Filed under: Retro
There Is one genre in this god damn world I cant actually play. Survival Horror. I clearly remember the day when I was like 11 years old, playing playstation with a friend. I suddenly inserted Resident Evil 1, as I thought it would be a cool zombie shooter.
After going through the dining-room, opening the door and seeing the first zombie, I never hit the “off” Button of a console that fast. I was scared. Im fascinated by the fear those games create, but I cant play one of those games for more than 10 minutes, even in the middle of a shining day. Im that much of a pussy.
Either way, yesterday I accidentally read about Clock-Tower for the SNES on Wikipedia. The story made me curious, so I went through dark-paths on the interwebs to look for this game.
You remember my 10 minute rule?
I closed my emulator after 10 minutes. It were exactly 10 minutes of playing.
Gameplay is easily explained. Move the Cursor around with your D-Pad, and interact with the enviroment via ABXY-Buttons.
So, instead of focusing on the gameplay,I’m going to focus on the enviroment. That is the main factor of making a game scary, right? There is no music most of the time, until you meet anything trying to harm you. The game itself is very dark, and the sound youll hear most is the sound of your footsteps.
Normally, when playing a Survival Horror, you expect 2 basic game elements. Trying to survive and feeling the horror. Any Survival Horror game I played gave me a Weapon to defend myself. I was able to defeat most of the evil creatures by shooting them, stabbing in their heart, basic stuff like that. But in Clock-Tower, you are defenseless. Thats right, the game gives you no possibility to fight. The main character is a defenseless 14 year old school girl. Youre constantly running away, trying to hide from the stalker, a nine year old boy with an oversized pair of scissors. He will attack you if youre in a room for too long ( havent stopped time for that yet ), if you enter a room youre not supposed to enter, if you enter a room youre supposed to enter, if you go through a hallway, if you climb up some stairs. You never have the chance to rest.
The most exciting fact about this game is : its an SNES game. You dont need kick-ass graphics of special light rendering algorithms to strike fear in a heart. The knowledge of being defenseless, the quiet atmosphere, your own footsteps, everything makes this game thrilling. And best of all : its non linear, you have the chance of doing what you want to do. And it has about 6-7 endings, which makes this game replayable. I’ll try to beat it. Honestly, I will _try_ .
Filed under: Retro
Yesterday when I pluged in my SNES, NES and PS1 I found a game which shackles me
for hours to the Playstation. It’s called Azure Dreams.
What a baaad game…
Azure Dreams plays in the destert town Monsbaiya. Monsbaiya is popular and well known for his big Monster Tower which habitat more then hundred types of monsters. The town sells the monster and is getting more rich than ever before. Adventures from all over the world come to this tower to find money and Monster Eggs.
You the hero, named Koh, are born as the son of the best Monster tamer ever. His name is Guy. One evening when Guy reaches the top floor of the tower a shiny and bright light appeared over the tower. Later at the same night his Monster returned back to his family without any sign of Guys life.
Years later you are 15 years old and now an adult. Your mom gives you the Monster tamer Necklace of your father so you can enter the tower and tame monster. This is where the
game begins.
The aim of Azure Dreams is to reach the top level of the floor to find the legendary Monster Egg. That sounds really simple. But it’s actually not!
There are some cool features in Azure Dreams. Like in Lufia II or Diablo theres a random map generator. Forget to notice or draw maps. It’s useless! Muahahahah…… sorry…
Another feature is that Azure Dreams give you the chance to meet girls and fell in love with them. This is funny but totally useless. In the Japanese version of the game you can marry the girl that you like most. But as I said it’s only in the Japanese version.
You also can upgrade your house or other buildings in the town. It’s not necessary but the people will talk about you and so you reputation grows the more buildings you build. This has no influence on the game but it’s funny. You also have a lot of Minigames if you build buildings. You can build a track in which you can be part as jockey and earn money. Or you can build a Casino.
Hmm the Gameplay have positive and negative sites, but mainly negative.
You can only enter the tower if you have less than five items in your bag. In addition you can’t leave the tower as you want. You have two ways of leaving the tower. The first one is the easiest. If you find Wind Chrystal you get warped in your house. The second one is to find a fruit which let disappear your monster which is with you in the tower and after
this send you at home. If you die while you are in the tower you lose all your money which you have earned and every item! Yes even the items you brought with in the tower.
In addition the hero is able to level up in the tower. But every time you leave an re-enter the tower your level is set to Lvl:1 again! Only the Level of your monsters remain unchanged.
Your monster have MP. Even if you only walk the monster is using MP. If the MP turns to 0 your monster fell asleep. If you come to this point your f*cked! If your monster is asleep you can’t give him any food to recover MP or something like that. So you have to leave the tower or pack your monster away and go on. But I wouldn’t suggest that.
You can visit the tower as much as you want. But after a few time it still s*cks… Every time you do the same thing. Run…Run…Press X to hit the monster…Kill the monster…Run…Run…
find a item… Run…Run…Lift…next floor. The fights are boring and slow.
But the game still have charm if you wanna say so. You train your monsters…just to defeat the best ones! You gotta catch em all! … Wait wasn’t that in another game…?
Ahh screw that! Who cares about that?
Facts:
- Azure Dreams was released in 1998… 2 years before in 1996 a game called Pokémon was published by Nintendo…
- A semi-sequel called Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal was released in 2006.
- Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal was under the top 10 of the worst game 2006.
