well as finding the right emulator that fits your preferences. So, it's quite comical to hear people jump straight to emulation when discussing preservation or of ways to play a game. Because at the end of the day, these game

 With the incoming worldwide release of the original Clock Tower, I thought to load up the PS3 for some Clock Tower 3. (Shoutouts to the base model PS3, a GOATed device for sure.) And having never played it, I was curious as to how the series had progressed from the original to the latest named entry. To be frank, I think that this game is just OK. There are some real novel concepts and ingenuity put forth that gets bogged down in some of the later sections. That's really what makes me not love this game, despite the charm that it exudes.  Like, the cutscene direction is phenomenal. The way that the characters move and emote is easily one of my favorite things in games. They are flamboyant and wacky in their mannerisms, which helps add to some of the uneasiness that Clock Tower 3 offers. It makes me wish for more games to embrace this kind of silliness. Alas, we need to copy movies right now because that is what sells a gazillion units. So, the main point of this mini-rant is that

 Recently, I have been going through my somewhat frequent rewatches of the Friday the 13th franchise. This was not intentional, but it is funny that I happened to do it during an actual Friday the 13th. And my current run has stopped at the death of Jason Voorhees, otherwise known as Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. And so I initially wanted to focus on Part III because of how much the formula felt phoned in and lacking. But thinking more on it, there are some aspects that I wanted to discuss in regards to the first four films.  These ideas stem from how the characters feel and just how much this franchise tends to get bashed on because they are not the pinnacle of horror. Like, there is a reason I can rewatch the original Friday the 13th, and why I don't want to rewatch most modern horror films. It has more to do with that human factor. The on-location settings, the creativity behind the deaths of the characters, and especially the deception in the shot choice that throws off t

 As per my last posting, I had finished 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. And what do you know, I have now also finished Virtue's Last Reward. The sequel to an almost perfect game. But that is certainly not how I would describe VLR. The game feels like a downgrade in every direction. The writing is bad in nearly every aspect sans one character, they switched to doing the cutscenes in 3D, and I personally felt that the puzzle design was just not nearly as fluid. There are a myriad of issues to be had with this game, and I really think much of that has to do with the production time.  Like, I checked the release dates for both games, and the gap was almost two years exactly. With 999 releasing in December of 2009 in Japan, and VLR releasing in February of 2012. That window alone is simply not enough to achieve anything other than a rushed game. Their deadline just didn't have the room for them to develop a sequel to a game like 999.  While I did not go into many specific

 After mainlining the first three Gears of War titles, I decided that I needed a genre switch-up. That decision came in the form of 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. A Visual Novel-Puzzle Game hybrid that borrows from many mystery and horror tropes. An inescapable death game with the purpose of pitting others against one another while collaborating, in a sense. While a lot of parallels could be drawn to many forms of media, the one that jumped out to me was Saw.  A franchise that is known for playing games in life or death situations with the intent being on the life aspect. The games are supposed to be winnable, but performed at a high difficulty. The decision making is crucial to getting out of a Saw Trap. While some methods may differ, the games created by John Kramer (Jigsaw) are indeed winnable. The only caveat being that your nerves are working against you. So, while the framework is there in 999, the puzzles are not nearly as stress inducing. They are intended to test y