GAMING: AMNESIA: DARK DESCENT (PC CD-ROM)

Duncan Stevens gets ready to be spooked by the latest horror offering for PC gamers

There is definitely something to be said for independently developed games, and if Amnesia: The Dark Descent is anything to go by that something seems to be “fuuuuuuuu….what is that crawling out of the cupboard, oh Jesus please don’t let it see me.” For many of you, Frictional Games’ latest offering will have slipped completely past your radars what with some of the more explosive action titles to have come out recently, but if you’re willing to put down your more generic first-person shooters for a moment, you may find this gem of a game has the capacity not only to tickle your gaming interests, but give you good reason to chew your own elbows off in fear as well.

The story is your basic Lovecraft-inspired affair which too many games in the survival horror genre cling to you; as the protagonist, wake up in a decrepit Prussian castle unable to recollect your past whilst being hunted down by unspeakable horrors. Nothing incredibly groundbreaking or original so far. But wait a minute, where is my weapon slot? You mean I can pick up and use virtually every free- standing object in this crumbling castle, but I can’t even equip this rusting sword plucked straight from a coat of arms to defend myself from the wandering squid monsters? Touché Amnesia, I stand in awe. Scratch that, I cower in the shadow of the nearest pillar in awe, praying to God that lumbering Cthulu doesn’t have the brain capacity to follow my meandering trail of piss. This is a game that has realised the potential of stripping the player of any chance they have of standing down against a horde of monsters, let alone one single hell spawn. Your only means of survival in this twisted world is to hide your sorry arse from anything that moves, and I do mean anything. Whilst desperately trying to piece together your shattered memory and force your way to the games terrifying conclusion you will find yourself screaming and running like a little girl to he nearest hidey hole the second a door unexpectedly slams open near you, only to realise it was caused by the wind blowing through from the next room.

Amnesia is not without its faults of course, graphically it pales in comparison to most games produced since 2004 and the puzzles never caused me to scratch my head over what I should be doing at any point, a glaring omission in what is supposed to be a cerebrally challenging game. However, as a jaded lover of the survival horror genre made cynical by recent supposed ’scary’ games (I’m looking at you Alan Wake and Dead Space) I can forgive Amnesia these minor flaws for its ability to create absolutely terrifying moments of gameplay for me. If you have ten pounds to spare, and don’t mind not being able to sleep tonight I urge you to buy this game. Support independent developers and give yourself nightmares, what better way to screw the system?

Review by Duncan Stevens

FILM: SAW 3D

Elliot Hyams gets ready to play the game in the seventh instalment of the Saw series.

The announcement that a seventh Saw film was going to be made came as no great surprise to anyone. Despite the inescapable feeling that this series has gone well beyond the point of flogging a dead horse, the Saw films continue to turn a reasonable profit. Saw VI ended with the Jigsaw killer’s successor, Detective Hoffman, escaping from a trap set for him by his dead predecessor’s wife and presumably intent on gaining some form of overly conceptualised revenge, and so the scene was set for Saw VII. Only this isn’t Saw VII, it’s Saw 3D. Traditionally in long running series the transition to 3D is a last ditch attempt to refresh something which has grown formulaic and stale. However, in modern times 3D is a gimmick that can be applied to just about anything and with Halloween being upon us it would seem that the success of Saw: 3D is almost guaranteed.

Like every Saw before it some unfortunate soul has to play Jigsaw’s game, this time it’s the turn of Bobby Dagen, played by Sean Patrick Flannery. Bobby is a survivor of one of Jigsaw’s games and has since become the author of a successful self help book. Clearly this was never going to sit well with the husky voiced killer. Whilst Bobby works his way through each elaborate trap, Costas Mandylor’s Hoffman continues his hunt for Jill Tuck, along the way we are treated to a series of extravagant scenes of torture and mutilation that are the calling card of the Saw films. Bodies are torn apart, sawn in half, smashed, burnt, impaled and eviscerated all in glorious 3D. But more than this long time followers of the series are rewarded with the return of a previous victim of Jigsaw in the form of Cary Elwes’s Doctor Gordon, who was last seen hacking off his foot in Saw I.

Seeing Ewles brought back memories of watching that first film, it was new and exciting. Yes there was gore but the true genius of it came through its construction and the intensity of watching two men forced to go to extremes to survive. Seven films later and Saw is little more than torture porn with a plot. What narrative there is takes a back seat to the real aim of the film, to get to the next gory jigsaw killer set piece, and whilst watching a woman get cut in half and explode out of the screen may seem like fun the truth is it isn’t, because we’ve seen it all before. What made Saw a great film was that Adam and Dr. Gordon were well rounded characters, it would seem that characters in Saw 3D are little more than fodder. Ultimately Saw 3D does what it says on the tin, if you want to enjoy a gory movie where guts fly out of the screen then watch Saw 3D, if you want to watch a well constructed piece of psychological horror then watch The Shining. The choice, as Jigsaw would say, is yours.

Review by Elliot Hyams

GAMING: DEAD RISING 2 (X BOX 360)

Elliot Hyams reviews Capcom’s latest slice of survival horror.

Capcom’s Dead Rising was one of the standout computer games of 2006, continuing the survival horror theme championed by the Resident Evil games X-Box 360 owners were offered the chance to battle their way through a Dawn of the Dead style shopping centre fighting of hordes of the undead with whatever happened to come to hand, a chainsaw, a bench, even...well....a hand. Now four years later Dead Rising 2 has been unleashed on a hungry market. Whilst at first glance it may appear to be a case of simply more of the same, the truth is there has been a world of subtle changes that make this game superior to its predecessor. This time gamers take on the role of Chuck Greene, a survivor of the first outbreak struggling to make enough money to pay for his daughter’s Zombrex medication, the only thing that will stop her from turning into a zombie. This leads him to Fortune City where he takes part in the game show Terror is Reality. However all is not as it seems in Fortune City and it’s not long before the zombies are loose and Chuck is rescuing survivors, fighting psychopaths and searching for Zombrex.

Like the previous game Dead Rising 2 offers the player an immersive seventy hour experience in Fortune City, during that time you can complete missions to forward the main story, rescue survivors or just go on kill frenzies. However playing the missions unlocks new areas and items for exploration so it is recommended that this is the way you play on your first outing. Also like its predecessor PP can be gained from completing missions, rescuing survivors and killing zombies in large numbers. This gained PP allows the gamer to level up increasing life, attributes and adding new attacks to your repertoire. It would seem that the U.S.P for Dead Rising 2 is the ability to combine weapons to create new novelty weapons, a chainsaw combine with a rowing oar, a giant teddy bear combined with a machine gun, an axe combined with a sledgehammer. The graphics are top notch and the sometimes clunky controls of the first game have been improved dramatically.

Although the game is at first great fun the problem facing Dead Rising 2 is very much the same one that faced the last game, after a couple of hours of game play everything starts to feel very sameish, bosses and zombies alike can be beaten with ease once their simple patterns of attack have been mastered. Similarly the A.I of survivors hasn’t improved dramatically since the last game and it often proves a lot easier to just leave the idiots to die and get on with what you were doing in the first place. Where Dead Rising 2 redeems itself is in the online gamer co-op mode. Working your way through different versions of the story with friends is simply a lot of fun, but again once this has been done a few times there really is no need to go back and play again as with the fantastic Red Dead Redemption. In short Dead Rising 2 is fun and well worth a play, but it is probably better to rent it over a weekend than spend any hard earned cash on it.

Reviewed by Elliot Hyams