Slender (PC): Finally, Someone remembered how to do horror right.

I had never heard about this game before now. But a friend passed a long a Rooster Teeth (who I friggen love, by the way) video of "Rage Quit", where Micheal and Gavin Co-Play Slender together. It's fairly typical Rage Quit fanfare, but the game looked pretty creepy. But as I was dicking around on another online game, another discussion of it came up talking about how scary it is. After hearing about it in two different places twice in one day and that it was free to play, I decided to take a crack at it.

SLENDER:(PC)

So if you go by the storyline provided to you in the actual game, the story of Slender is "Collect 8 pieces of paper." I had to do a bit of research on but as I understand it, the paraphrased legend of the Slender Man goes like this: the buzz about the legend of the Slender Man started (created?) on the Something Awful forums in the late 90's, but parallels to the legend seem to document well before that.  He stands at about 8-15 feet tall and has extraordinarily large limbs, occasionally with tendrils coming from him. 

Supposedly is able to access a 4th dimension it allows him to seemingly vanish and appear without a trace, although modern camera equipment has been able to capture him, however his abilities distort it. He has an affinity for children, and kidnaps them for reasons only known to him, but has been known to attack adults. He will stalk his target from days to years, gradually picking away at their sanity and sending them into a serious state of paranoia, where he tends to lure people to his favored hunting ground, typically a forest.

He stalks his prey, causing them to panic before triggering a complete breakdown and shatters their mind to a nearly catatonic state. He and his victim vanish with many cases of the victim never being found again, although some cases report the body being found impaled on a tree branch and left to bleed to death. The slender man in these cases will remove each of the organs one at a time, place them in a plastic bag, and then replace them into the body before leaving them. Motivations are never known, but apparently there seems to be no pattern for how the Slender Man chooses his victims aside of what strikes his fancy. (Information on the Slender man Lore found at http://theslenderman.wikia.com)

So yeah, that's horrifying premise this game is based upon. You play what I assume is meant to be yourself, you are in a fenced in area of the forest and you are trying to find 8 manuscript pages left behind by the Slender man. 

The controls are fairly simple, you use your mouse to look around and the mouse buttons to pick up pages or kill your flashlight. Movement is the standard gamer PC WSDA movement set up, with two buttons to zoom and holding left shift to jog. That's it. That's all you get. I struggle to find a comparison to this game from its play alone but I supposed I could say its Myst meets Amber meets Alan Wake? That's probably not accurate but yeah, a horrifying version of Myst seems the most right.

While much of the game takes place in darkness in dim wooden areas,
the fog and atmosphere are rendered beautifully.

The game starts you off at sort of a calm pace but there is already a lot of tension right as you begin. All you can hear as you walk around the forest are the sounds of your footsteps on the underbrush. The occasional chirping of a cricket or the flutter of a nearby bird. You are bound by the restriction of the fence, but the movement rate is pretty slow. It causes this gradual level of tension as you walk around, as if you were actually walking scared in the woods: slow, uneasy, and alarmed. It definitely puts you in the right mindset for this kind of game. 

You are generally safe when you first start the game up, as you have yet to do anything to upset the Slender Man. But if you happen to stumble upon one of the pages of his manuscript and take one, then the chase begins. The game doesn't exactly feature music but rather a series of low resonating drones that you'd hear in horror films. it does a wonderful compliment to build the unease and you immediately know that now he is after you, and with each page you pick up the droning because louder and more intense as the slender man draws near...

You will always know when the Slender Man is closing in on you because the screen gradually get more static and garbled as he draws near. So if static starts to pick up on the screen, you want to turn your ass around as quick as possible. Sometimes you can catch a brief glimpse of him, but more often than not you will be too panicked to try to stare him down. It will also shake the shit out of you each time you stumble across him with a loud pang of noise whenever you get too close. 

Probably one of the creepiest aspects is he sometimes has a very Jason Voorhees method of stalking you. There will be times where I have caught a glimpse of him and turned around and ran a few steps. But when I turned back around he was clearly much closer than when I first ran away from him. So I would turn around again and run a much further distance thinking it was safe to turn back around, only to find that he was even closer this time.  

If he is this close? You are probably already fucked. 

I at one point had the brilliant idea that maybe he was tracking me by the movement of my flashlight, so when the static started to appear I killed the light and turned around and slowly creeped away. I managed to make it a good number of steps, thinking that I was completely home free when he suddenly appeared right in front of me with a loud DUNNNNN causing me to violently shit my pants in fear and was immediately caught. So don't make the same mistake I did, the Slender man does not give a shit and half about your flashlight.

Last thing you see before you die.....

I have yet let last any more than 3 or 4 pages in this game before he gets me. It seems like the pages are in the same places each time but I've yet to get far enough into the game to confirm that with certainty. That's really all there is to explain about that game because that's about as deep as it goes. But if you'll notice, I have been practically gushing about this game as I have and explained each of its parts and I can tell you why that is..

These developers understand the keys to great horror game. Somewhere along the line devs forgot the simple rules that make a game terrifying. First off, nothing makes a game scarier than a feeling of being completely helpless. Old Resident Evil games worked because the ability to move was awful, and you had very limited shots. Silent Hill? Same concept: you are alone, everything seems to be after you, and your basically fighting for your life with a stick. Fatal Frame, throngs of ghosts coming at you with murderous intent and all you have to defend yourself is a camera. All of these games emphasize on the point that if you are trapped you are basically fucked and your only real course of defense is to flee. You are always tense. 

Two, low visibility. Lets face it, even as adults we can be afraid of the dark. By narrowing down the scope of your vision, you are constantly looking over your should and checking around for any imminent danger. You NEVER feel safe. Knowing that the threat is constantly waiting for you and stalking you, and you have a dim flashlight in a foggy forest to find him. The shadows and fog constantly play tricks on you and makes you see things that are not there.

Three, music and sound are terrifying. A brilliantly written horror music score can certainly raise the tension, but nothing is quite scarier than a break in the silence that you didn't cause. From a quiet forest ambiance to a increasingly menacing drone, the sound constantly pushes your level of fear that he is closing in on you, and rocks your readiness with loud pangs every time you accidentally stumble upon your predator. It is executed perfectly.

Lastly, they understood that less you can see of a monster or enemy the scarier it is. So they go to great lengths to try design the game where you are penalized for trying to see him. Sometimes he will completely vanish from right in front of you, but if you keep your gaze on him the screen scrambles as your sanity vanishes, resulting in a game over. It keeps you running from an unknown that you can't see, and it makes it that much more terrifying as a result.

For quite a while I was starting to wonder if people knew how to make good horror games anymore, as I watched all my favorite horror game franchises turn into fast paced action shooters. It was disappointing. However, this game has shown me that some people out there still get "it" and can still come up with some pretty original concepts from ones used before, and use simple tricks of light & sound to turn me into the frightened 5 year old kid I once was.

So crank up your video card settings, turn off the lights, turn up sound, and slip into your favorite brand of disposable undergarments and give Slender a shot. I doesn't cost you a dime to play and you can find it for free at http://slendergame.com/. If this game doesn't get your heart rate pumping, I'd call a mortician because you are probably dead.

Now if you will excuse me... I have to change my pants. 

Persona 4 Arena (PS3): Guilty Gear's sexy but slightly dumber cousin.

The Persona franchise has always somewhat intrigued me to a degree. I remember back when I worked at Derpbuster Video I found a copy of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and flipped through the instructions. What immediately grabbed my attention is that one of the characters persona's wrists were bound and was in spider tie bondage with a high heel grinding into her mask (which probably says all kinda weird things about my tastes). Sadly, the game was broken so I couldn't investigate the game further. But it kinda stuck with me.

I ended up trying Persona 3 later on the PS2. I liked the game a lot but the difficulty spike was retarded so I never finished it. When Persona 4 came out, I barely had a reason to hook up my PS2 so I never purchased it. The reason for this trip down memory lane is Persona 4 has a come up with a sequel called.....

PERSONA 4: ARENA (PS3)

What grabbed my attention to this game is even though it is a direct sequel to Persona 4, it's a completely different style of game. The Persona series generally is a cross between a JRPG and a Japanese school simulation. But this game is neither of those, its actually just a regular old one on one fighter. Interesting change but not exactly revolutionary. Final Fantasy has tried this twice, and it wouldn't be the first time one genre of game changed formats. Disgaea gave us Prinny: Can I really be the Hero? and that game was fucking awesome.

But then I noticed it was not only published by Atlus but also that it was produced by Arc Systems, the creators of the Guilty Gear series. Now, I may have been a bit late to the party, but I fucking love Guilty Gear. It's quickly become one of my favorite fighters, but I've been eagerly awaiting a new one of them. Looking over the images and videos of this game, it looks like it borrows a lot of mechanics used in Guilty Gear in the same ways BlazBlue did. With that alone, that was enough for me to take a leap of faith on this one....

The story takes place about year after the events of Persona 4. The heroes are proceeding with their scholastic career, and going about their lives as normal students. But they begin to hear rumors that the Midnight Channel, the mysterious program that would indicate someones forthcoming grizzly murder, was back on the air. Only this time the show is different, like its advertising some combat show. Naturally the heroes are concerned about this and then watch to see if the program comes back.

Not only does it come back, the shows announcers boast that the heroes are the combatants who will be fighting on the program. All of them shaken by this, they meet up to plan out their course of action and decide to dive into the television to combat this head on. Much like when they are battling their own shadows of themselves, they are constantly challenged by each other and digging at their own weaknesses of their personality. Each person fights to solve the mystery of this ordeal and of themselves.

The Investigation Team

That make sense to anyone? No? Me either. You have a number options on how to play the game, I first took a crack at Arcade mode. I shouldn't have to explain what this is but its about 8 fights with other characters before you fight the final boss. The game actually has a number of cut scenes and conversations as you go through arcade mode which comes off as sort of an abridged version of the story. Simple enough and probably the mode you will get the most enjoyment out of.

But there is also a story mode as well where the game goes to its RPG roots and you can learn more about the character and what they did and or are doing after the events of Persona 4. You follow along with the characters and the events are all explained in greater detail. Many of the cut scenes are fully voice acted and are actually pretty well done. I was expecting some pretty hokey voice work but actually they are pretty well delivered and a lot of the exchanges are pretty funny. Even the new character, Labrys, has this very out of place Bostonian (Kansai) accent. But after one or two cut scenes, she had a charm about her that made me really enjoy the character. 

The problem with the story mode is the there is too much text. WAY too much text.  I know its supposed to be story mode but lets be realistic here: this is a one on one fighter, and people want to get to the fucking action. The first chapter of the character I played easily took almost 10 minutes to get through the many screens of text it contained and I didn't even get to friggen fight in that chapter. A lot of it repeats in some stories too and could be severely cut down some. I ended up skipping a lot of text as I did other characters because I've read similar stuff already.

I'm going to make my girlfriend (who doesn't exist) talk in a bostonian
accent just because of how Labrys talks. I'm so in love with her.

When I finally waded through enough bullshit to actually get to a fight, it ended in a single round. BIG mistake as far as I am concerned. If there is concern that the story mode might get boring, then taking away some of the length of time I get to play it is not going to help. Luckily, you can open an options setting in story mode to skip unseen text, although that kind of defeats the purpose. My only other complaint with story mode is the music, as it restarts from cut scene to cut scene. It wasn't bad at first but after 2 or 3 characters in story mode, a lot of it was starting to get very grating on me. In actual game play you don't notice it though. 

After that the game modes are the pretty traditional fighting game fan fare. The regular mainstays like score attack mode, training mode, challenge mode, and verses mode are all there. There is a gallery to view the artwork or hear the songs you've unlocked, but there doesn't appear to be much more in the way of innovation there. 

Small side note: Where the hell has survival mode gone? With the exception of the Dead or Alive series, survival modes seem to have disappeared from the fighting game scene. Which I feel is a damn shame because that's where I think you can best train your skill, with an ever depleting life bar and a nonstop onslaught of enemies. Please game devs, start bringing survival modes back.

So enough about that shit, How about the actual game play? Well, The similarities to the Arc Fighting System games are clearly there. Much like Guilty Gear's punch, kick, slash, hard slash button layout, P4A has a similar light, heavy, Persona light, Persona heavy set up that feels right at home. It features a burst gauge that acts just like it did in GG to break you out of a combo and to fill up your attack gauge.

Each character has a handful of special moves and one or two flashier specials, some of them which change or give you another if you are below 35% health. The one hit finishers are back but they can only be done in a match point round, and if your gauge is full to 100 or better, so you can't just spam kill it at the start of a match.

P4A boasts a combo feature to where if you keep hitting the light attack it will chain a few hits together that will lead into a special or two, finishing with a big persona finisher if your gauge is high enough. This can be seen two ways. On one hand its a great feature to pick up and play because it allows you to button mash your way in and allow you to pull off a stylish combo, but on the other it severely dumbs down the game somewhat.

I often found myself when using a character I was not familiar with to just charge in and keep smashing that button until the gauge filled up then again to end it with the persona move. There are more detailed combos to learn, but I think the game would have been suited to have more specials for each character and more intricacy to performing combos.

Sigh, and then there is verses mode. Seems simple enough, you make a quick profile for yourself, pick a character and off you go. But as you will see in the video below, you are ranked by performance and if you are so much as a letter off the opponent, chances are they will leave the room. God forbid you just started the game because then you are lumped in with the rabble and if people see that F sticking next to your name because you'll sooner be punted from the room than tarnish their immaculate records. It pisses me off because how else are new players supposed to improve their rank if more seasoned players refuse to let them play?

My guess is the penalties for losing to someone with a lower rank than you are more severe than if you were to lose to someone with an equal or better rank. Still, it's fuck'n annoying because I have people rage quitting on me before we even get to start the match. That being said, what I did get to play seems to be pretty well balanced. I never seem to be get crushed as bad as I did in Streetfighter X Tekken. And using that burst gauge to smash your way out of combo's is something every new player should learn to do immediately.

I do feel for a game that has such a big universe, there could be a lot more characters to choose from. It boasts a modest number of 13 (one of which is the same character, with a different persona), but since this game is based off 4 different RPGs I felt like it could have a much bigger cast. They are probably withholding characters for if they get to produce a sequel.

The other problem is unlike games such as Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter the characters while they play very different from one another, their overall design is kind of boring. Most of them are school kids, so their outfits are just bland and kinda meh. Teddie stands out greatly as a non human creature and the characters from Persona 3 have interesting and different looks about them, but on the whole the cast could be more diverse.

Not a bad amount of characters for a first game, but could definitely use more.

All in all, for a first foray into the fighting game genre, I would say that Persona 4 Arena comes in rather competently. Its made an older franchise new by switching formats, yet still feels familiar which allows it to work as a strength as it caters to both the seasoned fighter and the new player. It takes a bit of risk with the story mode to incorporate some of the RPG aspect its known for, but while not perfectly executed it does enough to make me love the cast and want to go back and play the original Persona 4 title.

If this isn't going to be the only title in the Persona Arena series then it's laid down a solid foundation for future releases. Its a fast and frantic fighter that provides another new option to the hadoken spammed playing field we are all used to. I am having fun with this game and if you enjoy fighting games, I think you will too.

Now if we can just bring back Killer Instinct, I'll be all set.

Rage Quitter Omniderp: #1

Don't have much to write about lately, so I whipped up this vid for you. Enjoy

My Rebuilding Silent Hill article.