Clock Tower is a famous survival horror series that spanned about ten years; it began with Clock Tower: The First Fear. Noted for its graphics, music, and atmosphere, the game was a point and click stealth game, in which a young girl, Jennifer, had to navigate a Norweigan manor while surviving the many traps, people and horrors she meets on the way.
It became a cult classis immediately, mostly because of it basically being a video games adaption of.. some B-movie with Jennifer Connely in it who can control bugs, and there's a serial murderer, and some kid with patau syndrome or something who's called, wait for it, Patua (fucking incredible) I don't know, it's on Netflix, it's so-bad-it's-good, and also because of, well, the fact that it was a great game.
Come a few years later, a sequel, Clock Tower 2 - and America's first Clock Tower, causing some confusion with the titles - is realised, to critical acclaim. It did, however, look shit. So that's a detracting factor, especially when the first was absoloutely gorgeous.
This is what I call "Innocent Sin-drome". Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the first game in a duo of games connected by a weird Deus Ex Machina. For whatever reason, the USA only got the first, making the second a weird mess of stupidity and bad voice acting. Not that it made much sense with the first in mind anyway.
Eventually, Clock Tower: Ghost Head was released. It also became a cult classis, though mostly because of how insanely narmy it was. While still a good game, its scariest villian was a loli four year old with a knife.. no, seriously, she's actually pretty scary.
Then Clock Tower 3 rolled around. There were many problems with this game:
1: The main character is 14. She's legal in Japan, Sweden, Switzerland... go for it!
2: It's a Magical Girl anime so British it has a capital blimey.
3: All of its villians, while having cool designs, look like they came out of a fucking crack circuc.
4: It had stupid combat, coupled with a difficulty spike so imbalanced that you wouldn't believe.
Many agreed that it killed the IP, until Capcom announced Haunting Ground, a spiritual sequel of sorts. And that finally brings us to the review.
Haunting Ground (DEMENTO in Japanese. Yes, all in caps. Yes, and the katakana has to be written next to is, because redundancy is in, guuurl) is a horror/action/stealth/puzzle game released for the Playstation 2 not long after 3 bombed. Supposedly planned to be Clock Tower 4, it was quickly retooled into DEMENTO.
Unlike 3, it didn't bomb. Unlike 3, it didn't look awful. Unlike 3, it had a coherent plot that didn't trip up over itself. And unlike 3, the sexualised main character is not a racially fetishised lolicon twit with a Ron Weasely sidekick. But like 3, it did had incest... which is at least played for all of the gross, horrificness that it is in both games.
Haunting Ground is about Fiona Belli; its opening a homage to Silent Hill, on a vacation with her parents, their car crashes all too non-accidentally; she later wakes up. In nothing but a towel. With gorgeous graphics. And jiggle physics. Whatever direction they were taking with this game, it worked... kinda?
This is where the game picks up; eventually, you'll actually progress, and you'll find a doll, after getting dressed in your very sexy clothing of a bouncy, frilly thing and a skirt. You'll also find a huge ape-man suffering from a very bad case of Generic Hollywood Mental Disability Rage, and he really wants to hug you. Problem is, you'll snap your neck.
During the chase scenes, this is where the game gets its teeth. You'll get stabbed, cut, crushed, broken, and other horrible things will happen to Fiona, while the best she can do is kick. Yup. You'll even get raped (I'm not kidding; the fact that it just flew under the censorship board's heads is quite amazing) once or twice.
This is Debilitas.
That weird little smear on the screen is you, by the way. Obviously, Fiona doesn't stand a chance, so you've got to hide.
This is another interesting part of the series' gameplay; no fighting. Usually. The best you could do in Ghost Head was using a seperate character who could use guns, though ammo is scarce, and, well, 12 year old girls with very fragile arms and big, heavy guns don't really mix. Normally, you survive by hiding your ass in closets, under beds, in elevators, and...
in iron maidens?
Ok, ok.
Another interesting part of the game is Hewie, a cute little poochy German Shephard who follows you around after a certain point. And if you're on hard mode, you can talk to him. He's pretty funny. Hewie is your main source of self defense; he also has a deeper role as a morality meter of sorts. If you're bad to him, like locking him out of rooms to maul the bad person while you safely mill around picking up items, or accidentally mush him brains while opening a door for fun, then he'll attack you, you'll get a bad ending, or he just won't listen to what you say.
So, Hewie is one of the funner parts of the game. Rule of Rose, another PS2 classis, uses a similiar system, with Brown, an equally cute, equally useful dog also central to your survival.
So, after trapsing around a big castle for a while, looking at the gorgeous lighting system and amazing art direction the game has - which I will never stop fawning over - you'll eventually get to Debilitas's boss fight. Here, you get a choice:
Kill the fucker
Don't.
This is a Capcom game, afterall, so which choice is right is obvious: You don't kill the mentally ill manchild, because that's just plain wrong! ...Besides, if you kill him, you get the bad ending!
The next villian, and you encounter her almost immediately, is Daniella. Daniella... is, well, a stronger point of the game. The first thing about her is that you'll notice she has pretty much every facial feature that most men would find attractive: Thin face, nice eyes, cheekbones, long hair, yet her odd claymation-esque animation and monotonous voice spill out so many forms of deliberate Uncanny Valley that it's... just.. well...
Listen to her battle music.
Another thing you'll have noticed about the game by now is that it's a rather heavy deconstruction of fanservice. By now, you'll have gotten several notes from a dirty old bastard - and met another, both of whom are obviously older - who perv on you quite a lot. One of whom will shoot you if you move too quickly, another who watched you dress. Yes, he put you in that skimpy bouncy outfit to get himself off.
Also, Daniella woke you up by groping you up, saying she wants to tear out your womb because it has the essence of life in is, "azoth" (which is a real thing in protoscience, btw) and then proceeds to headbutt the window very very hard, takes out a piece of glass, and if you're not immediately quick enough, proceeds to do this:
...Ew.
So, up until now, you're in a big castle, that's yours in name only, your parents are dead, you're being perved on by two old men, one of whom has a gun and likes to make sculptures of you bearing his child, another one who likes to watch you dess, a man child who's on your side now, and a maid who just fed you your mother. Shit is not looking up.
Again, for a horror game - even for a horror game - this game has certainly got a LOT of teeth. Sure, the pretty graphics and lihgintg and the cute girl and the cuter dog might just be the thin coating of "stereotypical horror movie adaption" but it actually has a very meaty core, especially in its soundtrack, which, for lack of a btter term, is scarier than any of the enemies.
Here's another point that gets the game down, a fault sadly shared with Clock Tower 3: the enemies. They're fine concepts, but here's what they end up as.
A big hunchback who thinks you're a barbydoll.
An autistic who wants to tear your crotch out.
An old guy with a gun.
Another one, except he nips at your ankles like a Jack Russel.
Compared to the first game's enemies...
Satan's spawn itself, its disfigured face, melting, rotten flesh hiding only the disgusting, soulless, core, yet it only wants to feed its equally Satanic, vile brother hiding in the basement, living on the corpses of lost children, its mother killing anyone and anything to protect her sweet, darling babies.
...Eh? Seriously? It's pretty toothy for any game, but for Clock Tower, it's like going from a chainsaw to a blunt hairpin.
Obviously, Haunting Ground is a good game; it's gorgeous, has a great soundtrack, a creepy plot, and - even if just on its own - good characters. Especially Daniella. No, seriously, just Daniella.
This part of the review onwards was written after the text above. There were some things I missed. Also, it will be written in a kind of sypnosis/impressions style, meaning that it will contain spoilers. This review has become rather popular, most likely due to my inclusion of "sexy teenager gets beaten up for 20 hours" in the title. Thanks for the feedback.
One of the things I wanted to mention was the alchemy system; annoying yet also game-breaking.
Medallions are expendable items that can be obtained from knocked out enemies (but you can't kill 'em) meaning they are inifinite, and grinding them is pretty easy, especially if Hewie is well trained, and you've gotten better at the game at this point.
The alchemy system works like this: You insert a medallion, each of which colour has a different effect, such as expendable items, animals for your dumbass pooch, equipeabble items or weapons (bombs, firecrackers, ect). You then match up colours, the frequency and diversity of which is based on the medallion inserted.
Obviously, this gives the game a nice RPG feel, even if it is a little broken. Invisibility earrings, a dog costume that makes Hewie invinsible (very useful on Hard mode, where he can die, which means you die of... heartbreak?) and x5 damage boots, plus respawning healing items?
It's still a hard game, but it's fun to abuse.
The alchemy aspect is also very well researched. This game is a fine example of Shown Their Work, a trope with a rather explanatory name. It might as well be called "Shown Their Work and incest" and it'd be as accurate as Haunting Ground, if not more. In particular, Azoth sounds like a convenient plot device.
It's not. Alchemy being something of a bridging between religion, science, art and engineering, it was a very varied subject in its time. And did you know Flemell from Harry Potter was a real person, and a studier or such sciences and arts? I bet you didn't.
Obviously, it's best to have a vague understanding of alchemy, such as homonculus, azoth, and how the people of good ol' 1700s thought it worked, or this game will go straight over your head. For example, Daniella is a homonculus, but this is never mentioned in the game. A homonculus is an artificial human; Debilitas is also a homonculus. And they both failed in a way.
Any person who's played Persona 4 can tell you the spell Debilitate lowers all of your enemies stats for 3 turns. So, obviously, debiliate comes form Latin, because it sounds Latin. And it does; it means "weakness, illness, imbalance". Guess what Debilitas is? Big, incredibly friendly (far too friendly), displays several canine-like behaviours, and is, of course, an idiot.
Daniella is also fun: Autism, manic depressive disorder, ADHD, sociopathy - or at the least an unstable, constructed, broken mind that has realised how empty it is... if Daniella were a real person, a therapist would crack open the champagne and prepare for a fun night; all of which were possible problems that alchemists thought of when theorising about making a life without a man and a woman.
The game is worth playing just for the extensive research the team put into the game, proof that this game certainly has great artistry in it.
A great scene happens in the "Venus Room". Daniella's sitting there, attending a fire; poking it with a poker. An interesting part of Daniella is that she turns on and off. When she's off, she's just a friendly, but rather...eerie, monotonous maid who actually gives you items and talks to you. When she's on, she sexually abuses you with a huge shard of glass. So when you find her around the house, cleaning and muttering to herself, non-hostile, you're going to be terrified.
So, all the other times, she's been fine. So you talk to her this time. Big mistake.
Now, up till now, you'll have gotten a good feel of the castle too. It's big, sprawly, and dangerous. And the game's given you a spot without any enemies, near an alchemy lab - where you can pick up free health items and weapons every few minutes, and a save point.
Something's wrong [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity].
Because in the next room, Daniella's there, standing in an observatory. Nowhere to hide this time; Hewie's just wanting to kill the clockwork doll with lungs, and Fiona needs to get out ot the castle. So, naturally, you have no option but to kill her.
Her boss is actually very disapointing. For such as messed up, screwed, perhaps even non existant mind, trapped in a porcelain body with no idea how to control it, her fight is very bland. push the boxes onto the dents into the ground. Have Hewie knock her out, give her a kick or two to keep her down, push a box. It's a big letdown. Debilitas had a very tense, suprisingly difficult fight where you could say "fuck it, I don't care if I get the bad ending" and you could sic your cute dog on him.
Daniella's... is just a block pushing puzzle. Granted, her death scene itself is quite amazing. I couldn't find it myself, though. It manages to be scary yet heartwarming at the same time.
So, by now, Fiona's sick of killing people for the hell of it and Hewie needs to pee. So you continue.
Up until now, it's been a very strong game; good villians (if a tad bland), great music, and DEM GRAPHIcs and DAT ART that makes anyone with any idea how it would be made drool. It's only now that the game's quality starts waning, as it's obvious they started losing good ideas for villians.
For example, this chapter's villian, is a guy with a hood and a gun.
To elaborate on that, his name is Riccardo. He was a "friend" of your father's, and now for some reason, he wants to use your body as a vessel for his future self, so that he will be immortal.
And then he starts chasing you with a gun.
This is also when the game's great atmosphere finally starts fleshing out; the gorgeous castle you were in a minute ago is now some strange kind of lab, a rotting cave, totally unlike how you'd imagine a luxurious castle in the Italian countryside to be.
This helps capture the strangeness, deliberate blandness (I hope) and mystery around this chapter's villian. Unlike Debi-chan and Dani (fan nicknames; I swear I didn't just come up with them) who have both been sympathetic, and monstrous in their own right, this is just some guy with a gun who wants to use your body for science.
Then it turns out he's your uncle, and he planned the death of your parents.
This chapter, unlike the previous ones, mostly focus on Hewie, and how awesome he is. While always useful, his ability to climb into small, conveniently male, small-sized German Shephard sized holes littered throughout the castle, this chapter pretty much requires constant thinking of, "how do I get my MUTT OVER THERE"? This is hard, as now you're fighting some guy with a gun. Not some weaksauce sexy nurse with a bit of window or a slow as hell failed clone; a guy. With a gun.
Completely bland and scary at the same time.
So you'll die a lot here, which isn't really fair; beause up until here, the game's been very fair, and the new addition of leg-biting babies. No, seriously.
This is also one of the shorter parts of the game, but one of the hardest, no doubr about it. He's also got one of the most disturbing game overs ever. Too NSFW; Daniella's was a "I want your genitals because I deserve to be human more than you, you stupid blonde ditzy bombshell" but Riccardo's is a full on "I want your gentials because you're hot. Oh, yeah, and eternal life and all that jazz".
The game has also been experimenting with bland puzzles. Tedious, boring puzzles with a lot of potential.
*sigh*
You'll also learn that those notes from an old guy who only seems to want to help you are slightly more devious than you thought; he's your grandfather. Yes, he wants your womb so he can be reborn eternally. But don't worry, he's not into younger women.
Riccardo's boss fight seems to be the game apologising; it makes great use of Hewie, requiring Fiona and hewie to work properly. To win, you need Fiona to destroy barriers around the top of the tower (which looks gorgeous, by the way) and then you need Hewie to sic Riccardo until he lands on the ground hundreds of floors down. I think you find his body later.
The last stage is the biggest let down. The third stage's theme of "corroded lab of a sex predator" has been abandoned for a bland cave system.
Then the old guy ankle-nibbles has turned...
FABULOUS
This is Lorenzo Belli, the mastermind behind the game. He is fabulous.
Until the very end, the game turns into a bland cat-and-mouse game. For the majority of your time in this stage, Lorenzo will be on the ground, and his best attack will be scratching you slightly. Sometimes he can insta-kill you, but only if you would have died too easily anyway.
it replaces the puzzles and charm that made the past three stages to unique; now, you'll notice that he is amazing to grind form. So you make a bunch of firecrackers and beat him up with them for your amusement/. Because he's not scary. Guns are scary; spine crushing barehugs are scary; a sociopath who does not realise the consequences of her violent actions is scary. Getting trapped in an iron maiden is scary. Freaky mutant babies who eat you from the ankle up are scary.
Old people who have fallen off their wheelchair, and who follow you by crawling are not. He's also the weakest enemy in the game, even if he is the most persistent.
This is without a doubt the game's lowest, lacking the personality that has made it a great game until now. Granted, this phase isn't very long; he soon transforms into Mr. FABULOUS as pictures. And eventually, he gets turned on eternal fire.
No, really.
This is a 5 minutes run for your life, in which you are chased by a flaming old guy who will kill you if you so much as breath too loudly near him. It's very tense, very loud, and something of a spot light in the game's currently drab performance.
Yes, the game has thrown the subtely that made it so unique out the window too. You are now being chased by a flaming old guy. Be scared.
And it is scary, but at the same time it feels forced. While those 10 minutes are scary as hell, and if you don't plan everything out exactly, then you certainly won't last long, it seems like the game' making up for lost time.
The ending, however, is extremely satifying, especially if you get the good one. Because your old friend Debi debi Chan unlocks the gate for you after charging at you with garden shears (a home to The First Fear) and then Fiona just kind of leaves, as if she'd been bored at a museum and caught a bus home.. which probably happened.
The game has a lot of post-game content. Costumes, concept art, and of course, Hewie gets the ability to talk in Hard Mode. Both Hewie and Fiona also get a bunch of costumes, like Fiona's oh so memetic "Illegal in some States" dominatrix outfit and Hewie's "plushi" outfit, which completely sucks the horror out of the game in exchange for invincibility. Which is totally worth it. And for plushy dog.
All in all, the game is stupid, narmy fun, while also being able to be absoloutely terrifying and utterly cringe-inducing on purpose, with great characters and plot and beautiful environments. Haunting Ground is certainly a game worht picking up, renting or otherwise, perhaps simply because of that odd, charming, terrifying personality that got it so famous in the first place.
It became a cult classis immediately, mostly because of it basically being a video games adaption of.. some B-movie with Jennifer Connely in it who can control bugs, and there's a serial murderer, and some kid with patau syndrome or something who's called, wait for it, Patua (fucking incredible) I don't know, it's on Netflix, it's so-bad-it's-good, and also because of, well, the fact that it was a great game.
Come a few years later, a sequel, Clock Tower 2 - and America's first Clock Tower, causing some confusion with the titles - is realised, to critical acclaim. It did, however, look shit. So that's a detracting factor, especially when the first was absoloutely gorgeous.
This is what I call "Innocent Sin-drome". Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the first game in a duo of games connected by a weird Deus Ex Machina. For whatever reason, the USA only got the first, making the second a weird mess of stupidity and bad voice acting. Not that it made much sense with the first in mind anyway.
Eventually, Clock Tower: Ghost Head was released. It also became a cult classis, though mostly because of how insanely narmy it was. While still a good game, its scariest villian was a loli four year old with a knife.. no, seriously, she's actually pretty scary.
Then Clock Tower 3 rolled around. There were many problems with this game:
1: The main character is 14. She's legal in Japan, Sweden, Switzerland... go for it!
2: It's a Magical Girl anime so British it has a capital blimey.
3: All of its villians, while having cool designs, look like they came out of a fucking crack circuc.
4: It had stupid combat, coupled with a difficulty spike so imbalanced that you wouldn't believe.
Many agreed that it killed the IP, until Capcom announced Haunting Ground, a spiritual sequel of sorts. And that finally brings us to the review.
Haunting Ground (DEMENTO in Japanese. Yes, all in caps. Yes, and the katakana has to be written next to is, because redundancy is in, guuurl) is a horror/action/stealth/puzzle game released for the Playstation 2 not long after 3 bombed. Supposedly planned to be Clock Tower 4, it was quickly retooled into DEMENTO.
Unlike 3, it didn't bomb. Unlike 3, it didn't look awful. Unlike 3, it had a coherent plot that didn't trip up over itself. And unlike 3, the sexualised main character is not a racially fetishised lolicon twit with a Ron Weasely sidekick. But like 3, it did had incest... which is at least played for all of the gross, horrificness that it is in both games.
Haunting Ground is about Fiona Belli; its opening a homage to Silent Hill, on a vacation with her parents, their car crashes all too non-accidentally; she later wakes up. In nothing but a towel. With gorgeous graphics. And jiggle physics. Whatever direction they were taking with this game, it worked... kinda?
This is where the game picks up; eventually, you'll actually progress, and you'll find a doll, after getting dressed in your very sexy clothing of a bouncy, frilly thing and a skirt. You'll also find a huge ape-man suffering from a very bad case of Generic Hollywood Mental Disability Rage, and he really wants to hug you. Problem is, you'll snap your neck.
During the chase scenes, this is where the game gets its teeth. You'll get stabbed, cut, crushed, broken, and other horrible things will happen to Fiona, while the best she can do is kick. Yup. You'll even get raped (I'm not kidding; the fact that it just flew under the censorship board's heads is quite amazing) once or twice.
This is Debilitas.
That weird little smear on the screen is you, by the way. Obviously, Fiona doesn't stand a chance, so you've got to hide.
This is another interesting part of the series' gameplay; no fighting. Usually. The best you could do in Ghost Head was using a seperate character who could use guns, though ammo is scarce, and, well, 12 year old girls with very fragile arms and big, heavy guns don't really mix. Normally, you survive by hiding your ass in closets, under beds, in elevators, and...
in iron maidens?
Ok, ok.
Another interesting part of the game is Hewie, a cute little poochy German Shephard who follows you around after a certain point. And if you're on hard mode, you can talk to him. He's pretty funny. Hewie is your main source of self defense; he also has a deeper role as a morality meter of sorts. If you're bad to him, like locking him out of rooms to maul the bad person while you safely mill around picking up items, or accidentally mush him brains while opening a door for fun, then he'll attack you, you'll get a bad ending, or he just won't listen to what you say.
So, Hewie is one of the funner parts of the game. Rule of Rose, another PS2 classis, uses a similiar system, with Brown, an equally cute, equally useful dog also central to your survival.
So, after trapsing around a big castle for a while, looking at the gorgeous lighting system and amazing art direction the game has - which I will never stop fawning over - you'll eventually get to Debilitas's boss fight. Here, you get a choice:
Kill the fucker
Don't.
This is a Capcom game, afterall, so which choice is right is obvious: You don't kill the mentally ill manchild, because that's just plain wrong! ...Besides, if you kill him, you get the bad ending!
The next villian, and you encounter her almost immediately, is Daniella. Daniella... is, well, a stronger point of the game. The first thing about her is that you'll notice she has pretty much every facial feature that most men would find attractive: Thin face, nice eyes, cheekbones, long hair, yet her odd claymation-esque animation and monotonous voice spill out so many forms of deliberate Uncanny Valley that it's... just.. well...
Listen to her battle music.
Another thing you'll have noticed about the game by now is that it's a rather heavy deconstruction of fanservice. By now, you'll have gotten several notes from a dirty old bastard - and met another, both of whom are obviously older - who perv on you quite a lot. One of whom will shoot you if you move too quickly, another who watched you dress. Yes, he put you in that skimpy bouncy outfit to get himself off.
Also, Daniella woke you up by groping you up, saying she wants to tear out your womb because it has the essence of life in is, "azoth" (which is a real thing in protoscience, btw) and then proceeds to headbutt the window very very hard, takes out a piece of glass, and if you're not immediately quick enough, proceeds to do this:
...Ew.
So, up until now, you're in a big castle, that's yours in name only, your parents are dead, you're being perved on by two old men, one of whom has a gun and likes to make sculptures of you bearing his child, another one who likes to watch you dess, a man child who's on your side now, and a maid who just fed you your mother. Shit is not looking up.
Again, for a horror game - even for a horror game - this game has certainly got a LOT of teeth. Sure, the pretty graphics and lihgintg and the cute girl and the cuter dog might just be the thin coating of "stereotypical horror movie adaption" but it actually has a very meaty core, especially in its soundtrack, which, for lack of a btter term, is scarier than any of the enemies.
Here's another point that gets the game down, a fault sadly shared with Clock Tower 3: the enemies. They're fine concepts, but here's what they end up as.
A big hunchback who thinks you're a barbydoll.
An autistic who wants to tear your crotch out.
An old guy with a gun.
Another one, except he nips at your ankles like a Jack Russel.
Compared to the first game's enemies...
Satan's spawn itself, its disfigured face, melting, rotten flesh hiding only the disgusting, soulless, core, yet it only wants to feed its equally Satanic, vile brother hiding in the basement, living on the corpses of lost children, its mother killing anyone and anything to protect her sweet, darling babies.
...Eh? Seriously? It's pretty toothy for any game, but for Clock Tower, it's like going from a chainsaw to a blunt hairpin.
Obviously, Haunting Ground is a good game; it's gorgeous, has a great soundtrack, a creepy plot, and - even if just on its own - good characters. Especially Daniella. No, seriously, just Daniella.
This part of the review onwards was written after the text above. There were some things I missed. Also, it will be written in a kind of sypnosis/impressions style, meaning that it will contain spoilers. This review has become rather popular, most likely due to my inclusion of "sexy teenager gets beaten up for 20 hours" in the title. Thanks for the feedback.
One of the things I wanted to mention was the alchemy system; annoying yet also game-breaking.
Medallions are expendable items that can be obtained from knocked out enemies (but you can't kill 'em) meaning they are inifinite, and grinding them is pretty easy, especially if Hewie is well trained, and you've gotten better at the game at this point.
The alchemy system works like this: You insert a medallion, each of which colour has a different effect, such as expendable items, animals for your dumbass pooch, equipeabble items or weapons (bombs, firecrackers, ect). You then match up colours, the frequency and diversity of which is based on the medallion inserted.
Obviously, this gives the game a nice RPG feel, even if it is a little broken. Invisibility earrings, a dog costume that makes Hewie invinsible (very useful on Hard mode, where he can die, which means you die of... heartbreak?) and x5 damage boots, plus respawning healing items?
It's still a hard game, but it's fun to abuse.
The alchemy aspect is also very well researched. This game is a fine example of Shown Their Work, a trope with a rather explanatory name. It might as well be called "Shown Their Work and incest" and it'd be as accurate as Haunting Ground, if not more. In particular, Azoth sounds like a convenient plot device.
It's not. Alchemy being something of a bridging between religion, science, art and engineering, it was a very varied subject in its time. And did you know Flemell from Harry Potter was a real person, and a studier or such sciences and arts? I bet you didn't.
Obviously, it's best to have a vague understanding of alchemy, such as homonculus, azoth, and how the people of good ol' 1700s thought it worked, or this game will go straight over your head. For example, Daniella is a homonculus, but this is never mentioned in the game. A homonculus is an artificial human; Debilitas is also a homonculus. And they both failed in a way.
Any person who's played Persona 4 can tell you the spell Debilitate lowers all of your enemies stats for 3 turns. So, obviously, debiliate comes form Latin, because it sounds Latin. And it does; it means "weakness, illness, imbalance". Guess what Debilitas is? Big, incredibly friendly (far too friendly), displays several canine-like behaviours, and is, of course, an idiot.
Daniella is also fun: Autism, manic depressive disorder, ADHD, sociopathy - or at the least an unstable, constructed, broken mind that has realised how empty it is... if Daniella were a real person, a therapist would crack open the champagne and prepare for a fun night; all of which were possible problems that alchemists thought of when theorising about making a life without a man and a woman.
The game is worth playing just for the extensive research the team put into the game, proof that this game certainly has great artistry in it.
A great scene happens in the "Venus Room". Daniella's sitting there, attending a fire; poking it with a poker. An interesting part of Daniella is that she turns on and off. When she's off, she's just a friendly, but rather...eerie, monotonous maid who actually gives you items and talks to you. When she's on, she sexually abuses you with a huge shard of glass. So when you find her around the house, cleaning and muttering to herself, non-hostile, you're going to be terrified.
So, all the other times, she's been fine. So you talk to her this time. Big mistake.
Now, up till now, you'll have gotten a good feel of the castle too. It's big, sprawly, and dangerous. And the game's given you a spot without any enemies, near an alchemy lab - where you can pick up free health items and weapons every few minutes, and a save point.
Something's wrong [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity].
Because in the next room, Daniella's there, standing in an observatory. Nowhere to hide this time; Hewie's just wanting to kill the clockwork doll with lungs, and Fiona needs to get out ot the castle. So, naturally, you have no option but to kill her.
Her boss is actually very disapointing. For such as messed up, screwed, perhaps even non existant mind, trapped in a porcelain body with no idea how to control it, her fight is very bland. push the boxes onto the dents into the ground. Have Hewie knock her out, give her a kick or two to keep her down, push a box. It's a big letdown. Debilitas had a very tense, suprisingly difficult fight where you could say "fuck it, I don't care if I get the bad ending" and you could sic your cute dog on him.
Daniella's... is just a block pushing puzzle. Granted, her death scene itself is quite amazing. I couldn't find it myself, though. It manages to be scary yet heartwarming at the same time.
So, by now, Fiona's sick of killing people for the hell of it and Hewie needs to pee. So you continue.
Up until now, it's been a very strong game; good villians (if a tad bland), great music, and DEM GRAPHIcs and DAT ART that makes anyone with any idea how it would be made drool. It's only now that the game's quality starts waning, as it's obvious they started losing good ideas for villians.
For example, this chapter's villian, is a guy with a hood and a gun.
To elaborate on that, his name is Riccardo. He was a "friend" of your father's, and now for some reason, he wants to use your body as a vessel for his future self, so that he will be immortal.
And then he starts chasing you with a gun.
This is also when the game's great atmosphere finally starts fleshing out; the gorgeous castle you were in a minute ago is now some strange kind of lab, a rotting cave, totally unlike how you'd imagine a luxurious castle in the Italian countryside to be.
This helps capture the strangeness, deliberate blandness (I hope) and mystery around this chapter's villian. Unlike Debi-chan and Dani (fan nicknames; I swear I didn't just come up with them) who have both been sympathetic, and monstrous in their own right, this is just some guy with a gun who wants to use your body for science.
Then it turns out he's your uncle, and he planned the death of your parents.
This chapter, unlike the previous ones, mostly focus on Hewie, and how awesome he is. While always useful, his ability to climb into small, conveniently male, small-sized German Shephard sized holes littered throughout the castle, this chapter pretty much requires constant thinking of, "how do I get my MUTT OVER THERE"? This is hard, as now you're fighting some guy with a gun. Not some weaksauce sexy nurse with a bit of window or a slow as hell failed clone; a guy. With a gun.
Completely bland and scary at the same time.
So you'll die a lot here, which isn't really fair; beause up until here, the game's been very fair, and the new addition of leg-biting babies. No, seriously.
This is also one of the shorter parts of the game, but one of the hardest, no doubr about it. He's also got one of the most disturbing game overs ever. Too NSFW; Daniella's was a "I want your genitals because I deserve to be human more than you, you stupid blonde ditzy bombshell" but Riccardo's is a full on "I want your gentials because you're hot. Oh, yeah, and eternal life and all that jazz".
The game has also been experimenting with bland puzzles. Tedious, boring puzzles with a lot of potential.
*sigh*
You'll also learn that those notes from an old guy who only seems to want to help you are slightly more devious than you thought; he's your grandfather. Yes, he wants your womb so he can be reborn eternally. But don't worry, he's not into younger women.
Riccardo's boss fight seems to be the game apologising; it makes great use of Hewie, requiring Fiona and hewie to work properly. To win, you need Fiona to destroy barriers around the top of the tower (which looks gorgeous, by the way) and then you need Hewie to sic Riccardo until he lands on the ground hundreds of floors down. I think you find his body later.
The last stage is the biggest let down. The third stage's theme of "corroded lab of a sex predator" has been abandoned for a bland cave system.
Then the old guy ankle-nibbles has turned...
FABULOUS
This is Lorenzo Belli, the mastermind behind the game. He is fabulous.
Until the very end, the game turns into a bland cat-and-mouse game. For the majority of your time in this stage, Lorenzo will be on the ground, and his best attack will be scratching you slightly. Sometimes he can insta-kill you, but only if you would have died too easily anyway.
it replaces the puzzles and charm that made the past three stages to unique; now, you'll notice that he is amazing to grind form. So you make a bunch of firecrackers and beat him up with them for your amusement/. Because he's not scary. Guns are scary; spine crushing barehugs are scary; a sociopath who does not realise the consequences of her violent actions is scary. Getting trapped in an iron maiden is scary. Freaky mutant babies who eat you from the ankle up are scary.
Old people who have fallen off their wheelchair, and who follow you by crawling are not. He's also the weakest enemy in the game, even if he is the most persistent.
This is without a doubt the game's lowest, lacking the personality that has made it a great game until now. Granted, this phase isn't very long; he soon transforms into Mr. FABULOUS as pictures. And eventually, he gets turned on eternal fire.
No, really.
This is a 5 minutes run for your life, in which you are chased by a flaming old guy who will kill you if you so much as breath too loudly near him. It's very tense, very loud, and something of a spot light in the game's currently drab performance.
Yes, the game has thrown the subtely that made it so unique out the window too. You are now being chased by a flaming old guy. Be scared.
And it is scary, but at the same time it feels forced. While those 10 minutes are scary as hell, and if you don't plan everything out exactly, then you certainly won't last long, it seems like the game' making up for lost time.
The ending, however, is extremely satifying, especially if you get the good one. Because your old friend Debi debi Chan unlocks the gate for you after charging at you with garden shears (a home to The First Fear) and then Fiona just kind of leaves, as if she'd been bored at a museum and caught a bus home.. which probably happened.
The game has a lot of post-game content. Costumes, concept art, and of course, Hewie gets the ability to talk in Hard Mode. Both Hewie and Fiona also get a bunch of costumes, like Fiona's oh so memetic "Illegal in some States" dominatrix outfit and Hewie's "plushi" outfit, which completely sucks the horror out of the game in exchange for invincibility. Which is totally worth it. And for plushy dog.
All in all, the game is stupid, narmy fun, while also being able to be absoloutely terrifying and utterly cringe-inducing on purpose, with great characters and plot and beautiful environments. Haunting Ground is certainly a game worht picking up, renting or otherwise, perhaps simply because of that odd, charming, terrifying personality that got it so famous in the first place.
