Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Oct. 18-24 -- A bunch of horror that mostly didn't really work that well for the writers.

By October standards, this wasn't that bad of a week. Seven reviews, but only three people to determine places for. Five of the seven were by Joe, because it's October and Joe owns October. And seems to use it as an excuse to wipe out a bunch of horrible to pretty good Steam titles, clearing off delisted stuff from his hard drive. At least I'd hope he clears off some of those games, as they don't sound worthy of pure-ass ownership.

Also, movies, as always. Too Scared to Scream was an American slasher film that made me think of a giallo made by Americans, as it had some sleaze, a blatant red herring character and just that sort of vibe. Not a classic and does move pretty slowly, but deserves better than to be essentially a forgotten mid-80s flick. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was an okay early 70s zombie movie. I mean, nothing really happened for 3/4 of its running time, but the main character was the sort of glorious asshole I do love in films. And a theatre dude, too, so he was a glorious asshole in gloriously pretentious fashion! The Psychic was a pretty restrained giallo -- especially considering it was directed by Lucio Fulci, who is well-known for his love of over-the-top gory zombie movies. I dug it a lot, as it was all about the mystery and had some good twists and turns. However, it took the giallo abrupt ending a bit too far with the screen going black and credits rolling as what I'd consider to be the finale had a bit farther to go. The Final Terror was a lousy wilderness slasher where way too many people survived. Maniac Cop was a great popcorn flick. Dumb fun, but still really fun with people like Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins and Richard "Shaft" Roundtree all having roles.

As for Joe's non-placers, Locked-in Syndrome and Gridberd kind of felt a bit similar in that they both reviewed lesser-tier, delisted titles that weren't poor or worse for the typical reasons. I mean, you tackled this from different angles, so kudos for not letting the reviews feel the same, but things do come off as a bit similar due to both reviews having the same "There was potential here, but it got squandered by this, this and this!". Moons of Madness had the daunting task of taking a game loaded with annoyances, but still praising it for being different and original, if unfocused due to having a million inspirations. I can see why you felt that way, as over the years, you have played a TON of lousy "escape this place" sorts of games, so something like this would be comparatively neat…but I can't shake the feeling that some of the stuff you described would have me saying "no, just no" and not even noticing those positives. Tamashii was a pretty neat review that also seems to benefit (or "benefit", depending on perspective) from being chaotic and different, including things like "is this a glitch or was it supposed to happen" bits.


THIRD PLACE

Joe's The Music Machine (PC)

It was a bit tough for me to pick between this one and Tamashii as my favorite of yours and then it was tough ordering the three picks. With this one, I think the descriptions you used were great. Both in describing the characters -- such as Quintin's dual mindset of wanting to kill the young protagonist…but thinking her smoking was just wrong -- and in describing things like the (sparse) use of color. My one qualm about this review is that some of those descriptions could have been applied to the gameplay. I know you start at one place and find yourself transported to different places and that these places are creepy and weird, but are you just walking around exploring. Or are there creatures and whatnot trying to kill you? I know there are puzzles, since you mentioned having to do one twice in your "things get repetitive at times" paragraph, but I think this review would have been made stronger with a bit more on how you play instead of mainly being about the unease you'll feel in its world. Even if you wrote about that unease convincingly enough that it carried to the top of your reviews.

SECOND PLACE

EmP's Outpost 13 (PC)

This was a good deconstruction review. Or at least it would have been if you hadn't utterly destroyed this game in Paragraph One. But after that paragraph, you paint a picture that seems really cool. The Thing if you were the thing. In a game looking like Maniac Mansion. You point out ways to kill a person and also that you have to carefully choose when to kill in order to not raise suspicion. And then point out there's only one path and, regardless of your dog's natural or alien-given abilities, you can only kill in the way the game wants you to at any time. In light of that, the whole "the company apparently dumped an incomplete project out to meet a deadline, allegedly planned to release the rest as a second game and never did, so this is all you have" issue doesn't seem so bad simply because I wouldn't want to touch this one based on what I'd read previously.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

dagoss' Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

I really dug this review. I think it's big strength is that it did a great job of describing what made the Iga Castlevanias so enjoyable, while pointing out that all the exploration, organically building a character and other such things just aren't here to any appreciable degree. And that bosses are really tough damage sponges with you not having any viable way to turn the tables other than just being flawless in battle. Kind of like taking a bit of Iga metroidvania and a bit of old-school Castlevania and blending them together in a less-than-satisfying manner. When this game came out, I remember reading reviews by people where the tone seemed to be a bit disappointed by this one in comparison to previous portable CVs, but this review phrased all of that perfectly and really resonated with me enough to give you the nod over some tough competition.


No more RotWs in October for me this year! Even if my week doing it wasn't really that bad. Horror-themed reviews can be fun to read, even if the games weren't fun for the reviewer to play. Like many of these seemed to be.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

Thanks for the win! I didn't understand why I disliked Ecclesia until I wrote this. I didn't make the connection between how exploration and character growth were gimped and why all the bosses felt mean. Metroidvanias can have hard bosses without being a jerk about it. Hollow Knight is a great example, where you die a lot but the player grows in skill and fights become more like choreographed dances. Ecclesia is more blunt with its difficulty and the fights are just too long. You get good at Hollow Knight; you push through Ecclesia.

My most frustrating death was at the final boss. Dracula started walking and stepped on me. In all other games in the series, Dracula just stands there, so you'd never expect this to happen. The game was deliberating trolling veteran players.

Kudos to Joe for the shear volume of reviews that he's cracked out this month. I can neither play nor write about the number of games you've done this month in an entire year!

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Thanks for the mention. I really wanted Outpost 13 to be something special, but it could not have been further than that. It had such grand dreams, even a release schedule for major consoles. Instead, it's a forgotten failure. Now I've mocked it, I can forget it forever.

Props to the Joe wave and to Dagoss for the deserved win.

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