In between the good and the bad, there’s the ugly. I personally love the ugly. This is the pit where all the slightly off-key platformers would go. Games like the old Playstation platformer Skullmonkeys fits in this category actually, along with lesser played games like Silhouette Mirage. Another one of the more obscure (yes, even more obscure than the afformentioned games) “ugly” games involves two detectives, spray cans, feces, and fast food. That game would be…

Ah, yes… this game brings back memories of my Turbografx-16. JJ and Jeff was a game my brother had picked up for about $20, and even from the first play we both knew it pretty much sucked. The game was basically a Super Mario clone with worse controls, and that was the least of it’s problems. Let’s start with an obvious, glaring problem of any game that requires you to dodge things being thrown at you… the size of your character.

Friggin' 'Uge!

I mean, you’re a third of the size of the screen! That’s bigger than some characters in fighting games I’ve played! Add this with the annoying control “feature” that your character slides all the time and that adds up to a whole lot of frustration. But is that the only bad point? No, not at all! See that bar underneath the word “Vitality”? Yeah, that’s the one… not only does it decrease when you get hit by objects, but also as you play – much like Wonder Boy (or Hudson’s Adventure Island for you philistines who never played a Sega Master System), and you know what? I hated it on there, and I hate it here too. Absolutely frustrating. I can hear the developers now…”Let’s see, you took a long time getting through the level because you moved slow enough not to get hit by the enemies? Then you die a horrible death because you didn’t eat that apple we hid behind the 43rd bush you ran past! HAHAHA!” I’m sorry, but that’s just cruel.

But what exactly can you do in this game? Well, much like any game of this style you’ll mostly just run and jump. However, if that’s not quite exciting enough for you, you can also attack things two different ways. The most commonly used attack is the kick. With which you kick things. Simple enough. I don’t think it needs much more explaining. And honestly, if any of you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say the word “kick” then you really should stand up, walk away from the monitor, go outside, and walk in front of a bus, because you are beyond hope and it will be a blessing to humanity when you die. Or maybe you’re not a native english speaker. In that case, I hope you don’t walk in front of a bus. At least not until I know you better.

But there is a second attack you have that makes your enemies quake in their small pixelly boots. You can spray them with paint!

Sort of pathetic and anti-climactic... like me in bed.

“What? That’s it?” Yeah, I know those words hurt me very often, but they also hold true for this shitty excuse for a weapon. I’ve been playing this since I was 14, and you know how many enemies I’ve killed with this? None. For a comparison, do you know how many times I’ve urinated today so far? 14. What that has to do with anything, I don’t know, other than I think my kidneys are either playng some kind of crazy joke on me, or they simply don’t exist anymore. But I *do* know that we now have a game with huge characters, bad control, and even shittier weapons.

These things by themselves would make for a horrible game, but the one thing this game did have was extra shit for you to laugh at / be annoyed by. First off, one thing all by itself made me play this game, no matter how awful it was. This game had the one thing I’ve never been able to turn down in a video game. That’s right… Full Frontal Nudity. Oh wait… did I say “full frontal nudity”? I meant a slot machine game!

Hey kids! Gambling is cool!

We briefly touched on my present day gambling addiction in a previous video game article, and this certainly didn’t help things when I was younger. Actually, that’s another thing I always wondered about… ever since I played Space Quest as a kid, I’ve been in love with slot machines, and whenever I go to casinos I also manage to play lots of slot machines. I know, if I end up penniless on the streets of Las Vegas someday, I’m going to blame the gaming industry. Hey, why not? Every other dumbfuck in the world is, why can’t I?

But, rants about stupid people aside, I love games with slot machines in them. Super Mario Bros. 2 wouldn’t have been half the game it was if there were no slot machine bonus game in it. I mean, they’re frustrating, and 99% of the time you walk away empty handed, but occasionally you manage to win big and get a whole load of extra lives. See, I know the difference between real life, and video games… I just like the virtual world a whole lot more. If I win in Atlantic City, you know what I get? A bit of money, and a whole lot of headaches. I win big in JJ and Jeff? I get a load of extra lives, and some more notches in the vitality bar. I honestly think there’s no comparison.

But back on topic, in JJ and Jeff the primary thing to do while playing is to run through the level and kick everything you see. I’m talking lampposts, trashcans, men’s room signs, everything. When you do, a lot of things could come out. Most items (if they look like food) are food and give you more vitality in the vitality bar. You may also find coins, which you save up for use on the slot machines. The third thing you could get is feces, that’s right – a comical little Hershey’s Kiss of poo flies out of things when you kick them sometimes. I’m not joking.

This game is scat-tastic!

But slot machines are not all this game offers for me to laugh at. No sir, there’s also the amazing help this game provides. In some of the rooms where you’d find slot machines, you would also find help from inappropriately dressed characters! So let me get this straight, I’ve been running and jumping all day through the forest, and I finally come upon a doorway where I expect I can satisfy my gambing itch and instead I find…

So am I in heaven? I was told I'd get a thousand virgins...

That is just plain cruel… I mean, I’ve spent time playing your shitty game, earning coins and dodging pieces of shit, just to finally reach the doorway to what I thought would be a slot machine, and you give me this?! This is like being called by an ex-girlfriend, asking if she can come over for a late night sex call, just to show up and have her tell you to try and meet a girl sometime, so you can have sex with her. It’s happened. It sucks. And it sucks just as bad on JJ and Jeff too.

But no amount of any illegal substance known to man makes this next statement make any sense…

"Wonk, wonk, wonk"... so sayeth the Lord.

And there is one more thing that makes this game noteworthy. When you start the game you pick if you want to be J.J. or Jeff. It’s not a big decision, since there is no difference to the game, but the person you didn’t pick will come along and spy on you and eventually even try and stop you from… uh… whatever the point to this stupid game was. Anyway, this leads to some of the best screenshots I’ve ever taken. Let’s have a look, laugh, and love together, shall we?

I hope he is peeing...

This is the first thing you see in the first level of the game. That’s the kind of message we want going to the kids of the world today. We want them to know it’s ok to shake your shananagan in public. That’s what the kids need to know.

Well, it’s 5 am here (EST) on Saturday night, and I’m pretty drunk, so I’m just going to leave you with one more pictures and one more thought.

Furries are lacking in games today.

Overall, this game is acceptable, but when the day ends, it is just a good pile of laughs. I don’t know what I’m typing at this point – so I’ll leave it at “see you next week, or I won’t!”

This is where I’ve decided the new paragraph needs to be. Around this very desperate time (July 2002 – present time), Jeremy began using Guest Writers. Guest Writers are basically kids who like his site deciding that they want to amaze their friends by getting e-published by the ever-esteemed omgjeremy.com. To put it tactfully, many of these “articles” submitted to him were, and still are, complete and utter rubbish. We were horrified. Well, I was horrified, being the sometime-editor. And I said to him, I said, “Now Jeremy, you be a good boy and make a little area on your site that has some Writers’ Guidelines. Then you won’t have to avoid these people when they ask about the progress of their rotting submissions. You’ll only have to point to the Guidelines, and look the other way, causing an uncomfortable silence. They’ll understand.” I really said all of that.

This is the guy who doesn’t care what I write.

Ages later, there is still no Page of Guidelines and the horrid submissions keep rolling in. That is why I am valiantly writing this article tonight! I’m going to do what Jeremy should have done all along! I’m going to kill multiple Metaphor Birds with an enormously mighty Metaphor Stone! I will write the Writers’ Guidelines and disguise them as a simple and poorly-written article. I will fool you all, especially you, Jeremy.

Good. Now Class, Let’s Begin.

Now, I’m no professional when it comes to writing proper articles. Really, I should be, because I took a huge course on it a few summers back. But I never applied myself, and then when I started writing for this place, I’d already forgotten most of what I was taught. And the stuff I did remember, I didn’t want to use. What does this tell you? To start from scratch, people. We don’t require good grammar exactly. I mean this isn’t some sort of formal essay writing kind of place. My god, these blinking buttons in my taskbar are distracting. But we do like good spelling. And, a good strong, meat-eating vocabulary. God damn, hold on for a second. I must attend to this blinking!

My favorite part was when I started getting violenty ill at 7am, yet still finished this article.

Right. Where was I? Ah, yes. The first step to writing an article is to figure out your topic. Pretty basic. And it applies to all article writing for all the websites of the world. Well, all the good websites that want articles, and not journal entries. You can even use this part of the lesson to aide you in writing articles for other, almost mythical sounding mediums such as magazines and newspapers. Those jerks actually pay you, though, so the competition is pretty high. I warn against it.

The Topic Is Important, But Not As Important As They Want You to Think

There is a gnat flying around my monitor screen. I’m expecting it to fling itself into my eyes at any moment now, so forgive me if I seem a little tense. I’m waiting for the Inevitable Temporary Blinding and Subsequent Pain and Colorful Swears. The topic can take on many shapes. Make sure the shapes are pretty or interesting to look at. That really is key. Wait, no it isn’t. Because you can take an otherwise boring topic, like hentai, and use interesting words to make it seem like it’s interesting. Jeremy seems to do that fairly regularly and yet people seem to read those articles. The mind boggles at such a flagrant sham!

Welcome to the darkest moment of my artistic career.

So, it isn’t the topic that even needs to seem neat, it’s just the way you talk about it. Or, in this case, write about it. For this omgjeremy place, at least, you don’t even need to do anything more than ramble humorously. Sadly, it’s the humorously part that is hard to tell you all about, because I may not have it figured out myself. You could write something you think is funny, your friends and mom might tell you that it is very funny, but we, your staunch and cruel judges, may think that it is pathetic. Then again, we might think it is quite funny indeed and Jeremy will put you on the People Page and your life will dramatically improve! There’s really no way of knowing until we read it and sneer or read it and smile pleasantly.

Thousands of Words Placed In A Coherent Fashion? You’ve Got To Be Kidding!

There are word limits. Or are they word restrictions? Word… Things. Where you are not supposed to make articles under a certain word count. Is it word count? Do I need to remind you that we value a good large vocabulary? Keep that in mind, maybe buy a thesaurus. They are good for you.

The word count… suggestion/recommendation thing… for an average article is anywhere between 1000 and 2000 words, I believe. The closer to 2000 you get, the better. You can go a little over, actually you could go a lot of over and Jeremy would probably give you his right kidney. I regularly pump out articles of about two thousand words. This amazes me every time, because I rarely know what I’m writing about, even as I am writing it. There is a very simple reason as to why I can write so much. I am in tune with the almost-lost art of Rambling Out Tons of Filler.

But fleshing out an article with filler really isn’t as easy as you might think. You need to do it in a manner that doesn’t really seem like you are doing it intentionally. It’s got to have the Flow! It has to seem natural! Scan those first few paragraphs I wrote. Why, I’ll bet that about 80% of those words are extraneous, inessential, or maybe even downright unnecessary to the supposed topic at hand. But if I stuck to the topic, I’d probably be lucky if I managed a two hundred word article. Sometimes, if you aren’t feeling sloppy, somewhere between your lists of synonyms and random anecdotes, you can sometimes conclude little snippets of thought from earlier in the article. It makes it seem like there’s some good line of thought, or something. Also it gives the concerned reader something called “closure.” It gives the reader with the short attention span a moment of confusion as he or she tries to figure out why the author just said that. By the way, that gnat died in my cup of water and I have to refill. I’ll see you at the next section.

The migratory habits of the common earth gnat.

If Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words, Why Can’t My Article Just Be Two Pictures?

Naturally, the images included in an article are by far and away the most important part. They really bring an article together, give it a sense of continuity. The pictures do best if they are relevant to what you’re writing about, but we’ve proven time and again that it isn’t really required. Many times we raid Google Image Search for appropriate pictures, or sometimes we draw the pictures ourselves. We even use our clunky old digital cameras if we need pictures that include us, or if we just can’t find a good representation of what we want.

Funny comments are what we strive for. But they are elusive.

What all of the pictures have in common, of course, is the appearance of a funny, funny witty comment beneath them. Or, as is more often the case, not. (I just had Déjà vu) It’s actually the most difficult part of writing an article for omgjeremy.com, and we often fail at succeeding with them. Hey, can you tell that I’ve gotten extremely tired within the past few paragraphs? I’m actually sounding like I’m actually trying to help out around here in this thing. And I keep using the same words. Like actually. And thing. And variations of thing. And my sentences are becoming gnarled and hideously hard to understand. LOL!

Please pause while I turn on a movie, please.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Get Distracted!

Concentration is what you need to have. Concentration is what I need to have and yet I never seem to have it. I tell you, I can’t have it! It’s like some sort of wicked doom conspiracy that keeps me from being able to concentrate. Concentration makes for Good Articles. You don’t wind up forgetting things, as I do. Then you have concise paragraphs explaining what exactly it is you want to say. Then you don’t have to do what I’m about to do: back-track with a random set of parenthesis to do my bidding. (Don’t forget, with the images that you want to insert, is that you can know what they are going to be while you write your article, or you can wait until later, and add them afterward… Which is what I usually do. OMG Aren’t you glad I told you?!) Yes, I am so sorry about that.

Back to the distraction thing. Keep your work area nice and clean. That way, an errant piece of pipe cleaner and gum eraser won’t keep your attention for at least twenty minutes while you should be writing.

It’s ART!

You may want to close all chat clients you may have on your computer, so you aren’t available to have the most amazingly entertaining conversations of your life. It is a scientific fact that normally all of your friends are boring fucks. But as soon as you have something else to do, they are magically fascinating and great conversationalists. So, when you know you want to write something, disappear! Don’t tell your friends where you are or what you are doing! They don’t need to know your business anyway. What kind of friends do you have, that they need to keep tabs on you at all times? Not good friends! You’re better off without them, kids.

It is probably a good idea to not have a movie on while you’re trying to write. It can easily eat up thousands of minutes of your time. The only way I’d recommend watching a movie while you’ve got your write on is if you can work while television is showing you moving images. I’m not a person who can do that easily, especially when the movie is a fine one. Sigh. No. Never write while a movie is playing in the same room. You just wind up using the dialogue you hear on there. One false move and I’m yours. I love you. I love you anyhow. In fact, I suggest you do all of your writing in a plain white windowless room, at whatever time of day you feel you are at your most concentrated. And don’t go to sleep. Dreams are pretty distracting, too.

My bed symbolizes my life. What a mess.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, some people find that making outlines for the content of their pieces is a fine idea. I personally never touch the things, as I think they are the work of devil witches. But, if you are into that kind of thing, you can easily scribble a rudimentary outline on your caveman wall, or you can make a complicated and fully functional outline. The kind your English teacher wished you would make. With those Roman numerals and pretty capital and lower case letters. Honestly, if you made outlines like that for an article you intend to write for here… Never tell us about it. Never tell anyone. Ever.

I Hope I Covered Everything, Because I’m So Close To Leaving

I’ve consulted my word count feature. I have over two thousand words on this dubious topic. This is my cue to leave. When I have reached my word limit, I have very little incentive to stick around, so for all of our sakes, I hope I covered the things I meant to mention. If not, I guess you’ll never know, eh?

Anyhow, it is nearly four in the morning and I must get up somewhat early tomorrow. And I need to finish watching this movie. It’s very important that I do. What else? Oh, I do hope that you found this Guidelines For OMGWriters article to be very informative and stimulating. None of you have any excuse for submitting any articles that are worse in quality and content than mine! This is really not a high standard, sadly, so I expect it to be met. Happy writing, suckers.

I seem to have a thing where games scare me far more than movies do. I’ve never been the biggest person to scare easily watching most movies, as I’m constantly more interested in looking for bad effects, terrible acting, and the overall sense of feeling completely detached from what’s happening on screen. Games however, have always been able to scare the shit out of me for the simple fact that -- if a game is good -- I can really get into them. I feel like I am that character, in that situation, and getting through it relies entirely on me. Unlike most movies, where I can get through any one part by going to take a piss.

So below are a collection of the best scare-moments for me as a gamer. This is by no means supposed to be a definitive list. These are just the games that came closest to making me scream like a little girl.

Resident Evil: Those Fucking Dogs

I don’t think any list could be complete without the original pant-shitting moment from Resident Evil. It’s totally played out now, and even seeing a video of it makes any of us wonder how dogs consisting of 6 polygons covered in shit could ever scare us, but goddamn it did. You have to realize that, at the time RE was new, nothing like that had ever been presented in a game like that. Sure I hear the Alone in the Dark fanboys rolling their eyes out of their heads, but whatever. Unlike Alone in the Dark, RE looked crazy unbelievable at the time. It looked almost real to our young Playstation-playing eyes. And when those fucking dogs came busting through those windows the first time…well, it’s something you don’t forget. If you didn’t come close to shitting yourself, you sir, are a braver man than I.

Bioshock: That Guy Standing Behind You

You can really tell the guys that made Bioshock had a lot of fun making it just by the sheer amount of freaky ass ways they try to scare you throughout. There are so many neat little details and things in each set piece to make your skin crawl that you’d probably miss most of it if you’re not paying attention. Case in point: You just crawled through a vent in a creepy ass medical pavilion. Suddenly the room fills with smoke, and you clench your ass preparing for whatever the hell is about to happen. The smoke clears and…nothing. Everything is the same. You can actually leave the room and never be aware anything did happen. But if for some reason you happen to turn around, you’ll be treated to a splicer standing a foot away from your face. Staring at you in complete silence. Then you realize you weren’t clenching hard enough.

Bioshock Honorable Mention: That One Room

Runner up for sheer creep out factor goes for that one room with a switch behind the counter that leads you into a room featuring a plaster man sitting in a chair facing the corner. The first time I wandered into that room and saw that fine fellow I froze in my tracks. Almost to the point of just shutting down the game to stave off whatever horrible scare-tactic was about to make me change my underwear. I soldiered on, though. And sure enough, those underwear had to be burned off of me.

Silent Hill 3: The Haunted House

Possibly the most awesomely meta thing I’ve ever seen in a game, the haunted house at the end of Silent Hill 3 stands at the top of my list for most creepy fucking thing ever in a video game. I’m sure everyone is aware at just how crazy Silent Hill is. Taking every possible chance to just make you feel completely unnerved is like some sort of twisted joy to the Silent Hill developers. For the haunted house though, they must have been rolling around on the ground in glee for days when whoever thought this up. Basically, it’s a damn haunted house. Like a straight up haunted house…if you went to a haunted house located in Silent Hill. Every room is twisted, complete with narrator over a speaker telling you the tale as you go along. As you’re slowly being pulled along, it’s the complete uneasy feeling you have. You know the game is just fucking with you. Having some fun at your expense. You just keep wondering when things are going to go terribly bad. And then they do. Then you don’t play Silent Hill without the lights on ever again.

Silent Hill 3 Honorable Mention: The Mannequin Decap

A rare jump scare for Silent Hill. And even when they do jump scares, it’s still creepy to the core. You walk into a small room and by the top half of a mannequin. Make your way to the other side of the room, turn around, and suddenly the most piss-inducing scream ever blasts from the speakers. Once you get brave enough to venture back out of the room, you go by the mannequin again only to notice it’s head has been chopped off. Complete with blood everywhere. Not a huge moment, but something that sticks with you. A lot like the mirror room later in the game. What’s the mirror room? Don’t ask.

Dead Space: Running From An Invincible Monstrosity

Dead Space has it’s share of scares, but the most memorable comes from a monster you simply can’t kill no matter how hard you try. In fact, you spend more than a few sections of the game running in terror from it, because there’s nothing else you can do but that. It’s the tension that gets you mostly. Running into a fog-filled operating room with tons of normal everyday unholy mutations from the pits of hell itself, only to see this fine fellow right there with them. And if he gets ahold of you, you’re all but done. I realize Resident Evil 3 did this years ago, but Dead Space did something RE3 never could do: Actually be scary.

Silent Hill 4: The Trailer

Silent Hill 4 was a pretty big disappointment. It just never came together as a whole. But the trailer for the game…hooboy. I actually showed this to my girlfriend at the time it was released one night, and she literally refused to go to sleep afterward. When your fucking TRAILER does that, you know you did something right. Too bad the rest of the game just made you not want to actually play it.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Laughing Octopus

Metal Gear 4 was a fine game, but it hit it’s peak for me with the boss battle starring Laughing Octopus. You’re in a wooden shanty house, you’ve been drugged, you’re seeing hallucinations, hearing voices, AND you have a freaky octopus woman vanishing in and out of reality trying to kill you. The only thing you can do is wander around completely broken, just hoping the game doesn’t fuck with you too much. It’s one of the best boss fights ever in a video game, and worth just playing MGS4 to get to. It’s unsettling, crazy, and just flat out awesome. This is also the only time in the entire MGS series where you’ll hear the word “fuck” said. It’s that fucking serious.

Siren the Blood Curse: Trapped In A Hospital

Siren the Blood Curse (the PS3 version) is one of the best and most overlooked horror games ever made. The setting on some crazy Japanese island where everyone turns into zombies and spews blood out of their eyes is just classic. It also does something few horror games have done; it makes the enemies actually terrifying. No better place does it do this than early in the game where you’re trapped in an abandoned hospital filled with nurses that the Silent Hill nurses have nothing on. You also have no weapons at your disposal. All you can do is slink around and pray you don’t get seen. Did I mention you’re also a ten year-old girl in this section of the game as well? You have to use your smarts to distract the nurses long enough to get where you’re going, praying they don’t see you. And if they don’t get you, the sheer tension of it all will. I actually had to stop playing for a while after I beat it. It’s that rough.

There you go, kids. If you’re looking to get scared this weekend with some awesomely scary games, any of the above will do (minus MGS4, I guess). And really, there’s no better way to celebrate Halloween by realizing just how close you can come from scaring yourself so bad that you won’t be able to look at yourself in the mirror until at least Easter.

THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY NOT BAD!

Give yourself a few moments to collect your thoughts. Put your head between your knees if you need to. If someone else was reading, tell them to do the same. If the other person is stupid / drunk enough, tell them to put their head between your knees, and then pull your thang out on ‘em. I purchased this expecting a shitfest the likes of which the Saw films have been delivering on-screen for 6 years now. Instead, I got a pretty solid little “survival horror” game, with a heavy emphasis on puzzles and hitting people with nail-covered bats. It isn’t all great, and has some faults (which I will of course try to make the main point of this article since bitching is funnier than complimenting), but this game surprised me…and it might just do the same to you.

Sony have finally developed a device to MAKE people play their PS3...or DIE! Massive deaths ensue.

The “Story”

Yeah…I know. This has about as much of a story as anything in the Saw universe. You play Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover’s character from Saw 1), who awakens in an asylum only to be the latest player in one of Jigsaw’s “games”. The rest of the story carries out much like the Saw films. You progress along, get little bits of a progressing story and tons of back-story that form some sort of ghetto-assed, bad-writing Voltron that stumbles to a twist finale that you may have seen coming very early on. Not to say the story is bad or anything…but it just lacks A LOT. If you are a fan of the series, you’ll see a couple of familiar faces and recognize some of the voice actors. That is one thing I can say something good about at least, the voice-work is pretty good for a horror game. You’ll never be called the “master of unlocking” or wonder aloud “radio, what’s going on with that radio”.

Essentially you are being punished for the people you have hurt due to your near-insane obsession with capturing the Jigsaw killer. Tapp must save those who have suffered due to his actions, and some other random folks along the way. It makes it sound like you have a choice in saving these people, like you could just let their respective traps kill them if you wanted…but there is no choice. If the character dies, you go back to the last save point. Just a quick note for those of you who also may be misguided and then throw a fit because you get sent back after being a cold-hearted asshole.

A gruesome death, or a mini game/puzzle? It's up to you.

Along the way you face a series of increasingly challenging puzzles and enemies. Why do you have people randomly attacking you? Some are just insane, and others are after a key. You have a key surgically implanted into your body that apparently can free everyone else. Of course you can’t just make a little cut and take it out, but instead someone is going to have to go elbow deep up your ass (or I guess they could just slice you open if they were in a hurry) and yank that thing out.

That would have made for a great death scene.

Gameplay

No alleged gameplay here, but instead you get a fairly enjoyable survival-horror experience. In terms of the controls, think Silent Hill 2…the good and the bad. Your character moves a little stiff, but not enough to make moving around a chore. The combat is…okay you can put your protective coverings back on, I’ve got a big ol’ bucket of shit ready.

The combat sucks. You hold the trigger to go into your “Fighting Stance”, no doubt striking fear into the heart of your attackers. You then proceed to use two buttons, one for a STRONG attack, and the other for a not-so-strong attack. You start off with your fists, but can pick up a variety of items to use along the way. Molotovs, pistols, mannequin arms, bats, and the old faithful pipe are all at your disposal. Too bad that it is somehow harder to kill an enemy WITH a weapon. I honestly just went hand-to-hand most of the time, as the heavier weapons have a hell of a delay from button press to strike. We’re not talking a tenth of a second, but a full second delay as the weapon is swung. It sucks because the AI usually goes for weaker strikes, that will undoubtedly land before your strong attack comes down on them. My recommendation, if you don’t have a gun, just use your fists or use weak attacks with the weapons. Another problem is getting cornered. You can block attacks, and even counter-attack if you block at the correct time (when that is, I do not know), otherwise you are screwed. If a guy gets you in a corner, if you can’t counter-attack then it’s over. You will NEVER be able to get in a regular attack, heavy or weak. Getting cornered is instant death in this game, as is trying to fight more than one enemy at a time…which luckily doesn’t happen that much at all.

Just punch 'em!

You can step your offense up a little around the halfway point of the game, by getting a little defensive. You pick up spare parts throughout the game (trip-wires, shotgun shells, etc), that you can use to make your own traps. Some traps stun the enemy, while others unleash a horrific gas (for this one you need 1 Jeremy, 2 shitty Taco Bell ripoff tacos, and 4 beers), and then some flat-out explode. Just to warn you, these things don’t take away a lot of health, and I played through the game using traps only once or twice. You can also screw yourself over if you are close enough to them when they go off.

You are not the only person setting things up however. Much like the internet, there are some traps out there that will make you cry and cause you to spend the rest of the night vomiting and vowing “Never Again” as your try to proudly hold your head high over the commode. Trip-wires are everywhere, and usually result in a shotgun blasting your head off. You must carefully use your light-source to find these, which means that running should only be reserved for areas you are familiar with. To the best of my knowledge, traps are never set back up or newly set after you’ve been through an area. So if you go through once, it is pretty safe to travel through with a bit more speed.

There is another danger lurking out of view, as there is broken glass scattered across many of the floors. Why is this a problem? Because you are goddamned BAREFOOT! Forget the fact that you kill several shoe-wearing lunatics, you spend this entire game like a woman should, minus the being pregnant and in the kitchen part. When walking over glass you move slower, but your health-bar sure as hell doesn’t. I honestly think that you lose a bit too much health from walking on the glass, but then again I’ve never walked over glass..and if I had to I would take the shoes off the guy whose ass I just beat the shit out of with a pipe.

Then of course, you have puzzles. Oh, do you ever have puzzles. They are presented in a fairly decent fashion, and they are great in number. Though I am a bit let down by the variety. They are mostly one of the following:

1. Panels where you have to make gears move by adding gears of various sizes.
2. Circuit boxes where you have to direct power flow (which I have hated ever since Terminator 2 on the Gameboy).
3. A pipe puzzle where you have to make two ends of a pipe meet together by using some of the stiffest controls around.
4. Puzzles involving finding the numbers of a padlock, which are usually on the surrounding walls or area.
5. Sliding around racks of dead pigs.

Not joking about #5.

I’m not going to lie, these puzzles can get pretty damn rough. There are some in particular that just made me want to give up on life. The circuit box puzzles aren’t my favorite type of puzzle to begin with. But when facing down one that had maybe 10 or so tiles on it, that was okay. Though when I cracked open a box later in the game only to see what looked like a series of circuits complex enough to power the entire United States twice, I nearly shit myself. Mind you that with most of these puzzles you are timed, and if you don’t get it knocked out in that time…you’re fucking dead. Many of you will turn to the internet for help, but I have to warn you that the puzzles sometimes do not repeat. You could get a completely different layout the next time you try. Fortunately my girlfriend is a puzzle-wizard, and was able to assist me with some of the tougher ones while I sat on the edge of my seat and let out soft prayers toward the Gods of everyone religion I could think of. One of those 3 or 4 higher powers is real, but I can’t recall which one it was that got us through that circuit puzzle when I called out.

Oh yeah, a ways in you get knocked out and wake up with a collar around your neck. The collar is filled with shotgun shells and if you are near another person wearing one of these collars for too long it starts to beep and will eventually blow your head off. This is the point where you take advantage of bolting doors shut, making barricades, and doing other things to avoid these characters until their own collar explodes. You also have the option of killing them, which disables it…but you better have something heavy in your hands so you can do it in one or two shots. I never died due to this collar going off, but at the same time as soon as they strapped that thing on me I got so paranoid that I moved around at a crawl.

In Closing

I didn’t really go into depth about the graphics, because those really don’t matter much to me. But, they are serviceable. The character models are never bad enough to be laughable, and about 3/4 of the environment are covered in shadows anyhow. The sound is good, and knows when to be quiet…which is important with a horror game like this. Sometimes things are silent and you can hear a little rustling around in the background or possibly a voice, and it works very well. Music only seems to pop up and swell when you are being chased or in the midst of combat, or for the timed challenge puzzles. This also is a pretty good use, as it adds that little extra to your already heart-attack inducing rise in blood pressure.

If you are a fan of the film, you’ll be an instant fan of the game. You’ll get a little more back-story, because somehow 6 films haven’t already done enough apparently. It was stated that the game would also allude to the fate of several characters from the first film. I think it might touch on one or two, but really you don’t get much. It was also supposed to explain the fate of that dude in the first film who sawed off his foot (the guy who played Robin Hood that one time), but I didn’t see anything to explain shit about it. There is a foot and saw in a bathtub early on, but who hasn’t seen that before?

I also highly enjoyed the part where you have to shove your hand into a syringe-filled toilet bowl to retrieve keys (this happens more than once). I liked to think of it as a crack-addict simulator.

I have watched all of the Saw films, though I normally wait till they have hit the bin at Blockbuster and get them for $3 or so. Konami states that they intend to make Saw their new horror franchise…so we all know what that means…

See you again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that...

The four horsemen of the apocalypse. The skinny one is called’ Plague. Just so you know.

Depending on your point of view, it sounds exactly like the beginning to either a really good or really bad sci-fi horror movie.

Deep within the confines of two separate government-funded research facilities, under constant watch by armed guards, locked away behind stone and steel and glass, frozen at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, a monster sleeps. A brutal killer, it is a monster in the truest sense of the word. Cold, callous, devoid of such human ideals as compassion, morality, motive or thought, over unknowably numbers thousands of years it has slaughtered tens of millions of people, sinners and saints and plebian and patrician alike, and left nothing but the stench of death and the horror of hideous mutilation in it’s path. It has caused the downfall of one of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world, unwittingly used as a weapon that decimated entire kingdoms of man, leaving the survivors broken, subdued, helpless children lost and alone amidst a sea of death caused by a hellish beast that just doesn’t care.

It is, beyond discussion, beyond debate, without the shadow of a doubt the single most insidiously destructive and impossibly dangerous endangered species on this planet, and none of the men in white coats tasked with the unenviable occupation of simply holding it in check, buried away within hopefully impenetrable walls, have even the slightest idea of what to do with it. It’s almost farcical, attempting to discuss the morality of wiping a monster that does nothing but kill and maim from the face of the earth, but despite our considerable track record, causing the deliberate extinction of an earthly lifeform, no matter how demonic in form and cruelly cold in function, is something our species has never done.

Clinically, the monster is called the Variola virus. The name it was called when it ravaged the world, leaving broken dreams and shattered lives, millions upon untold millions of lives, is Smallpox. As of 1977, the year I was born, humanity won a final victory over a monster that had been terrorizing it since before the second century, BC, as the use of vaccination had finally beat back the monster to where the last naturally-occurring cases were recorded, and the monster was battered down, frozen and tucked away, where it now resides, sleeping patiently, in Atlanta and Moscow.

Waiting.

You are not safe, my best beloved.

This is the way your world ends. Not with a bang, but with a handful of agonizing nights that rape your brain, ravage your body and leave you twisted and broken, so that not only will your own mother not recognize you, she will be far to terrified of what is left of you and what may still live inside you to touch your tormented face. Have a nice day.

You cannot hide from a demon that lurks, invisible, in the air, waiting for you behind soft eyes and tender lips, lurking away in the dark recesses of your own body, just.. living. Just eating. Just growing. Just… waiting. In other Guides I have written with the intention of scaring you into paying attention, I would begin by saying ‘THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.’ There is no point in mentioning such niceties this time.

We’re not talking about massive hornets that spray poisons that dissolve your flesh this time, my best beloved. There will be no curtains pulled free to reveal a fly you will likely never meet whose maggots burrow into human flesh. I don’t need to tell you that the monsters in this article are everywhere. I don’t.

Because they are.

And you already know.

In the 1980s, the virulence of a horrific killer, the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus, or HIV, and the resulting Auto-Immune Disorder Syndrome, or AIDs, came to bask in the light of day. It ravaged the country, reducing strong men and beautiful women into husks, barely able to lift their heads or open their eyes. It rages still, in Africa, raping the lives of women and children away, carried by transient workers making use of destitute whores and wreaking havoc on the population.
Every so often, someone will refer to it as the worst epidemic – no, fuck that, PANdemic, the modern world has seen in decades.

And all I can do is laugh.

The HIV virus is incredibly picky. It cannot survive in oxygen (though it may one day evolve, in which case we are all fucked), and thus is only transmitted through direct fluid-to-fluid contact. In terms of contagiousness, that’s fucking mild. Imagine a virus that rapes your life away in the space of days, leaves you a miserable, bloated black corpse, swelling in the harsh sunlight, food for worms and teeming with potential death, that you caught simply by breathing at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

This is not to say HIV/AIDS isn’t horrific, nor am I saying that the act of keeping it under wraps for so long was anything short of demonically cruel. I am not, by any means, trivializing the untold hundreds of thousands, millions of people who should not have ever had to leave this world in such a horrible manner.
What I am saying is, if HIV/AIDS is the worst epidemic we’ve currently got, we are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty fucking lucky.

Here’s why.

BUBONIC PLAGUE (Pasteurelle pestis, bacterium)

Carrier: Fleas on infested rats
Symptoms: Buboes (swollen lymph nodes, fever, prostration, delirium)

Let’s start out on the right foot with a virulent pestilence commonly referred to by a delightfully quaint, almost cuddly name, ‘The Black Death.’ Three times this disease has erupted amongst the fields of mankind, over the course of 1,200 years, removing an estimated 137,000,000 people from the face of this world.
That’s a pretty fucking big number right there.

Anyone else hungry? Man, I could really go for a pizza right about now.

Once you realize that all three major outbreaks, occurring in the Justinian times of Rome (540-590 AD), the really famous explosion in Europe (1346-1361 AD) and one last time for a year in London (1665-1666 AD), occurred during periods of time in which the human population of the world was far, far less than it is today, that number seems to loom all the more larger, more monstrous, devastating and impossibly deadly.

What we are dealing with is a disease with a mortality rate of 90%, one that could destroy you, from first onset of symptoms until the moment your body simply stops feebly trying to live, in the course of a handful of days. Spread by infected fleas riding on the backs of Rattus Rattus, the common black rat, the pestilence entered the bloodstream through flea bites, causing deadly temperatures, cooking your brain, or septicemia, blood poisoning. Unless your lungs were infected first, causing a pneumonic form of the plague, in which case fuck the fleas, your lungs have just become a viral cannon and everyone breathing anywhere near you is at risk. Risk, when dealing with something like this, equals death. One single case of pneumonic bubonic plague can cause a hellish epidemic, and did. Three times.

It’s very difficult to understand, in these modern times we live in, what such a monstrous thing as an epidemic of the likes of the Bubonic Plague is actually like. While the Black Death outbreak is by far the most famous, with school children learning quick and meaningless factoids like ‘wiped out a third of Europe’ while sparing the gruesome details, the Justinian plague was by far the most severe.

This is a doctor, believe it or not. They wore these leather masks, the long ‘noses’ filled with rancid-smelling herbs, because they thought it would save them from the plague. HEY GUESS WHAT IT DIDN’T FUCKING WORK.

One hundred and thirty-seven million people over twelve hundred years is a rough number to wrap your brain around. Let’s try a smaller number, shall we? Ten thousand. Can you imagine ten thousand? Ten thousand people. Is that easier? Okay, good. During the height of the fifty-year-long Justinian plague, ten thousand people were simply falling away into nothingness.

Every single day.

Imagine waking up one morning and your entire family is lying, motionless, crawling with insects, black and bloated and foul smelling, eyes bulging, tongue swelled, oozing dark liquids from every orifice. Last week they were full of life. Five days ago they took ill. This morning they are pestulant lumps of diseased flesh, their throats and armpits and groins swelling with ‘buboes’, enlarged lymph nodes, and the stench would drive a God to drink. You stumble from your home, crying for help, but no-one is left alive to hear you. Your entire village has been completely wiped away. Families, lineages, entire bloodlines, stricken from the record in one fell swoop. Ten thousand people every single day. Individual graves could never be dug fast enough, not even mass graves could accommodate the dead. At first, the corpses, teeming with contagion, were stacked into high towers until they neared overflowing and then lye was poured within. When that wasn’t enough, when no more towers remained that were not stuffed full of the dead, in the end, they simply took large ships, loaded them up with bodies, set them to sea and either abandoned them or burnt them.

Cities vanished. Agriculture just… stopped. A hundred million people in fifty years, a hundred million people in a period of time in which the total human population of the globe was a fraction, a tiny sliver of its current state. By 590 AD, when the plague died away, it was not because a cure was found, nor had the bacillus vanished. The germ had simply slaughtered too many for it’s own good, wiping out the critical mass of carriers until no-one was left to hold it within them. Fifty years of torment, horror and death. The plague that put the final nail into the coffin engulfing the Roman empire, eventually, because it had killed too much, simply petered away.

And then came back, a thousand years later, in a particularly vicious form, a pneumatic adaptation to the same old bug that produced dark hemorrhages beneath the skin and around the eyes, causing gangrene of the lungs and spread like the flu, with a mortality rate exceeding 90%, destroying 27,000,000 people in fifteen years.

HEY LOOK THE BLACK DEATH IS STILL. FUCKING. HERE.

The dread Black Death, a pestilence that simply ended everything it touched and created panic the likes of which we cannot come close to comprehending. Doctors refused to see the dying. The holy men turned away the near-dead, refusing to hear their last confessions, lest the monsters riding the breaths of those words find them and rip their lives away, too. Jews were blamed for poisoning wells, creating a more familiar plague of ignorant rage, thousands of Jews murdered by fire for their imaginary crimes as the plague ravaged the known world.

“I buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave,” wrote Italian author Agnioli di Tura. “No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world.”

It was not, of course, eventually the plague subsided, like a fire that simply burned too much fuel and died away, stealing back into the night for one last grand hurrah, an outbreak in London that lasted a matter of months and murdered 2,000 people per week at its peak, before stealing away into the night. There have been scattered outbreaks here and there over the years, but as of 1971, the demon seems to have been controlled, though no actual cure has been found. Antibiotics seem to help and controlling the rat population doesn’t hurt, as the report of the World Health Organization reported – 965 cases in 1971, only 47 deaths (a 5% mortality rate, which is close to the Justinian plague’s SUVIVAL rate). By the late 70s, the death rate was down to about 3% of cases. This is not because of modern medicine. This is because the bacillus has become far, far more mild – an adaptation to assist in the bacillus’ own life cycle.

The demon has not been beaten, best beloved. We did not defeat it.

It is still there. It still lives, infects, eats and procreates.

Waiting.

MALARIA (Plasmodium Vivax)

Carrier: The female Anopheles mosquito
Symptoms: Chills, fever, anemia, enlargement of the spleen

The word means ‘bad air,’ which was thought in ancient times to be the cause of the single greatest killer of mankind since its inception into this world. It is impossible to even begin to estimate how many millions of people the disease has slaughtered, coldly, callously, ripping away their strength first, then hope, and finally their lives, untold millions of people throughout the course of human history. It’s thought that tribes of humans from the dawn of man fled upwards into the colder climates of Europe and Asia in order to escape the dread affliction, thus causing the existence of white people. Hatas, you may thank the mosquitoes for the presence of The Man. Malarai is very likely the cause of the eventual fall of the Roman empire, which spread out over almost the entire known world, weakening it severely, ravaging the population and reducing scores upon scores of people into shivering mounds of doomed flesh, a fate the empire could never recover from, as it was, in its weakened state, soon pulverized by the Justinian Bubonic Plague.

Presenting the single most deadly Nightmare Monster Bug From Hell on the entire fucking planet, responsible for untold hundreds of millions of deaths since the dawn of the human race, the female Anopheles mosquito. Take a bow, princess, you’ve earned it.

Malaria was there, waiting impatiently for fresh blood at ever stage of human history, tearing civilizations asunder and leaving behind shaken, terrified survivors who could do barely more than wait for the other shoe to drop. Malaria swept from the ruins of Rome and took over the world, carried by dying Romans, their conquered people and the conquerors who tore in to take their share of the once-great kingdom, obliterating untold millions as it engulfed three-quarters of the world, outbreaks cropping up so frequently it would be useless to try to list them all in this space. Malaria raped the Crusaders. It waited for the settlers in the New World. It assaulted American troops in the Pacific island of World War Two, a more terrifying opponent than the Japanese suicide bombers, and in Sicily, it took more lives than the guns. It has always been there, and it will always be there, causing its wracking chills, taking its horrific toll.

Malaria stands atop the human race to this day. It has shrugged off all attempts to produce a vaccine, and has laughed away any attempts at a cure, rapidly adapting to create immunity to new drugs and slamming back into the population with a mighty vengeance. Caused by a protozoan and carried by an insect, any moist place is a potential breeding ground. There is no cure. For over five thousand years, the total sum of recorded Human history, it has been the most dreaded and virulent disease this world has known. It has caused evolution, it has shaped history, it has murdered more people than any estimate can count.

See those red splotches? That’s where five hundred million people are currently infected with malaria, two hundred million new cases will be reported this year, and 2-3 million people will die. GOD BLESS NOT LIVING IN THE RED FUCKING SPLOTCHES.

To this day, two hundred million people are infected every single year.

To this day, millions of lives are shaken to death by it, every single year.

A culprit, the female Anopheles mosquito has been found, yes, in 1894, by British physician Ronald Ross. A culprit was found.

But not a vaccine.

US Troops in malaria-risk areas – which are almost entirely sub-equatorial nations, Africa, southern Asia, South America, are given, apparently, a “promising candidate” for a vaccine, but an iron-clad proof against the disease has yet to be found. Two to three million people, every single year die in agony, their bodies striped of strength and then life, perishing in agony you really don’t want me to describe. The best ‘candidate’ currently boasts ‘tantalizing’ results, reducing the chance of infection by an OH MY GOD HOLY FUCK 30%. It’s a start.

After five thousand years of recorded human history and only God knows how much longer, after uncounted, untold hundreds of millions of deaths, it’s a start.

SMALLPOX (Variola Virus)

Carrier: Flakes of dead skin from an infected person.
Symptoms: Fever, scarring pustules, blindness

Imagine, if you will, being a citizen in the greatest nation of the world you know, ruled by a king who was not set there by the Gods, he IS a God. Your king’s will is the will of the Gods. His words is their law. The blood of the divine runs in his veins, beating in his heart, and he controls the world you live in from the top of a palace that looms over a magnificent city of stone that grows like a forest up from the very top of a mountain, his words reaching the clouds long before the reach you.

Smallpox.

Now imagine, one day, setting down on the eastern shore of your world, white men in metal clothing and great wooden fortresses that glide across the water. Men wh speak in strange tongues that ride massive beasts the likes of which exist only in nightmares, they carry tubes that spit fire and thunder, and they tell you that your Gods are dead, and that their one God has conquered them. Your own King seems to fear them, fear what they represent, but you’re not so sure. They cannot be gods, they bleed like all men, don’t they? And as fearsome as their weapons are, as monstrous as the beasts they ride may be, if they bleed, they can die, is this not so? You are legion, they are so few… aren’t they?

And then, not like a thief in the night, not like a dagger between the ribs, not so much like a whisper and so much more like nuclear warhead, it strikes. A weapon far, far worse than the muskets, a demon far, far more terrifying that the horses, a demon the Spaniards, those self-important Conquistador bastards, did not themselves know they had brought with them. It strikes fast, furiously, and harder than a hammer made from entire worlds. Three times, the men in metal come, and three times, that hammer strikes, and each time it strikes, the shock from the blow is like a wave that begins on the eastern coast and courses through your people, tearing a path to the western banks.

The year this begins, the year your world begins to end is 1519. Your people are called Aztec, and are numbered at an estimated 25 million. By 1596, a little under 80 years later, 18,500,000 of your people are dead, gone and forgotten, twisted human wreckage, the scars that ravaged their bodies right down to the bone marking them as victims of the blight brought over on Spanish ships. Of your great nation, six hundred and fifty THOUSAND remain, 650,000 out of what was once a great nation of 25,000,000. And those six hundred and fifty thousand survivors, who have watched their nation crumble away into dust under this horrific disease, this blinder of children and destroyer of everything it touches, watched as the men in metal clothing, those men who claimed their God was GREATER than yours, walk amidst the death untouched. You do not understand the phrase ‘built up a resistance’. You do not know that six hundred years prior, the same blight descended upon Spain, brought by the Moors and nearly decimated them. All you can see is that they are alive, and everyone you know is dead.

It is easy to understand why the survivors cast away their old religion so quickly, and why they embraced Christianity with fervor far more passionate than even the Spaniards who brought it to them.

Smallpox.

The plague is called Smallpox, and the name is a reference meant to differentiate it from the ‘Great Pox’, which was Syphilis, a once omnipresent killer that forced values into a more chase mindset, once a mass murderer and creater of madness, now controlled to the point where it has become a visit to the free clinic and a shot that’ll be sore for a while. Syphilis could be concealed for decades, until the third and fatal stage of the illness. Smallpox, though…

It’s impossible to understate the effects this disease has had upon those who lived within its grasp. Mummified Pharaohs have been revealed to have scars on their bones, on their fucking bones that show they were touched by it. Their bones. It cuts through your skin, disfiguring you to the core of your being, carving patterns into your bones and devouring your eyes. “Disfiguring” is a funny word. It’s hard to put it into perspective. I am at a loss for words to explain, precisely, the ravaging scars left behind on the survivors, so I’m hoping that the included pictures can do a better job than my descriptions.

Smallpox is of the same viral family as Chickenpox, which means that resistances can be built, minor immunities that will leave vicious, grotesque scars but leave your life more or less intact, though your social graces are effectively at an end. Those who were lucky or unlucky enough to live free of the disease, however…

The Aztecs were obliterated.

The Native American tribes at war with the European and Proto-American settlers for the land they inhabited since time immemorial were crippled and finally washed away.

The Spanish, in 710, were nearly annihilated by it.

And resistances do not mean immunity.

Sixty million Europeans fell prey to it, ravaged unto nothingness by the disease in the 18th century alone, and the surviors were left as hideous, malformed abortions of nature for the rest of their lives, shunned by society, their prospects for healthy, normal lives evaporated by the touch of a microscopic organism that does not have the capacity for malice or remorse.

It was not until 1796 that the war against this virus reached a turning point, a three-thousand year losing streak just turned right the fuck around when an English country doctor named Edward Jenner hit upon a vaccine, the very first vaccine in history of medicine, and even this weapon would have failed – nobody really wanted to have a live serum of Smallpox injected into them – if not for Catherine the Great of Russia, who submitted to the procedure as an example to her subjects. The disease had finally met its match, as more and more and more of the world inoculated itself against it. By 1948, the last natural case in America had been recorded. South America, which had been altered politically, religiously, completely and forever reported its final cases in 1971.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD, BABY GIRL

By 1977, the year I was born, the very last naturally occurring cases were recorded. Twenty-nine years have gone by, an entire generation has come into this world without the barest hint of fear of this virulent monster, this demon that lives in two places and two places only, Moscow and Atlanta, under armed guard, debated over by scientists who no longer work with the disease.

Secreted away, frozen in time.

The beast is not dead.

It merely sleeps.

And then there is Typhoid, an intestinal killer, over a hundred cases and thousands of deaths of which can be attributed to a single cook named Mary. And then there is Tuberculosis, called consumption, which wasted it’s victims away to a state that, ironically or not, was considered to be the feminine ideal of beauty – weak, fainting, reddened lips and ruddy cheeks as the lungs of the victims were eaten away. And then there is the Spanish Influenza, which exploded out of thin air and devoured eighteen million people in eighteen fucking months, and then vanished as quickly as it came. And then there is Syphilis, a destroyer of ‘the immoral’, which damned the dying as they slowly went mad, their minds eaten away.

And now, there is AIDs.

In comparison to the great pestilences of bygone years, it seems almost mild. Transmitted only through direct trading of fluids, like syphilis, a disease that marks the dying as immoral waste, prompting the ignorant to consider it vengeance of God upon the sinners they despise.

All things considered, you know, it’s rather hard to catch it, isn’t it? I mean, there must be blood involved, really. It lives in the blood, doesn’t it? Anal sex, blood and semen. Sharing needles, blood to blood. It’s in the blood and only in the blood, in the semen, dying in the air, such a horrific disease and yet so fragile, so hard to transmit… isn’t it?

That’s the problem with viruses.

It’s easy to forget that they are living things, belligerently living things.

And like all living things, they adapt.

Take the Pasteurella pestis bacterium that causes the Bubonic plague, for example. It has most assuredly adapted, evolved, it has become milder. Less deadly. Less willing to destroy its hosts, so that it might live longer, not burn away its stock of hosts as it did in Rome and Europe. It has adapted.
And so, I read, is HIV.

An HIV infestation. Say goodnight, Gracie.

It’s adapting, too.

Growing new spines along its microscopic carapace, evolving to meet the demands of its life cycle. One day, sooner, later, it may complete its adaptation, so that it no longer needs the blood to infect.

Those adaptations it’s growing? They appear all too similar to those found on other sorts of viruses.

Airborne viruses.

Sweet dreams.

This was spotted in a park close to my house. It’s basically the equivalent of a haunted house shanty. The place was called Pandemonium In The Park, and was covered with all sorts of fourth grade caliber Halloween art. If this place would have been open I would have totally went through. Between all the Christmas creep in stores, and all the religious people around here demanding to have “Hallelujah Parties” instead of Halloween Parties, this was the best thing I’ve seen all month.

If this is what passes for a “horror” film these days, and if this is what scares people…then we have entered an era of being a bunch of no-taste pussies. I watched this film after hearing how it was quite possibly the scariest film of the year, the decade, or perhaps OF ALL TIME! Granted, movies don’t really scare me…but I still watched this one with the hopes that all the people talking about how they pissed themselves watching this were right.

They were far from being right. What you are plunking your money down on is not a horror masterpiece. Film yourself and your significant other doing your day to day activities, then splice that together with an episode of “Most Haunted” and you’ve got this film. The “story” centers around a young couple who have just moved in together into a very nice and spacious home, even though neither of them seem to actually have a job. The girl has had a rough past, and has experienced some hardships in her past and also experienced some activity (of the paranormal kind). Her boyfriend proceeds to purchase a big-assed video-camera in the hopes that his girlfriend will continue to experience these events and he can snag it on video.

The next 90-some minutes is just bad, and can best be described in the next section.

The Strict and Predictable Routine the Film Follows

Ever watch House? The television show about the doctor, and not the completely awesome horror flick from awhile back. If so, you know how utterly predictable that show is, at times to a fault. Patient passes out, nobody knows what is wrong, someone else guesses the illness but is wrong, House swoops in and saves the day. Take that predictability and up it a few notches and you’ve basically got this film. The entire film is essentially this:

1. Daytime scenes in which the couple argues and / or tries to make up after arguing.
2. Night scene where a loud noise is made or a door shuts. Girl screams, guy grabs camera.
3. Girl whines about wanting to leave the house, Guy does not want to leave the house.
4. You start to boil with anger when you see some pussy actually cowering in fear.

I'm going to guess a loud noise happened here

The Boyfriend

I don’t remember his name, but I remember his being a stupid douche. I am sort of on the fence with my supernatural beliefs, but the moment some ghost shit goes down in my home…I’m gone. If a ghost wants to get a piece of me, they’re gonna have to run after me and hope they don’t trip over their sheet in the process. This dumbass chooses to stay in the house, even after facing down a series of REAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYY SCARRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYY loud bumps and lights cutting on and off. It’s bad enough that he is obviously spitting in the face of some demonic force, but his girlfriend is going batshit insane all at the same time. Or maybe she was just on the rag.

This character epitomizes the guy that you want to see get it in these films. Normally a character like that is great because you want some other folks besides the main characters who can be killed off. But in a film like this, filmed as if it were inviting you into the lives of these two people…you shouldn’t HATE them. If anything, you should feel some sort of connection to them so when bad shit happens you worry for them, or pull for them to make it through, or any of that stuff you do when a character is actually fleshed out and not just thrown on the camera so a studio can turn a buck.

The Girlfriend

She was unattractive and could stand to lose a few pounds.

Limited Release…Not Limited Enough

I love the gimmick they had for this film. Only put it in a few theaters, so only a few select people could realize how much it fucking sucks. Meanwhile, they show commercials with footage of crowds screaming and covering their eyes and acting like a bunch of 3 year olds. They go on to pretty much proclaim this to be the Jesus Christ of horror films, then say something about how this film will rape your mother and beat your children and all other sorts of stuff.

LOOK OUT! HERE COMES THE SHAKY-CAM GHOST! OH NOOOOOO!

You see this preview and are sorta on the outs, but then you see it is a limited release. So you casually get online to see if it is in your area, and you see that the closest theater carrying it is about 2 hours away. Now, knowing that you more than likely can not see this film, you WANT to see it. You HAVE to see it! You have to know what all the fuss is about! Then when (surprise, surprise) it got a wider release, you are finally able to go, eager to plunk down that cash money. That is when you find out the truth.

You are watching the home movies of your most boring friends.

The first quarter of the film really feels like that. I guess it is trying to establish the characters or something else it is failing to accomplish, but for a film that has been touted as the scariest movie in the world…I don’t want character development. You want the shit scared out of you from start to end. You want to grip those arm rests or someone else’s leg until you feel your nails sinking into cushion (or flesh).

The only way this film could even remotely cause someone to shit is if they put extra extra butter on their popcorn.

Is it My Fault?

I don’t scare easily by films, or really at all. So can my opinion really be trusted when it comes to this film? Is this actually a good film, and I am the one at fault for not recognizing it?

No.

This film fails on so many levels. I’m a blood and guts man, but I can appreciate a good psychological horror film. While I like to see a monster / ghost / creature on screen, I can also enjoy the films where you never directly see what is causing the trouble. That being said, the entity in this film does little more than stomp around and shut doors. This film needed a sense of dread. It needed to build up anticipation and nervousness in the audience. Those scenes at night where the couple are in the bed, and everything is quiet…the crowd should be starting to cower down in fear of what is about to come. Instead the monotony of how this film plays out completely ruins it. You learn early on that things will be quiet, then there will be a sound. The guy will get up, the girl will yell, the guy will grab the camera and run around a little, and that is it. There is no big payoff, there is no big money scare for your waiting.

A messy bed, a girl on the floor in ruin...this was almost a good movie had it just went straight to Pornhub

By the time the film is almost over you are eating a big Sandwich of Disappointment. Well folks, lift up that bread because the ending is going to toss on another slice. Oh yeah…

SPOILERS!!!

After watching his girlfriend go more and more insane, the guy finally decides it is time to leave and stay at a hotel (it only took 20-some nights). The girl then proclaims she wants to stay there. The following night she gets up, stares at the guy forever, walks downstairs and starts screaming. The guy rushes down and things get quiet. You are then treated to an almost comical shot of the guy flying back into the bedroom and into the camera, and his now apparently possessed girlfriend crawling over to the camera and smiling.

The End.

THE END!? Wow. While this did not bring forth “No Country for Old Men” levels of hatred when it comes to an ending, I thought this was just the completely wrong note. I’m all for endings that aren’t rainbows and sunshine, but this just felt out of place. Not to mention the fact that you knew the two characters were going to die from the very beginning, as the opening has text saying that “Paramount thanks the families” of the two characters. Thanks Paramount.

Then again, this is a shaky-cam movie. EVERYBODY dies at the end of those.

End Spoilers, Begin Closing

This film is nothing more than a joke. What could have been a decent concept was ruined by predictability, unlikeable characters, and a pretty weak presentation. If you want to see this movie and enjoy it, try to cleanse yourself of all common sense. I hear about 100 different bumps and creaks a day, and I don’t pick up a video-camera and immediately run toward them. That kinda stuff.

Is this movie scary? I don’t think so. If you do, and you’re not a child or at least a female aged 16-25…stop being such a tittybaby. You really should be ashamed.

This film is like a drunken mailman with diarrhea. It doesn’t deliver, and what it does attempt to deliver is covered in shit.

The first game to be unearthed from its tomb is Dark Chambers. This game does live up to its name in that it is quite dark (not that hopeless dark like Haunted House though) and does contain many a chamber…MANY a chamber. I ask that you now remove all small children from the room, and keep in mind that if at any time things should get too intense, repeat to yourself “It’s only a shitty rehash article so the site could have more Halloween content”.

DON'T FAINT!

In this game you take the part of a man. You see, this is no ordinary man however. I’m pretty sure it is in Indian, because of the hair-piece which may in fact be a head-dress. Besides, what is scarier than an Indian with a gun? This game explores a deeper horror than darkness, running from monsters, and endless rooms…it dives into the hatred of the Native-American, and if put into a situation where there was no law…the fact that he would go around shooting every damn thing. Unless you had something that shined really bright that would catch his eye, not unlike a raccoon…you would be shit out of luck. Or maybe if you had the flu, then you could finish off this red-skin and his whole family. After all for all of their advances in growing crops and hunting, they were too damn lazy to develop decent immune systems. As you stood there, laughing at your flu-bug invading his system, he would grow far too weak to finish sending off his smoke-signals to his tribesmen.

GIVE 'EM HELL RED-MAN!

Well this is basically Haunted House, except without the cool or suspense. I do not know why you are in these Chambers, though there is a wizard-type character right at the beginning of he game. Is this more than just Indian-blasts-the-Undead? Is there an underlying theme? Is this a cleverly masked KKK vs. The Injuns supergame that “The Man” held down because he doesn’t want people to see Native Americans in a role of power? Probably not, it probably isn’t even a fucking Indian, but a 2,000 word minimum isn’t going to fill up by itself is it? You run around shooting various skeletons, but after you shoot the skeleton, something odd happens. The skeleton turns into a human. I shit you not. It goes from white bones to white skin and a snazzy overcoat immediately. It’s like a reverse Ghosts N’ Goblins…only thankfully you don’t have to listen to that same damn theme play throughout all of htis game. So what do you do with this newly created man? You fucking shoot him dead to because he’s a white asshole and he shouldn’t have took your damn land in the first place even though it was kind of your fault for making bad business decisions. So go on, SHOOT HIM INDIAN! Shoot him before he rubs in your face the fact that you gave up all you had for a string and several glittery rocks. Shoot him before he builds another upper-middle class home on top of one of your burial grounds. Or maybe just knee-cap him…a dead white man means one less customer at your casino.

I found this game to be simply devilish. I can not imagine what I would do if put in a similar position as the Redman in this game. Wandering about, taking jabs in the dark, trying to enter tight areas while having no idea where they lead, I’m just no good at it. For those very same reasons, I’m not much of a hit with the ladies. However, that tale is more depressing and suicide-inducing than haunting, so we press on!

Better hide those brownies, tubby.

As scary as that was boys and ghouls, we are going to travel back to the mid-80’s…which was a scary enough time in itself. I know ALL of you reading this were born then, so you remember the movie Gremlins. As a child that film nearly made me shit my pants from fear, actually it did make me shit my pants one time but I had deeply repressed that humiliating memory until just now…fuck. The concept of these green creatures running about, tearing shit up, sending old ladies out of roof-tops…it was heavy shit. The movie was great, and the Atari game of the same name was surprisingly decent, and SCARRRRRRRYYYYY!!!! The game is divided into two parts, the first of which has you trying to keep the critters from falling to the ground below, where you just happen to have a number of delicious cheeseburgers laying about. Cheeseburgers in the yard? This was the mid-80’s after all, and nobody gave a damn about their health back then. Cheeseburgers in the yard was not uncommon at all in any neighborhood.

Hamburgers in the grass, GREMLINS ON YO ASS!

After that we move on to the second portion of the game. In this bone-chilling mode of play, you must shoot the Gremlins that you allowed to hatch earlier. You left the cheeseburgers, you fucked up, you dropped the ball! Now your nine is the only way to right the wrongs. This is relatively easy, as the Gremlins move quite slow for a number of levels before presenting a true challenge. Just for fun though, let the Gremlin ram into you one time. Despite the fact that he is moving at roughly the speed of the one very elderly cashier at Wal-Mart they just employed to avoid a age-discrimation suit…his walking into you will send you flying off screen…for the sake of making scary let us say it sends you flying into a DEN OF VIPERS! Beware playing this game alone, and certainly not in the dark! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Well readers, you survived to the end! Here’s to hoping that you are not horribly killed immediately after you get up, as the curse of this article is known to do. As always, it has been a pleasure. I hate to leave you on such a GRAVE circumstance, but I must be going. I have many things to do to prepare for the Halloween season…such as…yeah I guess I don’t have too much to do. WhateBOO!