Arguing against “why didn’t they just write a book?” is an uphill battle, but if there’s any genre where story can trump gameplay it’s horror. Unlike visual novels, Corpse Party has you actually walking through the world instead of fading out between text binges, but the core conceit (click through dialogue to progress) is in full effect.Īny game where you read more than you play is a hard sell. Immediate comparisons can be drawn to Sweet Home-the seminal Dragon Quest-styled Survival Horror-but it’s easier to liken it to a visual novel. It’s had some remakes and a couple manga series, but it’s still pretty much about RPG sprites exploring tile-based rooms. They are doomed.Ĭorpse Party started as an RPG Maker project in the mid-90s. A chanting ritual deposits a group of fun loving high school students in a collapsing school created by the psychic suffering of four murdered children. If not, then maybe try out the first title on Steam before committing to this 12 hour adventure.As someone who suffers the odd Bloody Mary nightmare, Corpse Party’s opening scene holds an immediate resonance. Would I recommend Corpse Party: Blood Drive? If you’ve played a CP game before then absolutely, yes. But I do think the game has limited appeal for new audiences just because it’ll make zero sense. The plot was riveting, the scares were truly creepy and the style was adorable. Credit: Team GrisGrisĭon’t get me wrong, I really loved this game. Throwbacks to the previous games without context are going to get very weird with this one, as evidenced by the screenshot below. If you want to get into a series, starting with the final part of a trilogy isn’t the best way to go about it and I struggled with the plot at times thanks to never having played Book of Shadows. But – and get ready for a big but – I have to ask why Blood Drive, which is the conclusion to the main trilogy, was the first game to make its way to the Switch. As a person who loved the first game and never got to experience the second, I was thrilled that it was going to be available on the Switch. I went into Corpse Party: Blood Drive being incredibly hyped. The hiding mechanic didn’t really add anything for me and I found it more frustrating than useful. Coloured rings on the screen would indicate when it was safe to leave the closet you’d taken refuge in, but you could step outside, turn a corner and immediately be chased again. You can now also hide from ghosts, something which wasn’t available in the first game. This was a bizarre mechanic that had absolutely no bearing on the gameplay for me, though a quick Google tells me it was a major problem for other players. You can use statues to cure your Darkening, but honestly, I never needed to. Introduced in the previous game (and therefore a new mechanic to me), Darkening is essentially your character losing their mind thanks to what they’ve seen. Before these chapters I think I’d found only two or three talismans, so they weren’t a reliable way to rid yourself of many ghosts you’ll get pursued by. Talismans can be found and used to “cleanse” spirits that are following you, though this didn’t really seem to come into play until the last two chapters of the game. This is a huge improvement on the first game, in which making the wrong move and having saved in the wrong spot could impact your ability to continue the story. The game is split into 10 chapters which can be replayed and reaccessed whenever you need them once they’re unlocked. When you have a party of characters you can swap between your main, with a couple of somewhat-sexist different abilities, like the male characters being able to move broken desks where the females can’t, and the females able to squeeze through tight spots where males can’t.īlood Drive plays really, really nicely. The game is split in chapters, with different playable characters and different stories to follow. You can see this in the screenshot above, where I’m happily posing next to this dead body. It was a little immersion-breaking, sort of like posing your Nendoroids in a horror setting but with entirely the wrong expression. A few times I’d be in a cutscene that was particularly nasty, ghost-filled or gruesome, only for the 3D characters to be smiling away. The downside of the new 3D models is that they’re not particularly expressive. In 3D, the characters maintain their cutesy-style, taking on a chibi-like appearance that makes them just as adorable as ever. It’s surprisingly effective, though not flawless.
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