Scary Video Game Review with James Paradie: Amnesia Custom Story - Rain

 

 (I couldn't find a good header for Amnesia Rain, so I just went with this very stylish fountain with disembodied legs.) 

Updated (2/23/17) I had to edit out Neewchy's playthough, because apparently it doesn't exist anymore and replaced it with a video from Harshly Critical's playthrough.

What's up ladies and gentlemen, boils and ghouls, Scared Sheetless is back! Hold your applause, because I'm sure a lot of you have went to other websites for your daily dose of fear, ghostly encounters, video game reviews, and tongue-in-cheekyness that only I can provide. It's okay though. You'll be back ... they ALL come back. Muhahahaa! 

-Coughs- Alright, so I don't have a good excuse for my abscense other than a few health problems have been really side tracking me lately, as well as my new venture selling stuff online (which has actually kept me really busy, I must say.) You'd figured it would be my new book, but nope. For right now, I'm just letting it ride on its own. So while I was away, I completely forgot about this website. I know! It's like it never existed. I mean I've only been posting here religiously since 2009. But we all need our time to ourselves and to just chill. But the other day I was thinking, don't I have a blog where I can rape peoples ears (or eyes in this case, raping ears gives me a weird mental image)? Oh, yes, I do! 

Enough stalling. I've been kibbying (it's slang for craving, by the way) for some horror games in my life and with the last Bioshock Infinite DLC, Burial at Sea Part 2, not coming out until next week (I think?) my Youtube watching schedule is open. So browsing around, I checked my usual suspects: theRadBrad had nothing scary going on; Harshly Critical - nothing I wanted to watch at this moment of time, so I searched for Amnesia mods. I love Amnesia and a lot of these mods that people take time to create are really cool. I searched "Greatest Amnesia Mods" found a website and found some of the ones I've already seen, but saw one called Rain. It got really favorable reviews, so I put my brave jacket on, turned on all the lights I could, and sat down and started searching for it on Youtube. I found a few doing videos of it, but they were the annoying ones. Some people worship them, but I just don't see the point of them (we'll get to that in another blog), but I found one commentator/walkthrough guy named Neewchy. He's a lad from Sweden who loves to provide us with walkthroughs. 

What's the Game?

I fear my life is in peril. Where I am or how I got here I have no recollection of, for my memory is fragmented and my mind scattered. I find it necessary to write down my thoughts for fear of losing them again. I don't know how many times I have drifted in and out of consciousness, or for how long I have been here. I see visions beyond this nightmare, visions of wood and carpet instead of stone and dirt... I hear rain.

-moddb.com 

My Review: 

I'm not going to give away spoilers, but I will say that I did enjoy the story and the scares were great. I liked how they created brand new scares, rather than run of the mill, Dark Descent rehashes. I also loved that they messed with the player's (or in my case, viewer's) mind. The creator also added some new environments, as well as creating a way to modify the environment. What do I mean? How about a whole atrium filling up with blood? Check out the video below. The video is provided by Harshly Critical. He is my commentator of choice when it comes to horror video games. When I originally did this review, in 2014, I was unaware John (HC) played the game. Here's the first video of his playthough and it does have the blood atrium (I believe is the right architect term for it). I originally said, in my original review of this (back in 2014, this is being written in 2017) that it was a corridor. No. Foolish me knew better, but decided to embarrass himself! Eh, who cares? Enjoy. 

SSS (Scared Sheetless Score): For a mod, I'd have to say it's a 5/5. I know there's some other mods out there that totally take everything we know about the Dark Descent and throw it out the window and replace it with a completely new environment. But to take the Dark Descent and create new stuff with it, I'd say that's quite commendable. It kept me wanting to watch more and it definitely scared the hell out of me in some areas. Maybe I'm too generous with the rating, but I think it was really good and definitely worth a re-watch. 

Games to Be Reviewed Here Soon: 

The Last of Us 

Bioshock Infinite 

Bioshock Infinite DLC: Burial at Sea, Episodes 1 and 2

The Wolf Among Us: Episodes 1 and 2 

So come back later for another Scared Sheetless game review. Thanks for reading, guys.

Scary Game Review: Amnesia - White Night

Hey guys, it’s SS here with another scary video game review. 

I actually watched this game a few years ago on my commentator of choice, the Rad Brad’s channel and was amazed. The reason why I was amazed was because they took an actual game and made it into something entirely different. 

What game am I talking about? Amnesia: White Night. 

The game takes the world of The Dark Descent and warps it into a new world, with a new story. Some people say it’s not even a horror game, like the Descent was, but I think it’s freaky enough. 

The Story (No Spoilers): 

Be careful about what or who to believe.

Just like the Dark Descent, your character wakes up and has no idea where they are or what happened to them. All this person, whose name is David, knows is that he is in a mental hospital. The beginning of the game, which acts like an prologue, doesn’t tell much. It tells about a happy couple who are celebrating an anniversary, when suddenly the wife is dead. Three years later, the husband is in a mental institution and has recollection of what happened. Guesses point to that the husband killed the wife. 

My Thoughts: 

Not one to play games, but to watch them and enjoy them for the story, I can’t tell you much about the gameplay. Other than going by that it plays just like the Dark Descent. The story, however, is well done. My biggest problem with it is the voice acting. Some is okay, but the majority of it is not that great. It seems like they’re dead panning it and reading their script. I know that they have to read the script, but usually you need to put some sort of charisma into it to make it sound halfway decent. These voice actors did not, however, and it makes the story suffer a little.

I actually had to watch the entire game again, because I forgot a lot of details, minus the fact that I enjoyed watching it. Watching it the second time, I saw some similarities with games like Silent Hill, Nightmare House 2, and Cry of Fear. Elements of these classic games are in White Night, but of course the biggest comparison of White Night is to the Dark Descent. 

The music is really good too. Definitely sends a chill down your bone, which makes the atmosphere even better. 

SS Score: 7.5/10 – I was going to rate it 8/10, but I realized that I rated Outlast the same score. Not that it wouldn’t be a problem to, because other games on other sites (example: IGN.com) give numerous games the same rating. My problem with giving White Night the same rating as Outlast is due to that I believe Outlast was a better game. The voice acting is the reason why White Night can’t be taken *completely* serious. No offense to the voice actors, but they should have went with text dialogue. Another example of a great game with terrible voice acting – Cry of Fear. I will be doing a review on that as well. But where the game suffers, it does make up for it with some pretty fascinating twists and turns in both story and game landscape, along with some neat puzzles. 

I know last time I said I was going to do a review on Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs or Eleusis, but the commentator I watch hasn’t played the game yet (he will, but he has other games to complete first) and Eleusis was not what I was expecting it to be. Not a bad game, mind you, but it doesn’t fit in the scary game category. 

Until then, check out White Night and tell me what you thought. Have a great day.