Andie (and some of you, I’m sure) will undoubtedly be delighted to hear that I finished Corpse Party: Book of Shadows last night, which means I will no longer be sitting in the dark before going to sleep with the sounds of Japanese schoolgirls screaming emanating from my headphones.
So what of Book of Shadows as a whole? Well, I enjoyed it — as much as it is possible to “enjoy” a Corpse Party game, anyway — and, as I noted the other day, I particularly appreciated its unconventional narrative structure. For those who didn’t read that post the other day and are too lazy to click on that link, Book of Shadows essentially acts as a collection of “deleted scenes” and alternate endings to the original Corpse Party for the most part, with each chapter focusing on a different group of characters and either exploring “what if?” scenarios if things had gone differently in the original game, or acting as a means of expanding on and exploring the stories of a number of incidental characters who were either already dead by the time the first Corpse Party’s story unfolded, or who showed up in the game’s “Extra” chapters after you’d finished it.
One of the strengths of the original Corpse Party was how well-realised all of the characters were, and this continues in Book of Shadows, even in the chapters that explore characters other than the main cast of the first game. Each character is an interesting person to spend time with, and the fact the game is structured as more of a visual novel than the original game was means that there’s a lot more in the way of narration from each chapter’s protagonist than there was in the original. This lets you get inside the head of these characters to a much greater degree than previously, and this, coupled with the again fantastic Japanese voice acting, makes for an experience where you really get a strong sense of who these characters are, what they’re like and how they’re handling the horrific situation in which they find themselves. And, as I noted in my previous post, there’s not usually a happy ending, since by the time the cast of the first Corpse Party arrive at Heavenly Host Elementary School, most of the people they come across are dead.
Once you’ve worked your way through all the main chapters of Book of Shadows, you unlock a hidden final chapter called Blood Drive. (If you’ve finished the game and haven’t unlocked this, you either need save data from the original Corpse Party on your memory card or to see all of the Wrong Ends from all the previous chapters before it will unlock.)
Blood Drive is the “true” sequel to the original Corpse Party, following on directly from where the previous game left off. Unfortunately, the chapter Blood Drive is but a preview for the game Blood Drive, which is not yet even out in Japan, meaning that the game ends on one hell of a cliffhanger that won’t be getting resolved in the immediate future. Still, the amount of “oh NO!” I felt as the credits rolled for the last time is testament to how engaging I found the game as a whole — I liked these characters, enjoyed spending time with them and felt bad for them when they suffered, and I really, really want to see how the story continues (or ends?) in Blood Drive.
Unfortunately, I’ll be waiting a while yet. Still, it’s not as if I’m short of other things to play right now — not least of which is Idea Factory’s Sweet Fuse, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Sachiko-san, onegaishimasu. Sachiko-san, onegaishimasu. Sachik– shit, how many times was I supposed to chant it again?
After re-finishing Corpse Party for the second time (and this time around actually playing through all the bonus chapters) I moved straight on to its sort-of-sequel Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, a game which I’ve owned for quite some time but haven’t got around to because I wanted to replay Corpse Party first.
So far, I’m very impressed. Book of Shadows maintains the things that were great about Corpse Party — its dark, mature storyline; its realistically flawed but likeable characters; its unusual but startlingly effective soundtrack; and its incredible, incredible sound design and voice acting — while making a few significant and notable changes.
The most notable change from the previous Corpse Party is that it’s no longer a top-down RPG-style affair and has instead become a first-person perspective point and click adventure with lengthy visual novel-style sequences to advance the plot. I’m fine with this, but I was also fine with the top-down nature of the original. I actually really liked the fact that the first Corpse Party had all the trappings of a JRPG — top-down perspective, a menu you pop up with the triangle button, hit points — without any fighting whatsoever. (That said, the PC-98 original version of Corpse Party, of which the PSP version is one of several remakes, concluded with a boss fight.)
Book of Shadows’ shift to the first person is an interesting one, because despite the change in perspective and despite the change from tile-based backdrops to hand-drawn environments, it’s still recognisable as Heavenly Host Elementary School. The map is the same; the rooms are laid out the same; you’re just seeing them from a different perspective. This gives a pleasing degree of consistency to the experience.
The concept is peculiar but kind of neat, too. One of the “wrong ends” of the original Corpse Party saw the band of unfortunate teens travel back in time after successfully reversing the charm that had got them into the school in the first place, only to find themselves repeating the same events exactly as they were before — thereby dooming themselves to the same fate. Book of Shadows runs with the idea that the characters being aware of this “time loop” might see them try to cheat their fate, and the first chapter at least explores what happens if a particular tragedy that occurred early in the first game was averted. In doing so, we get a chance to spend a lot more time with characters who didn’t get a great deal of screen time in the original game (because they were the first to be unpleasantly murdered) and gain a greater understanding of both them and their relationships with others in the process.
I’m digging it so far. The palpable sense of menace of the original is very much intact in this new game, as is the wince-inducing violence — though as with the previous game, Book of Shadows has a wonderful understanding of the concept of “less is more” when it comes to horror. The most effective scares come from the imagination rather than gory scenes on the screen — and while Book of Shadows, like its predecessor, certainly isn’t afraid to show the aftermath of a violent event, the actual instance of something unpleasant happening tends to be depicted through nothing more than text and sound.
Book of Shadows deserves particularly special mention for its sound. The original Corpse Party made magnificent use of fake 3D effects in the stereo field to make it sound like people were whispering in your ear, standing behind you and all manner of other things. Book of Shadows continues this and somehow manages to be even more effective. In an early scene, for example, you’re playing the role of the character Naomi, who finds herself in bed with her possibly-a-lesbian best friend Seiko, who is over for a sleepover. When the lights go out and Seiko falls asleep, you can hear her soft breathing and occasional murmuring to herself in your left ear while Naomi ponders things to herself; when Seiko is roused by Naomi’s mumbling, her voice sounds like she’s lying right next to you. It’s unnerving in its realism, but startlingly effective for immersing you in the game world and story.
I’m partway through the second chapter of Book of Shadows so far. I’m enjoying the “what if?” nature of these chapters, but what I’m really looking forward to is the not-so-secret final chapter that actually acts as a sequel of sorts to the original story. I’m intrigued to see where the story goes, and despite the fact it’s such a consistently unpleasant, depressing series, I really hope we see more in the future.
I’ve been replaying Corpse Party recently due to the fact that I’ve owned the sequel Book of Shadows for ages and haven’t gotten around to it yet. Since Book of Shadows is more of a spinoff that tells other concurrent stories that take place during the first Corpse Party, I figured it would probably be a good idea to refresh my memory on the original.
I’m reminded how much I liked the game first time around, for a number of reasons. It has its frustrating elements, sure — chief among which is the lack of a “fast forward” function for scenes you’ve seen before and want to skip after reloading from a “Wrong End” — but there’s a lot more to like than there is to dislike.
The most impressive thing about Corpse Party is still its sound. Not only does it have some fantastic music, but it also makes use of some utterly brilliant 3D sound effects that are alarmingly realistic when listened to on headphones. There’s one sequence partway through where a character is listening to someone’s voice on their phone, and the way the sound is positioned actually makes it sound like a phone held up against your ear. Elsewhere, careful positioning of sounds in the stereo field can make it sound like they’re coming from over your shoulder, or off in the distance.
Alongside the marvellous 3D sound is some incredible voice acting. I have pretty limited knowledge of Japanese seiyuu, but it’s clear that those who signed on to voice Corpse Party’s cast really know what they’re doing. The delivery of their lines is packed with character and some really genuine-sounding emotion. When a character shouts, they sound angry. When a character is crying, it’s heartbreaking. When a character screams, it’s enough to send shivers down your spine.
The game, as I’ve said on a few occasions previously, is also a masterclass in that essential part of horror — “less is more”. While Corpse Party has its share of explicitly gory moments, its most horrifying scenes are completely invisible in terms of visuals, instead unfolding entirely through sound effects, text and occasional flashes of colour. The imagination really gets to work in these scenes, filling your mind with some truly, truly unpleasant mental images that are all the worse for the fact you know that you’re responsible for picturing them. I often find myself wincing at explicit, gory horror movies, but Corpse Party is the only game that’s managed to genuinely get me squirming using nothing but a minimalist approach.
I’m into the game’s fourth chapter, so I’m making good progress on my playthrough. I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the “Wrong Ends” so far, though the growing completionist streak I appear to be developing will probably insist I go back and get them all in order to fill in all those “Ending List” stars at some point. And this time I will actually play the “Extra” scenes that you unlock as you play through, too — for some reason I didn’t get around to those last time around.
Anyway. Yeah. Corpse Party. If you’re yet to experience this creepy classic on PSP and Vita and are hungry for something scary, get on that right now.
I always used to be one for having my game’s voices in English. I liked being able to understand what they were saying as well as reading the subtitles on screen. In some cases, I didn’t have the option; I’ll always associate Persona 3 and 4 with English voices, for example, even though, in retrospect, it would probably be better with Japanese voice acting. In others, the English voiceover job was so genuinely good that I didn’t want to try the Japanese version — Xenoblade Chronicles springs immediately to mind in this regard.
I can remember the moment that I realised Japanese voice acting was something worth exploring even though I didn’t speak the language, though. It was while I was playing the utterly terrifying PSP visual novel/adventure game Corpse Party — one of my favourite games on that platform, and legitimately one of the most disturbing games I’ve ever experienced — that I realised that, frankly, Japanese video game voice actors aren’t afraid to let rip with the utterly raw emotion. They’ll shout until their voice cracks; they’ll scream; they’ll cry. And by God, they sound like they mean it.
It was around one of the many points in Corpse Party where one of the characters is bawling their eyes out and screaming in terror at the horrific situation they’ve found themselves in that I realised when it comes to voice acting in games — which are typically accompanied by subtitles, particularly in the visual novel and JRPG genres — it’s not about the words that are being said, but about how they’re being said. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand the Japanese words that were being screeched into my ears (seriously, play that game on headphones and you’ll never want to turn the light out again) — the meaning was all too clear simply from the tone of voice.
Those who have been reading regularly will know that I’ve been playing Ar Tonelico 3 recently. I played the first game in that series in English, largely because I found the English voices in the video cutscenes too jarring when paired with Japanese speech in the main game. I played the second in Japanese because I’d been warned that the English dub, much like the overall translation job, was somewhat questionable. And I started the third in English, but after not very long I switched to Japanese. It is a decision I did not regret.
It’s very obvious from the huge rift in quality between the English and Japanese voice tracks in something like Ar Tonelico 3 that the English actors are, for the most part, phoning it in somewhat, while the Japanese actors care about what they’re doing. In many cases, it is the difference between a rush job (English) and having well-known professionals handle the voices.
I witnessed a scene this evening — no spoilers — that had me more than a little choked up due to the amount of raw emotion and passion that the actress playing one of the characters was throwing into the delivery of her lines. I believed that she meant what she was saying. This character was supposed to be upset, and I believed that.
The other thing that comes into play is that when a game’s dialogue has been translated relatively literally from the original Japanese rather than fully localised, reading it out loud in English often sounds very stilted and artificial, simply because that’s not how English people talk. We don’t say things like “what is this, all of a sudden?” and start entire conversations with “By the way”. We don’t refer to ourselves in the third person to be cute. (Usually. Saki will do it!) And we don’t use the term “lovey-dovey” anywhere near as much as Japanese people apparently do.
There’s nothing wrong with doing a literal translation from the Japanese — so long as you do it with enough care to make it understandable, of course — but if you’re going to take this approach to translation, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s best to leave the voices as they are. If, on the other hand, you’re going to take the Ace Attorney/Cherry Tree High Comedy Club/Recettear approach to localisation and actually make the dialogue significantly and noticeably more “Western” in the process, then we can talk about English voiceovers.
I must confess to always having found an attitude like the one I just described a little snobby in the past. Having immersed myself in this side of gaming (and anime) culture for this long, though, I totally get it. Once you get used to the infinitely more professional job Japanese voice actors do on productions like Ar Tonelico (and even on lighter fare like Hyperdimension Neptunia, for that matter) you’ll likely never want to go back.
One of the things I always find most memorable about any story I experience, be it a book, TV show, movie, anime or game, is the characters. If the characters aren’t interesting, chances are I’m not going to get hooked in. It’s the reason I usually cite as to why I loved the open-world adventuring of Xenoblade Chronicles but find Bethesda role-playing games and most MMOs rather tiresome after a while, but it applies to pretty much any medium.
As such, I would like to present to you a randomly-chosen selection of five of my favourite characters that have popped into my head immediately upon attempting to think of my favourite characters. If that makes sense. I make no apologies for the fact that some or all of these are likely to be big-eyed anime or computer game people.
Grace (Gabriel Knight)
Most people cite Tim Curry’s memorable portrayal of the lewd, womanising bookshop owner in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers as the highlight of that game, but the unsung heroine of the piece is most definitely Grace Nakamura, his long-suffering assistant.
Grace is a realistic female character in that she’s not there to be eye candy, she’s not there to be a useless sidekick hanging on everything the hero does and she actually has a personality. She doesn’t take any shit from Gabriel, and you’d better believe that he regularly gives her shit — his always-rejected advances are a highlight of their interactions, and yet it’s clear that the pair of them do, in fact, care deeply for one another, otherwise Grace would have been out the door long ago.
The exact nature of Grace and Gabriel’s relationship, at least in the first game, is kept deliberately rather ambiguous. Grace often acts as something of a mother figure towards Gabriel, though it’s never quite clear if she actually wants to “tame” him or simply sand down a few of his rough edges. Gabriel is certainly receptive to the things she says and appreciates the hard work she puts in for him — and yet the clear sexual tension between the two of them goes unresolved. Proof that you can have two characters of the opposite sex to one another without them ending up in a predictable love scene.
Angel (Buffy, Angel)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off series Angel remain two of my favourite TV shows of all time. David Boreanaz’s brooding vampire Angel appears in both, but really comes into his own when he gets his own series.
It would have been easy for Whedon and the gang to leave Angel as your stereotypical brooding vampire, haunted by his past and trying to make amends for deeds that can never be forgiven. And indeed for many of his appearances early in Buffy, he’s little more than that, providing a convenient “forbidden love” interest for Buffy while allowing the show to explore some traditional vampire themes.
In Angel, however, he cuts loose and we get to see him for who he really is. Sure, he broods and spends a lot of time sitting in the dark — something that is regularly commented upon by his companions — but he also does a fine line in completely deadpan one-liners.
Also, this.
Incidentally, a comment on that YouTube video reads thus: “I always thought Angel was a ponce in the first three season of Buffy…then He moved to L.A. L.A. changes people.”
Kyoko, as you can probably tell from the image above, does not give a shit what people think of her, and she’s immensely entertaining as a result. She’s often the instigator of the various scrapes the group gets into, and her hyperactivity is a big part of what gives the show so much energy. Part of her appeal comes from the fact that her blonde-haired, blue-eyed appearance sets her up to be “the pretty one” and she then subverts stereotypical expectations completely with her wild and crazy behaviour.
At the same time, though, she’s a dedicated friend and companion, and the whole “possibly unrequited love” thing going on between her and the huggably tsundere student council vice president Ayano (whom I also considered including on this list, but settled on making her my Facebook avatar instead) is another big draw for those who enjoy seeing blushing anime girls simpering at one another and then denying their feelings vehemently. I-It’s not like Ayano wants to spend every waking moment with Kyoko or anything, after all! Idiot!
Seiko (Corpse Party)
Seiko was one of my favourite characters from Corpse Party, a game with an incredibly well-defined and interesting cast all round. The best thing about Seiko, though, was how self-consciously “not girly” she was. She’s open, honest, brash, crass and, a bit like Kyoko, does not give a damn what people think of her. At the same time, she’s cheerful and does her best to keep the people around her in high spirits, even as they are trapped in a horrifying, terrifying situation from which there appears to be no escape.
It becomes clear after only spending a short amount of time with her in the game that she has a number of deep bonds with her friends — particularly with the character Naomi, for whom it’s rather strongly implied that she’s harbouring romantic and/or sexual feelings.
To say too much more about Seiko would probably be to spoil Corpse Party more than I’m willing to, but suffice to say that she’s a definite highlight of the game. And, oh look! Corpse Party is half-price on the PlayStation Store (PSP and Vita) right now. You should go and buy it if you have a Sony handheld, otherwise I’m not sure we can be friends any more.
Polgara (Belgariad, Malloreon)
David Eddings’ Belgariad and Malloreon series are rather traditional pulp fantasy novels in many ways, but a few aspects of them cause me to remember them fondly — and I’ve even re-read the whole set of books several times, which is not something I normally do.
One of these aspects is Polgara the sorceress. For those unfamiliar with Eddings’ epics, they follow a relatively traditional pattern in which an unassuming young farmhand named Garion gradually gathers a party of various ne’er-do-wells and, through various combinations of circumstances — spoiler! — becomes incredibly powerful, battles against an evil god and wins.
One of Garion’s constant companions throughout the entire series is his “Aunt Pol,” who has been a constant presence in his life since childhood. It transpires that “Pol” is actually Polgara, a four thousand year old sorceress and daughter of Belgarath, sorcerer of legend and he who recovered the mystical artifact The Orb of Aldur from — look, let’s just say he’s Kind of a Big Deal, all right?
The reason Polgara is interesting is not because she’s a kick-ass sorceress, though, it’s the fact that she’s a very well fleshed-out character with a hell of a lot of hidden depth. Garion learning the truth behind her heritage in the Belgariad is just the tip of the iceberg — Eddings went on to publish two additional books known as Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress which explained the ancient magicians’ history in exhaustive detail, giving the entire world in which the two series were set an extremely strong feeling of being a “real” — or at least believable — place. Polgara and Belgarath’s constant presence throughout the world’s history give you something to latch on to as millenia tick by in the pages of the books — and yet both of them remain entertainingly “human” despite their obvious… non-humanness.
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That was fun. I’ll do this again sometimes soon. I won’t ask what your favourite characters are, because no-one ever replies when I end a blog post with a question. I’ll just say good night and leave it at that!
I’m glad this game exists. It’s a pleasing piece of evidence to point to when people start talking about subject matter which would “never get greenlit by a publisher”. It exists. It was greenlit by someone. It’s freely available to download to your PSP or Vita via PSN. It’s horrific. And it’s brilliant.
Corpse Party tells the story of a hapless group of schoolkids who botch an attempt to commune with the spirit world and find themselves trapped in a long-abandoned elementary school populated with rather unfriendly ghosts. It’s then up to the player to help the group (who quickly become separated in true horror movie fashion) to understand the truth behind what’s going on and return them to safety. It all gets very Japanese horror very quickly — if you’ve seen anything like Ju-on: The Grudge or played Fatal Frame you’ll know the sort of thing to expect.
Unfolding like a cross between a visual novel and a top-down 16-bit RPG, Corpse Party manages to keep the player feeling involved in the action while keeping the story flowing at a good pace. Oftentimes the player’s only contribution between important events will be moving the current player character (for there are several) to a new location, but that simple act, along with the ability to examine items in the environment such as creepy notices on the walls and corpses of previous unwitting visitors to Heavenly Host Elementary School, makes the game feel far more interactive than many visual novel titles, which typically involve tapping the “continue” button lots of times. There’s plenty of that, too, sure, but mild exploration and puzzle elements make this feel much more like a “game” to those who care about that sort of thing.
It’s worth noting at this point that far from taking the relatively “straight line to the finish” approach that many visual novels take, Corpse Party gets increasingly easy to balls up completely as you proceed. Rather than simply immediately ending with a “Game Over” screen for making a bad choice, however, sometimes the butterfly effect of actions you take doesn’t become apparent until an hour or two later. This is a double-edged sword; it turns “making a mistake” into an “alternative ending”, even going so far as to credit the player with this ending in the menu screens, but it also means having to replay previous events, figure out what you did wrong and then do something differently. And God help you if you didn’t make full use of the five available save slots per chapter. Fortunately, though, each of the game’s five chapters is relatively short, with the final one being the longest at around three hours, meaning that replaying a whole chapter is not as much of a chore as it could be — though the game could really do with that mainstay of traditional visual novel interfaces: the “skip” button.
While it’s relatively easy to get on to a “bad ending” path, particularly later in the game, this actually isn’t something to get too frustrated about, for some of the most intense, morbidly fascinating and emotional scenes come about as a result of these “Wrong Ends”, as the game calls them. Sometimes these are subtle changes to events in the supposed “true” ending for each chapter that mean hope turns to tragedy. Sometimes these endings result in horrible deaths for one of more of the main characters. Sometimes they result in revelations about the characters that you wouldn’t find out about otherwise. Pretty much all bar a couple of “you were caught by a Bad Thing, you die” incidents are worthwhile and substantial narrative events in their own right, making discovering all of the story’s possible endings — good and bad — something of a metagame in itself.
The game’s story and the emotional power behind it is helped by a fantastic translation from the Japanese coupled with some truly excellent, emotionally charged Japanese-language voice acting. Even if you don’t speak Japanese, you’ll want to let the fully-voiced dialogue run its course, as it’s packed with convincing expressions of emotion. (Oh, and you’ll want to wear headphones while playing. The game features some of the most unsettling use of stereo effects I’ve ever encountered, along with a kickass soundtrack.) Characters laugh, cry, scream in terror and generally act in an incredibly realistic manner given the situation they find themselves in. Certain incidents which occur also show that being in a horrific, seemingly inescapable situation doesn’t make the cast immune to things like your body letting you down at the worst possible moment, or your own feelings towards another person. Despite its supernatural core, Corpse Party’s tale is a very human one, examining the relationships between all the members of its main cast and leaving the player feeling like they know most of them very well by the end of the story.
But that doesn’t mean that the horror side of things is toned down. Far from it. Despite its retro-style presentation, this is likely one of the most disturbing, unsettling games you’ll ever play. It doesn’t hold back. This game puts its characters through some of the most unimaginable suffering possible in the name of evoking an emotional response from players, and it’s all the better for it. Story is conflict, and through conflict people grow and change — sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. The fact that the characters are children drives home the fact that tragedy can happen to anyone, and the way in which we react to horrific situations can make a big difference to what happens to us next. It’s a powerful tale, for sure, and even the most strong-stomached will struggle not to wince at some of the acts described throughout the course of the game’s narrative.
Note that I say “described” and not “seen”, for Corpse Party understands that most fundamental tenet of horror — the most terrifying things are not the most spectacularly gory things presented to the viewer on a plate, but the things in their imagination. As such, many of the game’s strongest, most disturbing scenes are depicted entirely through text, colour flashes and sound effects. The understated manner in which various unpleasant incidents are coolly relayed to the player makes them all the more powerful, for it’s at these moments that the imagination comes into play, filling in the blanks about what is not described as much as picturing what is described. It’s a potent demonstration of the huge difference that having people who know what they are doing work on a game’s script makes.
Corpse Party isn’t a long game, and it won’t take you long to beat all five chapters. There’s plenty of incentive to replay, though, including discovering all the possible endings — good and bad — as well as a series of smaller “extra chapters” that fill in other events which are occurring alongside the main plot. There’s also a bunch of student ID tags to collect throughout the course of the game, providing details on previous visitors to Heavenly Host who weren’t so lucky, including how they died. It’s a diverting little side mission which is integrated nicely into the theme of the game rather than feeling like a gratuitous addition. Since the PSP doesn’t have a Trophy system, it’s clear that these tags haven’t just been added to fill out the Trophy list; they’re instead present to provide context and atmosphere to an already creepy and impactful game.
So should you play Corpse Party?If you’re a fan of story-based games and Japanese horror, then yes, you most certainly should. There’s more than enough content to get your £11.99 worth in this game, and despite a couple of niggling flaws (the lack of a “skip” button when replaying scenes being the most disappointing oversight) it’s a memorable, emotional experience that will stay with you long after it’s finished.
Looking for something terrifying? Own a PSP? Then quit whatever you’re doing and go download Corpse Party from PSN for a very reasonable £11.99.
I’ve mentioned this briefly a couple of times over the last few days but it’s worthy of some more in-depth enthusing, so here goes.
Corpse Party is a horror adventure game that uses a combination of Chrono Trigger-style top-down visuals and beautifully-drawn anime-style stills to tell its tale. And what a gruesome, horrifying tale it is.
Following a botched attempt to cast a friendship charm as one of a group of friends is set to leave her school, eight Japanese high schoolers and their teacher find themselves trapped in an unpleasant situation: a ruined, abandoned, creepy old school that is not their own, populated by malevolent ghosts and a wide variety of mutilated dead bodies — obviously previous victims of whatever curse brought them there. It’s up to the player to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and attempt to get the kids home. I haven’t finished it yet, so I don’t know if they’re successful.
Corpse Party initially puts across the impression of being just another light-hearted anime adventure. But things quickly take a turn for the dark as the corpses start piling up and the numerous mysteries surrounding the ruined school start to reveal themselves. Gameplay is limited to wandering around, exploring and making occasional choices, so the game is perhaps best compared to a visual novel rather than an adventure game or survival horror, but it manages to be one of the most affecting, evocative games I’ve ever played using the bare minimum of tricks and gimmicks.
It achieves this in a variety of ways. First up is the excellent writing and localisation. Not only is the tale told one filled with unexpected twists and turns, but it’s also one populated with believable, “human” characters who are far from being “video game heroic”. They’re kids. They talk like kids, they swear like kids, they make inappropriate comments like kids and they react like kids would in horrific situations like the ones in the game — by screaming, crying and running away.
The game doesn’t hold back in its writing, preferring instead to depict its characters’ behaviour in a realistic manner rather than the sanitised view of life we get in many other video games. For example, in one flashback scene depicting one of the characters’ lives before the events of the game, we see a big sister (one of the main cast) and her little brother in the bathroom together. Both are nude. Big sister, who is somewhat outspoken and borderline brash at times, teases her little brother for being ashamed of his nakedness and hiding his penis from her, tackles him to the ground and tickles him, behaving as siblings do. There’s no inappropriate eroticism in the scene despite the characters’ nudity, just a believable depiction of two very “human” characters enjoying a mundane moment together.
A lot of the power of Corpse Party’s writing comes from this clash between the mundane and the uncanny. Chapters will often open with a flashback of the “good old days” before the botched charm made everything go wrong for these kids, and it makes the anguish and terror they go through all the more profoundly affecting having seen what they’re like in situations that they’re comfortable with.
The writing is wonderfully descriptive without being overly explicit, either. Some of the most toe-curling, unpleasant scenes in the game come from a blank screen accompanied only by text and minimal sound effects. And yet somehow the manage to be far more horrific than anything I’ve seen on a next-gen console. The imagination is truly a powerful thing.
Imagination is all very well, but it can be helped along in a few ways. Firstly, there’s the visual side of things, which is kept relatively simple for the most part — old-school pixel art RPG-style graphics punctuated with occasional hand-drawn closeups to emphasise particular scenes.
Star of the show is the game’s sound design, though. Best experienced on headphones, Corpse Party’s soundtrack combines a variety of atmospheric, dramatic and memorable musical themes with subtle use of sound effects and some truly fantastic Japanese-language voice acting. The delivery is packed with emotion, making the kids’ screams of terror all the more harrowing as you find yourself really believing what’s going on. And the use of stereo makes for an impressively unnerving experience.
While some may object to a game which features quite so much violence against children, I for one have so far found the mature treatment of the player to be refreshing. The game doesn’t pull any punches at any point, meaning that you’re just as likely to meet an agonising and drawn-out demise when playing as a little girl as you are when playing the “tough” guy. Far from feeling “wrong”, however, the knowledge that the game’s characters are in very real danger throughout provides a strong emotional impetus for the player to get to the bottom of what’s going on and try to save them.
The only criticism of the game I have is the fact that if you find yourself down one of the “bad ending” paths and meeting a sticky end, you can sometimes lose a bit of progress if you haven’t been saving fastidiously at the game’s sparsely-scattered save points. With no means to quickly skip through scenes you’ve already seen once, this can be a little frustrating for the impatient (or those who can’t work out what they’re doing wrong — though it’s usually obvious).
This little issue far from ruins the experience, however. In fact, those who want to “100%” the game will actually need to see all of these unpleasant endings as well as the “proper” ends to each of the game’s five chapters, meaning that an unpleasant death for one of the cast isn’t necessarily wasted play time.
Above all, Corpse Party is a rewarding, affecting, remarkable experience that treats the player as an adult throughout. It’s refreshing to play through something which doesn’t feel sanitised or dumbed down in the slightest, and I’m both surprised and delighted that a game like this made it on to the Western PSN store.
I’m certainly not complaining, though. In fact, I’d like to see a lot more titles like this in the future.
