My review for January:

Game: Archibald's Adventures

Platform: PC/PS3/PSP/iOS/Mac OS

Year: 2009

Developer: Rake In Grass

Genre: Action/Puzzle/Platformer

Archibald's Adventures (AA) is a wonderful action/puzzle/platformer. The player is required to solve various environmental and physics puzzles, perform tricks and avoid monsters to reach the exit in each level.

On the surface AA looks like another indie platformer, easy on the eyes and lighthearted, but like with most puzzle games, it gets more and more challenging as you progress through the game. But it hardly ever gets frustrating because the controls are very tight and you always see the goal, you just have to find the way to reach it.

The game takes place in a mansion owned by a mad professor whose experiment has gone wrong. You control a teenage boy Archibald, who gets in the mansion by accident and has to find the exit.

AA features more than 190 levels that are divided in to several stages. To unlock the next stage, you have to complete all levels of the current stage. After the story mode stages you can play a few extra stages with levels that are even more challenging. Normally in other games this would be a paid DLC.

Nearly 200 levels seems like a lot, and it is in a positive sense, because each level is unique and, as you progress through the game, new techniques, vehicles, items and monsters are introduced.

Archibald initially moves by skateboarding, but later drives a special pod. In one stage you control the mad professor, who moves by the means of a jetpack.

The game has a few music tracks that are played randomly in each level. Personally I think they are great and surprisingly never get old.

I am very fond of this game, it is one of those games that lift your mood thanks to the positive atmosphere, bright visuals and sense of progression and achievement. Some of the later levels are super hard and some even make you think outside the box. I must confess that there are still some levels that I never beat, but I refuse to look them up (walkthroughs are available at the game's homepage and Youtube).

If you like puzzle games, AA is a must. It offers incredible value, remember nearly 200 unique levels that, at the later stages, will challenge even the most seasoned and wittiest gamers. Get this game now!

Score: 10/10

Nice review! Consider adding it to the DataBase, that way people will be able to read it when searching for it.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/46139/archibalds-adventures/?region=All

Thanks, I added it, lets fill it up :P

Less than one week left until February. How are you guys doing with your obscure games?

The Nintendo DS is a very interesting platform in terms of its software lineup. You have Nintendo's first party games which are always amazing, you have the 3rd party titles which can be hit or miss, but then it starts to get interesting. Amidst the heaps of shovelware that plagued Nintendo during their DS / Wii era, the DS actually got a surprising amount of hidden gems, so many in fact that it almost seems like there is a second layer of hidden gems beneath the already exposed hidden gems, and thats where Im going today. For my first review of the Obscure Game Review, i am going to review 2 games from the Nintendo DS that are, and I have to admit this to myself, my favorite games of all time. Without further introduction, here I go.

Game: Drawn to Life

Platform: Nintendo DS

Year: 2007

Developer: 5th Cell

Genre: 2D Platformer

SPOILER WARNING - These games are best experienced blind

When I was a kid and first saw TV commercials for Drawn to Life, it looked cool. It marketed itself as a game where you could draw your own character on the touch screen and then play through the game as that character. It seemed simple enough.... 

When you first start playing Drawn to Life you immediately get to the exposition. The world of the game is inhabited by small fox-people called Raposa, and the world itself was created by an all-powerful god named The Creator (which is sort of you, but its hard to explain) by drawing everything in the Book of Life. Originally everything was peaceful until one day black ink monsters started appearing and began covering the world in darkness. Slowly everything drawn in the Book of Life began to fade away, including the sky, sun, moon, and even time itself. The Creator vanished leaving everyone with no nope, and slowly all the Raposa left the village (where the game takes place) looking for hope elsewhere, and never returned. 

Then the game actually starts with the village in its current state. Everyone except the Mayor, his daughter Mari, and her friend Jowee have left. Mari tries using the Book of Life to talk to the Creator despite being absent for so long, and he responds, promising to help restore the world. She runs off to tell her dad, but he doesnt believe her. The creator then speaks to Mari, and now to Jowee, telling them to go to the Creation Hall. They find a mannequin which the Creator then transforms into a hero (this is where you get to draw your own character) and tells them that the hero will rescue the villagers and restore the world. 

From then on the game features 2D platforming levels. In each level, you must look for three villagers who have been captured by the darkness and find pages that have been torn from the book of life so that the Creator can restore everything, all while battling through ink monsters amoungst over enemy types. The levels are fun to play through and will occasionally feature sections where you have to draw objects for the hero to use. It was primarily done to show off the touch screen of the DS, but it was still a fun new mechanic that other platformers just dont have. As you progress through the game you will make your way through four worlds, each with their own respective weapon. You start in a snow world where you fight with a snowball gun, then move to a forest where you get a gun that shoots exploding acorns as well as wings to help you fly. the next area is an underwater world where you are given a gun that shoots heat-seeking starfish and you are given scuba gear to breathe underwater. in the final world the hero eats a magic berry that causes them to grow 10x their normal size and you can just punch through everything. and through all of this, you draw what all of these weapons and objects look like. in the final level, you are given a sword to fight the last boss with, and you better believe you can design that sword to look like anything you want. if i remember correctly in my last playthrough i drew my hero the Monado from Xenoblade Chronicles.

between each level of the game you interact with each of the villagers you rescue in a top-down overworld, and this is where 99% of the actual story takes place. after each level, you see different Raposa characters return, each of them brimming with personality and life, well beyond what was needed for a game targeted at a younger demographic. you also get to meet Wilfre, the game's main antagonist. Wilfre use to be a regular villager, loved by everyone, and one day convinced the Mayor to give him the Book of Life to draw his own creations. He ended up drawing the black ink monsters and creating the darkness, even transforming himself into a half-Raposa half-Ink monster. throughout the game Wilfre will appear and torment the villagers, causing more trouble for you, the Mayor, Mari, and Jowee to deal with. i really do need to stress that each character is lovable in their own right, and it is amazing that the devs were able to make so many interesting characters to populate this game. you even end up rescuing several characters who werent even part of the village in the first place. Heather appears after the first boss level and is a young girl who has half of her face covered in darkness and she also never talks. then you meet Mike, who is a human, which would normally not seem like a big deal except humans arent even supposed to exist in this world. and i could go on for hours about each character but that would be far too long. 

at the end of the game, the main cast has gathered everything they need to stop Wilfre. the Book of Life is complete again, the hero has the sword to fight Wilfre, and the path to his castle as been restored. the Mayor has one final wish though. in the Book of Life there is a final page where each Mayor signs their name to preserve their legacy to the village. the Mayor never got to because of the darkness, so he asks the hero to go find the last page. the hero returns with the page, only to find that the Mayor has been murdered and the Book of Life has been stolen by Wilfre. after finding him dead in the woods, the entire village begins to disappear. with quite literally no time left, the hero then goes to battle Wilfre, killing him, and restoring the world, leaving Mari as the new mayor of the village. (they might have gone a bit dark for kid's game)

this game is phenomenal, and also dirt cheap. due to its practically non-existent fanbase and minimal people knowing about it, the game can be found going for around $3 - $5 at your local used game store. the game is beautifully designed, has an amazing story, great characters, and is perfect for kids pr anyone just looking to have a good time. the game takes around 10 - 20 hours to complete (or more if you really want to go balls to the wall with drawing everything) and i have played through it about ten times, each as enjoyable as the last.

The hidden gem hidden beneath the other hidden gems - 10 / 10

BUT it doesnt end there, because the second game i mentioned at the beginning is this game's sequel, Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, which being made a sequel to a game little people knew about only makes it even more obsure. and since this review is long enough, i will instead have to split it into two. i'll probably have the second one done by the end of January

Game: Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter

Platform: Nintendo DS

Year: 2009

Developer: 5th Cell

Genre: 2D Platformer

SPOILER WARNING - These games are best experienced blind

The Next Chapter picks up an unspecified amount of time after the events of the original game ended, and in the game's opening introduction, the focus is weirdly shifted to Heather, the strange girl from the first game whose face is half-covered in darkness, but has since learned to talk. The game opens with a dream sequence where Heather watches Mari turn evil, and Jowee turns into Wilfre, who then proceeds to steal the color from the world around them. She wakes up terrified and wanders off in the middle of the night and makes her way to the beach, where she finds a treasure chest with a strange scepter inside.

The focus then shifts to Mari and Jowee who wake up to find that Heather is gone and proceed to go find her, and then the two get interrupted by nearly every villager going to Mari for help. Being overwhelmed with everything going on, the two go to the Creation Hall to get the Creator to bring the hero back to help them. But before the Creator can finish drawing the hero, the mannequin suddenly loses all of its color, preventing the hero from coming back. They then run outside as the entire Creation Hall proceeds to lose color. The rest of the villagers get scared and run off, and then a huge white portal opens revealing that Wilfre is back. Only this time around he is out to steal all the world's color instead of covering it in darkness. The creator then speaks to Wilfre and tells him to stop, but Wilfre denies the Creator, claiming he is the world's savior. He then pulls out the same scepter that Heather found and tears open more white portals to suck up all nearly all of the villagers before disappearing into one himself, also revealing that he kidnapped Heather, who drops a pendant as she disappears with Wilfre into the portal.

Now only seven Raposa are left in the village- Mari, Jowee, Isaac the shopkeeper and his daughter, Crazy Barks, Pirate Beard, and Mike the human. They all struggle to form a plan as the color rapidly starts vanishing from the village until Pirate Beard directs everyone to his ship so they can escape. They arrive at the docks to find that his ship is gone, so Mari asks to Creator for help, and he responds by sending a giant turtle with a village on its back to save them, where they send off. They then learn that the pendant has magical properties that lets it guide them to where Heather is.

AS FOR THE ACTUAL GAME on the turtle village there is another Creation Hall with another mannequin in it that the Creator uses to summon a new hero. it plays 99% like the original with 2D platforming levels and and a top-down overworld, only this time around, you sail across the world visiting other villages that Wilfre has stolen color from, and using the Creator's help you restore color to those villages and help solve the problems that Wilfre has caused, as well as trying to find the villagers that Wilfre abducted. The levels are much more simplified in the fact that there are no pages that you need to collect, and finding villagers is completely optional. your only objective is to complete the levels and gather color drops to use to restore color. Also new in the sequel, you can draw a sword, gun, and a new slinger type weapon right from the start and swap between the three at any time. The hero also gains the power to transform into a blob form and a spider form to move through levels as, and there are some unique level designs that utilize these new mechanics in really interesting ways. 

In the first village you visit, a few new characters come into play. Salem is introduced as an evil Raposa who has cursed the mayor. Sock is also introduced as a Raposa from another village who got sucked into one of Wilfre's portals and ended up where you are now. Mari and Jowee and agree the let Sock join them in hopes of finding his village. Eventually they confront Salem, who is revealed to be Wilfre in disguise, and break the curse on the mayor. As they are planning to sail off again, Jowee and Sock notice that Mari is missing and eventually are forced to leave without her. for the rest of the story you occasionally run into Mari in the other villages you visit and eventually learn that she is now working with Wilfre. After working your way through three villages, restoring color and solving problems, Jowee tries using the pendant to guide them further, but it doesnt work. Sock then takes the pendant and throws it into the ocean, then reveals that he himself was also Wilfre in disguise, only acting like he was lost to keep an eye on the villagers. He then opens a portal and disappears. At this point the villagers are left helpless. They are too far off the map to continue onward and without the pendant they have no way to track Wilfre or Heather. They decide the only thing they can do is give up, and return to their colorless village. 

Eventually Jowee does find a way to get to Wilfre, and they sail onward to find Wilfre's wasteland and confront him and Mari. Mari tries to convince Jowee to listen to Wilfre and ends up kidnapping him to show him what Wilfre showed her. The tone during this part of the game is very dark and ominous. The rest of the Raposa (and Mike) cant do anything. Mari, Jowee, and Sock are now gone. for the first time the Hero is left entirely alone and stuck in Wilfre's wasteland with no idea where to head next... until out of nowhere the Mayor from the first game appears and guides the Hero to get into Wilfre's castle, and disappears afterwards. You meet up with Mari, Wilfre, and Jowee who has just been shown... something. Mari and Jowee debate what the right thing to do is, and eventually Jowee convinces Mari to stop trusting Wilfre. The hero goes into the castle and fights Wilfre, killing him yet again, and freeing Heather, whose face now appears normal.

All the world's color has been restored and Wilfre has been defeated once again, but Mari and Jowee both let on that this whole adventure isnt over yet. The seven of them return to the original village and Mari asks the creator to... do something. The game then shifts focus to Mike, the human, as the game ends. Everything begins to fade away, including the villagers. Mike is left alone in a white void.

As the credits roll, the game flashes back to Mike, leaving a carnival with his mom, dad, and his sister Heather. As the four of them were driving home, they got into a car accident that ended up killing both of Mike's parents, and putting Mike into a coma. At the hospital, Heather is seen now with half of her face covered in bandages, hoping that Mike will wake up, and eventually he does. You then see two toys, presumably won at the carnival, heavily resembling Mari and Jowee. The entirety of both of these games was just Mike's coma dream, and Wilfre was able to figure this out. He covered the world in darkness to keep real world Mike in his coma forever. Mari and Jowee realized though that even if it meant their world would cease to exist, they had to do the right thing and wake Mike up. 

While the first game had an even mix of platforming and story, this game goes all out with the story and only uses platforming when necessary. The levels are still fun to play through but at times just felt like an awkward pit stop. The lack of collectibles in each level also made them lose that feel of needing to explore everything. But one thing that was made better was the actual level design. The camera can now zoom in or out depending on the situation, which can really open up some areas in ways the previous game couldnt. The graphics are mostly the same with character models and assets being directly taken from the first game, but honestly i could care less about that. Being so similar in design only makes transitioning from one to the other feel more natural, like you are playing one long continuous game instead of two. I have just as much love for the sequel as I do the first game.

The Next Chapter is a sequel done right. Mechanics are mixed up just enough to keep the game fresh, and the same lovable characters and story from the first game are all present. - 10 / 10

I give you my review for February:

Game: Viper Racing

Platform: PC

Year: 1998

Developer: Monster Games

Genre: Sim Racing

Viper Racing was a fairly popular racing sim in the late 90s among those PC gamers who cared about this genre.

As the game title suggests, this game is all about Viper racing. Yes, only one car model, which is ironic because Viper Racing is such a great game despite this limitation.

I stumbled upon this game in '99 in a game exchange with my neighbour. The game cover looked generic, with screenshots from what looked like a graphically unimpressive game. Boy was I wrong! Viper Racing is probably one of the most technically advanced games of that time. Remember, this was a PC exclusive, so there were much less technical limitations than for multiplatform games, but back to it later.

The game features several tracks - from the Daytona oval to long and winding fantasy tracks which are grand in scale, and all tracks have the reverse versions, which doubles the track number available.

Viper Racing has one of the best Career modes I have ever played in racing games. You get four career stages - Amateur, Club, Professional and Grand Touring - and in each stage you have to complete a full season and win in order to advance to the next stage. If you don't win the season, you have to play a new season in that stage again and again until you win.

As you complete races and seasons, you receive game money that you can spend on a big number of car upgrades. Car upgrading is very important in Viper Racing and surprisingly each upgrade really does change the behavior of your Viper. Do you want to drive faster and mostly choose the engine upgrades? Your car will be faster but harder to control now and believe me you don't want that. Do you worry more about the stability? Handling is easier, but the opponents are faster than you. So balancing between the various upgrades is usually the best bet.

What makes Viper Racing truly special are the car physics and handling - you really feel like you are driving a supercar, in this case a Viper. When starting a new Career, you have to choose the mode - Arcade, Intermediate or Simulation. Honestly I always played Arcade because the other two were just too hardcore for me, but rest assured - even the Arcade mode is more sim than many other sim games ever were! Forget the slidy physics that were introduced in the racing games of the early 2000s and never left since. Of course today, if you want, you can find the modern sim of your liking in iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Project Cars and the likes, but Viper Racing is where it all started, and never aged! Just ask any sim racing fan who has played Viper Racing.

The game cover says that the AI opponents act like real drivers, and it is no lie. You really feel like you are racing against real people, but this time more or less decent ones, who don't try to push you out of the track every chance they get.

Viper Racing had and still has active fan communities who have made new tracks, new cars, graphics updates and patches for the latest Windows versions.

So is Viper Racing worth playing today for new and aspiring sim racing fans? Probably not, but it is still as great as it was back in '98 and personally I will keep replaying it from time to time, it's just that today it's all about online - competing against other players from all over the world. But the point still stands - Viper Racing gives you a great single player sim racing experience to this day. There is nothing like going down a winding highway in super high speed in your Viper with adrenaline pumping in your veins with a sharper turn in front - how well will you do this time?

Score: 10/10

Hello, people. How are you doing? We're getting great reviews, don't forget to add them to the database if possible.

Game: Neighbours from Hell.

Platform: PC.

Year: 2003.

Developer: JoWooD Vienna

Genre: Puzzle

Game: Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation.

Platform: PC.

Year: 2004.

Developer: JoWooD Vienna

Genre: Puzzle

Videogames have been often criticised for their representation of bad behaviours, usually through the actions the characters often partake in. Ill manners are very frequent to seem even in the most simple of games. However, very few games dangle the line between satire and dickishness like the Neighbours from Hell series. The original Neighbours from Hell was initially released in 2003, and a year later, it got a sequel, Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation. Both games are extremely similar, so this review will analyse both of them, even if there are some aspects unique to each instalment.

First, the plot. In a random neighbour of Vienna, our protagonist, Woody, is your average Joe, enjoying his life as much as he can. However, he is constantly bullied and irritated by his horrid neighbour, Mr. Rottweiler. He throws garbage to his house, he lets his dog do its thing in Woody’s garden, he makes a lot of noise with his vehicle, he never listens to the rest of the neighbours complains (to the point where his name appears in the newspapers)... Finally sick of his neighbour’s behaviour, Woody gets in contact with a TV program, and they both decide to create a plan to enact revenge upon Mr. Rottweiler: Woody will enter in his neighbour’s house and set prank after prank after him, and the TV guy will record everything to show it to the masses as some sort of reality show. And that’s the game. It is basically a series of point and click scenarios designed to create traps and tricks to annoy Mr. Rottweiler to the point of breaking. The first game is set in Mr. Rottweiler’s house, whereas the second one follows him travelling around the world during holidays. You will try to go finding objects and items to manipulate and combine to set traps to the neighbour, while making sure he doesn’t see you. The more pranks you make, the better the ratings will be, and thus, the better your score is. You can combine a series of pranks to get extra points, while the neighbour acts like he’s having a mental breakdown or a heart attack. Pranks vary from the stupid, to the juvenile to the downright dangerous. There are some that will make you think Woody is trying to outright murder him, all while the laugh track of the show enjoys it. Though to be fair, you never feel too sad for the characters, and if the neighbour finds you out, he will beat you up and the game will be over. In some levels, you will have to deal with his pets too, his parrot and his dog, that will alert him of your presence if you make too much noise. The second game changes things a bit. Instead of an instant game over, you now have three lives, but the game compensates this by adding Rottweiler’s mother to the levels, and she will attack you if she sees you too. Other than that, they are more or less identical.

These two games are not particularly long. The first game has 18 levels including the tutorials, and the second one has 14, also with tutorials. In the first game, the more levels you beat, the more areas you have to wreak havoc, while in the second one you have multiple settings themed like different countries. The game is not particularly difficult once you get into the rhythm of it. Beating the game with the minimum level needed is extremely simple, and it’s also easy to reach 90% of audience. Reaching the 100% on a level, though, requires playing the same level a lot of times, knowing the timing and location of everything, without wasting a single second. That could be a fun challenge, but there isn’t a big incentive to do so.

The game feels like a cartoon, something like Tom and Jerry, or the Roadrunner, but much, much more mean-spirited. First off, this is one of the few games I’ve ever played where every character involved is an absolute asshole, from beginning to end. To start with, Rottweiler is portrayed as irredeemable in the games. He’s rude, he spies on women in both games, he damages public and private property, steals from charities, he’s a jerk to children and at one point in the game he kills his pet parrot and hangs his head in the wall like a trophy. The protagonist, Woody, is a resentful prick that breaks into his neighbour’s house to torment him even when he’s not doing anything wrong, the guy in charge of the TV program is breaking I don’t know how many laws by streaming the neighbour being tortured on TV, to the viewing pleasure of thousands, if not millions of people (considering we can reach ratings of 100% at best). Rottweiler’s mother is a beast of a woman that is the spitting image of her son, with everything that can be said about the neighbour being applicable to her as well. The only main characters that are somewhat redeemable are Olga and her son, who appear only in the second game as the romantic interest of Rottweiler. And even then, Olga is just there to beat up the neighbour once he falls into one of Woody’s plans.

Graphics are fine. They decided to go for a style somewhat similar to Wallace & Gromit, but not go all in on the Claymation. The graphics are fine, and the environment is pretty detailed. There are some things that feel weird, like the neighbour has some sort of pornographic tabloid in both his study and the bathroom (I wonder how they managed to hid THAT from the rating boards), but the resolution of the images is lowered considerably to keep kids from seeing them for what they are. The second game has much better visuals, although that comes from a better variety of things displayed, due to the premise allowing them more freedom in that regard. The music can get repetitive fast, there aren’t that many tracks in either of the titles, but it’s not too bad.

There’s a bit of a feedback problem with the PC versions of this games. They don’t have an intro explaining the plot, they just throw you right into it, if you want some sort of explanation of why Woody does what it does, or why is there a TV program revolving around torturing the neighbour, you’ll have to go to the GameCube or the Xbox version (I’m shocked this game didn’t have a PS2 release, when it was primarily released in Europe). Also, a bit of trivia here, for some reason the ESRB rated this game Teen, but the PEGI board rated it 3+, which is a decent difference.

Overall, I find the difficulty of the games and the fact they are so short the only problems for otherwise perfectly serviceable games. But then again, these two things aren’t so much nit-picks as actual problems to the game. I guess someone that has not played them before could enjoy them fine, but they’d better get them in a bundle, otherwise they will feel the short length of the games. They are good puzzle games, though, and they will be enjoyable for a while.

Score: 6.5/10

I see the admin team has added a Latest User Reviews feature. Thank you guys! :)

Also, a reminder that people participating in this thread should add the reviews of their respective games to the adequate game on the DataBase, and that way people can read them regardless they see this thread or not.

Here I bring another obscure game to the lightspot, only this is the first game I review here I consider a bad game.

Game: Nanashi no Game (The Nameless Game).

Platform: Nintendo DS.

Year: 2008.

Developer: Epics.

Genre: Horror.

Horror is a very subjective thing. Some things are able to scare all kinds of people but, for the most part, what is considered horror tend to vary from people from people. However, one of the things that is generally accepted as a good horror trope is unpredictability. The inability to see what’s coming next, that fear of the unknown, is something almost instinctual in all of us. Great scary stories have been told through this, and there are very few horror classics that don’t use this tool. This surprising moments are forever burned into our memories and subconscious, and are able to make us think about what scare us, why does it scare us, and thus learn a bit more about ourselves.

So what can a horror game do when it has an extremely predictable plot and no original thought on it? Welcome to Nanashi no Game, or The Nameless Game.

Before I start this review, a couple of things I want to address. This game is Japanese only, so it has no official translation to other language but Japanese. The version I’ve played is a patched one that changed the original text to English, and as such, I’ve had to play this on an emulator. Some of my complaints may sound harsh knowing this information, but I don’t think they’re unjustified. I’ve also had a couple of visual glitches I know for certain are due to the emulation process, so I will ignore them for the overall review.

Nanashi no Game is a survival-horror game for the Nintendo DS developed by Epics and published by Square Enix. It centres on the protagonist, a Japanese college student who receives a game from his best friend. After discovering his death in mysterious circumstances, he realises the game they were both playing is cursed, and everyone who plays it will die after seven days. Thus, with the help of one of his teachers, he will use that week of life to search of a method of saving himself, along with discovering the dark mystery around the game.

If you think that this description sounds familiar to you, don’t worry, it’s normal. This plot is the exact same plot as Koji Suzuki’s Ring (1991), more commonly known as The Ring in the West. The game is almost the same, with identical beats, themes and twists. It is pretty amazing how similar both are, they just changed the video tape for a video game. If you’ve read the original book or you’ve seen either the Japanese or even the American film, you know what is going to happen at each moment, without exception. Maybe the motivations are different, maybe the backstory is somewhat changed, but the general plot stays the same. The game borrows everything from The Ring, and this is the main source of problems of this title: its lack of originality. This holds the game back constantly, not being able to take advantage of the media to scare us, instead choosing to rethread The Ring. Remember how in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem the game scared you in many different ways, from making things change and appear without reason to making you think the game had deleted all of your progress? Remember how in Batman Arkham Asylum the game screwed with you by giving you a game over screen and then throwing you into a mindfuck level? There is no real difference here between the video tape and the video game, and if you’re not going to do anything clever with it, why bother changing it? The fact the cursed object is a game is used, don’t give me wrong, but it’s so underutilized it’s not really excusable.

The gameplay is also considerably flawed. The game is divided into three major playstyles: the real world, where you have to navigate scary 3D environments using a combination of the D-Pad and the Touch Screen. This is the majority of the game, where you try to find clues to solve the mysteries of the game and solve puzzles that I wouldn’t really call puzzles they are either so simple or cryptic. Sometimes, you will be attacked by ghostly apparitions, and you will have to run away from them, and this is where the control problems come in. Like I’ve said before, I played this on an emulator, but even then I realised I would have problems trying to move around. You have to turn your DS sideways, and with a combination of D-Pad and Touch controls, try to move around in first person. Not only it is a very awkward form of controlling a character, it also is very slow, even in the run option, and the character will be frequently blocked and become stuck if close to walls or objects, due to the hit detection being somewhat spotty. I’ve heard this is one of the purposeful elements of game design, make the controls somewhat unresponsive to make the player feel powerless and scared. This reasoning is absolute flawed in so many levels, just an excuse to forgive the controls of games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Rule of Rose. Unlike those, however, Nanashi no Game is unable to even give satisfactory alternatives to fight back, so the only thing you can do when confronted by evil spirits is run away and hope you don’t get stuck somewhere. To be fair, the ghosts in this game are very slow, with the exception of one moment when it suddenly becomes twice as fast and you have to run to the nearest door to hide. The ghosts themselves are pretty generic too, they’re your standard zombie-esque Japanese apparition, all pale white with their eyes and mouth like black holes, and they don’t really seem to be that threatening, they just touch you, go boo and then game over.

The other main gameplay mode is the videogame mode. The player carries around his TS, which is an obvious parody of the DS, which can receive mail and play this mysterious cursed title. The game itself is basically an 8-bit sprite game where you listen to some of the backstory of the game and, from time to time, get some attempts at a scare. It also serves as a ghost detector, with the screen glitching out more and more once a ghost gets near. The challenge in this mode is even less so than in the regular mode, and it’s almost impossible to fail there. Lastly, there is a final mode, but it’s basically exposition and has no gameplay whatsoever, only really interacting with it once in the entire game.

The setting is mediocre at best. There are seven levels in the game, and they more or less go through many cliché locations in horror games: creepy hospital, creepy abandoned building, creepy lighthouse, creepy train… The graphics are weak but passable, considering the DS was never the most powerful machine out there, and the music is utterly forgettable. I don’t even remember the main theme, and it’s constantly repeated throughout the game. The cursed game is basically cloning Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest in creepy 8-bit, with random glitches and other similar things. Nothing really stands out about it.

And then we come to the story, which, again, is just The Ring with video games, but there are things outside of that that should be commented on. Also, I will spoil some of the events of the game here, so you’ve been warned. Basically, it abuses every Japanese horror stereotype and cliché possible, and with no clever twist, from the scary little girl to the white ghosts that are just unrested spirits looking for revenge. First off, some of the characters are pretty pointless. The best friend of the opposite sex (the player can choose its genre, although it does nothing but change this single detail, so why bother in the first place) is in love with you, and it only affects gameplay when his/her ghost appear to attack you. That’s it. One of the seven days the game has to tell its story, and it wastes one and a half in a character that amounts to nothing. The teacher character is also bizarre, and one of the clearer knock-offs from The Ring, but without understanding what makes the character work. He’s basically Takayama from the book, the protagonist’s best friend to whom the protagonists confides his secret, does investigation on the side and ultimately gets a bad ending. Unlike Takayama, however, the teacher really has no reason to help the student. He investigates on his own instead of giving information to the police (who are investigating the previous death), knows way too much for a bystander (which made me think that he was going to be the twist villain or something, but nope), and dies before the protagonist without actually playing the game, hurting the rules of the setting by doing so. The fact he puts the protagonist, a student of his, in constant danger is a very despicable thing to do, considering nothing so far has shown the curse is real. The father of the creepy kid is important to the story, but it barely does something himself, with the exception of the last act, in which he tells his daughter how much he loves her, breaking the curse or something. Why don’t the police investigate the game too? References to it are plastered all around the scene of the original crime, there is no reason why should just ignore it, how lazy or bad are they?

The evil villain in the game is your typical Japanese little girl, dressed in white and with black hair covering her face, and in the end is just an angered spirit, filled with vengeance. This is an incredibly lazy move on their part, considering how many plot holes she can be sometimes. Why is the image of a well constantly used in the 8-bit game? It has nothing to do with the story, and it’s only there because The Ring had a well. And why does the game kill after seven days? They didn’t even try to give an explanation to that, that’s just stealing lazily!

And then we reach the final level. This forces us to a countdown until sunset of the seventh day, and we have to talk to the ghosts of all of the characters before reaching the end of the cape where the lighthouse is. Mind you, the problems with the controls come back here in full force, because we have to talk to statues of the deceased, wait for them to turn into ghosts, let the ghosts touch you (something you’ve been trying to avoid the entire game), talk to them, and then repeat the process, and then reach the end of the stage by talking to the ghost girl. All while navigating a pretty long walk with many curves and places to get stuck on. And in the end, you realise there are different endings! Specifically, there’s a good and a bad ending. You have to find all of the items sprinkled to the levels before reaching the final stage, then you get the good ending. And what’s the difference? None! They are the same! The good ending has a cutscene in which the ghost girl ascends to the heavens, whereas the bad ending doesn’t. That and a possible hint for a sequel in the bad ending. That’s it. It’s not worth replaying the game for 10-20 seconds of cutscene, none at all. Overall, the game clocks in at 4h of gameplay, even less so if you’ve already played the game. 4 hours, that is incredibly short for a story-driven game! There are scary games out there, free to play games that have much more content than this!

I am honestly surprised Square Enix approved the publishing of this game, and even more so that it has more than one sequel. Most outlets and review sites have very good things to say about this. Am I missing something here? This is awful, and I don’t really get the sequels it got, or the fact Japanese outlets gave it a very decent score. Awful controls, mediocre graphics, unfulfilling and short story that is basically The Ring with a video game… This is not a good Japanese horror title, just go play the myriad of good titles out there.

Score: 2/10