[Emu]

I got the dog!

He seems useful, anyway. The sections of the game where you're by yourself leave a lot of explorable-but-empty areas that make it feel like it's not worth my while to deviate from the plot's linear room sequence. The dog can find hidden items and thus may actually give some kind of point to looking around, which has improved my perception of the game immensely at this point.

The most redeeming feature so far seems to be the music. It's moody and interesting, if painfully repetetive at parts. The voice acting has been good to superb at the parts where it exists. Some sections that should have voice acting don't, and one child had voiced parts for half of his dialogue and silent subtitles for the rest. Speaking of dialogue, the game is very well-written in the sense that there's no Engrish, although the children don't really talk like children (which is forgivable in a horror game or movie -- I'm still freaked out by the kid from Children of the Corn and how creepily articulate he was.)

The graphics are continuing to disappoint me. The characters move in an extremely goofy way that's pretty unforgivable for a game released as recently as this one, and especially when it's following in the heels of the Silent Hill and Fatal Frame series (and I guess RE4, if you count it as a PS2 game.) A lot of the textures are re-used too often and there's not a lot to look at -- and what you can look at you can rarely examine up close.

The worst part so far is the combat. I've only fought one monster, a warped little melted child in a tuxedo. It was a creepy monster in its own right, but it quickly lost its charm when I started stabbing it with my salad fork. Turning to target the thing was an ordeal in itself, given that it was so short as to stand well below my level fighting range. I had to actually disengage combat to turn and face it, and the thing was much faster than I was. It grappled me and I shook it off. It fell stunned on the ground while I tried in vain to make the bitch bend over and stab it. I had to wait for the thing to stand up again before I could hit it, at which point I was greeted with the cheapest looking blood splatter I think I've ever seen in a PS2 game. I get the idea that there's one manner of bloodsplat for each attack you make against any enemy. No salad fork is going to create the gusher of blood that shot out of the thing, not to mention the fact that this splatter was represented by one static expanding texture jutting out from the thing's head. Fuck.

I can say, however, that I am kind of sorry I had to spend 30 bucks on it, even for a new copy. The game's been out for a year and apparently hasn't been selling well. If you're a srs bizness horror junkie like me, you might want to pick it up for the notoriety factor alone. The game was banned in Poland or something.