Illbleed is many things.
Objectively, Illbleed is one of the worst games ever created. It's cheesy, idiotic, a good idea went to waste. It's imbalanced, easily broken, badly written, and it flopped so hard that deaf people everywhere filed for noise pollution.
Subjectively, Illbleed is one of the best games ever. It's unique, worth a play, novel, and you play as Nancy Drew. Sort of; it's something definitively Japanese, and something only Japan could do well.
And in the end, Illbleed is genius.
Illbleed starts with Eriko Christy, giving a "pissing off" speech to her highschool with an audience of 0, but talks anyway. She talks about how she's emotionless and stuff because her father was an asshole who tried out homemade traps on her. Good way to start a story: Child abuse.
Then her stupid friends; Michelle - psychic wannabe, Randy - RIGHT ON, and Kevin - duuuur, all get a pass to Illbleed, a horror park with supposedly cheesy scares and crappy puppets. They go, as it very blatantly says on it, "btw we'll giv u $100m if u can make it to end xx" on the ticket or something. I don't know, these kids are stupid. Then they walk into a wall.
A few days pass, and Eriko's worried. As the only intelligent character in this piece of shit, she goes to the park to find her. Micheal Reynold's (or is it Reynolds's?) Virtual Horror Land, Illbleed.
So, the game works like this:
The level hub of the game is the park itself: It's got stores, which sell both character upgrades, what you should spend the bulk of your special items and money on, which gives the game a suprising RPG feel - and normal, run of the mill items, like hentai, salads and nitroglycerin (for chewing. Of course for chewing), all of which have an effect on the character. And characters themselves, in case you missed them, you thick shit.
Then you go to the first level: Banballow's Mansion. The story is:
Mr. Banballow, a jolly, rich and handsome guy who owns a youth hostel is turned into a pus-oozing monster after almost being burnt to death by a bunch of irresponsible, firework toting teenagers who killed his son.
They died because they went to play baseball. In the basement. Now, Banballow wanders around his mansion, killing anyone who steps inside, with a blowtorch.
The goal: Beat the frightened, delusional and burnt-up old man with his dead son's baseball bat, and we'll give you $30,000. See how this game is genius.
Now, onto what makes this game so weird, yet brilliant: This game is a parody, yet blatant homage to, jumpscare-tastic, B-movie horrors, obviously.. I mean, everything is so horrible - the voice acting, the art, the story - all on purpose, that this is the only possible solution.
You first walk onto the mansion's grounds: A sign falls on poor Eriko's face, knocking her leggy 15 year old ass over. Then you get attacked by a mud monster. And a head from a grave. And then a lightbulb. Then you die after being frightened by a school bell.
No enemies, no weapons, not even many items. And you're dead... what happened? You've played Fatal Frame, Clock Tower, Silent Hill... all the big names in survival horror. So, what the fuck happened? Why are you so confused?
That's because you ran into a shit ton of traps. In order to avoid these traps, you need to use the Horror Monitor, a sensitive piece of equipment that lets you scout out traps, enemies and items in a room, but only after draining your own adrenaline, because you're too lazy to put batteries in.
How do you recover adrenaline? Put using an entire drip. No, you do not throth at the mouth, twitch, and have a heart attack.. your adrenaline goes up, allowing you to detect more traps, which in turn give you some in return. Also, traps can do some pretty nasty stuff to you, and you can die in the following ways:
Shock Death: Heart rate exceeds 250
Blood-Loss Death: Bleeding exceeds 100
Exhaustion Death: Energy hits 0. The "standard" way to die.
Heart Stop: Heart rate hits 0. Pretty obvious.
So, there are four ways to very easily die, everything's trying to kill you, you have a limited amount of items - which you cannot use in battles - and for a while, you don't have a weapon. No running, no hiding, and your good items gotten in stages are wiped for the next. What the fuck do you do?
Easy. You take it slow. Granted, this stilts the game's pace a little, but the game actually manages to make it pretty scary. You have four senses: Sight, smell, touch, and sixth sense. Sight, smell and touch all blip when there's a trap around. For example, if there's a loose electrical wire hanging around, sight will blip, if there's carbon monoxide being vented into the room, smell will blip, and if there's an item or enemy around, sixth sense will blip, ect, ect.
So, you have a setup for a pretty tense, very interesting game.
So how did they fuck it up so badly?
Yet how did they make one of the best games of all time?
So, each level has a gimmick. The first's is fire, mazes, and actually being pretty good, along with easing the player into the concepts of traps, bleeding, heart rates and status effects. The second's is throwing all of that away and being shit (you also kill a huge worm, followed by the line "Let's go back to hell, Rachel! Thank you so much!"). The third's is all about combat, but it also focuses on traps. It's pretty damn scary. The fourth's is very trap heavy. The fifth's is a murder mystery that is actually real, and the sixth's is...
A Toy Story parody?
And holy fuck, is this game dumb. Yet holy fuck is this game amazing. I mean, this game still has a very strong following, especially after the creator's death (with a sequel in the works) and... just...
Killerman is Killerman!
No, but, seriously.
So, reasons to play this game:
It's weird
it's fun
it's surprisingly competent
it's pure genius
it's got an oddly good idea that needs to be looked into more in modern games
holy fuck, if it weird
It's bad. I mean, really. But it's so fucking bad that a kind of brilliance sweeps into it. The holy character: "om". This game is "om". The holy om. Because it's so bad.
Such lines as "JIMME JIMEE JIMEE JIMEE JIEE JIMEEE", "Let's go back to hell!", "Killerman is Killerman!", and this conversation:
Player: CAUGHAWWAA, GYUUAAAGHAYAWW
Character: You must be one of those part timers...
Reasons not to play this game:
Any reason you wouldn't disembowel yourself with a pairing fork. But you still should. Play the game, I mean.
Objectively, Illbleed is one of the worst games ever created. It's cheesy, idiotic, a good idea went to waste. It's imbalanced, easily broken, badly written, and it flopped so hard that deaf people everywhere filed for noise pollution.
Subjectively, Illbleed is one of the best games ever. It's unique, worth a play, novel, and you play as Nancy Drew. Sort of; it's something definitively Japanese, and something only Japan could do well.
And in the end, Illbleed is genius.
Illbleed starts with Eriko Christy, giving a "pissing off" speech to her highschool with an audience of 0, but talks anyway. She talks about how she's emotionless and stuff because her father was an asshole who tried out homemade traps on her. Good way to start a story: Child abuse.
Then her stupid friends; Michelle - psychic wannabe, Randy - RIGHT ON, and Kevin - duuuur, all get a pass to Illbleed, a horror park with supposedly cheesy scares and crappy puppets. They go, as it very blatantly says on it, "btw we'll giv u $100m if u can make it to end xx" on the ticket or something. I don't know, these kids are stupid. Then they walk into a wall.
A few days pass, and Eriko's worried. As the only intelligent character in this piece of shit, she goes to the park to find her. Micheal Reynold's (or is it Reynolds's?) Virtual Horror Land, Illbleed.
So, the game works like this:
The level hub of the game is the park itself: It's got stores, which sell both character upgrades, what you should spend the bulk of your special items and money on, which gives the game a suprising RPG feel - and normal, run of the mill items, like hentai, salads and nitroglycerin (for chewing. Of course for chewing), all of which have an effect on the character. And characters themselves, in case you missed them, you thick shit.
Then you go to the first level: Banballow's Mansion. The story is:
Mr. Banballow, a jolly, rich and handsome guy who owns a youth hostel is turned into a pus-oozing monster after almost being burnt to death by a bunch of irresponsible, firework toting teenagers who killed his son.
They died because they went to play baseball. In the basement. Now, Banballow wanders around his mansion, killing anyone who steps inside, with a blowtorch.
The goal: Beat the frightened, delusional and burnt-up old man with his dead son's baseball bat, and we'll give you $30,000. See how this game is genius.
Now, onto what makes this game so weird, yet brilliant: This game is a parody, yet blatant homage to, jumpscare-tastic, B-movie horrors, obviously.. I mean, everything is so horrible - the voice acting, the art, the story - all on purpose, that this is the only possible solution.
You first walk onto the mansion's grounds: A sign falls on poor Eriko's face, knocking her leggy 15 year old ass over. Then you get attacked by a mud monster. And a head from a grave. And then a lightbulb. Then you die after being frightened by a school bell.
No enemies, no weapons, not even many items. And you're dead... what happened? You've played Fatal Frame, Clock Tower, Silent Hill... all the big names in survival horror. So, what the fuck happened? Why are you so confused?
That's because you ran into a shit ton of traps. In order to avoid these traps, you need to use the Horror Monitor, a sensitive piece of equipment that lets you scout out traps, enemies and items in a room, but only after draining your own adrenaline, because you're too lazy to put batteries in.
How do you recover adrenaline? Put using an entire drip. No, you do not throth at the mouth, twitch, and have a heart attack.. your adrenaline goes up, allowing you to detect more traps, which in turn give you some in return. Also, traps can do some pretty nasty stuff to you, and you can die in the following ways:
Shock Death: Heart rate exceeds 250
Blood-Loss Death: Bleeding exceeds 100
Exhaustion Death: Energy hits 0. The "standard" way to die.
Heart Stop: Heart rate hits 0. Pretty obvious.
So, there are four ways to very easily die, everything's trying to kill you, you have a limited amount of items - which you cannot use in battles - and for a while, you don't have a weapon. No running, no hiding, and your good items gotten in stages are wiped for the next. What the fuck do you do?
Easy. You take it slow. Granted, this stilts the game's pace a little, but the game actually manages to make it pretty scary. You have four senses: Sight, smell, touch, and sixth sense. Sight, smell and touch all blip when there's a trap around. For example, if there's a loose electrical wire hanging around, sight will blip, if there's carbon monoxide being vented into the room, smell will blip, and if there's an item or enemy around, sixth sense will blip, ect, ect.
So, you have a setup for a pretty tense, very interesting game.
So how did they fuck it up so badly?
Yet how did they make one of the best games of all time?
So, each level has a gimmick. The first's is fire, mazes, and actually being pretty good, along with easing the player into the concepts of traps, bleeding, heart rates and status effects. The second's is throwing all of that away and being shit (you also kill a huge worm, followed by the line "Let's go back to hell, Rachel! Thank you so much!"). The third's is all about combat, but it also focuses on traps. It's pretty damn scary. The fourth's is very trap heavy. The fifth's is a murder mystery that is actually real, and the sixth's is...
A Toy Story parody?
And holy fuck, is this game dumb. Yet holy fuck is this game amazing. I mean, this game still has a very strong following, especially after the creator's death (with a sequel in the works) and... just...
Killerman is Killerman!
No, but, seriously.
So, reasons to play this game:
It's weird
it's fun
it's surprisingly competent
it's pure genius
it's got an oddly good idea that needs to be looked into more in modern games
holy fuck, if it weird
It's bad. I mean, really. But it's so fucking bad that a kind of brilliance sweeps into it. The holy character: "om". This game is "om". The holy om. Because it's so bad.
Such lines as "JIMME JIMEE JIMEE JIMEE JIEE JIMEEE", "Let's go back to hell!", "Killerman is Killerman!", and this conversation:
Player: CAUGHAWWAA, GYUUAAAGHAYAWW
Character: You must be one of those part timers...
Reasons not to play this game:
Any reason you wouldn't disembowel yourself with a pairing fork. But you still should. Play the game, I mean.
