Horror – Page 10 – Savior Gaming

The Playground

Hey kids, have you ever heard of splatterpunk? Have you ever watched Willy Wonka and wished there was Saw in it? Well, Aaron Beauregard has you covered. Before I begin, the cover of this book tells you exactly what you’re getting into. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, fuck that, here’s a good exception to the rule. This book is gnarly so if you have a weak stomach and the idea of children dying triggers you at all as well as some really, really WTF sexual stuff involving poop at one point, this book is absolutely not for you.

3 low-income families receive the chance of a lifetime from the reclusive billionaire and philanthropist, Geraldine Borden. She and her adopted son, Rock, have invited the families with their total 8 children to come and test some new state-of-the-art playground equipment in exchange for $3,000 per family. Not a bad deal, right? The parents even get to relax in their own private theater and monitor their children at play…until things go violently wrong. Ambushed by ravenous dogs, the children are chased through a razor blade-laced chute to a dungeonous series of macabre games where survival is the only reward. The parents, captive in places, are forced to watch there beloved children fight not only the horrific games but also themselves as Geraldine’s twisted games unfold…

Holy shit this book gave me whiplash. Is it a fun read? Hell no! Is it an exciting read I literally couldn’t put down? I really couldn’t. The kids are the superstars of the story and a lot of praise to Beauregard for writing thoughtful, authentic children instead of angelic Hollywood kind of kids. I felt for quite a few of them on their reactions and grisly fates while also cheering when the villain of the eight gets his just deserts. The games are eerie and pretty imaginative with some incredibly disturbing outcomes. I like that Geraldine is in no way a sympathetic or redeemable villain in a modern world of tragic villains. Rock is a really tragic character and his redemption at the end is well-earned. The flaw in the book is the parent sections which do drag the pacing down. The book is organized into 3 POVs: the kids, the parents, and Geraldine. The parents are literally locked in place and most of their sections revolve around reacting to what just happened to their kids. It makes the pacing a bit bumpy, especially around the middle.

So in the end I really enjoyed the book, though all be damned if I didn’t need a hot shower and a hug after. No, there’s no happy ending and yes this book is depressing and horrific but the ending lands and is self-contained which is cool. It’s honestly well worth a read and well written if you can get past the grotestuque subject matter. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blood Meridan

What do you think of when you hear about the Old West? Cowboys, Indians, covered wagons, and dusty saloons where a shootout is a shot of whiskey and a whore away? John Wayne? Clint Eastwood? John Marsten? Well, like most people I did too. I heard many tales that this novel was one of the darkest, if not the darkest westerns ever written with one of the most fascinating villains in literature. Does it hold up to the claims?

The story begins with a young runaway referred to as The Kid who finds his way into the Glanton Gang, a crew of scalp hunters roaming across the west near Texas and Mexico in the 1850s. Normally I’d go deeper into the story but Blood Meridian doesn’t have much of a coventional plot. Much of the book is an experience in haunting philoshy and depravity. For real, this book is grim as hell so if you are easily triggered by racism, violence to people or animals, gore, or rape stay away from this book.

Cormac McCarthy (Rest in Peace) beautifully illustrates a hellish depiction of the Old West and the horrors of man left his own devices. There is some truly horrifying imagery and the way the book is written, I felt strained as the gang does getting worn down after dozens of bloody raids and losses in a unforgiving desert. Could this be a second hand horror story? I can see it in the way Dante’s Inferno could be seen that way. I really like that the Kid is not a good kid corrupted by the debauchery or even has anything close to a redemption- nope- he’s just as cutthroat and ruthless as Glanton and the rest. The standout, the man who does steal the show of the book, is the mysterious Judge Holden. He’s a huge, hulking hairless albino man that is almost inhumanly intelligent and depraved more than the rest; the sermons he gives are legendary and off putting as hell. Whenever Holden appears I was instantly griped and I think the praise he receives as a villain is well earned.

So is this book a masterpiece, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. First, this is not written like a modern book. McCarthy is a novelist in the true sense of the word; ten pages in I said “oh shit this is one of them smart people books we don’t get anymore”. He won’t hold your hand. He has a pretty impressive vocabulary. You have to pay attention. One thing I admit irked the shit out of me was that there are no quotation marks but an awful lot of dialogue; do you see why I said pay attention? He also loves giant sentences with little punctuation so if you are trying to rush, things will blend together. The pacing is a double edged sword. 350 pages doesn’t feel like it.

In the end, this book is a masterpiece of dark fiction but be warned it’s not the easiest read and if the book didn’t hit you hard enough, the ending will. May the gaming gods bring you glory and like the Judge, you keep dancing on and on gleefully.

Arachnoquake (2012)

Every so often comes a movie that is so horrifically bad it circles back around to being good. The story is just bad,the concept is ridiculous,the CGI is so bad we can’t even describe it.

This is one of those movies. I honestly don’t have anything good to say about it. The concept is horrible. It takes place in New Orleans and a series of earthquakes release spiders. Not normal spiders, ancient spiders.

These spiders have evolved to live in lava it seems and breathe fire, because of course they did. They start small, and get a bit bigger and bigger and of course there is a huge one they fight eventually.

This movie was probably made for Syfy channel or something honestly, it’s a true horrible B movie. And everyone should watch this train wreck of a movie. I don’t have anything good to say about it. The acting isn’t great,the spiders look ridiculous and the story has been done to death. It is however fun. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Subservience (2024)

Subservience with Megan Fox, Michael Morrone, and Madaline Zima is one of those movies that has it all and nothing at the same time. Want to see good-looking people ( Megan fox and Michale Morrone ) mostly naked? Deal. Want to see Megan Fox brutally beat the breaks off some dude or kill someone? This movie has it. Want to know the potential dangers of AI in a capitalistic world like America? This movie will perfectly demonstrate how eventually robots might steal every job imaginable and how humans will then rebel and wreck them.

The only real issue I had with the movie was as entertaining as it was, which I have said before is all a movie needs to be, is if you saw M3gan Unrated review you basically saw this. The premise is basically the same. An AI-powered robot that is meant to make life easier gets far too attached to someone in the family, in Megan, it was the daughter in Subserviance to the husband, and starts doing insane stuff to make them happy or protect them including killing people. Even the endings are quite similar in many ways. I don’t mean this as an insult, I enjoyed both movies quite a bit, in fact, I recommend watching them both. It would however be quite dishonest to say they aren’t similar. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Just Go With It (2011l

Honestly if you have ever seen any Romantic Comedy with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston you know what this movie was about. Adam got his heart broken by a woman, he does some insane shit for years.

He meets Jennifer Aniston,this time she works for him. He meets a woman he actually loves, he convinces Jen to help him fix the horrible situation he created. Some will they won’t they ensues.

The movie has its funny moments but the real star here is just the overall chemistry that Adam and Jennifer have. I always enjoy their movies together because they just seem to enjoy being around each other. It would be super weird to find out they actually hated each other at this point. Shout out to the kids for playing their parts well. The movie is a must see for romantic comedy fans. It doesn’t break any new ground,but it does the entire genre well. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (PS5 Review)

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead from Stormmind Games and Saber Interactive is primarily a stealth game set in the world of the movie franchise, A Quiet Place. In case the name didn’t somehow give that away. They were also nice enough to hook me up with a copy of this one. Normally I appreciate this, but I extra appreciate this one since “my most middle child” affectionately calls themselves loves to watch these movies with me. So being able to continue on in this world with them was a nice treat.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a very odd enigma in gaming for me. It managed to create a very odd paradox where the game is simultaneously so slow and methodical I found myself bored and not wanting to play, but also on edge watching the phonometer creep its way between the environmental noise and the noise I was making and hoping a monster didn’t just out and eat me.

This is the key component of the game. You can not let the noise you make go higher than the environmental noises or the alien monsters that have taken over the earth will attack you. This requires you to walk very slowly pretty much at all times, and perform every action such as opening doors, drawers, air vents, etc. at a snail’s pace or risk certain death. While this makes for a tense and terrifying experience it doesn’t always make for a fun experience.

None of this makes it a bad game, it does look nice and the horror aspects of it are great. It does feel like You are sneaking through the world trying not to get killed by one of these creatures. And since you are playing as an asthmatic 20 -something year old the decision of hitting your inhaler and possibly alerting the alien or waiting it out can be exhausting.

A Quiet Place won’t be for everyone, it is however a solid title. It won’t be winning any Game of the Year titles for example. At about 10 hours of playtime, however, fans of the series won’t be disappointed with the story of Alex and her adventure to find someplace safe for herself. I give it a 7 of 10, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you gloty.

Twisted Metal season 1

So I know I am a little late here but I FINALLY got around to watching the Twisted Metal show on Peacock. I have to be honest much of what they chose to do I didn’t really expect but I still loved it.

The story is about John Doe, who drives his car Evelyn on delivery jobs. This is known as being a Milk Man. Interestingly in the Games John Doe drives the car Roadkill, but this show takes place prior to the Twisted Metal tournament. The object of season one is to get from New San Francisco to New Chicago and back.

On his journey he will meet a ton of people and groups,some from the game tho many of them have interesting takes to them. For example Mr. Slam earned his name not because he drives a piece of heavy machinery and slams people but because slams his massive dick into fruit as a show for the people in his bar.

There is also an original character named Quiet,and she makes a nice counter character to John because he never shuts up. I really enjoy Stephanie Beatriz alongside Anthony Mackie as they have great chemistry.

Another character that surprised me with how well he was done was Sweet Tooth. Physically he is played by wrestler Samoa Joe and this is done great,his mannerisms truly come off as insane. Will Arnett does an equally great job in the voice. And I truly enjoy that he isn’t psycho just to be psycho,if you pay attention his actions actually make a weird sort of sense.

All in all the 10 episodes are all worth watching and with Season 2 just confirmed to be in the works, it’s a great time to check this out if you haven’t already. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cocaine Cougar Movie Review

Cocaine Cougar is a movie about an escaped Cougar from a lab hyped up on cocaine that kills people. That’s it,that’s the entire movie. It has no other story going on.

I wish I could say something good about this movie. I can’t,but I wish I could. The story doesn’t really exist,at one point I spent about 5 minutes (literally) just watching 2 people walk around a carnival and it would jump back to a red tinted camera moving around to represent the cat walking around. There wasn’t any spoken dialogue for any of it.

In fact in the roughly hour and 5 minute run time, at least 10-15 minutes of it was generic rock music or just people walking around.

The actors looked like the had fun making the movie however,and that’s not something you often see these days. Seriously though, don’t watch this movie. It isn’t fun bad, it’s just horrible. The writing is bad, and has no real redeeming qualities. Shout out to the actors tho for giving it their all still. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Cocaine Bear is a 2023 movie that is yes, legitimately based on a true story, with quite a few liberties taken. For example the part about someone tossing massive amounts of coke out of a plane and a bear getting into it is absolutely true, there is even a museum in Lexington Kentucky where you can go see the bear they found in the woods that ate about 15 million dollars in that beautiful white stuff.

Now on to the movie, which quite honestly is a big old pile of what the fuck did Elizabeth Banks just make. I mean that in the best way possible. This movie is gory, it is funny it has some great acting for a movie that does absolutely nothing to take itself seriously. The bear also looks pretty good for a pretty low budget movie.

The story itself is actually very simple, a plane is going down so a man tosses duffle bags of coke off the plane. He dies when his parachute doesn’t open so a cop that knows what is going on rushed to find the drugs. The cartel that owns the drugs also wants to find the millions in drugs. Unfortunately a young girl and her male friend also skip school to go paint a waterfall after the mother breaks a promise to go paint the before mentioned waterfall.

As the name of the movie implies,a bear eats bags of coke and becomes all coked up and decides to kill everyone in his way of, you guessed it, eating more coke that it is now addicted too.

Small things you get to enjoy is a bear doing a line of coke off a severed leg if you pay attention. A drug dealer constantly complaining about his favorite jersey getting messed up (but not his missing fingers) and possibly the last movie appearance of the late great Ray Liotta. (He did finish filming numerous projects before his death but not all were movies)

The movie is a ton of fun,I won’t say it is a good movie, but God damn it was one of the most fun movies I have seen in years.

New DREDGE PS5 Review

Every so often I get the chance to review an Indy title with an interesting concept that seems a bit off,but I need to know more. Black Salt Games and Team17 were awesome enough to toss me a copy of such a game,and that game is DREDGE.

The idea is simple, and it plays just as simple as it sounds. You are a fisherman, who crashes their boat at a small port town of Greater Marrow. You are quickly given a new boat and told you can pay it off as you help out the town.

You will start by meeting the townspeople, they are nice enough people that are willing to fix your ship and buy your fish along with selling you upgrades and sending you on some fetch quest. Oh and they do give you one small rule, don’t go out at night.

Rule 2: be careful what you try to investigate

The fishing is done with various mini games, timing hitting buttons with the green box, or hitting the circle when it lines up or in the case of dredging up new items making sure you don’t hit certain spots on a spinning sort of dial. It is all very well done.

I did get a little tired of simply fishing during the day and decided I needed to see what would happen if I went out at night, because like anyone else told not to do anything I have to try it out. The darker it got the higher the level of panic level went. The fish also became more rare and sold for more money.

This is when things started to get weird. Eyes began to stare at me from a distance. Red smoke would begin to follow me and attempt to overtake my boat as I would flee not wanting to risk losing my days haul. The longer you spend out at night,the worse these things become until the stop being things that watch you and become things that can end your game prematurely.

The game isn’t perfect,I wasn’t a fan of the inventory system. Imagine the Resident Evil cache case. I often found myself having to toss out fish or wood I needed for upgrades because I needed something else just a little bit more. It made the game more difficult than it needed to be in some aspects when other things were made quite simple and relaxing.

The graphics and sound could have been better I’m sure,but personally I loved them both. I don’t think I will ever forget the first time I heard a foghorn in the night or when an arm of what I can only describe as a kraken crushed my ship because I decided to try to rush back to port in the night.

I know I haven’t mentioned the story and that is intentional. First, you are either going to love it or hate it and second I feel like it should be seen blindly just like I did.

I do however feel comfortable saying this game is a great buy. 8/10 with ease,and at $25 this is one of the better Indy titles on the market.