Haunting Ground

[Emu]

Kind of an obscure horror title, but I picked it up the other night and played it for about half an hour. ;< So far it seems creepy as hell, and I was really impressed with the graphics and the level of explicit gore. The game is more tactical than action-based, because as far as I'm aware you never get a permenent weapon, not counting the dog that follows you around. Mostly you avoid enemies by hiding at "evasion points" like under beds, in closets, etc.

Creepiest of all, though, is that the game includes a lot of implicit sexuality. The main character wakes up in a f*cking cage wearing nothing but a thin silk bedsheet. If you get killed by one of the three different people wandering around the mansion, it shows a silhouette of the character either being 1) apparently raped or 2) getting what seems to be her uterus ripped out with a shard of glass.

Has anyone else played this?

[Chojin]

I just watched a bunch of videos about this game and now I wanna play it ;<

But I can't find any videos online of the in-game deaths that you mention :< Just a montage of the cutscene deaths, of which there are like 4:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O1CQbU5oAds

[Guitar Woman]

The hiding and stuff makes it sound kinda like clock tower, which I both love and hate with great intensity. I might look this game up if I ever get a PS2

[Emu]

It was originally going to be Clock Tower 4, actually.

And to be honest I haven't actually died yet myself, but I heard about the deaths from a couple of places, namely IGN. I'm going to play it again tonight and die on purpose to see them for myself.

From wikipedia's kind of crappy but still probably accurate article:

Controversy over character deaths

Of much comment in Haunting Ground are the game-over scenes, as they leave the player to wonder what exactly the killer is doing to the protagonist's body when she's dead.


Debilitas: He attacks by swinging his arms at Fiona (jumping out at her to startle her) and giving Fiona a bear hug. He snaps Fiona's spine with the Bear Hug and much speculation has been cast on what he does to Fiona's body when she's dead. During the Game Over screen, you can hear Debilitas rip Fiona appart as if she were a doll. (like when you pop the head off a barbie or action figure)


Daniella: She attacks by either using a hot fire poker or a sharp shard of glass. When Fiona lies on the ground, Daniella stabs at Fiona and at the Game Over screen you can hear Daniella laughing like a lunatic as she renders Fiona's uterus from her body.


Riccardo: He attacks using his flintlock pistol or by punches and kicks should the player move Fiona too close to him. When Fiona lies on the ground, he seems punch her to unconsciousness. During the Game Over screen, you can hear Riccardo rip Fiona's clothes off before proceeding to rape her.





I deleted the last death description cuz I think it has some spoilers. Otherwise yeah.

[Guitar Woman]

sounds icky :<

[Emu]

The game's got a strong sexual theme. In the first fifteen minutes of the game you're threatened with pregnancy, and Fiona's boobs bounce around comically when she runs (which I can overlook, although I think it detracts from the game.)

This is the first game I've played in a long time that actually makes me feel uncomfortable.

[Emu]

Holy shit the death was disturbing. And the heroine's utter inability to fight is about making me sick.

[Emu]

I would edit my last post except that firefox has a coniption when I do so

I'm about 3 hours into the game, and so far I'm having a lot of fun with it. The controls are kind of frustrating at times, and it takes a lot of practice to get used to controlling your dog, since you can only give him commands and hope that he does what he's supposed to. You can scold or praise him when he does bad or good. I got separated from him for a really long time while being chased by an enemy and I think that soured my relationship with him pretty badly. He kept disobeying me, so I had to keep scolding him. I think I lost a lot of points and I'm having a hard time regaining them because he disobeys me so much that he does very little that's worthy of praise.

The "panic mode" induced by being cornered by an enemy is really fucking cool. The screen looks like somebody turned degauss or whatever on full blast and everything turns white and strobe light-like. I THINK being panicked makes you run a little faster, but you trip a lot.

I'm not sure if it's my fault for sucking at the game or what, but it seems like I'm encountering enemies a lot more often than I'm supposed to be. I'm spending nearly ALL of my time now running away from a single enemy trapsing about the castle, who has an uncanny knack for fnding me in spite of having minimal IQ, and he seems to find me every time I get anywhere near the viscinity of where I'm supposed to go (even after I've chased him away from that area.)

Most of the "weapons" you get aren't spectacularly effective and the dog can only distract the enemy for so long, and hiding places are few and far between. Most of the savepoint clocks are located too clustered together for my taste, and I hate having to use the same hiding points over and over again, because it makes it easier for the enemies to find you when they do.

Overall though this is the first game I've played in a long, long time that's actually made me panic while playing. It's really difficult, but the sheer ineptitude of the heroine makes encounters genuinely frightening.

[Chojin]

Horror games affect me way more than they should, so I had Bruce pick me up a copy of this to play tonight. With any luck, I should be a blubbering mess by midnight!

[Emu]

This game is scary as all fuck. I beat the second boss just now.

[Emu]

Editing hates me

I'm in the third 'segment' of the game and things are getting really fucked up.

Originally Posted by possible scare spoilers

In this section of the castle there are a number of weird, hairless grey men standing around doing weird things and babbling incoherently. I don't know what they are yet, except that they're not hostile (yet) and the dog doesn't like them. And that you can kick them. One of them was kneeling over on the ground busily lapping up what was either urine or vomit mixed with blood. I kicked him a few times to teach him a lesson but my efforts were for naught, for he did not retaliate.

My current pursuer is the harshest yet, since he has a ranged weapon. Thankfully he's a crappy shot, but he's fast and one hit from the pistol can disable you for a significant amount of time.

The game began moving in a fairly linear fashion, but it's becoming less so as I unlock more and more of the castle. It's not immediately obvious where you go, and the enemies pursue you at random, so there's always that element of fear when you're wandering around trying to figure out what to do.

[xbxDaniel]

Originally Posted by Chojin

I just watched a bunch of videos about this game and now I wanna play it ;<

But I can't find any videos online of the in-game deaths that you mention :< Just a montage of the cutscene deaths, of which there are like 4:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O1CQbU5oAds

The one where she throws the doll and he goes apeshit on it made me laugh.

[Chojin]

This game got a lot less scary when I found out that you can only be killed while in panic mode ;< I tried to scold the stalkers repeatedly with the dog commands and I think it actually confused the gardener a little because he stopped a few times when I forcefully told him 'NO!' and pointed at him.

[Emu]

I beat it tonight with the best ending.

[Emu]

I had a lot of fun with this game, although it has a lot of glaring problems that really brought down the experience. The AI is quirky at best; the dog is ridiculously difficult to control a lot of the time, and I ended up wasting a lot of my items because of the difficulty of aiming. I'm not too pissed about those things because they contributed some sense of realism and futility to the game, adding to the scariness of encounters.

The biggest bring-down is that so little of the story is revealed to you. It seems to me like the story was really well-developed, and that the creators were well-read in terms of alchemical lore, but so little of it was put to use. I think this is probably more due to development constraints than anything. The game overall recieved next to nothing in publicity and was overshadowed by the glorious release of RE4 a few months earlier. I had never heard of it until I ran across it mentioned briefly in a Wikipedia article.

I think this game could've been done better on the Gamecube due to the GC having more buttons that would've allowed more options with Hewie's AI. Plus, the Gamecube kicks PS2's ass anyway.

If you have a big horror collection like I do, I'd say definitely pick it up, becasue it'll probably become a collector's item in the next few years due to its relative obscurity. Otherwise, rent it, if you can find it.

I want a white german shepherd now, though. :<

[DuFresne]

Any chance you could put those deaths you talked about in your first and second posts on youtube? That'd be great.

[Guitar Woman]

I hate to say this, but the PS2's controller has more buttons than the Gamecube's does.

[RaNkeri]

So wait, the only enemies in the game are those 3 people you mentioned before? Sounds quite much like Clock Tower. Is it made by the same publisher?

[Emu]

Originally Posted by Guitar Woman

I hate to say this, but the PS2's controller has more buttons than the Gamecube's does.

Yeah, if you count select

I like the GC's controller better, okay? ;-;

And I'm too retarded to make videos. You don't actually SEE her getting raped or whatever, it's just strongly implied, although when Debilitas kills you you do see her spine break, which is gruesome. After her back folds over, the scene shifts to another part of the room and you hear about 30 seconds of excruciatingly uncomfortable noises. It sounds like somebody fisting a huge bowl of jell-o and grunting. The Wikipedia descriptions are incredibly misleading and almost entirely speculation. And there's no way you can tell that he pops her head off.

Daniella's death scene does the same thing, where it shifts off camera as she walks up to you, and you hear her give a crazy-fuck laugh for about thirty seconds, accompanied by some ripping flesh. But you don't actually SEE it.

[Emu]

Originally Posted by RaNkeri

So wait, the only enemies in the game are those 3 people you mentioned before? Sounds quite much like Clock Tower. Is it made by the same publisher?

There are actually "5" pursuers. I left out one death description in the post cuz it had some spoilers in it. And yes, it was slated to be Clock Tower 4, but they decided to make it its own game.

[DuFresne]

Guess I'll have to get off my ass and buy the damn game then.