Come on boy! Bite his leg off!
Frightened away by something, Debilitas leaves Fiona to give her the opportunity to explore the demented dungeon of this castle. A lot of questions remain left to be answered by Fiona - how did she end up inside the castle, and why are there creatures inhabiting its walls?
Another resident is Hewie, a mutt with a Lassie-style IQ who can help solve puzzles and attack enemies. After encountering him early in the game, he’ll become your right hand, er, mutt for the rest of the adventure. While there's certainly an uneasy sense of horror in the air, a small element of warmth can be found in Hewie's comforting presence. Before you get too friendly however you must first establish trust, and trust comes through not only treating him right, but in offering some gentle praise once he has successfully retrieved an erstwhile, unreachable item or helped out in solving a puzzle or three. The occasional hiccup in Hewie's AI sadly irritates - until you remember what it's like when dealing with dogs, and suddenly it won't seem so bad.
Only if dogs were this helpful in real life
As you and Hewie try and escape the castle, Debilitas persistently follows making him look like a perverted stalker. So how does our friendly lass Fiona feel about this? Overcome would be the word. When Fiona finds herself on the run from such a horror she will start to panic and the screen will flood with adrenaline-soaked effects like heavy motion blur, a slower frame-rate, and charcoal like colour to mimic her falling state of mind. At first these effects really seem quite awesome but they quickly loose their appeal. Having no gun by your side is really more fun that it seems. The gameplay is really a unique experience on par with games such as Clock Tower.
The reason why Haunting Ground can be likened to the Clock Tower series is because Fiona is a weakling when it comes to combating supernatural forces she cannot control. Fiona's no gunner. She's just a blonde bombshell whose only ability in battle is to run away from her attackers. That deranged fat ass figure, Debilitas, will often chase Fiona throughout different sections of the castle. Using a multitude of hiding spots, the idea in the game will to let Debilitas guess where you are until he can't find you any more. But, hide in the same spots again, and it'll be easier for the fat and the fearsome to catch up. Coming in contact with the horrors of the game isn't the best idea to go, though, because Fiona starts to lose stability when this happens. Again, like 2003's Clock Tower 3, danger can brush up against Fiona and force her to lose her composure. Controlling Fiona will be more difficult. She'll wobble around, limping, while the screen will go bonkers with a black filter clogging it. In this state, it'll be easier for enemies to feast on Fiona's fresh flesh. Keeping Fiona safe and sweet will be the idea here instead of drunken and decayed.
Hiding under the same sofa time and time again is a system of diminishing returns, and it won't be long until you're sent scurrying for a different hidey hole, in a different room, on a different side of the castle. Cat and mouse is what you're playing, so let us up the ante for a moment with the use of our dog. A quick tap of the right analogue stick will tell Hewie what to do, with shouted plea from his master being all it takes for him to jump into action. Lets just say Hewie is much more effective than a kick from Fiona. The controls are near perfect, marrying the use of a Resident Evil style camera with a true sense of 3D movement.
Capcom has done a great job with the graphics making it one of the best looking games on the PS2. The backgrounds look amazing and they did a great job trying to produce the gothic feel of the Castle. But its not the environments that make this game beautiful, it’s the character models. They are finely detailed and show real emotion – like Fiona smiling at Hewie for example. For a horror game the graphics really do affect the game in a good way. The FMV sequences are amazing but this is to be expected as they are co-produced by the CGI specialists at Robot. But it's not the graphics that amazed me the most - it's that there are no loading times! The game is streamed from the DVD flawlessly.
No! not brocolli!
The voice acting in Haunting Ground is quite well done and most of the voices are well suited to the characters. Fiona’s voice sometimes sounds a little forced but the the rest of the characters make up for that. The voices of the creatures are disturbingly beautiful and they truly add to the atmosphere of the game. The music is another high point of this game. Every character that goes after the young Fiona has their own ‘chase theme’ which are really done well – depending on how near you are to the chaser the music will either speed up or slow down. Besides the chase themes there is very little music in the game at all - actually there is very little sound at all, making the game even scarier.
Scare me. Shock me. Shake me. Take me to a place where horror is able to splurge into any gamer's mind and rattle it around playfully, frightfully, terribly. That's what horror gaming should be like. Haunting Ground really is a fun game to play and is another one of Capcom’s gems.
Loading...
