Mr. OL
Yo jes hummilated yoursef
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2018
Lists are a fuckton of boring, so I'll just come back to the topic every so often to rant about one game at a time.
First that comes to mind (that isn't something obvious or "heard it before a thousand times"):
Haunting Ground.
In my eyes one of the most underrated, most underappreciated games in all of Capcom's grand library of classics. It started as a bit of a takeoff of the Clock Tower franchise after Capcom acquired that, with its basic setup of wandering a mansion solving puzzles while a single enemy stalks and tries to kill you, but managed to veer off into its own territory entirely. Instead of striving to be "scary" in a traditional sense, its style of horror is a little more of the edge of disturbing and uncomfortable. It's very unconventional amongst others in the same genre. Despite having the classic Capcom warning that "this game contains scenes of explicit violence and gore" (or something to that degree) there's actually very little visible blood or violence in it. It's more thematically messed up, and I like that a lot. It's about as non-cliche as Capcom have ever attempted in the horror genre.
It's also absolutely beautiful from a visual design standpoint, and in ways that are a little more subtle than games tend to be. Its colors are muted without being outright brown and grey, but it's style is very gothic without being all about black and white. It straddles a lot of lines like that, but it just makes it all the more unique and interesting to look at. This is easily one of my top three PS2 games that I genuinely feel deserves a remaster (the original game was plagued with jaggy edges; the above image is actually from a PC emulator, I think).
And to top it all off, it has one of the greatest dog characters in all of gaming. Good ol' Hewie. There's actually a system in place to "train" him as the game goes on, controlled entirely with one thumbstick (up to "go/retrieve/attack," down to "stay," and left or right to either praise or scold him) which works surprisingly well, and helps to create a bigger bond with him. And his theme music is just a damn nice tune.
Gaddamn I love this game. Makes me want to replay it for about the sixth time just talking about it.
First that comes to mind (that isn't something obvious or "heard it before a thousand times"):
Haunting Ground.
In my eyes one of the most underrated, most underappreciated games in all of Capcom's grand library of classics. It started as a bit of a takeoff of the Clock Tower franchise after Capcom acquired that, with its basic setup of wandering a mansion solving puzzles while a single enemy stalks and tries to kill you, but managed to veer off into its own territory entirely. Instead of striving to be "scary" in a traditional sense, its style of horror is a little more of the edge of disturbing and uncomfortable. It's very unconventional amongst others in the same genre. Despite having the classic Capcom warning that "this game contains scenes of explicit violence and gore" (or something to that degree) there's actually very little visible blood or violence in it. It's more thematically messed up, and I like that a lot. It's about as non-cliche as Capcom have ever attempted in the horror genre.
It's also absolutely beautiful from a visual design standpoint, and in ways that are a little more subtle than games tend to be. Its colors are muted without being outright brown and grey, but it's style is very gothic without being all about black and white. It straddles a lot of lines like that, but it just makes it all the more unique and interesting to look at. This is easily one of my top three PS2 games that I genuinely feel deserves a remaster (the original game was plagued with jaggy edges; the above image is actually from a PC emulator, I think).
And to top it all off, it has one of the greatest dog characters in all of gaming. Good ol' Hewie. There's actually a system in place to "train" him as the game goes on, controlled entirely with one thumbstick (up to "go/retrieve/attack," down to "stay," and left or right to either praise or scold him) which works surprisingly well, and helps to create a bigger bond with him. And his theme music is just a damn nice tune.
Gaddamn I love this game. Makes me want to replay it for about the sixth time just talking about it.