Corpse Party Review

The final game of this month is a special one to me, and its fan base. Its memorable, popular, and still going on. Its made me scared, made me cry, and made me laugh. It was heartwarming and awesome, and I'll say straight up this might be my personal favorite game reviewed this month. With the final day of this month among us, its time to look at the final game of this month, so get ready for the Corpse Party. Make sure to bring drinks.

This game actually has a pretty long history. Corpse Party was originally an indie horror RPG created by Makoto Kedouin. It had some strange elements to it, but it was popular, and even won Kedouin 5 million yen at a game competition, so what do I know about strange. It was remade in RPG maker in English, so if you want to experience the originals story, play that first. This version will have different scenes, different characters and just be overall better and easier to understand. Since I suck at segways, I should mention that in Japan, this game was released in chapters on the PC under the title Corpse Party BloodCovered. It was later remade and released on the PSP and iOS in one package with more content and updated graphics and voice work. This version is the one that was released in America, so it'll be the one looked at in this review. Its subtitles were stripped though, being only called Corpse Party here in America though, so to make things easier to recognize, from here on out I'll be referring to the first game as BloodCovered. Just a heads up.

The plot begins in a room with nine characters and an eyeball. Whoops, forgot to press yes to watch the intro. Yeah you can skip the intro to each of this games five chapters, and its nice to be able to shave off ten minutes in future playthroughs. But anyway, the plot begins in a room with only seven high school students telling scary stories. One scary story and prank later, the seven students, that is Satoshi, Ayumi, Naomi, Yoshiki, Sieko, Mayu, and Morshige, their teacher Ms Yui, and Satoshi's little sister Yuka, all clean up the room after the schools festival that day, and take the time to give Mayu a fond farewell, as she is going to transfer the next day. Then Class Rep Ayumi pitches an idea to make sure they stay friends forever. This is through the Sachiko Ever After charm that Ayumi found online. The way the charm works is that two or more people grab onto a paper doll, say the phrase "Sachiko we beg of you" once for each person in the group, and pull. Should you have performed the charm correctly and hold onto the scrap of paper from the charm, all people in that group will stay friends forever, no matter where they are. Everyone performs the charm, and no more than a few seconds later, an earthquake envelops the school, and reveals a hole in the floor that engulfs everyone there, separating them. The students are transported to Heavenly Host Elementary School, a school that was taken down thirty years ago after becoming the site of the grizzly murder of three children. The group of nine now must attempt to reach each other and find a way out of the cursed grounds before they fall victim to the spirits that haunt these halls, killing anyone that comes in.

The game is split into five chapters, and you'll follow different characters in each. Its a nice way to keep the game fresh and new as you advance through the chapters. Since this game was made in our friend, the RPG maker engine, you move ina grid based system being only able to investigate things. No battles here however, as this is largely an adventure game, where you'll have to explore and find items to use in order to make progress. With there being no battles, your defenseless against the forces you'll run into in this school. That goes into this games horror, but more on that later. When not looking for progress, your reading the many walls of text this game has. You'll be reading and occasionally you'll be asked to make choices. These choices are usually one or the other however, as a wrong choice will lead to a bad ending, but more on that later.

Skipping around what I usually do, the presentation looks good enough. The game uses sprites for everything which are well done. The only problem is that if you look closely, the sprites can look blurry, and you can see the black outline on them. The game also has CG for certain things, and they look great. But UK also a sucker for anime artwork so maybe its just me. The game is fully voice acted in Japanese, and it sounds fantastic. The voice actors are very believable, and it adds to the horror when things hit the fan. Many of the voice actors voiced in popular anime, and their all good picks, except for one that bothers me. Sachiko Shinozaki is voiced by Ikue Otani, who as many know, is the voice of Pikachu. I won't tell you what that means, but you'll know what it means once you play the game. And the music is good for the horror setting. Its not something you'd want on your iPod, but it'll stick while your playing the game. And special mention goes to the opening theme Shanger-La by Asami Imia. Just listen to it and imagine it'll only get better from each game out.

So now the horror. Now Silent Hill was mostly scary in your botched ability to defend yourself. Yume Nikki was scary because the things you found in each dream were up to interpretation, meaning you could make your own connections about what they mean. Clock Tower was scary because you were completely defenseless, forced to hide and run from a creature much more powerful. Corpse Party is scary because of what you don't see. Spoiler Warning, people have died here, and people will die still. And you'll never see the person dying, only hear it and get graphic descriptions of what happens. And even if you do see something, its usually only the aftermath. This really shines in the games wrong endings, where messing up results in the most brutal deaths in any game. And you'll only hear, never see. This helps make up for the graphics and adds to the horror. The descriptions leads to you making your own mental image. And I can assure you that whatever will be going through your head will be scarier than anything the game can show you.

There's only one really glaring problem with this game, and that lies after the horror of the wrong endings. Every time you die, your booted back to the title screen, and you have to reload a save. When you do this, all progress is obviously lost, and all the text is reset. There's no way to fast forward the text, so I hope you like mashing the X button for five minutes. The writing in this game is good if that softens the blow, but this bothered even me, a guy who likes reading, and it becomes even more noticeable in future playthroughs. And for the love of God, don't mess up in Chapter 5. Just don't. Trust me.

Besides that though, this game is flawless in my eyes. Presentation, Gameplay, and great horror factor. However, the repeated reading will damper the fear for first time players, and it might turn some off for the game taking a reading approach. However, if you power through that, you'll find a great example of Japanese Horror that any fan of that will enjoy. Corpse Party is available in English on the PlayStation Network for $20, and it a great asking price for this game. Its also on iOS, but that version costs $25, and is only available in Japanese, so only get that version if you understand the language, don't mind if you pay five dollars extra, and have no other option.

The Silent Protagonist has to butter up his pooper for the next game. Updates will resume on November 9th. And Seiko is the greatest character ever. Just trust me on this.