Category: Horror

Alan Wake remastered

Fear is an interesting thing. As subjective as fear can be, some fears are instilled in everyone as part of our make-up, none other than the fear of the dark…

Alan Wake is a bestselling crime author in a rut with the dreaded writer’s block. Alan and his wife go to the sleepy woodland town of Bright Falls for a vacation at the picturesque lakeside cabin. Everything seems fine until Alice disappears and Alan is thrust into the dark woods where the very shadows themselves have taken over the townsfolk and turned them murderous. Alan’s only weapon is the safe haven of light. Day by day as Alan’s reality crumbles and the Dark Presence grows stronger, its up to Alan and a few found friends to battle the darkness and save Alice.

For a game that’s roughly 15 years old, this game does a damn good job of setting up an intense atmosphere. The game uses darkness, light, and sound to keep you on edge all the way through to the end. The story is very intriguing and has a cool King vibe I really enjoyed. The gameplay is solid but the dodge mechanic is a bit funky at times so definitely keep that in mind. If you like the band Poets of the Fall like I do, you’ll get a treat as they have music in game which is pretty cool. The game gives you just enough ammo and supplies to get through but you do have to conserve and be creative which I appreciate. The game does show its age at times and there’s parts I hated, namely the damn “kidnapper” escort mission but the game keeps you invested. The only other bummer I got is that the ending is anti-climatic from a gameplay perspective but you will want more. I can’t wait to play Control, which overlaps, and play 2. I highly recommend checking it out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

High on Life

So you’re on the verge of adulthood, sitting on your ass gaming while your sister gets baked when the aliens come. Next thing you know you find a talking gun, a crippled alien bounty hunter and before you know it you’re out in the cosmos blasting through an intergalactic cartel of aliens who what to ingest humans, the ultimate high.

Ok, so the timing of release bit this surprisingly fun sci-fi FPS platformer in the ass. It might have been announced during the height of Rick and Morty’s astronomical popularity, being written and voiced by the creators of the hit shit, but by the time it was released, Justin Rowland delivered the deathblow on a dwindling empire. Hell, considering he voices Kenny, your first gun and a main character of the game (exactly as he voiced Morty at that) maybe enough to turn you off. If Rowland’s involvement or Morty’s constant chatter is more you can handle, I get it.

Beside the unpleasantness of Rowland’s involvement and hearing Morty’s voice squawking at you nonstop, you’re going to want to scream at the insufferable humor in the early game. If you’re fan of season 4 of RnM and up, it might not bother you but I found the insistent swearing and crude humor annoying. You can cut weapon chatter in the settings thankfully and as the game goes on, it gets much more tolerable and actually funny and engaging.

The game is actually pretty fun once you get your hands on your second talking gun. Every gun is a living alien that has 2 firing modes that are fun and unique. The graphics are pretty eye-catching and the music has a nice, retro sci-fi kinda feel to it that I really enjoyed. Despite becoming a bounty hunter, the game remains tight without many side missions, instead opting for many collectibles. The boss battles are fun and quirky with good rewards. The game is a fairly quick play at roughly 8-10 hours which suits it just fine. In the end, it’s a pretty solid game once you get past the cringy humor that tries shoving itself down your throat the first hour or two. I think it’s worth a try. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday,Chupacabra

Chupacabra, of which there is, despite popular belief, more than one, lives across North and South America. The name literal means goat sucker in Spanish and is called this because of how they hunt and kill animals, which would be predominatly farm animals. They do this the same way as vampires, by attacking and sucking the blood of creatures.

A number of them have been supposedly found, but they are always later discovered to be a known animal, usually a coyote with mange or something similar.

That being said, it would be wild of some guy on a blog to say it doesn’t exist. I have clearly not traveled the continents doing research or memorized any sort of animal codex and cross-referenced anything. It does happen to be one of the few cryptids that I do believe has been pretty debunked at this point. Either way, it is a rather interesting one. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Near Dark

So Caleb is a good-looking country guy working on his dad’s farm with his little brother, living the typical boring farmhand life. When he and a buddy go into the city looking for chicks, beer, and a good time, Caleb finds it. Mae is hot, quirky, and likes Caleb a lot…so much she nearly bites his throat out getting some hanky panky. Understandably Caleb freaks out and heads back home, bleeding out and feeling his skin burn the closer morning comes. Before he can reach his home, he’s snatched by a gang layered in thick blankets who speed off with Caleb in an RV with all blacked out windows. Odd. Turns out Mae is part of a nomadic gang of anarchist vampires, feeding and raising hell by night while laying low come dawn. Caleb is drawn between his budding love for Mae and the comradery he begins slowly forging with the maniacs but is he willing to destroy his soul for love and immortality?

Ok, this movie is a gem and I’m utterly pissed its a pain in the ass to find. There’s some legal rights dispute bullshit with it so finding it physically is going to cost you a hell of a penny, and streaming is a headache. I found it on Tubi- once- after trying for over a decade to track it down.

If you loved Aliens the gang will look extremely familiar; Henrickson, Goldstein, and Paxton did Near Dark right after Aliens actually. Bill Paxton (RIP) steals the show as a menacing, hilarious, and awesome villain. The acting all around is great. I love that the movie is a terrific balance between a western and a horror movie. I weirdly found many themes from Twilight as far as Caleb’s pathos when he has to fight the cravings to keep his humanity, just obviously much better and effectively done, reminding me much of Kaneke’s arc in Tokyo Ghoul (season 1) . I do like how they came up with a clever means to a happy, albeit badass ending. In the end, I implore you to go find Near Dark and experience this super underrated, near-forgotten gem for yourselves. May the gaming gods bring you glory Mr Pig Knuckle.

Salem’s Lot (2024)

You know, this is one of those damn movies I never thought would see the light of day (hehe lame vampire pun). It was announced, delayed, then disappeared for a few years before getting dumped on HBO Max like a dead carcass at the slaughterhouse. Years ago I reviewed the novel for Salem’s Lot and since then I’ve read it at least twice and I can say it is a damn good book and a pretty solid vampire tale. While I never saw either mini-series, the trailer for 2024 was enough to make Savior and I at least excited for a flaming dumpster fire. Did we get it?

Sadly no. Salem’s Lot 2024 is not a garbage fire. That’s not to say it’s particularly great or even good. The cast gives decent performances given a pretty crammed script. Much of the soul, the suspense, and characters of the book are crushed, compacted, and repackaged into a forgettable vampire romp. It’s the kind you can forget the same day you watch it which honestly is a shame given how good the book was. The vampires are more like zombies. Barlow isn’t a nightmarish ghoul like in the 79 mini-series but a parody of that memorable design. There’s not even as much gore or hilarious jumpscares as I thought there’d be in the trailer. In the end, read the book or seek out another vamp movie because good or bad, you’ll remember it more than this thing that should’ve stayed in the development grave. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Doctor Strange: The Flight of Bones

Dr. Stephen Strange has overcome some tremendous feats not only as the Sorcerer Supreme, long-time hero, and renowned surgeon. Despite how much he’s overcome, his hands are failing him. While searching for help in man’s medicine, a new magical threat emerges when people begin spontaneously combusting and one of his dear friends becomes wrapped up in a deadly cult at the cause of the deadly pyres. Just another day for the good doctor, eh, true believers?

Ok, so first I gotta say two things about this book: the story itself is incredibly short and the art is the bizarre beauty I love about Strange’s stories. I was disappointed the Flight of Bones story itself is so short because I was getting pretty invested before it just…ends. There are quite a few other shorts in the book that are mostly good, all with different art styles that are wholly unique and eye-catching. When it comes to Marvel, Strange reliably has some of the coolest artwork and designs, and this book is no exception. Being under Marvel Knights, there is some adult imagery that might scare away the younger kids but many of the stories keep to a darker, bordering on horror edge that I love and I wish the MCU would embrace more with Strange. In the end, while not the best Strange story and not something that will make you fall in love with the Sorcerer Supreme ( I highly recommend Dr Strange & Dr Doom: Triumph and Torment ) it’s still worth checking out for some faster reads. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Graveyard Shark

The other day a friend of mine shot me a message and said hey, you need to watch Graveyard Shark on Tubi and he refused to explain why. He does this occasionally and I am never disappointed. The movie is always either a complete train wreck,or a masterpiece,but they are always enjoyable.

  This time,the movie manages to be both. You can guess by the name what this movie is about, a sort of man shark is buried in a cemetery after it is thought to be killed by a fisherman. It turns out it isn’t dead,and now it is killing people in this graveyard.

This is a rubber suit. And I don’t know why it’s a spiked leather jacket

  Now there are some twists and turns and things I absolutely refuse to spoil, but at no point I’m this movie did I know what was going to happen next. The entire plot of the movie from where the shark came from,to how they get rid of it and everything ok between was a rollercoaster ride of what the hell is going on.

I mean all of this in the best way possible, I never wanted to know for example how a mermaid has sex or that Bigfoot was a bottom. I do however know both of these things now. So go,learn these things,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Things Heard & Seen (2021)

Things Heard and Seen starring Amanda Seyfried (Cathrine Claire) and James Norton (George Claire) is a Netflix Horror/Mystery that honestly did not do well with critics, or fans for that matter. I can see why, the story from the start seemed to struggle to understand what it wanted to be.

We start with a family moving from the big city to a small town when George gets a new job at a prestigious school. He isn’t a very spiritual person, unlike Cathrine and the rest of the town who seems to believe in spirits. This is good because their house is haunted, but Cathrine thinks the ghosts aren’t bad or evil.

The movie quickly goes from being a horror movie to really more of a mystery drama as the marriage quickly devolves into George keeping all sorts of secrets from Cathrine, such as the house they got such a great deal on was the site of a brutal murder-suicide. The spirit in the home is trying to protect Cathrine from what it views as a horrible husband.

Honestly from the bit I have told you, you can probably guess the rest of the movie. I won’t spoil it for you obviously but as much as I enjoy Amanda Seyfrieds work this isn’t one of her better movies. This isn’t a slight on the acting in this movie, in fact, the chemistry between them made the movie worth watching. What should have been a terrible movie turned into a decent movie just because of Amanda and James. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Fisherman

Grief is a terrible thing everyone needs to overcome in their lives. For widower, Abe, fishing is his great release. After losing his wife, fishing helped him get his life back on track. When his coworker, Dan, goes through an unimaginable tragedy, Abe extends a hand of friendship and offers to fish with him. While a quiet friendship blooms between the widowed men, Abe can’t help but see Dan drowning in despair…until they stop for breakfast on a rainy morning, going towards a spot Abe never heard of that Dan seems all too eager to fish at. Almost obsessively so. During this breakfast, they are treated to a folktale of the river, dark magic, the impossible, and Der Fischer who may have opened the gates between life and death. Desperately the men are on a course that might not just cost them their lives, but also their souls as Dan is willing to sacrifice it all for what he lost? Will Abe make the same choice?

So immediately when reading this I thought of a more Lovecraftian take on Pet Sematary . In many ways, I can see it but Langan weaves a pretty solid story telling the folktale of Der Fischer in between the main story. His writing story is very easy to get into and flowed very smoothly to me. Some will get put off by the story within a story aspect of the novel but he neatly pulls it off and neither story feels overstayed. I like his depictions of Dan’s rising mania and Abe’s internal battle against the abominations they face. I found myself wanting to know more about what Der Fischer unleashed and got to see more horrors from the other world. In the end, if you liked Pet Sematary and wished there was Lovecraft in it or wanted to get into cosmic horror but wanted something more modern, the Fisherman is a quick, well-written read I’d recommend. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mary: An Awakening of Terror

Mary is a nobody in every sense of the word. Banking on the dreaded 5-0 and wading into menopause, alone in the world except for her “loved ones” (tiny little porcelain figurines she talks to, her life turns upside down once she loses her job. A job that barely pays her enough to get by as is. A sliver lining comes when her loathsome, dying aunt Nadine calls begging for help. After pissing off Mary’s cousin, Nadine is alone and unable to care for herself. Mary is soon left to journey from New York to the eerie desert town where she grew up. Returning home resurfaces not only her repressed hatred for her crass, despicable aunt by the layers of trauma she spent her life hiding as well as what might be the secrets of the town itself? With bodies piling up, visions playing Mary, and an obsession with a hospital that had been converted from an infamous serial killer’s home, the question becomes who and what is Mary?

So I read this book for my book club, going in completely fresh. I knew nothing about the book or author and was even kind of surprised it came out in 2022. As someone who sucks at socializing, suffers from a host of mental health issues, and is just awkward as hell, I felt for Mary. I found her to almost be an updated Carrie, someone shy, frumpy and pathetically beaten down who just wanted to matter. This story takes a lot of crazy ass turns from being a ghost story, to a psychological thriller, to some bizarre Midsommar levels of WTF. The book deserves to be experienced because it is fun as hell trying to figure out where its going. However fun that particular aspect is, it causes some issues towards the end. A character I hated got a half-assed redemption and the ultimate conclusion, while being fun and over-the-top gory, didn’t really satisfy me. The ending couple of chapters felt unnecessarily open-ended, but given how weird of a ride this story was, I can’t tell you if a sequel would work.

In the end, I enjoyed this book a lot but I didn’t love it. It’s very well written and really engaging but the ending as well as some plot choices fumble it from being great. Absolutely a good read worth checking out if you want a weirder kind of horror book. May the gaming gods bring you glory.