Halloween is nearly upon us and so it’s time to grab our zombie masks and scare the crap out of all those annoying six-year-old trick or treaters in fairy costumes. It also means it’s time to whip out the horror games and scare the crap out of ourselves. Luckily there are a few spooky titles to choose from this year, and joining the bloody line-up just in the nick of time is Corpse Party: Blood Drive. The final instalment of a horrific nightmare that begun on PC and the PSP, Corpse Party: Blood Drive is a Japanese horror adventure set within the walls of a ghastly and ghostly school. Thought destroyed forever, Heavenly Host Elementary remains standing in an otherworldly limbo and, worse still, those who died there are doomed to forever walk its corridors. An eternity of P.E? I can’t think of a worse nightmare.
Part adventure, part puzzler, part horror and part novel, Corpse Party: Blood Drive has a little bit of everything to please everyone. The first hour or so of gameplay could fool you into thinking you’re playing a visual novel. Interaction is minimal at this point. This is the final game in a series so there’s some background to cover, something the developers have been careful to present without the need for endless exposition. If you’re new to the series, you’ll need to pay particular attention and don’t be surprised if you start dithering about whether or not to stop and buy the previous games. Past events are woven seamlessly into the current storyline so you’re not missing out as such, but the quality of this game shows early on and you may start to get a faint suspicion that you’re a plank not to have played the other games years ago.
Enjoy the nice easy visual novel while you can, because it’s not long before you’re put in control of the characters and your nightmares really begin. The adventure side of things takes place within a 3D environment, and very nice it is too. Each chapter has a different goal and you’ll need to trundle around the spooky stomach gurgling (literally) walls triggering cut scene events and puzzling out how to obtain objects and use them to complete your objectives. Ultimately, you’re searching for a book, The Book of Shadows. It’s lost somewhere within the school and it’s the only way the main character Ayumi Shinozaki can bring her friends back to life and find redemption.
The chubby little chibi characters may very well fool you into thinking you’re playing a tame and cutesy little horror. Wrong. Expect blood and violent death from the beginning. This isn’t Haunted Honeymoon; it’s full on Hellraiser. Entrails on the floor, violent spirits, traps and bird carcasses – Heavenly Host Elementary could do with a sweep, but unfortunately the caretaker is long dead. You’ll need to guide your characters around the school with care and attention if you don’t want to fall through the floor or get strangled by a giant tentacle. All you’ve got is a torch and use it wisely, because the light will fail and spare batteries are in short supply. Without that torch, you might as well find a nice yellow Labrador, because you will be almost blind. The environment is, at times, very dark. The tension caused by the fear of running out of batteries and losing the light is certainly effective and as the game progresses you will start to remember where some of the traps are and you can flick the torch off to save valuable power. It works. However, the graphics are so dark and the Vita so shiny that when your torch is off, you’ll get a lovely view of your own face. After you’ve touched up your mascara and squeezed a couple of spots, you may very well find yourself in a bit of bother. Some rooms won’t need the extra light but in other areas your torch is essential and if you’ve got a spirit after you and no way to banish it, you could very well find yourself on the dead end of the existence spectrum. Also, some chapters can be tricky to figure out and once the batteries are gone you’ll be creeping about in the dark, which after a while can become frustrating. The moral of this story? Don’t go off for a pee and leave your torch on. Or, better still, Google the Endless Battery cheat.
BY sj hollis
review - ps vita
44