Stasis: Bone Totem – Atlantean Rumble

What do you get if combine meaty body horror, Lovecraft, and Atlantean mythology sprinkled with Blade RunnerThe Descent, and Alien? Well, you get Stasis: Bone Totem. This is the Brotherhood’s third game in the Stasis franchise – a point & click horror adventure series that doesn’t shy away from showing the macabre and the gruesome in all its glory. So far, so good, and you can read the thoughts of the developers in an interview I made with them here. However, it saddens me to say, that there are some problems with this title. While it maintains the horror in both atmosphere and story, the game falters and stumbles in the feature most critical to gaming: the gameplay.

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Echoes of the Living – Demo Impressions

There has been a revival of survival horror in the last couple of years, but very few games have mimicked the original controls and camera control (tank controls & fixed camera angles). MoonGlint with their game Echoes of the Living aims to change that, so let’s see how they managed so far in their demo.

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Dreams in the Witch House – Rat Trouble

Another day, another Lovecraft-inspired game. However, the difference from other games that tries similar things, is that Dreams in the Witch House actually succeeds at what it tries to do. It got nice atmosphere that feels like it could be part of Lovecraft mythos, and it got interesting gameplay to boot – beyond the traditional point & click stuff. I played the demo last year and was impressed with the game then already, so it makes me happy the full title retains the feeling I got from the demo. Atom Brain Games created something truly special here, and now we can only hope that they continue on this track for the future. But enough of that, what about the story, and how does it play?

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Onimusha: Warlords – Demons fear the Samurai

Onimusha: Warlords is an action-adventure/survival horror set in feudal Japan, which here, unlike real history is infested with demons and the mindless undead. It was made and released by Capcom back in 2001 for the Playstation 2. I do own the game on that system, but I decided to play it on the computer emulated with PCSX2. I had no trouble at all running it, the only setting I had changed was renderer to software. I played the game with a Playstation 4 controller plugged into the computer, which as usual matched all the in-game prompts and tutorials. In true survival horror fashion, the game has wonderful pre-rendered backgrounds with characters and monsters in 3D. Onimusha also controls like the olden days with tank controls, the sticks on the controller are unused – only the D-pad is used for movement. So, is it any good, and does it work as a survival horror in the veins of Resident Evil?

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Dead Space: Extraction – Extract This!

Dead Space: Extraction is a rail shooter made by Visceral Games. It was released for the Wii, and Playstation 3 a few years ago. Since I don’t own any of these consoles I decided to play it on the PS3 emulator RPCS3 using a PS4 controller plugged into the computer. I had no issues at all, I didn’t even have to configure anything. It worked flawlessly right out of the box with the right buttons being presented on the screen for the tutorial stuff. The performance was also great with no visual glitches. So, while the gameplay isn’t much more than pointing, and pressing buttons to shoot aliens with the occasional reloading action, I got to say I had a grand time the few hours this game lasted.

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