Yume Nikki - Because what could be creepy about a little girl and dreams?

This is as upbeat and un-creepy as it gets.  Just FYI.

This is another one of those games I knew by reputation before I ever played it.  The product of twisting a RPG maker system until it screams, this game plays like the sick, bastard offspring of Earthbound and the more screwed up parts of the Silent Hill series.  It takes place in the dreams of a young, isolated girl.  She will not leave her apartment, instead drifting in to dreams, and from there through a series of doors in to...well...it goes downhill fast.

Did I not just say things go downhill?

First, you should know that, beside the odd visual style, this game is VERY different.  There's no directly stated goal, no real "bad guys", none of a lot of things that make up modern games.  This all seems to help give you a oddly dislocated feeling.  It always feels like you're just one degree off from true, which leaves you always wondering when things are going to kind of snap back to normal.  Hint:  not happening.

The dreamlands are amazing.  Running from the hard-core creepy to the mearly odd, they all carry that odd dream-logic with them, where things that normally would set of alarm bells or be impossible are just accepted.  What makes this even more amazing is remembering that this is being done with SNES-era graphics.

Silent Hill?  Got your polygons right here, sucker.

What is also amazing is there always seems to be more.  No matter how much you look, there's always some little thing you missed.  What's more, over time the girl can collect talents and such that allow her to access new areas or even interact with some of the inhabitants.  (Note:  do NOT google "yume nikki", "fan art" and "knife" at the same time.)

You can leave the dreamland any time, with a simple pinch on the cheek, but just like real nightmares, this really isn't overly comforting.  You still feel compelled to keep going, to wander down that bloody road, to follow that sewer pipe, to explore that shattered slum.  You're dragged along the dream-road, trying to always latch on to some small scrap of something sane, and always missing it.

What is...what...I...what?

Yume Nikki is a WEIRD game, and really isn't for everyone.  However, if you like creepy/odd games at all, you'll love this.  If you happen to be a old-school game nut as well, then bonus points.  Hop over here to grab a copy of it and get some much-needed hints.  Play in the dark for maximum effect.

Sweet dreams.

Oh, yeah, this shit won't haunt me at all.

Marathon - back when Bungie was nobody

No, it's not the Tau dammit...

Way back when personal computers were still getting started, there was a game made for the Mac called Marathon.  I actually played it, way back when, I think it may have come with out first computer.  Anyway, at the time I didn't really appreciate it, as FPS games were basically unknown to me.  Still, it was cool, had some neat aliens and such, and just generally seemed like a cool game.  Years and years later, I decide that maybe I should look up that old game, see if it's still around.

Oh momma, it's still around.

dual-wielding double-barrel plasma shotguns?  Why thank you, yes I will.

First of all, as you can guess by the title, this game is by Bungie, makers of Halo and starting what's been called a rebirth of First Person Shooters.  It appears that Bungie has always been dedicated to the craft of cool games, as Marathon is not just a neat shooting game, but a rather complex one as well.  It's not just a "shoot the demons" game, even though there is a lot of that.  There's a actual, real storyline, and your place in it is slowly revealed, bit by bit.

It seems Earth has fallen on hard times, and one of the moons of Mars has been converted in to a massive colony ship: The Marathon.  With everyone tucked in for the long haul, the colonists are happy to leave the war-torn wreck of the Sol system behind...that is, until multiple alien races decide to attack the Marathon, and the AI systems that run the ship start going rogue.

The Love Boat this an't.

See, unlike most of the shooters at the time, there's a real ongoing story here.  Computer terminals let you communicate with some of the AI, give history lessons, and just generally flesh out the world you're in.  It's not just a throw-away couple pages in the instruction manual, either.  The story plays with concepts of freedom and awareness rather well, not to mention that the aliens are not a cohesive force.  There's infighting and rifts between them as well, which can be both fun and useful to exploit, now and then.

Any race that can charge plasma weapons with a spear and still do pretty well deserves respect.

The guns are cool as hell, too.  They feel...right.  That is to say, they feel organic to the world their in, not too advanced or too primitive.  Plus, they look cool, and many of them can be dual-wielded for maximum bad-assery.  The controls are maybe not as great as I would like, but it's more of a personal gripe then anything else.  Some of the jumping/switch puzzles feel a little unnecessarily hard as well, and I HATE the "keep the humans alive" missions, as they have a tendency to wander in to my line of fire.  Always.

The aliens are neat, too.  Many of them are pallet-swaps of each other, but they all have different behavior.  Some hang back, some will charge, others will attack their fellow aliens if left to their own devices.  What's more, they look and behave alien.  Their speech is some kind of odd chirping and squeals, and it makes their silent attacks look less like cheap programming and more like a concentrated effort to unnerve the enemy.

runrunrunrunRUNRUNRUN

Plus, like most old-school shooters, the modding community has made tons of stuff to keep a already cool game fresh and interesting.  They run the gauntlet from single level bursts, to massive sweeping epics of sci-fi goodness, to the...well...odd.

OH GOD, I THINK IT'S KICKING IN

If you want to see a piece of history, or just want to check out something you may have missed from back in the old days, just over to the Aleph One project, where they've been working hard to bring this sweet game to the modern era.  It may seem like another sci-fi shooter, but trust me when I say it can even give some diehard FPS fans a challange.

Cloud - It's like a daydream you play

I...I have nothing smart-assy to say here.

Cloud is a oddball game, especially for the current gaming environment.  When the whole world seems bent on making you shell out money every month for games you already own, and forcing you to look down a gun sight for any kind of solid gameplay, Cloud stands out as something totally apart, like a snowman in a battlefield.

First of all, It's peaceful.  I mean really, genuinely peaceful.  The amazing thing is it does this without being boring at all.  You fly about as nightshirted avatar of a day-dreaming boy, collecting and shepherding clouds around to form shapes, or pushing them against storm clouds to make rain.  The thing is, at no time do you feel stressed.  Even when you're trying for the eighth time to make a shape, it's just all so pretty and peaceful it's hard to get worked up.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Not since NiGHTS has a game made more happy to fly.  The controls take a few seconds to get used to, but soon you'll be zipping around, collecting clouds and just generally exploring.  The area is somewhat minimal, but everything is done with such a soft, day-dreaming style that it's still gorgeous to look at.  It's hard to concentrate on missions at times, with the nagging desire to just pick a direction, put the hammer down, and fly!

What's more, there's a nice sized community of folks making add-on missions for converting black clouds, making puzzle shapes, and just generally fleshing out the experience.  At only four levels, it's a short game, but you'll find yourself playing it again and again.  It's just a fun, wide-open sandbox of imagination.  Oh, have i mentioned how cool it is to fly in this game?  It is.  Really.

I keep finding myself grinning at the screen like a idiot.  Well, more of one.

The cherry on top is that it's a free game, distributed here for the joy of all.  It's won tons of awards, and is well worth at least a look.  I may not be the next big thing in the game world, but it's interesting to see that there are still some people with truly original ideas out there.

Now, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky.

All Of Our Friends Are Dead - Dear god what am I playing...

This is the least disturbing thing in the entire game.

I first heard of this on a paranormal message board.  It was talking about creepy games, and with a name like All Of Our Friends Are Dead, I thought it sounded like it was worth a look.  After a bit of looking, I downloaded it, then proceeded to get ready to play.  Waited 'till night, turned off the lights, put on headphones, and sat to play something neat.

I have rarely been more poorly prepared.

THE BULLETS, THEY DO NOTHING!

The game is very, very surreal.  the visuals are gritty and low-tech, but they take away nothing from the hysterical fever-dream horror.  It plays like a Silent Hill infested version of Metal Slug, with a hefty machine gun spitting a almost solid beam of ammo.  It should say something that all that firepower gives you ZERO sense of security.  The odd, grinding pulse-noise that comes off a dead enemy is almost worse then letting them live.

The levels are odd, switching between basic platforming to puzzles and back seeming at random.  One of the first "boss" things, a jittering red...thing, with a wide mouth and glitch-flickering tentacles, appears to fight by belching bleeding, spinning fetal monsters at you.  At no point does the sense of horror ever, ever let up.  It just goes from high-octane horror to subtle mind screw, then back.

This is either a boss, or what God made because you touch yourself at night.  Maybe both.

There is a built-in quicksave feature, and I suggest you use it OFTEN.  One hit is death, and trust me when I say you will die a LOT the first go-around.  It's not a very long game, really, but it packs a lot of creepy, mind-screwy madness in to that small package.  What strikes me the most is that sections seem like...glitches.  Like something you weren't meant to see or get to.  Do a quick little google search for creepy game glitches to see what I'm talking about.

I very much recommend this for any fans of creepy stuff, and for lovers of oddball games in general.  Grab it here and get strapped in.  For best effect, use the dark/headphone combo, as the audio is great as well.  Electronic pulses, rumbling ambiance, it all just adds to the strangeness.  Whats more, a sequel, Au Sable is now out, so if you like this, you can keep the shuddering, mind-twitching horror rolling.

Have fun...hell, you weren't sleeping anyway, right?

And then, sometimes, it just decides to screw with you.

Chex Quest - Defender of the Crunchy

I still think the armor is cool...

Back in 1996, FPS games were really taking off, but as a sheltered kid who's parents still believed that any exposure to violent video game would turn me in to a drooling serial killer, all I could to was watch from the sidelines, and play at friends house.  Then, I found a CD in my cereal box.   I then proceeded to play Chex Quest like a fiend for the next three days.

Chex Quest is a promotional game that came with (surprise surprise) Chex cereal.  You play as the Chex warrior, fighting of the green slime creatures called Felmoids.  What's more, your weapons don't actually kill anything, but teleport the critters back to their home dimension.  This game should be wretched and pathetic, a stupid promo game...and yet, it's not.

ohgodohgodohgod

This game was made with pure, unadulterated love.  This game is perfectly faithful to its doom roots, to supercharge health packs (breakfast cereals) to giant room-clearing BFG-type zorch cannons.  The enemies, while generally simple, can still give you problems with encirclement, and at higher levels can give even veterans the occasional problems.

The layout, the level structure, everything FEELS right here.  There's pitch-black rooms and halls, sending you stumbling along, hugging walls...suddenly, there's a screech and you start getting pounded with goo.  Ideally, if this doesn't send you in to a seizure-inducing collage nightclub flashback, it will feel much like the good old DooM.

Yes, we're fighting off alien invasion with a PowerSpork.  No, I don't see the problem with this.

What's more, it's non-violent.  Normally this is almost a negative for me, but let me explain:  I have three kids.  What's more, my eldest daughter will get nightmares at the drop of a hat, despite her love for all things creepy.  I love first person shooters, yet can't play most of them during the day.  This one, I can...hell, even SHE can play it, and I don't have to worry!

This is a somewhat short game, but trust me, it's worth checking out.  Go to almost any video game forum and bring up Chex Quest, and you're bound to have at least a couple rabid fans chattering about it within a few posts.  Plus, the big deluxe edition, Chex Quest 3, has all three official games in one.  it's good for a day's fun, when blood and gore has burned you out.

Is...is anyone else disturbed by this?  Anyone?

DooM - No, that's how they spell it, it's not a typo...

Wait...are the ones on the right smiling?

Good lord, talk about a game that really changed the face of video games.  There are some landmark games in history, and this one seems to get overlooked by things like Mario, Pong, or Halo.  For god's sake, before the term "First Person Shooter" came in to common usage, any FPS was called a DooM Clone.  Few other games bear the distinction of having their entire genre defined with their name.

DooM, for the eight people who don't know, is about a outbreak of demons.  To be specific, a far-future lab on Mars is toying with teleportation and manage to open a direct pipeline to Hell, and get the entire moon the lab is based on sucked in to the plane of suffering to boot.  You, the gritty space marine, are the only one left to fight back the hordes of demonic horrors and save the earth.

Ok, so this is such a tired line, but the thing to remember is, THIS IS WHAT STARTED IT.  This base concept, with a few tweaks here and there, was rehashed for the next ten years, and is still in circulation to this day.  What's more, this is one of the first games to really bring the concept of video game violence to the main stream, both in the game community and the mainstream media.

FEEL THE FURY OF MY TEEN ANGST!

And oh momma the violence.  No, it's not the beat-you-with-your-own-arm shock of God of War, but it's amazing for the day.  Unlike Wolfenstine, where people just drop in a small spray of blood, the enemies ooze, shudder, scream and melt when they're killed.  The slow explosion of oddly colored guts that come with the death of the Cacao Demon is still a favorite of mine, in all its pixilated glory.

Not only did you get to fight zombies, pink flesh-ripping bull horrors, spider-brains and floating balls of death, but you got to wander through a field of gory wreckage afterward.  What's more, the levels themselves were creepy as hell, and sparked a whole wave of parent outreach and protest to stave off the impending doom of western civilization.

Are you trying to say wandering through oceans of blood is anything more then good, clean fun?

Another amazing aspect of this whole thing is the modding community.  They must be one of the most dedicated, longest-running bunch of gaming geeks in the world, because they have created literally THOUSANDS of levels, packs, and whole games based off the DooM code.  There is no limit to what's been done, everything from megaman and barney themes, to stuff that makes Silent Hill look like Yo Gabba Gabba.  Pick a movie, there's probably a mod of it floating around, the Alien mod got awards for years and years.

Not Pictured: When the Marshmallow Man explodes like a hefty bag full of meat.

If you've never played it, PLEASE do so.  If you have, dust it off and play it again.  Yes, you'll giggle over the cheap graphics and simple gameplay, but the Cyberdemon can still get the pulse racing now and then.  The ZDooM project has made some amazing strides in bringing the game to new audiences and cleaning it up a bit, while still keeping it faithful to the core system.  Check it out if you can, really.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get knee deep in the dead...

I have no idea what's going on, man.

What is going on here?  Well, right now...nothing.

BUT!

Soon, there will be a great deal of reviews, commentaries, and general snark about books, games and movies that I think are cool, really suck, or just generally want to call attention to.  Ideally, they will be fun to read and informative, but we'll see how it goes.  Who am I, that you should value my opinion so much?  Well...nobody, really.

I'm married, have three kids, and like to collect things, mainly books, games, and movies.  My life goes between randomly sucking and being a boatload of fun, and is generally pure chaos.  I have delusions of writing grandeur now and again, but I'm not a "pro" by any means.  I'm just a guy who likes games and stuff, and feels like I have something vaguely interesting to say, now and then.

So...yeah, that's pretty much it, thus far.  Stay tuned, I swear to god it gets more interesting.