Media Matters: Peaceful days died. Let's Survive

This feature can also be found at the South West Londoner, here.

Even with my busy schedule, I still try to squeeze in some gaming time. My current vice on Nintendo 3DS right now is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked.

 It's actually something of an old game - it was originally released as just Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor in Japan and America back in 2009, but never saw a UK release. Overclocked is a re-release for the 3DS, but due to publishing issues, it took a whole two years between the Japanese release and ours, released on the March 29.

The game details an unlikely disaster scenario - a large section of Tokyo is suddenly cordoned off by the armed forces. The government say it's due to a poison gas leak, but the thousands trapped inside the danger zone know the truth – it’s an invasion of bloodthirsty demons. Knowing that death is constantly around the corner, they try to survive the lockdown for a week, assuming they don't find a way of escaping. The game's tagline says it all: "Peaceful days died. Let's Survive."

It's a story that's surprisingly easy to relate to. Not so much the demons (although the mythology nerd in me appreciates that), but in the character interaction. The main character is rather plain, but his friends and the other survivors he encounters each have their own concerns and different motivations for trying to escape... or stay.

It got me thinking: if I was in a similar disaster area, would I be able to survive? Lord knows how many fellow nerds made zombie survival plans in light of that now overplayed and overrated horror trope.

Devil Survivor offers little advice, but it definitely discusses the dangers. The electricity going out is one of the biggest threats. We of the Communication Age need electronics more than ever to stay functional. Some people get tetchy when they can't check Facebook at will - having no internet connection at all would destroy them. Most of the food would spoil, and failed traffic lights would cause more than a few accidents.

Fortunately, a lot of our technology is both portable and rechargeable. You may not have desktop access or a call signal, but there are countless handheld chargers out there, even DIY ones if you fancy yourself handy.

After that comes the rioting. In the game, once the public realise that they're being lied to about the poison gas leaks, things get tense - and any small argument could escalate into chaos. In real life, riots will break out the moment people realise they can break shop windows without getting caught.

I still remember the riots in 2011 – although not sparked by disaster, it still remains a great example of what people are capable of if given a little temptation and stirred into a frenzy.

In either case, large groups become a problem. The general consensus on surviving riots is simply to remain detached from it. The closer you are to the incident centre (and the more you're dressed like a rioter, or worse, a person in uniform) the more likely you are to get involved in the fray.

Taking a look at a different work of media for advice - The Walking Dead TV show has seen a lot of success for both being yet another thing with zombies in it, and also being legitimately good (which I admit slightly begrudgingly).

Its narrative focuses more on the relationship dynamics between the survivors more than the, uh, walking dead. It seems that their survival recommendations involve escaping the city entirely, which I doubt I could manage; I'm terrified of the countryside (and nature in general).

They also lack electricity, but have (somewhat intermittent) police radios to communicate. Tension between survivors is often laid on for drama's sake, but it 's clear that becoming a 'lone wolf' in the face of danger will most likely be fatal.

In reality, even though we encounter most of our experience with disaster in media, the survival advice they give is sometimes dangerously inaccurate. Some disaster movies are just plain ridiculous. Even with the presence of demons, Devil Survivor feels a lot more plausible than pretty much all of 2012.

So yes, in a disaster scenario, my media knowledge is probably just going to get me killed. Which is a shame - not because I intend to fight zombies or demons any time soon, but because North Korea's constant threats of nuclear missile strike make me feel I should be collecting tins of food and searching for underground shelters on online estate agent websites.

Luckily, there are countless paranoid people on the internet with detailed disaster survival instructions, from reasonable things like floods to this increasingly likely nuclear apocalypse.

Film Review: Evil Dead

This review can also be found at the South West Londoner, here.

Despite my passion for the arts, there are gaps in my knowledge. The most salient ones are with film. I became interested in film after a lot of 'cult status' films made their rounds, and with my already huge backlog of films to see, a lot of them have gone unwatched.

So, although I know it was a major factor in forming its genre, I have not seen the original 1981 Evil Dead. Nor am I especially well-versed in the 'slasher' variant of horror films, aside from a regrettable evening where I was coaxed into watching all the Saw films back to back.

So I was entirely down for watching the 2013 reboot. The director is different – this new film is directed by Fede Alvarez instead of the longer-established Sam Raimi – but if it grabbed my attention, I was prepared to fall in love with a whole new genre.

Still, I hedged my bets; I made sure to not step into the screening alone (or sober). That decision turned out to be for the best, as Evil Dead thrives not on its own merit, but by bringing audiences closer through how shamelessly bloody and silly it is.

The plot, I am told, clings close to that of the original. Five teenagers stay in a run-down cabin in the woods, finding that it was used for Shady Things of a Mystical Nature. 

One of them finds a book made from flesh, has the complete lack of foresight to read magic words from it and things get real bloody real fast. Chainsaws, possession and vague sexual abuse metaphors follow.

Interestingly, a lot of this material was familiar to me without having even seen the source material – which says a lot for how well-worn the themes are. As a whole, Evil Dead goes over every standard horror convention with precision but without artistry.

A lot of it was funny, but not often intentionally. While the acting isn't exactly bad, they have a rather weak script to work with, and no performances stand out enough to make it worth recalling actor names. 

Once the evil entity in the house possesses one of the characters, almost every line they utter is hilariously filthy, Exorcist style.

The copious amount of blood thrown around is also worth a giggle (the credits scene has props plunging into endless pools of the stuff), but to Alvarez's credit, all the effects are practical. A worthy mention in an industry filled with computer generated scenery, effects and costumes.

The soundtrack is also one to bring up, if only because it starts blaring loud sirens whenever someone suffers a grievous injury, like ambulances are going to burst in from off camera.
I came out of the cinema feeling entertained, but not especially satisfied, and definitely not scared.

Watch It: If you have a horror movie night arranged with lots of booze, you want a textbook example of the slasher genre (...for whatever reason), you take knowing amusement when 'the black character dies first'.

Skip It: If the sight of blood makes you queasy, you absolutely cannot handle jump scares, you roll your eyes when 'the black character dies first'.

Want more? Actually watching the original film is a safe bet (though I'm not sure if it's necessarily better than this one). Cabin in the Woods makes a perfect companion piece to this film, though I find it notably flawed.

Film Review: Stoker

This review can also be found at the South West Londoner, here.

I do love a bit of Gothic Horror. Not because I'm a fan of the macabre (not entirely, anyway), but because it has a wonderful precedent of being understated. And in the current Hollywood climate, bombast and explosions are king - so Stoker is a refreshing presence.

Director Park Chan-wook had a worldwide cult hit with Oldboy in 2003, but Stoker is his first film with English actors. India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska, Alice in Wonderland) is a troubled girl living in opulent American Suburbia. Her father sadly deceased, she's quietly withdrawn but comfortable - until her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, Watchmen) comes to stay, and gets a little too close to her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman).

Things soon escalate, but carefully and quietly. The first act is very much a slow burner, but when the spark of intrigue shows itself, you begin to reach the state of mind that the film demands - a focus on the finer details. This is helped in no small part by the cinematography director Chung-hoon Chung, who sets up shot after shot filled with detail. There's a scene where a close-up of long hair pans and fades into swaying long grass. It's perfectly done, and pretentious as all get out.

The acting definitely reflects that - while no one is under acting, the script is filled with hushed fear, quiet lusting and silent anger. Nicole Kidman pulls off hateful, piercing stares that I never knew she was capable of.While there's a heavy focus of suspenseful horror; there's also a core of human drama, as India grows into herself. She could be best described as Wednesday Adams reaching adolescence; and it works wonderfully.

When the instances of violence occur (and they definitely do occur, though not as intensely as in Oldboy) it's a huge snapping of tension, and I appreciated the film's low-key nature for it. It takes skilled direction to have violence that will get a reaction from its audience (since we're generally desensitised to watching mild violence in films these days) without it going into fetishistic territory. Likewise, discussions and display of sexuality are toyed with here, often feeling unsettling but never gratuitous or disturbing.

It's what, in my opinion, separates it from the standard Hollywood fare. In a traditional suspense horror film, the violence and feelings of entrapment come on hard and heavy, and after a while the impact is lost. More so with the standard of action films. Some manage to go beyond the basic requirement of  'all spectacle, no substance' (I don't know anyone who didn't love Django Unchained, and would rather not meet them), but that kind of film making is both easy and lucrative, so there may not be a change on that front for some time.

Watch It: If you want to watch something different from the current releases, if you're a fan of cinematography, if you fondly remember The Addams Family or Daria.

Skip It: If you want more laid-back cinema, if you're wary of sexuality without romance, if you picked on 'the quiet kid' in high school.

Want more? Why not look at Shadow of a Doubt, a Hitchcock work which heavily inspires Stoker's plot. Definitely watch more of Park Chan-wook’s films if you haven’t already – if Oldboy is too extreme for you, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay is a more comical affair.

The Too Spooky Shopping Trip

This article has been written as part of the Critical Distance October Blogs of the Round Table. It can also be read at Digital Heaven Entertainment, here.

The scariest moment in gaming I've experienced? Accidentally saving over a near-endgame file of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I've not really played any horror games. Not because I don't want to, I've just never really gotten around to it.

Hopefully not having played the first 3 Silent Hills won't invalidate my opinions as a Person Wot Writes About Games; but until I eventually play them, there are a few times where a game has been successfully unsettling. The one that's still stuck with me is from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

As a series, the Shin Megami Tensei games (this is excluding Persona and other spinoffs, mind) are very thematically similar. You, a lowly human have been gifted with the technology to summon demons to fight by your side, while a ridiculous catastrophic event goes on around you. Depending on how you react to certain story choices, you gain a Chaotic/Lawful alignment (intentionally not just 'good/evil', though often it pans out to be the same).

Where Strange Journey differs is its setting - a series of twisted worlds called the Schwarzwelt. Created by demons, it represents the ills of the human condition. You play as a soldier of a global army, investigating the Schwarzwelt in an attempt to destroy it; though you quickly find yourself unable to escape.

Welcome to Sector Carina

Up to a point, each location in the game plays up a problem with humanity, with a surreal twist. A lot of these areas don't have the impact they should (which I will discuss later), but the third area, Sector Carina is meant to represent humanity's greed, being a gigantic demon shopping mall.

And you know what? It really creeped me out. Sadly, not entirely due to the game's aesthetics, but at least partially! Sector Carina was clever in being uncanny. At first look, everything does look like an ordinary shopping mall (through the filter of low-quality textures on a DS screen), but then you talk to the first NPC:

And then you look at the posters and the shop windows:

And then you pay attention to the slow, militaristic waltz used as background music:

And it settles in that this is a shopping mall with all of the pretence stripped away. Everything you could ever want is within these walls (along with a whole lot of stuff you don't), and your only company are towering urges to BUY, EAT, and CONSUME.

Relevance in a Riot

I was playing Strange Journey in August 2011, and reached Sector Carina during the time when the England Riots occurred. For those who aren't familiar, a riot broke out in Tottenham, a district of London, on the 7th of August. What had started out as a protest against police corruption and brutality in the area took a turn for the violent once someone decided to throw a bottle when the police arrived to suppress the protest. Things escalated quickly, with shops smashed and ransacked, and arson attempts. Once it started, similar riots sprang up all across London, and then into other, unrelated cities of England.

On the day they had started, I happened to already be in the centre of town, watching Croydon slowly go up in flames on BBC News. Had I not gone home when I did, the underground and bus services would have closed, leaving me stranded on Tottenham Court Road. I get home by sundown and find through Twitter that even my local high street had rioters.

While the area where I lived wasn't especially wealthy, it didn't have economic and police problems as severe as the ones in Tottenham. As I found out more about the event, it became woefully apparent that the majority of the rioters weren't causing anarchy for any kind of cause, other than their own pockets.

In a way, even though what happened is incredibly sad, I empathise. People riot in pursuit of aspirations, and ideally you'd want those aspirations to be political. However, many of us (and I'm including myself here) have aspirations that don't extend too far beyond our economic status, the next pair of shoes, the next luxury meal, the next tablet computer.

That some of us are willing to go to the lengths of destruction just to get it (along with the vague promise that you won't get caught) is actually pretty scary! It weighed on my mind, as I progressed through Carina, being told that the area was run by the demon Horkos, a glutton so dedicated, it ate an entire space craft, filled with the protagonist's comrades. Drawing a parallel between materialism and violence is heavy-handed, but it's not exactly incorrect.

It is later implied through some side-NPC dialogue that the layout of the Sector was based on a human shopping mall. This kind of M. Night Shyamalan twist made me roll my eyes, but then, the Westfield shopping mall in Stratford opened.

Retail Therapy & Theming Consistency

It's hardly likely to be the largest shopping complex out there, but I felt dwarfed by Westfield Stratford's size when I visited in its opening week. It had a casino. It had a 10-screen cinema. It had a food court that took up almost a third of the whole complex, with every kind of regional cooking speciality. It's the kind of place that would get anti-capitalists and anti-consumerists feeling violently ill, but I actually, honestly enjoy that kind of thing.

As I walk around, I recall Sector Carina and suddenly feel awkward. I make a realisation. For once, the moral soapboxing in a piece of media is about me. Funnily enough, by being very faithfully tied to the rules of what makes an Atlus JRPG, Strange Journey keeps its theme and its gameplay woefully separated. It hamstrings the entire game, really.

While I couldn't get emotionally invested with the themes of war or lust, if they'd taken the time to do something to make those ideas relevant to the player, they'd have more impact. It makes Sector Carina's effectiveness something of an accident. While the stage itself didn't do anything to make you think about greed via the game mechanics, materialistic greed is something that I can admit to having done in the past, way more than bloodthirstiness or careless environmental destruction or (sadly) wanton hedonism. Sector Carina was effective because the setting has (at least for me) some real-life parallels; not just a strawman argument of humanity.

While my experience with Strange Journey is very much down to circumstance, the aesthetic and theme of Sector Carina could still be used in other games. Commerce as Horror is something not really explored, unless you count Dead Rising (you shouldn't) or one of the stages in Illbleed (which does use greed as a mechanic, impressively). No one should experience their neighbourhood being torn apart in the pursuit of goods in real life, but they can damn sure could see it done in a game.

N.B.: You can read about the finer details of the 2011 riots at the Guardian here. The information is surprisingly extensive.

Running from your relationships: Catherine review

This review can also be found at The Yorker, here.

Video games aren't too great at dealing with relationships; especially sexual ones. Often, when sex comes up in a game, it's as a 'reward'; and if the game is particularly immature, as a mini-game. In that light, Catherine, a game about relationship problems is refreshing. It's been a long time coming - Catherine saw a release in the US last summer (and in Japan earlier still), but has only just made it to UK shores.

I'm not just talking about some pastel-soft high-school love triangle, here. Catherineis about cheating, choosing between passion and responsibility, and dealing with the resulting nightmare one's life can become. Both figuratively and literally.

You play as Vincent Brooks - 32, with a dull day job and a small, slightly trashy apartment. He's been dating his girlfriend Katherine for years - but now she's starting to talk marriage, and Vincent isn't quite ready for that step. Drowning his sorrows at the Stray Sheep bar, he encounters Catherine, who has everything he wants in a woman, his dream girl. After a one night stand he doesn't remember; he is thrown into moral turmoil - how could he possibly tell Katherine about his infidelity? What's worse, nightmares about climbing collapsing towers while chased by twisted versions of his fears start haunting him every night...

The gameplay is starkly split between the dialogue-heavy trappings of a visual novel and a fast-paced action-puzzler. While on paper the two genres don't blend readily, in practice the two modes play off each other to keep things fresh.

Story segments at the Stray Sheep are compelling in seeing how the characters handle the idea that there's a curse that kills those who cheat, among other romantic ills and gender politics; but the nightmare stages break the calm by being tense and fast-paced - not to mention challenging on any difficulty other than Easy (and even then, Easy stops pulling punches halfway through). Then after a boss has bean defeated, you get to wind down the tension with the continuation of plot.

However, what I find most interesting is how the topic of sex and relationships is discussed as something entirely other than an ideal. While both Catherine and Katherine are physically attractive; they're both flawed people and put a lot of pressure on poor Vincent. Once both characters show their true colours, you feel just as worried as Vincent when the emotional and possibly physical stakes of having sex get much much higher.

The game wants you to seriously consider such dilemmas - to the point where after every Nightmare stage, Vincent has to sit in a confessional and be asked an either/or question on relationships before being whisked away to the next area. If you're connected to the internet, you answer is compared to the first-time answers of other players.

These choices along with others made in the story go towards a Law/Chaos meter (A variation on the good/evil choices in a lot of other games, but the semantic choice of using law and chaos is relevant); though sometimes it just feels as though it's a visual indicator of your allegiance with the two Catherines. Your alignment does affect certain lines of the story; but the actual ending (of which there are multiple) is decided largely independantly of this mechanic - a shame.

Aesthetically, Catherine is mostly in the positives - if you've played an Atlus RPG before (Most notablyPersona 4) you'll recognise the style of character design and the wonderful music by Shoji Meguro. What lets the side down is that the animation can be a bit stiff at times - all the attention to detail has been put into the facial expressions.

It's always refreshing for a high-budget game to be unabashedly unique; in an industry full of sequels; and as such, I'm ready to recommend it to most who are interested in games that do something different - but prepare yourself for nightmares of your own once the puzzle stages pull out the stops.

Film Review: Dream House

Psychological thrillers are hard to do properly. Whether trying to appeal to a pretentious deep-seated metaphor, or just a set up for an M. Night Shaymalan-esque twist, attention absoltuely has to be paid to keeping the twist obscured, and orchestrated to pack the biggest emotional punch; what's colloquially known as the 'MindF**k'. What you can't go and do is give the twist at the end of the first act with next to no buildup.

It looks like Dream House didn't get the memo.

Okay, so the premise then. Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a British man with an all-American family, moving into the house of his dreams. Problem is, the neighbours are freaked out by him, there are goths hanging out in his basement, and... oh yeah, five years ago the family living there were shot in cold blood. So not so dreamy then.

This could have devolved into a run-of-the-mill slasher film with the ghosts of the recently deceased causing havoc, but no, Dream House is clearly too smart for something so gauche. After finding out that the husband of the murdered family survived and was interred at the local mental hospital, Will goes to visit the facility, and then The Twist happens. I would feel bad for spelling it out (though the film's trailer blatantly spoils the twist...), but I'll just say that the reveal is laughably contrived, lacked build-up, and poor Daniel Craig did his best to act as if the revelation was tearing him apart.

With the twist out of the way so early into the film, the rest of the runtime is taken up with a one-sided murder mystery. Only Will Atenton seems particularly interested with the pursuit of the truth, neither the police nor the audience offer more than a shrug, and just leave him to get on with it.

That's not to say that Daniel and the rest of the cast are doing a bad job of working with the awful source material; they just can't do anything to save it. A fair amount of dialogue is required from the two daughters of the family in order to go for a sappy, heartstring-pulling angle (rendering them immediately annoying from the get-go), and the rest of the cast does a good job of keeping them in line, but the end result doesn't really work. It's pandering and tedious.

Dream House's thrilling conclusion goes down like the clichéd path it was predestined to roll towards. Villains are evil and hateful simply because they're evil and hateful, everything goes down in flames, and it all resolves with a happy ending like there was no gruesome murder in the first place. Yawn.

Dream House turned out to be a movie that thought it could survive on star power. Hopefully its failure will stand out as an example to other film projects as what not to do when putting a thriller together.

Film Review - Demons Never Die

This review can also be found at the Yorker.


I'm not particularly well-versed in horror films, but a lifetime of cultural osmosis has left me with a good understanding of how it's supposed to go. Morally bankrupt, personality-lacking, or otherwise Orange County everydude Americans are put somewhere dark and isolated through contrived circumstance, and are summarily killed - by a supernatural entity, a guy with a chainsaw, or just 'cause.

Aside from the killings, Demons Never Die entirely ignores this framework - and really it's worse off for it. While I doubt it's a full explanation for why this is the case, Demons is a British film, an oddity in a genre seemingly dominated by the US. Set in London, it has that same mixture of authenticity and self-parody that Attack the Block had with its council-estate setting. The soundtrack is Grime and D'n'B throughout, which I honestly quite liked.

The plot follows a group of kids who form a suicide pact when a girl at their 6th Form College takes her own life. Most have the details as to why they want to die fleshed out, and some are surprisingly serious - the female lead Samantha (Emma Rigby) suffering from schizophrenia, and Ricky (Femi Oyeniran) being pressured by his homophobic father. Lead character Archie (Robert Sheehan) has some trappings of unhinged stalker to his personality, which is interesting in his interactions with Samantha, but after a while it's played as endearing. Odd.

As the story progresses, they eventually realise that an elaborate suicide is not the solution to their problems, and become all a bit more comfortable with themselves. The cast have had their share of movies prior (sharing a few names with Adulthood), and they manage to get some compelling character interaction going, and you find yourself rooting for them to find a solution. That's not how slasher films are supposed to go at all! All of the Final Destinations and the Halloweens out there have almost intentionally flat or dislikeable characters, so when the flesh-rending eventually occurs, we don't feel like awful human beings for finding it entertaining.

Speaking of flesh-rending, that aspect is the weakest part of Demons Never Die by far. At the same time as the suicide pact plot, we find that there is a masked killer picking off the kids one-by-one with a hunting knife. It's clear that the film was produced on a low budget - not being able to go all-out on the violence is understandable, but Demons employs some incredibly obvious cutaways, torn clothing and blood packs; and it feels cheap; especially since the death of the kids doesn't seem to drive the plot as much as you think it would.

Up until the third act where literally every named character ends up knifed (to no real emotional impact - even with all the effort they put into characterisation), nothing would be particularly lost if all the murder scenes were removed. In fact, with some editing, Demons Never Die would be better off as a one-shot BBC human drama.

Part of me wonders if when this film was initially pitched, they had to crowbar in a crazed killer to get it to fit into a Halloween season release; but that's just wishful thinking on my part. There's nothing wrong with having a different take on a genre, but Demons is too tame to be a horror, and too shallow to be a drama – a failed experiment.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE: Dead Space 2

I'll admit now that I don't have much patience for the Shooter genre. Both of the first and third person varieties. I've not indulged in many horror games either. So this makes me playing Dead Space 2 a bit of an odd match up. While I had played the first Dead Space, it honestly didn't grab me. Its polish and quality was clear as day, but I just wasn't hooked by its premise.

Dead Space 2, on the other hand, is a mutation of its predecessor. The basics are the same - surviving endless waves of alien parasites popping from air vents and broom cupboards - but Dead Space 2's tone of delivery is different. Very different. Where the prequel prided itself on a silent, creepy atmosphere with a muted palette, protagonist and soundtrack - this game is all about loud, bold action and goofy set pieces; something I enjoy, but struggle to take seriously.

The game opens with protagonist Isaac in a straight jacket, being half-cared for, half-captured by a group looking into the nature of the aliens he'd splattered in the first game. Right on cue, one of these aliens bursts into the scene, violently violates the medic monitoring Isaac, and the player is directed to flee for his life. Restrained by the jacket and with no armour or weapons, Isaac's escape should be a very harrowing experience; but his goofy movement animations, his stomp attack that's heavy enough to shake the screen, and the multiple cut scenes where other survivors are mutilated by aliens while Isaac remains oblivious or just plain uncaring evokes memories of MadWorld, not Silent Hill.

The locations you run through also give an aura of cliché B-Movie horror, relocated to a space station. Take a setting, and add a dramatic "In space!" to the end, and watch it appear in Isaac's jaunt aboard The Sprawl.

Abandoned hospital, in space!

Blood-stained elementary school, IN SPACE!

Ominous church with added foggy graveyard IN SPAAAAAAAACE!

Facetiousness aside, this tone for Dead Space might prove to be a bit of a problem, not because the game isn't taking itself seriously; but because despite the game's pitch-black humour, it still wants to evoke a sense of atmosphere and drama. The decision to give Isaac dialogue and occasional scenes where he's haunted by hallucinations of his dead girlfriend doesn't so much make him human and tormented, but foul-mouthed and cardboard flat. The game tries time and again to get me to care about Isaac, but I'm too busy watching the awesome death cut scenes to notice (Watch Isaac have his arms rather unrealistically removed by an air-lock door without making a Monty Python Black Knight reference. I dare you). The game pulls a page out of Bioshock's book and leaves small video and text files lying around, but they're either unhelpful or uninteresting to read. Isaac's tour of the space station is well-detailed but so incredibly linear, the scare-factor of having to deal with enemies is diminished when you notice that the doors lock behind you whenever there's something in the room you need to tear apart.

So who would I recommend the game to? Fans of the first, definitely. There is a lot of polish to the flow of the game that outshines the original, and most likely other 3rd Person Shooters floating around. But if you're looking for a haunting, atmospheric experience; you're unlikely to find it here. Stomping on corpses to get at the ammo and money hidden within, and flying around with rocket boots is however, a more than satisfying replacement.

This article has been hosted on The Yorker, and can be found here.