Tag: Horror

Source of Madness PS5 (Review)

As always with these things,a huge shout out to the ladies and gentlemen at Thundeful Publishing and Thundeful group as well as everyone working with them to hook me up with a copy of this one. It is always greatly appreciated.

Did you ever want to play a game that would basically tell you how the story, the basics on how to play then just let you go? No I don’t mean any of the souls games, I mean one that is easy to just pick up and play without someone screaming “git good” when you get frustrated.

Enter Source of Madness, a side scrolling rouge lite where you WILL die,and that’s ok. You will start out with a bit of lore, escaping to a sort of keep after picking a character and setting out into the Loam Lands. In true Lovecraft style you will collect blood to level up. Each run ends when you die. Any money you make and items you find are gone, but the blood you make can then be used to unlock new skills or items.

With your character dead you will pick from a group of new randomly generated characters and set of once again into the procedurally generated world for the next run.

The combat in game is a lot like the graphics, simplistic yet effective. The visuals are the perfect mix of spooky and creepy while not being so dark things are hard to see which is an issue I think to many games try to do. It’s the creatures here that take center stage. You never know if something with far to many arms is going to come out of that rustic building and kill you or if a blog of tentacles is going to come sliding down the next hill.

The combat itself is simply a matter of dashing around and attacking with the appropriate buttons, usually one of the trigger buttons. This sounds easy but it is far from. The timing of it means a lot and messing that up can mean losing a nice chunk of health you can’t really afford to lose.

The game takes some time to get used to,with each run teaching you a little more and helping you get a little further into the game itself and it’s mechanics. I’ve probably got about a dozen hours in and lost about as many characters and I am still figuring things out,and that to me makes this beautiful game worth playing. This one is a great 8/10 and at it’s price point is a must play for fans of rouge lites or side scrollers. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Devil’s Whispers, By Lucas Hault

First and foremost, I don’t do a lot of book reviews but TkPublishing asked me to take a look at this one and as a gothic horror book, it seemed like something I would enjoy. Plus we all know how much a love an up and comer in anything. So huge shout out to both of them for hooking me up with this.

We start out like many books, with our main man Gerard Woodward being summoned to an old castle. Our new British friend wasted no time getting settled into his room and doing what the average person would do, second-guessing his life decisions.

The life decision at this point is not listening to his wife and coming to this castle that he is now clearly locked into. Things aren’t exactly normal back home in London where he left his wife, I will however leave that for you to figure out as it is quite interesting.

Obviously, as you guys know I don’t like to spoil too much about the story of these things and that will be more true here than normal so I will talk more about the style of writing here. If you remember those old classic horror books written in the time period style of old letters and journal writings. This is a lot like that, and it is extremely well done. You can read this and feel the picture Hault paints with his pen.

All that being said there is a sort of mystery to the whole thing, and that mystery is would it be better to classify this book as an homage to Dracula or more of a retelling. I don’t mean this as an insult, I feel like it is very well done in fact. The story doesn’t revolve around a simple vampire and it isn’t as simple as silly name changes in a quick cash grab. There was time and effort and love put into this novel and I truly think fans of the classic monster tails by the likes of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelly will find a lot to like here.

If you are interested in checking out The Devil’s Whispers, and I recommend you do, you can pick up a copy here.

Sunshine Manor Out today on Steam!

Today developer Fossil Games is pleased to announce that Camp Sunshine’s prequel, Sunshine Manor, is out now on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux. To celebrate – a release trailer that alludes to the terrors within the walls of the spooky house..

It’s Halloween 1980, the front doors are open so step inside the old Aitken House and guide Ada on her journey through both the human world and the terrifying demon realm. Find out what events unfurled that led to the Camp Sunshine massacre in 1986.

Game Features



A dark, involved and outright weird story that builds to the events of Camp Sunshine!

Beautiful hand-drawn 8 bit-esque pixel art

Inspired by classic horror movies of the 1980s and beyond.

A game of cat and mouse where the nefarious Shadow Man could be waiting for you around any corner.

An original 1hr 22m soundtrack written exclusively for the game

Chernobylite (PS4 Review)

As always a huge shout out to the people over at The Farm 51 for hooking me up with a revised copy of this one. Always fun to get to play a new release.

Now I am just going to give you a quick version of what I am about to tell you for those that just want to know. If you like survival games, a strong story, and an interest in history you can stop reading and just go pick this one up. You have my blessing. For a longer version, keep reading.

The game itself is an interesting semi open world survival game, and this I thought would be kind of bad but it turns out I enjoyed it. You can pick missions for yourself and your team, yes your team. They will go off on their missions, and they may not come back if you send them off on something beyond their abilities. You will then leave your base area and hunt for food, supplies,ammo or things to help build things at your base.

These outings take place during the day, and can be simple things like finding a cache of medicine or food or more complex, like not getting murdered by enemies as you progress the plot. You are free to take your time as you explore and build traps or small outpost I’m the world but this may not always be the best idea. See the world has a habit of changing with more enemies and radiation and such just showing up.

This isn’t really the only part of the game however, when you aren’t in missions you will be at the base where you have a pretty high level of control over what gets built and where, from work benches, to random chairs and couches for your people to be more comfortable in. You can even build walls for your people to have some privacy while they sleep, and yes these things will matter. People tend to like being comfortable and not sleeping on floors.

You will also need to make sure everyone has food and medical supplies, unfed people are miserable people and they will leave you. Supplies are not infinite either as every time you play the location of things and supplies seem to change, some days you may find plenty of ammo for your revolver and herbs. Other days finding 2 or 3 rounds will feel like a blessing. Stealth is definitely the preferred option in this game,and having 100 rounds does not mean turning the game into the wild west is a great idea.

The game obviously isn’t perfect. It doesn’t always give the best guidance on what to be doing and I did notice some significant drop in frame rate here and there. The very first time I played I did also have to reload a previous save to fix a glitch, but it was a one time thing that I could not duplicate after multiple attempts.

The game is beautiful however and it has moments of pure creepiness that I haven’t experienced since playing The Forest and having cannibals screaming from trees when I couldn’t see them at night. The sound is also spectacular. Very few games at this price point ($30) offers this much value in my opinion. This game at this price is an 8/10 and should not be missed by survival fans. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Flies Inside Pre-order

The time has come my friends, our very own @torstenvblog and his first book, The Flies Inside is now live for pre-order.

https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-flies-inside-torsten-v/1138929829?ean=9780578858821

For $10 you can support a new author and check out his first book, in paper back. Stay tuned for my review, and possibly an interview. Thank you for the continued support. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

World War Z GOTY (PS4 Review)

The first thing is first, as always. Huge thank you to both Saber Interactive for hooking me up with not one but two review codes so I could review this one and enjoy the multiplayer and my daughter, Kaitlin for joining me on this adventure in her free time. I couldn’t have given this game the review it deserves without her.

The GOTY Edition of World War Z contains the base game along with the new Marseille missions in France. There are also so premium weapons and character skins included, and a ton of content that has released since its initial launch. There is also cross-play between PC and Xbox. There is also a free update to come later on this year with a new character class and abilities and so much more I haven’t even gotten into yet, mostly because I know you guys are here for the gameplay and to see if I think this is worth buying.

Graphically the game looks great. There is a certain joy to watching a zombies head pop off when you get that perfect shot and the environments just fit perfectly to an apocalyptic hellscape. As you walk around wondering which people are zombies and which are just bodies lying around the lights from fires just dance across the street nicely. That isn’t to say they are perfect. When the pile on each other in hordes, for example, they all sort of blend in together then just sort of splitting apart as you kill them, it doesn’t look bad and I understand what they were going for I just didn’t care for it.

The sound also did leave something to be desired, it wasn’t bad by any means it just wasn’t anything to write home about. The guns and zombies sound nice, but they are all pretty standard. I am however ok with that because let’s be honest, nobody is playing this game or games like to it to see beautiful graphics and hear amazing movie quality sounds. We play them for fun.

Now the fun is the most important factor here, and I don’t say this lightly. If you enjoyed Left 4 Dead, you will probably enjoy this one. There is a very real comparison here. It has less humor but the concept is the same. Four people start in one spot with a general set of weapons, you will move through a level shooting zombie finding new weapons as you go and fight a horde occasionally. There are special zombies like screamers and some that explode or will charge you that you will also have to deal with.

The huge difference is the class system. Each class has a different set of abilities such as starting with claymore mines or medkits. As you level those classes up you will get new abilities and you will level up your weapons which you will pick from to start with or find throughout each level. That is a big part of where the replay value of this game comes from, just messing around with your friends killing zombies, and leveling up the different classes.

This game for me is all about the multiplayer, The PVP wasn’t much fun for me and I rarely played it, I didn’t enjoy it at all but the PVE took me back to a time I would stay up late with friends and my girlfriend, shoot zombies, drink beer (I was 25 don’t get any idea kids) and just let all of likes problems just drink away for awhile. For me, this is worth buying and is a solid 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Carriers

Carriers is an odd movie for me. It is a movie about a sort of plague illness that spreads across the world that is quite contagious but seems to only be in certain situations. If you get blood on you from a carrier or such you can catch it, but not being near someone with it. But everyone is wearing masks as if you can get it from the air.

The movie itself is about a couple and a brother and a random girl they never really explain very well as to why she is there. They are attempting to get to an old beach house the two brothers used to vacation at. Chris Pine, the oldest brother, plays the role of the hard headed jerk that does what needs to be done very well. In fact they all do.

As the movie goes on they slowly turn on each other, which is done in a rather interesting way. The issue really is much of the story is pretty much filled with weird holes that easily could have been filled. Like where did the 4th member of the group come from and why? It’s never explained very well. And if Pines character worked buring people with the plague how did he never get it if the thing was so easy to get? Any why the mask if you can’t get it that way?

The movie was fun, but far from great. Go check it out but keep expectations low.best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Anna And The Apocalypse (2017)

Anna and the Apocalypse is a weird movie. I went into it thinking it was just a Christmas horror comedy and ended up watching a musical. At first, this annoyed me but admittedly the songs are kind of catchy.

The story is about a girl, Anna of course, and her high school friends just going about their lives as normal. Then one morning, boom zombie apocalypse. They will have to fight their way through town and meet up at a bowling alley then to the local high school in order to be escorted to safety.

The story is pretty basically honestly, but as a musical, the story is there to just give them a reason to sing and it serves its purpose well. The songs are catchy and if you are into musicals (admittedly I am not) are easy to sing along with.

The movie is fun and you should absolutely check it out, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dead House (2014)

I put off watching Dead House for what seems like forever because it just seemed like a silly movie. Thieves break into a house only to discover hidden in the basement is a house of the dead. A silly but fun movie it seemed like admittedly.

I was so damn wrong and should have avoided this damn movie for longer. First, the thieves are essentially demented rapist that film it and stop to steal money from a safe for about 10 seconds to move the plot along. It is pretty graphic, so if you are easily upset or bothered by such things don’t watch it and definitely not around children.

The zombie portion doesn’t even show up until the last 20 minutes or so and even that seemed to be there for no other reason than to give us a twist ending and some shock value. Truthfully everything done in this movie is done somewhere else and it is done better. The movie has no real redeeming qualities outside of the acting being pretty well done on all parts. If you are morbidly curious feel free to give it a watch, aside from that skip this burning heap. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cooties (2014)

Cooties is a 2014 horror-comedy about a school and some teachers that have to deal with Cooties, which are basically zombies. Sort of. You see this started with some chicken nuggets that made a little girl sick. She, in turn, bit another kid who bit another. This keeps going until everyone has cooties. Why is it called cooties? Well, it only turns people that haven’t hit puberty yet.

The movie is actually pretty funny to me, but admittedly many people won’t like it for one very big reason. All the zombies are kids, which means all the adults are beating kids to death. You will later discover in the movie it is a worldwide thing since of course, it is a huge chicken nugget factory.

None of this bothered me of course since it is just a movie and a comedy, and the love story in there wasn’t front and center but just kind of tacked on in a fun way. This is pretty much a B movie with some real celebrities in it which I am ok with it. Go check this one out on Hulu, but just know it isn’t a great movie it is just silly and tasteless. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.