Nightmare House 2

Nightmare House 2 is another mod for Half Life 2: Episode 2, by We Create Stuff. The game is based on an original horror map pack called Nightmare House, which is included here as the Prologue level.  In this level, you start off near a building in the woods, apparently having had a car crash.. a creepy setting to begin with, before you even get to the house.

Having found an axe in the shed I felt a little bit safer, until I found my way into the house, which was a mixture of collapsing floors, flickering lights, blood and zombies.. 🙂

As if these weren’t enough, there was also the creepy girl who appeared for a split second here and there.. in one scene hanging, and in another appearing just before the floor gave way!  After a final swathe of zombies, including some horrible fast, jumping ones on the path outside the house, I thought I’d escaped.. only for the game to end when I got back to the truck..

“There is no escape from Nightmare House!”

The main game began after the prologue’s credits.  This time it starting off in a grimy padded cell, as I was now a mental patient of Never Lose Hope Hospital!  I wasn’t alone though, as there was a doctor on the other end of a radio, trying to help me escape.. and out in the corridors there were more zombies..

In another corridor there were black shadows.. which I expected to change into zombies or otherwise attack when I tried the doors, but instead just remained, watching..

One of the creepiest parts of this game was in a series of underground tunnels which warped and changed as I moved from one end to the other, getting shorter with no doors in sight.  Guessing that I would eventually end up in a single small chamber didn’t make it any less creepy when it happened, and I ended up screaming when the girl appeared above me as I turned around.

Falling through a similarly changing section of airvents, I met up with a group of soldiers.. and relief for just a moment, before I realised that they would surely be taken away from me.

After a fight with some zombies, we moved on to find one of the soldiers had gone missing.. and then some hideous, skinny, mouth-creatures came crashing through the windows to attack us!  I was glad of their additional firepower, but expected to lose another soldier as we moved into the next room, and another in the next, and so on.. but instead I fell through a sudden hole in the floor and was separated from them all at once!

What sort of hospital is this with so many creepy underground corridors?
I ended up plunged into darkness in this next one, with something glowing at the far end.. a pyrotechics locker, which turned out to be full of flares!  I’ve never been quite to happy to come across flares 😉

Another scene felt like it had borrowed from Doctor Who’s Angels, as I turned around to see the dressmaker’s dolls had moved to fill the room I’d just passed through.

I really didn’t want to walk past these, but with the door refusing to open, I had no choice.. and the lights went out as I passed the first one!  🙂

In order to be rescued, I had to destroy the computer which was jamming radio transmissions, and call in the helicopters which were circling the building.

My methods here resulted in fire!  This spread so I had to run from it.. that was, until I met a locked door.  Just when I expected another crumbling floor, I was snatched through the doors by the ghost girl..  I followed her off to the morgue where I ended up on the operating table in another quick switch, only to look down at my body and see a skeleton!  How’s that for a nightmare?

I woke up with the soldiers around me, and promise of escape..

With the soldiers alongside, it felt less horror, more normal shooter, despite the horrible mouth-creatures lunging at us from all sides.  The real tension was gone.. I guess it’s hard to maintain.. and jump scares lose their effectiveness after a while too.

Escape?

The rescue helicopter went down in flames, and the remaining soldier fatally injured.  It turns out that the SWAT team were here for Dr Romero, who has been manipulating people’s minds.. causing hallucinations.  Sneaky.  I was told to go and kill him.. then when I got in the lift, Dr Romero spoke over the radio, giving me the choice to escape when the lift stopped at the entrance, or continue on to kill him, if I could..

Two choices?  This had been mentioned by the friend who told me to play the game, so I took a peek at the “escape”.. no escape at all as the ghost girl really doesn’t like you trying to escape your fate 😉

On to the depths of the facility, and the Doctor’s hideout..

To control minds, he was using a device called the Core, which seemed impervious to bullets, and even after I’d managed to turn off two sources of power, the thing was still running.  More creepy mouth creatures were keeping me from exploring too well, and while I was running around dealing with those, he dropped a few funny lines and references to other games.. “look at me, still talking when there’s science to do”.

I eventually spotted the weakness to the structure holding up the Core, and set about destroying it.
The Doctor wasn’t too happy, and sent me away to a few more hallucinations, but the creepy girl ‘saved’ me from them each time..

The backstory isn’t really explained, but bits of dialogue tell us that the girl was Dr Romero’s wife.. and that something he did caused her to die.. which is why she wants revenge, and kills him where you couldn’t.  It also turns out that the house in Nightmare House was theirs.. which you just had the misfortune to crash outside of.. a little bit pieced together, but horror doesn’t have to completely make sense 🙂

More Amnesia

I didn’t complete Amnesia at the recent i-event, despite the previous plan to play it with a friend and scare ourselves silly with it late at night.
It turned out that there were usually too many people around that I wanted to talk to, and when I did start the game, attempts by a couple of friends to make me jump while playing actually made me less scared by the game as I wasn’t so focused on it.

I loaded up my last save to find I had obviously run on without looking where I was going.. I was in a dark room with absolutely no clue where I was.  Not only did I have no idea where I was, my lantern was out of oil.. I tried to find a torch or candle to light, when I heard something behind me..

I turned and was confronted with this.

I’m only slightly ashamed to admit I screamed out loud..

Having no weapons (I believe there are none, anywhere in the game) I attempted to run away, a whimpering wreck trying to find somewhere to get away to, but still being hopelessly lost.  This hideous thing caught up with me and smacked me to death, and I realised I should probably load up an earlier save so that I at least knew where I was to start with.

This was much nicer looking.. but I know what’s coming! :'(

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first person horror survival game from Frictional Games.  You take the part of Daniel, a man who has lost his memory, or as an early note tells you, has drunk something to make him forget..

Daniel must find the Inner Sanctum and there kill a man called Alexander, but is warned of the “living nightmare” which is chasing him..

After starting the game, you get a few flashbacks.. Daniel trying to remember what he’s doing, who he is.. struggling to walk down a corridor and eventually collapsing at a dead end.  Daniel is afraid, which makes me afraid too.  The fear is added to by the panicked breathing, visual distortions and noises of unseen enemies.. as well as the knowledge that you have no weapons!  You can interact with objects.. light candles, open doors, pick up objects and throw them.. but all you can do to save yourself from enemies is run and hide.

The castle is rather dark; there are candles here and there, and early on you find out you need to stay in the light.  This goes a little against my will to explore, as I don’t want to run out of oil for my lantern, and tinderboxes for the candles are in short supply.. so I take small peeks into unlit side rooms, tensed up and expecting something to jump out on me!

The more scared Daniel becomes, the more he loses his sanity.  Low sanity results in hallucinations, making it harder to see and move.. when I let it drop too far, there was a piercing noise and Daniel fell to the ground.  Looking directly at enemies also scares him.. the on-screen hint suggested that later enemies might also see you!

The demo gives what I assume are the first couple of levels in sequence; enough to try out a few simple puzzles, such as removing an obstruction to a pulley so you can open a trapdoor.  While letting Daniel scare himself silly reduces his sanity, solving puzzles restores it.

The cellar level.. boxes scattered around, and knee-deep water, with some horrible unseen enemy splashing his way towards me!

I failed at jumping across the boxes the first time I tried this level, and didn’t make it out of the water before he slashed at me.. two hits and I was dead.  I fared better the second time as I was barely in the water, and was able to distract the enemy by throwing books into the water.  The gate to the next part of the cellars was opened by a lever way back at the start, which meant a careful trip back and then a mad dash to get back before the gate shut again, all the while expecting the monster to slash me again.

This room didn’t seem to make Daniel any more frightened, maybe because he couldn’t see the enemy.

In the next room, there were body parts instead of books..
If you waited around after throwing one of these, you could hear him eating it, and see the blood mixed in with the water.  Nice..

As soon as I made for the next gate, though, he was right back after me.. and this time the gate didn’t shut in time to trap him on the wrong side and I had to run for the next door hoping to beat him to it.  Here’s where the door interaction frustrated me the most; trying to open the door towards me meant I had to stop, else I would push the door shut again with my body.  The monster ended up getting rid of the door for me, in the end.

The game reminds me very much of Korsakovia, an experimental mod for Half Life 2 which I played last year.  The fear in this game.. mod.. is created from the sounds and anticipation of what might happen, especially with enemies you can only run and hide from, though in Amnesia’s case the player character’s own fear comes through as well.  As with Korsakova, I think I’d get very frustrated once there were harder enemies to deal with.  Despite the game being as atmospheric and scary as it is, and being on offer on Steam, I’m still not sure whether to get it.

Limbo, part 1

We had the office pup for a few nights while the boss was away.. and since the pup has taken a liking to chewing live power leads recently, I decided I needed to stay in the lounge, away from my PC and all the lovely wires underneath..

I picked up Limbo for the 360 some time back, but due to moving house, and with the requirement to play alone to avoid accidentally revealing solutions to Tim, the game had stayed untouched.  Limbo is a side-scrolling puzzle platform game, brilliantly atmospheric with a shadowy black and white world and creepy ambient sounds..

This post is rather spoiler-ish, and I’ve not used tags for the simple reason I’d be hiding more of the text than I’d be leaving visible.
There are also spiders in this post.. though there are no pictures of them, as I can’t grab from the 360 at the moment 😉

A post of this length wouldn’t feel right without screenshots, so until I can add my own, I’ve used some from the gallery on their website..

After waking up.. glowing white eyes opening, and the little boy sitting up in the near-silence.. I immediately did the usual check of the space to the left, in the opposite direction to where convention says to go.  There, I picked up my first achievement, “Wrong Way”! 🙂

Going the right way, I eventually came across a massive spider which seemed to be waiting for something..  I had a horrible idea that ‘something’ was me getting closer.. of course, it was.  The closest leg raised, pointed, then pulled back.. and slammed into the ground with a thud.  I tried to run under the legs only to hit something in the shadows, and was flung back and then stabbed through by the first leg before I could even get to my feet.  Awesomely gruesome.. but there was more to come!

The solution to this first spider involves a trap, which is sitting on a branch before you arrive at the spider, but is flung to the ground after the spider stabs the ground twice.   Revolted by the solution in mind, I took the trap to the spider, and caught his leg as he tried to impale me.  There was a recoil, but the spider stayed where he was.

Eww.  One was bad.. but I have to snip off all the legs?

Three turned out to be all I needed to get past, but I then had the thought of an angry five-legged spider pursuing me.. so when I found myself trapped in some webbing on the ground I assumed it was time for another death animation.  Instead, the five-legged spider wrapped me in a cocoon to save for later.  He then wandered off, and I made my escape.. hopping along in a cocoon! 🙂

One of the earliest things I’d seen about Limbo was a video playthrough involving a different spider chase, and I came to this section a little further on.  Easy, after seeing the walkthrough, though.  I wouldn’t have watched the video if I’d known I was going to get the game.. but I’d probably not have bought the game if I’d not seen the video and got some interest in it.

There was another spider to come, though this one was less threat and more revulsion.

Two boys appeared on the far side of a spike trap, fired at me, then ran away.  The ground blew up behind me, and I went to look.. to see a twitching spider carcass, which tried to stab at me with his one remaining leg before he died!

I said revulsion, right?

Just as the solution to the first spider of the game had given me a sick feeling, so did my initial idea of the solution to this one.  The spike trap awaited.. and here was something which could make a nice path over the spikes.

The carcass wouldn’t move when pushed, so I went to pull the thing by the leg.. and the leg came off with a little splash and sticky, wet sound.
The leg then dropped to the floor, and I was unable to pick it up.. leaving me with just the spider’s body..

A spider’s body, and a spike-trap.. and I must have whimpered, because the pup came running over to see what was going on!

I played a little further on before taking the pup for a walk, and have no idea how far through I am.
I’m hoping to get something sorted for screen capture, for the next time I play, though maybe I’ll resist screenshots of the spiders 😉