Anyways, for Halloween this year I’m playing through Silent Hill 2 for the first time after playing through the original last year. I think a couple years before that I played through Shattered Memories. I’ve sorta made a habit the last four or five years to try and knock out a season-appropriate game each Halloween season as I always seem to pass over the various horror-ish games I’ve picked up over the years (this is also how I knocked out Amnesia: A Dark Descent and… Castlevania: Rondo of Blood). Since I may not be the only one to do so, might as well have a topic for those who…
sees the Bloodborne topic*
…Oh, well I mean I’m sure not everyone would pick that game.
Anyways my main thought regarding Silent Hill 2 so far is that the manual listing James’s occupation as “protagonist” is the funniest gaming thing I’ve come across in a while. Also had the terrible realization when he went “No, I should probably check out that shadow” that I’m playing as a moron.
I’ve never been able to play a seasonally appropriate game. Or anything seasonally appropriate. I’m incredibly bad at even noticing holidays before, during, and after.
maybe I should actually play through Sweet Home now. I’ve wanted to do that for forever.
I always hit up at least the NES Castlevanias in October. Also trying to get into Sweet Home again as I know I never finished it years ago when I last played, but damned if the difficulty doesn’t seem to ramp up quick, though that might just be me nosing in the wrong direction.
Painkiller usually ends up being my game to play on halloween with the music turned up as loud as comfortably possible. One level is just a straight up haunted house.
I played some genesis Ghouls 'n Ghosts the other night. I also plan to play Symphony of the Night since that is one of the few castlevania games I haven’t completed. Last halloween I put a little time into Folklore, so I may get back to that.
Maybe I can finally play through Okage: Shadow King. I’ve only owned it for 15 years. That Castleween GBA game always looked fun/cute to me. Or I’ll take the easy road and just play SOTN again.
Man, I’m less than an hour into Silent Hill 2 and I’m already lost, that might be a record. Stupid dark apartment…
I sometimes tell myself that I’ll finally get around to beating Ghosts 'n Goblins, either for Halloween or not, but man that game is about as hard as everyone says it is.
A couple days back I spent an hour or so with Midnight Mutants for the 7800. It’s like a weird blend of Adventure, Zelda 1, and Fester’s Quest. Much to my surprise, it’s way more playable than I expected.
The upshot is Al Lewis (aka Grandpa Munster, but here just Grandpa for copyright reasons) got turned into a pumpkin while trying to stop some revived warlock dude. You play some kid who begins completely unarmed, who has to rescue him. One of the two buttons is dedicated to getting psychic tips from Grandpa, which are vital to figuring out what part of the big open map to go to next. Before bosses, Al also dumps a bunch of text which will do things like provide a detailed backstory for the giant skull that’s about to shoot eyes at you. He’s sort of like a Master Miller, and nothing at all like the sex freak scammer politican he became in real life.
The game has this great broken feeling horizontal scrolling where the laws of relativity break down and the frame of reference between the player and your thrown knives and axes changes as you move. That coupled with the big chunky sprites (and the massive chunky bosses) really dives home the weird position the 7800 held between the 2600 and the NES which was recently discussed in another thread.
I couldn’t get my emulator’s screen shot feature to work, but I did get some shots from two of Al’s pre-boss fight expositions.
